The Mask Workshop

In this three-day afterschool workshop students make plaster-cast masks on each other’s faces and decorate them so that they represent an element of nature that will be a guiding principle throughout the year. Students learn to identify with the plight of the species or element they have chosen and to see the world from its perspective. Students come to see that its health and their health are interrelated. The Mask Workshop is facilitated by Vermont maskmaker Gabriel Q. Gabriel, a master of the Venetian style mask, a puppeteer and an environmentalist. He is a perennial favorite in summer at the New York Renaissance Faire and in the spring at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He is currently designing for a samba school in Rio de Janeiro.

To make the masks, students divide into pairs. Partners take turns making the mask molds on each other’s faces with fast-setting plaster bandage strips. Then, each person decorates his/her mask to express the species or element he/she has chosen. The necessity to partner in plastercasting is a radical departure from the isolated experience of learning and begins to weave the students into a web of community. From the individual perspective the workshop is an exercise in creativity, on the group level it is an exercise in trust.

Supplies for this workshop include scissors, petroleum jelly, masking tape, plastic wrap, jumbo garbage bags, soap, paper towels, gesso, paint, paintbrushes, fabrics, feathers, glue, glue guns and glitter.

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