Every fall, Seattle holds “Luminata” – a festival of lights with a parade around the Green Lake in lighted costumes. I built this from scrap plywood, found hardware, chicken wire, and added a light array in front, and wore it with a black robe. You could *just* see through the slit across the bridge of the “nose.”
It was inspired by tribal masks I had seen in museum collections.
This mask was the largest one I could manage to cut out and make wearable from the tin ceiling tile, which was originally a 3-by-3-foot sheet of tin.
It is definitely meant to be worn without sunglasses so that the wearer’s eyes are visible.
I also fabbed a new mask, including magnets so that the faceplates are interchangeable (see VIDEOS at the bottom of this post)- and so that I didn’t have to sew a new cloth liner for every single iteration of this series.
The videos below show how easily the faceplates can be changed, and what they look like in three dimensions.
VIDEOS:
Mask 2 and 3
How magnets work
I learned some things on the first mask. I’m still really pleased with the way it turned out, but this time around I primered the surfaces I intended to paint, and the paint went on a lot more smoothly and did not crawl and craze in the way that gave the first mask it’s beaten-to-hell patina.
IMG_2106
I’ve started a new personal project about the pandemic, masks and fear.
I’ve had these sheets of tin ceiling floating around the shop unused for years and found that the stuff lends itself to cutting, bending, painting and rivets, plus it’s sturdy and not too heavy to wear. (And yes, that’s a double-layered cloth mask behind the tin, so it’s wearable in public as protection.) You can find more in-process shots on my IG.
Others are in the works. Watch this space!
