Gary Christensen is a Makeup Artist and Makeup Designer who specializes in theater.
In the area of Special Effects Makeup, he has won a Los Angeles “Drama-Logue Award” for his prosthetics makeup design for Comedy of Errors at the Grove Shakespeare Festival.
He recently designed silicon makeup effects for Time Stands Still (2016). In London he has been a demonstrator for Mouldlife and Neill`s Materials at the International Makeup Artists Trade Show (IMATS 2014-15) and United Makeup Artists Expo (UMA Expo 2013-14).
As a Theater Makeup Instructor he has taught at several colleges and universities throughout Southern California including; California State University Fullerton and Riverside City College.
For two years, he served as “Backstage” columnist for Makeup Artist Magazine for Issues #11 (Feb/Mar 1998) through #23 (Feb/Mar 2000.)
Bio from Blogspot:
Gary began his makeup career in 1977 when he worked for five years as the makeup supervisor for the “face-painting” unit at Knott’s Berry Farm’s annual “Halloween Haunt.” For the “Haunt” he supervised nine other artists painting skulls, monsters, and stylized makeups on 150 Knott’s employees in a 3 hours period (approximately one makeup per artist every 12 minutes). Then, for seven years, he was the assistant prosthetics makeup supervisor for Abel Zeballos applying prosthetic makeup on “Street-ers,” the street monsters for “Haunt.”
During that time, he also began designing Makeup for several professional theater companies in Orange County including: Grove Shakespeare Festival, Gem Theater Company, Laguna Playhouse, Alternative Repertory Theater, and Shakespeare Orange County. He has designed over 50 professional productions. Some of his favorite design include: Julius Ceasar, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, Henry IV, part I, and Seascape. In 1984, he won an L.A. Drama-logue award for his makeup design of “Comedy of Errors” at the Grove Shakespeare festival.
In 1985, he began teaching theater makeup at Fullerton College. He has taught both Beginning Theater Makeup and Advanced Makeup (prosthetics. etc.) In the past 25 years he has taught at: California Institute of the Arts, California State University Los Angeles, Professional Actors Conservatory, Santa Ana College, Irvine Valley College, El Camino College ,and Long Beach City College. He currently teaches at California State University Fullerton, Riverside City College, and Mesa College in San Diego. At these colleges, he has also designed makeup for over 75 productions.
In 1997 at Knott’s, a magazine editor visited the prosthetics makeup warehouse to cover the “Haunt” for his new “Makeup Artists Magazine,” his name of course, is Michael Key. In the December issue Key put feelers out for a columnist to write about theater makeup.” Christensen immediately shot of a letter to Key with samples of his writings. Christensen’s first column was published in the “Titanic” issue (#11-Feb/Mar 1998). He continued as the “BackStage” columnist 13 issues over the next two years (#23-Feb/Mar 2000).
His theatrical makeup designs are featured in the newly revised, 11th edition of Richard Corson’s textbbook, “Stage Makeup.”
Christensen has an Master of Fine Arts in Theater from Cal State Fullerton. He continued his makeup studies at University of California with William Tuttle (Film and TV), and at University of California Los Angeles with Victoria Jackson (Fashion & Print).
