Despite myself (my perfectionism, desire to always do better), I am delighted with this masque.


(Note: I've uploaded a much larger image this time. If you click on the image and then click again, you can better see some of the detail.)

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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.

The Green Goddess masque goes out dancing. :-)
Photo from Buddha Groove last night... taken by Irena Strzinar.





The divine Helen Goldstein, and Irena Strzinar.

I'm still in that stage between painting and seeing what I've done. The foil impression of the face in the painted version is something I am getting used to, though of course I wasn't aiming for a life-like masque. Both images are fairly close to the actual coloration and feel of the masque, though the upper one, originally taken under daylight bulbs, which brightened the colour too much, has been brought to its colours through post-photographic filters, while the lower one wasn't. By the time I realized photographing in natural light gave the truest colours, it was too dark.

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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.

A crisis yesterday - it dried and was too small for my face. From the neck up I split one cheek, taped the mask wider, re-papier-mâchéd it. Naturally, I have spent hours composing this photographic image rather than painting!

Last night I bought a single, large silicon Calla Lily to carry as a wand. When I went searching in Google images for ideas for painting a "Green Goddess" there were many photos of Calla Lilies!

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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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

Flower Scene, 11"x14½", 28x37cm; mixed media (oils, acrylic varnish, markers) on canvas

Just fooling around today - painted most of this without my reading glasses, which felt freeing. Think  I will add a poem to it.

My thought is to find something I've written or write something new and print it on parchment paper and varnish it onto the painting.

Sounds like an idea, but finding the words and materials... now that's another matter!

That rather clumsy lining of the trumpet vine flower will decrease in visual dominance when there are words in black with their letters of lines.