Mask making is wicked fun!

There are no real excuses for my absence from this blog. There are explanations. Lack of regular internet access throughout the summer, lack of focus due to the impending reality of my thesis year of grad school, the reality of entering said thesis year. There was also the colossal harddrive crash of my beloved Mackie. Ever since they put in his new harddrive he hasn't been quite the same. Not to mention, I got an iMac, and I think my Mackie has mixed feelings about it. On one hand, the new desktop lightens the load on the laptop. Apparantly, if you run your operating system, the Adobe Creative Suite, TurboCAD, and you partition your harddrive using Bootcamp to run Windows, it will eventually get the better of the laptop. Now the work load is more evenly distributed, but there may be some jealousy. They are like siblings.

Clearly working on my thesis is making me lose my mind just a little, since I am anthropomorphizing my computers!

I have been knitting and spinning, but I haven't been photographing it! I did however, photograph this.
For those of you who know me, you may recognize that this is my face. This semester I am in a mask making class. When it came time to demo the process of casting the head, neck, and shoulders in order to create a mother mold for a bust, my hand shot up in the air before our instructor even finished his sentence, "Do we have a model for tonight?"

If you are claustrophobic this is not for you. I am not, and I thought it would be a cool experience. It was. I think it is a little like what being in the womb must have been like. It's quiet and dark, and you can hear people when they are up close.

You can breathe just fine because the nostrils are not covered.

We will be building masks for a ballet to be performed next semester based on the Briar Wood stories. I will be sculpting and building the mask for the character of Ms. Meadows, a blue heron. The animal head is actually perched above the performers head.

All in all we cast 15 busts.

Below is a maquette I made of the heron mask. This is about 3 inches tall and made out of Sculpey. I have some modifications to make, but I will probably do them in Photoshop. I have been working more with Photoshop and Illustrator, finding ways to use them as visualization tools for the work I do. It's fun. The final project won't be this boring, single color. The designer made a beautiful rendering, but I should ask her for permission to post it. More to come!
Tschussi!