"Scrutinizing Eyes II" Off to the Mold Maker

I have been working on this thing off and on for FIVE YEARS. I am so excited to get it done and have a mold made. I can hardly wait to cast up a bunch and paint them in fun colors!

A long time ago I read Karen Horney's "Neurosis and Human Growth" and brainstormed a series of masks based on the different types of neurosis she proposes. (Which are, for the record, narcissistic, perfectionistic, arrogant-vindicative, self-effacing,and resigned. In case you're interested, perfectionistic is my own particular brand.) From there, I played with the more general idea of anxiety caused by excessive self-examination and concern about the opinions of others. As in, OMG HELP THEY'RE LOOKING AT ME!!! From there, I made a Mardi Gras type mask, substituting the feathers with eyeballs.

I had imagined this to be a series of three masks, "Scrutinizing Eyes" (the mask pictured below for the open studio giveaway) being the first and this being the second. The third exists right now simply as sketches in my sketchbook. Hopefully I'll finish it in less than five years!

Dancing In the Streets

And here we continue with the Sans Souci Studios Summer Reading List Extravaganza!!

I love Barabara Ehrenreich, and when I heard she had written a book about the decline of community festivals (and along with them, much in the way of masking traditions) in Western culture, of course I had to read it. Here are the ideas I found the most interesting.

Ehrenriech implies that there is an inherent contradiction in human society, that it is collective by nature, but as it becomes increasingly successful, it grows larger and larger until by necessity it splits into hierarchies. Then the upper hierarchies try to suppress collectivism in general as it can foment revolution and change. Festivals (especially masked festivals!) were a prime time for people to gather and plan all sorts of mischief, so the powers that be have been trying to regulate or do away with them altogether for time immemorial.

In this context, masks are subversive. They allow anonymity. Masks allow people to step out of their prescribed roles. They allow men to be women, beggars to be kings. Masks, through estatic ritual, possession, and trance (now how are those for scary words!) can afford practitioners direct contact with their gods, as opposed to through "belief" and "faith", or through the indirect mediation of priests. Masks by their very nature can defy the social order.

Now I really want to run off and catch the next performance of Bread and Puppet!

Stay tuned!

Masks Tell Stories

This summer I read a great book about masks, "Masks Tell Stories", by Carol Gelber. It's aimed at older children, but it was thought-provoking for this middle-aged adult, too.

The most interesting thought that occurred to me after reading it was: Masks help make abstract ideas concrete, and bring them a place where they can be physically dealt with. With the aid of masks, ancestor spirits can walk among their people and remind them of the values of their community, and perhaps of the consequences of not being mindful of them. They can teach, protect, and discipline the children of the community. With the aid of masks, benevolent spirits can be cajoled for what a community needs and desires- good luck, good weather, good health, etc and chaotic spirits can be chased away. With the aid of masks, the spirit of the community, the place, or the time itself can become embodied and celebrated, such as we see now with Mardi Gras or Halloween.

However, with the overriding mind-body dualism of this Western culture (mind is good, body is bad) I imagine the idea of making an abstract idea concrete is viewed with much suspicion. Why ruin a perfectly good idea by embodying it? While I'm not advocating (say, for instance) foregoing modern medicine and returning to masked ritual to cure illness and so on, I do often wonder what our culture's dualism has caused us to throw away and lose.

In any case, I sincerely hope I will be able to explore these ideas more thoroughly in future work. Stay posted!

Masks at the Movies

Imagine my suprise when I was trying to unwind with a movie and not think about masks when I found the movie was actually about... MASKS.

I love Neil Gaiman. His Sandman graphic novels are some of my favorite books of all time. I also have a healthy respect for Dave McKean, one of several illustrators for Sandman. So I was pretty keen to see this movie for which Gaiman did the screenplay and McKean did the artistic direction. While it turned out that I was a little bored by the story, I though it was a real treat to see the masks designed by McKean.

Other mask movies. "The King of Masks", a story about a Chinese maskmaker in need of an apprentice, is one of my favorite movies of all time. I thought "Eyes Wide Shut", directed by Stanley Kubrick with masks designed by Guerrino Lovato (I took a class with him once!) was really, really, really, boring, although the masks were lovely.

However, I'm planning on sticking with anime for the near future for entertainment! Not that it's safe from masks, either, there was that vicious flesh eating Noh mask in "Inuyasha"...