"Green Goddess" Papier-Mâché Masque: Adding the Headdress

This evening, after I took the masque out of a warm oven of 200°F, I cut cardboard into the shapes I wanted, added picture wire and taped that as well as the headdress, which is in two parts, to the masque. The fronds on the masque in this photograph of multiples and cut-outs now have a layer of papier-mâché, which is weighing them down, and so the shape is not exactly as pictured here.

I think I am spending as long composing these images for you in Photoshop Elements as I am creating the masque!

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*Note: To see the finished masque, as well as two short slideshows of the process of making it, go here: Green Goddess Papier-mache Masque.

                                 

"Green Goddess" Papier-Mâché Masque: first layer of wet glue paper

This is a challenging project. Will the masque hold? Each layer needs to dry fully. Will I be able to create enough layers for strength and have it painted by Friday night? And, most importantly, will my cat play with the torn paper, which is one of his favourite activities? Oh, Green Goddess, meow!

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*Note: To see the finished masque, as well as two short slideshows of the process of making it, go here: Green Goddess Papier-mache Masque.

                                 

Papier-Mâché Masque: Tin Foil Face

While I played a little with filters - it was irresistible - I hardly think this project is going to turn out anything like I had envisaged. The tin foil face masque challenges me to imagine its future, especially since it is a rendition of my face. Still, it is the base on which I will layer papier-mâché. Who knows how this will turn out? Or if it will. My aim was to make a "Green Goddess" masque, and perhaps in the end something to that effect may miraculously appear.

I hope to document the strange organic growth of this masque from its tinfoil beginnings.

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*Note: To see the finished masque, as well as two short slideshows of the process of making it, go here: Green Goddess Papier-mache Masque.

                                 

Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (Painting, 2009)

Slipstream, the Tangled Garden, 11"x14½", 28x37cm; mixed media (oils, acrylic varnish, markers, parchment) on canvas tablette

Today I pasted poetry printed on parchment paper onto an oil painting. The poetry pasted into the painting from the first lines of a prosepoem I wrote in 2006:

Slipstream, the tangled garden

Furrow in the tree. Leaf flapping, a green flag. Leaves sprout endlessly, each different. Why does it have to tick every second? Give me the skin of the drumbeat of time. Leaves dance in the solar wind. Blow time away. Enfold me like a furrow. Encase me in wood, the roots, the branches. Let tendrils be the leaves, or my fingers.

Rise from
this womb of roots.
_

Listen to a slightly earlier version of this prose poem (5min 4sec) at SoundClick. Or by pop-up window: highspeed; dial-up.