My absolute favorite Rose event thus far was definitely last week’s mask making at the Johnson. Admittedly, the event was very different than I had initially perceived. I thought the event was going to be a quick masquerade style mask making festival with feathers and plastic string masks. To my surprise, the event was so much cooler: we took a quick tour of different historical masks used for tribal rituals and festivals. From there, we walked into a very artsy room, we got our own smocks, we chose our own paints, and we got a blank imprint to design.

Those 90 minutes were the most relaxing 90 minutes I’ve had since I’ve been here: no school, no work, no prelims; it was just me and my thoughts. I spent about half the time trying to figure out what colors to use and how I wanted the mask to look. The whole process was very stress-free and it allowed me to just sit down and think about my life (one of those deep introspective conversations).

Here are the masks we made:

Mine is the red one; my friend made the black (much more creative, artsy) one.

Painting masks at the Johnson was exactly what I needed–an hour set aside to de-stress and do something creative. After looking through the museum for inspiration, one of the collections of masks stood out to me: there was a set of black and white masks, where the black masks represented evil and the white purity and goodness. Drawing from this I made my mask half white and half black, but with some details to counteract the strict good/evil separation. The black half has gold swirling across its cheeks in a tree like, flowing pattern, to show that even darkness has filaments of light drifting through it. The white side’s face has tears falling from its eye and a deep blue, crack-like pattern across it to represent how there are always faults even in the purest people. The golden mask around its eyes is for the masquerade we all play, both light and dark.

Beginning the event by looking at various masks, we all gained some inspiration for our own masks when we moved to the studio. The process of creating my mask was mostly rethinking and re-evaluating my ideas. Originally, I planned on making a underwater, ocean-related mask. However, with little white acrylic available, I had to change my plan. There was white tempera paint which is a thinner, runnier paint which I mixed with yellow acrylic, making it slightly more opaque. Because of my fascination with dragons, I thought that it would be fitting to draw a dragon on my mask.

For this project, I essentially treated the mask as a canvas. As a post-idea, I decided to make the mask more face like by adding red and silver.

Mask-making at the Johnson Museum was so fun! I’m not much of an artist, so I was a little nervous, but it was actually really enjoyable and relaxing. We started by viewing some masks on exhibit in the museum for inspiration, which was good because I had no idea what to do with my mask. We learned about traditional rain ceremony masks, and about the symbolism behind colors (white represents feminism and angelic qualities, black represents masculinity), and saw some examples of different masks from around the world. We then proceeded to the studio, where pre-made masks were awaiting our decoration. I really enjoyed seeing everyone else’s ideas and designs (some of which were much much better than my own).  I highly recommend attending a Studio Thursday at the Johnson, which are free for students. They have lots of different projects and are a great way to try new things and destress. Here’s a picture of my finished mask: