Inspiration from Young at Art - MASKS

The San Francisco Youth Arts Festival "Young at Art" at the DeYoung Museum in May was full of so many creative, inventive and inspiring ideas for art exploration with kids. The following are a few of my favorite MASKS that were on display in the show:

This was a great African or South Pacific Islander inspired mask that used a cardboard base, wrapped in tooling foil. The foil with tooled with a great pattern and vibrantly colored with permanent marker. The crepe paper streamers really add to the beauty of this piece. (It reminds me so much of the upper level of the de Young!) Especially fun on this art work is the addition of a long dowel to the mask so that it can be held easily at the face or even higher. What a great technique for a dramatic application - be it a theatre, opera, or dance performance!




These examples are an interesting take on mask-making, also with a vibrant use of foil. Using tooling foil and Sharpie pen, the masks are created flat and then mounted on backgrounds designed with oil pastels for a striking combination of media:




For younger grades, there were a few masks made from recycled materials that were particularly successful. These reminded me so much of Mardi Gras, and thought it would make a fun art project to go with our Fundred Project New Orleans style celebration in December.






This mask, made by an older student, really blew me away. It has a papier mache base, onto which a variety of types of paper, raffia and yarn were added to create the details of the mask. This young artist really masterfully understood the properties of the different materials and used them to best advantage in this creation:





For a simpler papier mache mask project, I also really enjoyed these paper mache cows. A simple balloon base for the head, onto which the nose was fashioned with a wide masking tape roll (or maybe a wide tube, cut in segments). Ears and horns were created with cardboard. Rather than a painted finish, strips of fadeless construction paper were used to add vibrant color and collage of shapes for eyes, stripes, etc.








There were so many great papier mache projects this year (a sign of the economy perhaps - papier mache is a great material to use with limited budgets!). Be sure to check my other blogs for more great samples of paper mache projects.