When we were first given the brief the theme that stuck out most to me was ‘Masquerades’ This stuck out to me as I like theatrical masks as they are mysterious objects as you don’t know who is behind them. To me I feel that I myself wear a mask of sorts myself. As I have bright blue hair and often wear colourful clothing, you would think that I would have confidence to go along with it but due to my anxieties I do not, I am a very shy person until you get to know me. In this project I wanted to capture this aspect of myself within the artwork.
I wanted to create my own mask inspired by traditional venetian masks. I feel that I put myself into a bit of a rut with the project as that’s the only thing I knew I wanted to make but was hesitant to getting a start on making it as I felt like it was wrong. However I decided to just go with it and attempt to make a mask using mod rock, because it would be better to make it and be wrong than to not make anything at all. I set about casting my face on my own using the mod rock built up in small layers and drying them in-between so I could build a mask that was made to only fit me perfectly. Once the mask was strong enough and fully dry I designed the ornate design inspired by a few different venetian masks. Once the design on the mask was dry I started with painting it, I painted the main bulk of the mask a light flesh colour so that it has a more humanesque quality to it. I painted around the eyes blue to signify my blue hair and I painted the rest of the design around the eyes gold and bronze as a lot of the venetian masks have rich metallic colourings to them. I originally painted the mouth red however this didn’t look right so I painted it out and painted it silver, this still didn’t look quite right and needed more work to it. I eventually found a copper colour paint that worked well with the rest of the mask. I felt like this was the mask complete however it didn’t stand out very well and needed something more to draw your eye to it. I found some big blue feathers online and glued them to the top of the mask creating its own headpiece much like on some traditional masks. I chose the blue feathers to again reflect my blue hair. On the back side of the mask I painted it black and got a gold paint pen to write a load of different words about myself, these words where a mixture of things about me be it personal thoughts and feelings, or basic things that if you know me you’d know but if you were to just meet me you may not know. I decided I wouldn’t document what was inside as some things where quite personal where not many people would know about me and I wanted it to only be vaguely seen through the front of the mask. The way the words are viewed is through the eye holes of the mouth, behind the mask I attached a mirror with a handle, this added to the theatrical mask aspect of it as they quite often have some form of stick to hold the mask to your face.
The second piece of my project is a collage of my face made out of stuffed animals. This piece came about before I had made the mask as I was stuck with what to do and it was suggested to me to perhaps make a very large scale mask out of teddies much like the teddy bear ‘clouds’ that mike Kelley made. So over the space of a week I went round charity shops collecting stuffed animals. When I had gathered enough of them I was then stuck with how to go about it, and I didn’t want to waste the teddies if I made a mistake. After putting off making anything with the teddies and making the mod rock mask, I had the idea to make up a face out of the teddies rather than do a mask. I chose to use a photo of my own face as a sort of continuation of the small project we received before this one, for that project I made three digital images of my past, personality and physical identity. To start the collage I got a large piece of canvas and used a projector to trace the image of myself onto the canvas. I then slowly started to collage together cut up pieces of the stuffed animals of the correct colour to make up the image. I am very pleased with how it turned out and it ended up being very recognisable as a face.
For my final piece it started off as experimentation before the collage to figure out what to do with the cuddly toys. I cut open two of the larger teddies down the back and turned them inside out. This immediately changed how they were perceived, what were once two cute cuddly toys became coarse, unsettling objects. After a tutorial I came to the realisation that they were more than just experiments and that they were relevant to the other work that I had done as my project has been about showing the inner self and how the inside can be different to how it is seen on the outside. I decided to restuff one of the teddies to see how that changed the object again. This changed it from being a lifeless unsettling object back into a teddy bear that at first glace may look normal but you come to realise there is more to it than just a teddy bear.
Overall I am happy with the outcome of my three pieces and how the project came about. I feel that all three pieces work as well together as they do on their own. I think that in this project what I have learned is that nothing can be wrong, and to just go with what I feel is right. I am hoping that I can take this knowledge into the upcoming projects so that I can get more work done to a higher level than being sat wasting my time worrying about what could go wrong with the project.
Maeve Dawson Art 