Primary materials: Plastic from gallon water bottles, braided thread, markers, electro-luminescent wires.
One day I found a spool of flat, braided thread in a dumpster. It was the same dumpster where I got wood and metal for two other masks. This garbage receptacle was quite a patron of the arts.
I had the idea of using the braided thread to tie together sheets of plastic cut from gallon water bottles. I’d never built a mask like this before, but was somewhat inspired by people in Cateura, Paraguy, who make musical instruments out of garbage.
I built the eyes and the “crown” of bottle handles first, and then worked around putting pieces on the top and sides of the mask. The somewhat withered, melted appearance comes from using a heat gun on the plastic to shape it and add extra character.
For the black patterns, I drew some inspiration from runes on Isaac Clarke’s “Witness” space suit from Dead Space 3. I haven’t played that game or any others in the series, but somewhat randomly stumbled upon a music video about the game that showed the suit, and thought it looked interesting.
For the coloration I did whatever I wanted. I knew I would make other masks using bottles, and wanted to experiment on this one to see what color combinations would look good for future projects.
This is the first project where I used electroluminescent-wire lights. This could have used twice as much wire, and the dark colors further obscure the lights, so the mask isn’t very bright. It still glows in a somewhat interesting way, but I have not been able to get a good picture.
This entire mask, in fact, was difficult to photograph because of its range of colors, irregular shape, and shininess.
Time for a bonus picture!
I took this one with a longer exposure time than usual. This gives it more of a jack-o’-lantern look than it has in real life. I think it’s somewhat evocative.