The Blonde-haired woman cracking BorschtBelt jokes and dragging a custom-made pushcart is just a bit over 5 feet tall when she's wearing a hat in the shape of a coffee cup. She looks a little odd at first, decked out in the hat, a flowing black cape and an array of scissors ornaments (pendant, watch, earrings). But as soon as she starts cutting,it is obvious that Wendy Brackman, self described as either Wacky Wendy or Mad Hatter, is going to deliver a lot more than the punch lines from Henny Youngman's "Private Joke Book", which sits on a shelf in her office in Midwood. The secret to Wacky Wendy is speed. She can cut hats from paper plates at a lightning pace, much like a pizza maker working a piece of dough. The hats are artworks in themselves. And even though they take only minutes to make,they are intricate,colorful and compelling. Her audiences only watch a performer's engaging shtick, but are witnesses to the process of creating art. "I am totally inspired," said Sharon Gallucci, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where Wacky Wendy performed last week."She knows how to do it without looking at it. She has it in her head,you know what I mean, she makes it. Her name fits her perfectly: wacky. "She's wacky. Ms. Brackman, 41, used to be a devoted sculptor and graphic designer and promises never to leave a crowd disappointed. She claims to be the only artist in the world capable of swiftly cutting paper plates into hats. She is probably right. From a few plates, she can make a mask of a rat, a frog, a devil or an angel. In less than five minutes, she can put replicas of cowboys, gorillas and ladybugs on people's heads. All the while, she tells jokes. "Hey, you know I went to school for this," she said to a crowd of students huddled around her in the cafeteria at F.I.T., as her left hand held a few colored disks and her right hand cut away as if possessed, zigzagging through the paper with her small pair of scissors "I did," she continued. "I went to Origami University in Japan. But after three years, they kicked me out, for cutting class. Get it?" Actually, Ms. Brackman's unusual vocation started in 1986, when she was at a barbecue and started playing with a paper plate. She cut at it to make a design and realized she was crafting a hat. She found that she was astonishingly fast and that she could design a seemingly unlimited number of hats. She began making hats and masks from white paper plates at parties. She started introducing colors and developing a repertory of jokes. And soon after, Ms. Brackman became Wacky Wendy, a performer at corporate parties and colleges and the "queen of bar and bat mitzvahs." "Where else can you find an elegant, beautiful party with so many nice people? There is no better job.

The New York Times
Sunday, October 20, 1996