For my final memory mask, I was asked to reflect upon my time in New York City thus far, and portray an aspect of myself that most might not know about me. My creative process started with playing around in photoshop and making a mood board about myself. The mood board includes some of my favorite things, my favorite colors, and naturally me rolling my eyes as this is a common theme in my life. There has been so many things to roll my eyes too since moving to New York City. With all of that in mind, I started to plan out what the aspect of myself most might not know about me, and that is that I am everyone’s “mom”. I come and cook my friends dinner, make sure they do their homework, and even helped one of my friends move in. My outward appearance is hard and edgy with a load and a half of eye rolls where as on the inside I am one of the most helpful people you will ever meet. I have a natural instinct to help those around me. For instance, when one of my suit mates didn’t know how to make pasta. I was going to let her figure it out for herself, but every part of me couldn’t not help her. In creation of my mask, I was asked to use Photoshop which is something I only have minimal experience in. To create my final image, I used found images and one of my own drawings. The mask is a full body mask to show a typical “Mom in New York City for the First Time”. I created it as a bobble head to add humor and emphasize my outward appearance of rolling my eyes. Overall I overcame my fear of photoshop, and yes I will still be “mom” to anyone who needs my help.

This mask is representative of a high school memory. The memory I chose was during high school, my dad had to work out of state so naturally I filled his role in the house. I was the cook, the mentor, the one who my family members leaned on, and also fourteen. For my mask I created a replica of the hat my dad used to wear, but in my version I added fabric and text to describe my high school memories. I also added a fish netting to cover the face to represent the fact that I was trying to fill his role, but essentially ended up in his shadow. It is his hat, and his role, but it is my take on it. In trying to fill this role, I ended up finding myself instead. The fabric all along the mask is representative of my journey through art and finding myself as a person and a fashion designer. There are mostly neutral fabrics all along the hat to represent fabrics I would typically sew with, and pieces of bright fabrics are scattered through to show the emotions I had when sewing. I found not only an escape in art, but some of my happiest high school memories are sitting in my room sewing things for the fashion shows I was a part of or sewing just to create. I created the base of the hat out of recycled Whole Foods bags, hot glue, and tape. Then I placed the cut up fabric all over the hat, and finished the piece by adding the netting mask, and the band with the words. Technically I used sculpture techniques, sewing, collage, and painting. Overall this is a very representative mask full of my high school memories.  

My timeline starts with the creation of fabric made of copies of my childhood through present day drawings and sketchbook pages. The timeline starts at the bottom of the pants with my childhood drawings and the print shows the newer drawings as the eye works its way up the pants. The pants are also a symbolic presentation of my Tae Kwon Do pants that I used to wear to classes while studying the martial art as a child. The top is a plain white bandeau or sports bar style top, not seen here, to symbolize the future. The white color is symbolic of a compilation of every experience that has gotten me to this point, and also of the black canvas that is my future. 

My memory mask started with a fond memory I have of the tree in my front yard that I used to climb as a child. I created a  masquerade style mask where the nose and point where the mask is help to the face is the trunk of the tree, and the branches expand from that central point. It is meant to be help so the wearer can chose which negative space points they want their eyes to be seen through.  I started the process with a sketch, and continued by rolling up the paper and covering it in masking tape and lastly creating a paper texture over the tape.

Sketch of Memory

Sketch of Mask

Base of mask

Final mask front view

Final Mask sideview

Final mask back view

Final mask wearable view