Oh my goodness!

Scared Kitty
Originally uploaded by summerpierre.

My friend Summer and her cat mask. I had to share. Look at her eyes. Jesus!

I love masks and have made a lot of them in my time. The most exciting one was made ON ME, in ceramics i at Santa Cruz High,where I had my face cast in wet plaster. The teacher dumped a huge bucket of it on me (I was the demo person since I had taken the class before) and later I developed two black eyes from the weight. I had two drinking straws in my nose, an old fashioned bathing cap to cover my then waist-legnth hair, and I imagine a more claustrophobic person would have panicked.

The detail that came out in that mask was amazing, every pore, every hair in my brows, my lips slightly flattened from the wieght of the plaster. It looks like I am asleep, or like a death mask, if you think about it. The cast itself resembles a big crusty white shell, and I think it's somewhere in my parents basement. I hope it isn't broken now that I think about it...16 year old me with my eyes gently closed, forever captured.

The ceramics teacher (Mr. Levi, if I remeber correctly) had done a facial cast of a surfer girl named Beth, and when she died surfing at Lighthouse Point a couple years after she graduated from high school he gave the cast to her family. I wonder about what her family felt , seeing her face in such 3D form, peacefully captured in youth.

This cat mask looks Oaxacan to me. I love the colors that they use in their woodcarvings- vibrant, primary, and life-affirming.