In the summer of 2014, I began creating animal garden masks. Just like the human/human-ish garden masks I previously created, the idea was to use these artworks to decorate our side garden area. I wanted these masks to hang on our wooden fencing.
I understood that by putting these pieces outside that they would be at the mercy of the weather and animals (squirrels and birds, mostly). I was fine with that although after several years, I did end up bringing the gorilla and the kissing fish inside because I loved them so much. They now hang in my living room. The leopard and some frogs masks have completely broken and the pieces had to be thrown away. One cheek of the bear mask broke off during the bisque firing. I was able to secure it in place with the glaze firing, although the broken piece is visually different from the rest of the bear’s features. I glazed one of my fish masks with cobalt blue and no under glaze painting and unfortunately the glaze rendered all the textures completely indiscernible – the color was just too flat. My first frog also suffered some cracking. After creating several pieces I realized where I needed to improve – I needed to always scratch and slip added pieces of clay, some masks were just too thick, and I needed to pay attention to glaze transparency. Although I do want to add that sometimes I think pottery is about luck and appeasing the kiln gods.
I began the process by using a combination of plastic forms and newspaper padding and then draping the clay across. But plastic is not an ideal form to drape clay because clay shrinks as it dries, so I switched to only using newspaper. The newspaper allows the clay to move. I tightly wadded the newspaper before use and used masking tape to help the form keep it’s shape. Then I draped and shaped the clay across the paper form. I added additional clay as needed and carved different features of the animals. The animal masks were underglazed, bisqued, and glazed just like previous projects. I’m so happy with most of the results. I think the only creature that I would want to rework are the owls – I’m not totally happy with their facial features. I mostly created frog masks because I was able to get the technique down to just a few steps. The form was less work intense to create than say the gorilla. Frogs also seem quite fitting for a garden setting.
I continued creating these masks over several years, the last mask made in 2017. In the future, I would love to creature more animal masks.
In the fall of 2017, I had a show at a local gallery here in Knoxville called The Bird House. I shared the space with a local painter and metal worker. I displayed a large section of my masks.
