Drawing Masks as Analogies for Self
Sketch by Marilyn Fenn
Sulka Mask, Melanesia, 1900-1910
Fiber structure covered with pith, feathers and pieces of wood
Drawn at the Field Museum, Chicago
Pencil on paper
7″x5″
1991
Class notes, from Advanced Drawing with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991
Basil, switzerland – Folk Museum – tradition of Carnival prior to Lent; also South Am., Mexico, New Orleans.
- Plant form growing out of nose
- Animal head-masks
- Pig-tail nose
- Skull-mask – design fashion
Masks of Mexico
1. collection of Donald Cordry shown at Smithsonian.
2. Mexican masks in Chicago Collections at SAIC (6-7 yrs. ago)
Types of masks:
- Heads w. spikes/thorns/claws/teeth: all in one form.
- Bird as nose, under eyes. Airplane as nose?
- Masks w/horns, then horns as abacus beads.
- Eyes as eyebrows. Post and lintel for eyebrow.
- Devil masks.
- Snake curled as nose or trunk or anteaters tongue or those things that you blow.
- Skeleton as eyebrows, nose, nostrils, mouth opening.
- Over bull-like face.
- Hair for tongue, cork for nose, antlers for ears (sense of arms).
- Pelvic bones of animal as face.
- Also looks like gas mask.
- Polished wood looks like plastic, like Darth Vader.
- Lizards as eyebrows.
- Crucified Christ as eyebrows, nose and mouth.
- Turtle back mask. Painted red face with real hair – second mask to snake nose area.
- Elephant suggested in huge bead form from Africa.
***
Prepare to do self-portrait substituting one or more features for an analagous form – develop 20-40 ideas, several visualizations for 1-2 final drawings.
Go to Field Museum to look at masks. Draw for analogies & what you respond to.
Portraits of Chicago artists at State of Illinois Center (43 portraits). Patty Carroll.
***
Self as house? Bugs, beetles as eyes?
Retablos – devotional pictures painted on tin. For people who have experienced a miracle cure – how they got healed (in churches after person has gotten healed – story of the cure). In show from Mexico – Fine Arts Center Museum catalog.
Early Ren. narratives.
