Class notes, from Advanced Drawing Studio 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.
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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.
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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.