Pulling faces

Under the watchful eyes of former students, we proceeded with making our actual masks--pulling them from the molds, to use the studio argot.

First we dug away the slabs of clay forming the frame, and then prised the plaster from the clay positive. I was a little sad to realize that this meant the end of the clay positive. Few of them survived the process. On detailed features like my mask's eyebrows, the clay tended to lodge in the tiny hollows between the ribs of plaster, which meant a fair amount of excavation with wooden tools, wire tools, and wet and dry brushes--like some combination of an archeologist and a dentist.


Once the plaster negative was clean, we coated the inside with liquid latex. We started by turning the nose into a sort of reservoir, and then swirling the latex around the negative. (I couldn't do that and take pictures at the same time, so this is an image of Zach's Magnifico negative.)

With a brush, we added more latex, and spread it around more. Then we added a thin layer of fiberglass and tamped it into place with more latex. Maybe this part of the process comes naturally to some people. Not to me. The bristles of the brush and the bristles of fiberglass kept getting tangled and messy, and I kept having to stop and peel boogers of dried latex off my fingers so that I wouldn't stick to things. But eventually I dried the latex with a hairdryer, and added another layer of latex and fiberglass and got it dry too.

Then it was time to be good artists and take care of our medium. So that it could be reused, all the clay from the positives had to be washed--torn into small chunks, immersed, and kneaded until the bits of plaster floated free. This is long, repetitive work, but there's something to be said for chatting with three friends with your hands together in a tub of mud. Anything that makes you laugh until you cry can't be all bad.