Unmask
After I made many masks, I wanted to represent the process itself. Making masks peels away my layers and transforms me. My façade breaks, my authentic self comes through. I wanted to show that unmasking.
I had made this ceramic mask long ago but was unhappy with the glaze, which turned out far too gray. I hung it on the wall anyway and the next day it jumped off and split neatly into halves. Fine, I thought. Maybe I'll find a use for the pieces later on. The halves sat on a shelf in my studio for a long time until I noticed that it quite nicely spoke to me of the process of unmasking. So I made a plaster face and painted it as realistically as I could to show humanness emerging from behind my brittle persona.
