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Mask maker and workshop facilitator Stephen Jon visited Mexico recently researching masks and mask making, here he shares some of his notes, sketches and photographs.

Chamula, waiting for Carnival to begin.

What I hoped for:

To see masks in museums: ancient masks.
To experience masks in action; contemporary masking.
To be inspired
To loosen up as an artist and get back to some impulsive work because over the last few years I have been becoming more and more refined and considered. Becoming a better sculptor but wanting to allow myself some freedom.

National Guard wearing biker's balaclava and shades

What I found:

Wonderful Museums. Some of the best laid out museums I have experienced, with clear spaces and a respectful limit on interpretation panels.

Workmen with Scarves:Teotihuacan

In Mexico City, Museo Nacional Antropologia. After one day of drawing in the ground floor galleries I just had to spend another full day drawing upstairs in the Ethnography rooms which were just full of masks in the context of indigenous cultures. Many masks which I already know from publications.

In Oaxaca, I fell in love with the Museo Rufino Tamayo, a collection of ancient artefacts displayed according aesthetics. Only a few rooms but exquisite works beautifully laid out.

I did a lot of drawing as well as photography in order to really look at and experience what I or my camera might see.

Already I have implemented some of this experience in the mask making work I am doing in schools. Adapting what I have understood about forms and techniques to the needs and abilities of young people.

Some Thoughts:
What is all this fuss about authenticity. I bought some cheap masks from the street, market and tourist shops. They are made by Mexicans and surely the way I will use them in workshops and performance gives them life, this is my kind of authenticity.
I am not interested in detailed provenance for investment and for collectors.

Looking at Mayan Faces. Both in art and in life, looking and seeing has fed my fascination for the Neutral Mask. Don’t know yet how this will manifest but I have been thinking about creating new neutrals since replicating Balinese Neutrals by Alit for John Wright last year.

Looking at Essence of Face. Once again, as I draw gloriously simplified sculptural forms which represent The Face, I am drawn to some sort of enquiry into The Naïve Mask.
I intend to make a new set of naives.

For more information on Stephen’s work, click here to visit his website

Cinema in a barn at a local Suffolk organic food fest showing DVD’s of local interest. One of these showed a contemporary sculpture of three figures on a raft being dragged out and moored in the reeds somewhere near Snape. I went looking for them without any luck, if you see them please post directions.

Scallop by Maggi Hambling, Aldeburgh Beach, Suffolk. Made in 10mm stainless steel celebrating British composer Benjamin Britten.

Fabricated by a local craftsman whose signature sits next to the artist’s; Maggi Hambling referred to the scallop as ‘a conversation with the sea’.

Whatever associations the form may have with listening, with the sounds and forms of nature, and with the words from Peter Grimes punctured into the rim of the shell: ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’; its form and positioning caused a mixed response from the local people.

Arguments ranging from objecting to the positioning as it spoilt the natural wildness of the place, to its form being inappropriate, scallops not being associated with shingle beaches. Whatever the pros and cons it can be seen at holiday times to be a place that families gather to hide behind, to climb on, shelter under and generally hang about. Decide for yourself, it can be found on the walk from Aldeburgh to Thorpeness on the Suffolk coast.

Bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth - The Family of Man (1970) installed at Snape Maltings Aldeburgh 1976 on permanent loan as a memorial to Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears at the request of the Hepworth Estate. It sits in the flat lands of the Suffolk coast looking out to reeds beds, skyscape, water and birds in one direction and a very full car park of visitors to Snape on the other.

The ancient art of fruit carving is not dead! Seen recently at a conference in the futuristic Curve building in Leicester. Created by Sanjay Foods who also provided some very tasty meals.

Calder by the sea

A gorgeous sunny day out on a weekend trip to the Lousiana Gallery, Denmark. We ate deliciously fresh food in the cafe and then took a stroll to be greeted by this Calder sculpture overlooking the sea. We saw a seagull perched on top and it was so still we weren’t sure if it was part of the sculpture. We discussed it for a while and then suddenly the seagull part of the sculpture flew off! Well that settled the debate. Its a really great contemporary gallery, well worth a visit if you are in the Copenhagen area, its about a 20 min train ride from the city.
Mel Larsen
http://www.louisiana.dk

Interior Frida Kahlo’s Blue House, Mexico City

Frida Kahlo’s  said “I paint my own reality” and looking at the work we can hardly disagree.  The raw material of Frida Kahlo’s life is a biographers dream; she  had a compelling personality, was unusually beautiful, well educated and intelligent, but  her life was marred by  tragic events,  due to her social circle she was to meet  (and occasionally have affairs with)  some of the main players of the time.  Trotsky  was a close neighbour and political associate, she knew Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Picasso, Foucaud,  and Noguchi to name but a few.  These people all had something to say about Frida.  Andre Breton said she had an essential  Surrealist quality “la beaute du diable”  she however  never called herself a Surrealist,  viewing  the movement as a  product of  disillusioned European culture, and could see the misogyny in Surreal fantasies.

Narcissism played a big role in the content of Frida’s paintings.  She painted the reality of her damaged body, her inability to have a child, the grief surrounding her marriage, (and the joy).  She was influenced by Mexican art, its ancient  imagery  and Mexican popular art.  She was fond of  “retablos”, which were small paintings  made by amateurs which typically depict  tragic events with a holy figure of salvation.  One was made for her after her accident,  the  accident was the main event in Kahlo’s life, a tragedy  which informed all of her work.  Aged  eighteen, she  was the victim of a crash between two buses,   a bus  hand rail penetrated her body.  Her injuries made her a semi invalid and caused  her enormous pain which she suffered for the rest of her life.  Added to this, since childhood she had suffered from polio .  Her deformed foot and malformed leg her broken torso often encased in rigid corsets,  were all covered up in the most theatrical of clothing.  Frida usually  wore the native clothing of a Tehuana woman, with  elaborate jewellery and hair styles.  Her self image was part of her art.  In keeping with the Mexican mask culture, Frida dressed this way partly for camouflage but also because of empathy with native Mexicans and her political sympathies with the Mexican revolution.  Towards the end of her life, Frida dressed more and more elaborately;  just as the self portraits “confirmed her existence”  so the clothing acted as a “mask and a frame.”

The main body of Frida’s Kahlo’s work are her self portraits; these paintings convey her dramatic  image, her dark hair, her distinctive eyebrows,  but they also reveal a narcissistic obsession with her disability.  “The Broken Column”  is a  painting where “pain and eroticism are evenly balanced”.  “Without  hope” shows a bed ridden Frida spewing out horrendous matter  which has attached itself to the easel balanced above her bed.   The animal in “The Wounded Deer” has her  facial features, and its vulnerable  body is being slowly destroyed by piercing arrows. Other portraits show  the image of her husband,n Diego Rivera  on her forehead, he was the famous  Mexican  muralist  who she divorced once, and  married twice.  She painted herself being born, her miscarriage, and as a mother figure to her husband, cradling Diego like a baby.

Article and photograph by Ann Lee

Artist Clare Simmonds sent us some images of her work, which we found quirky and humourous.  She uses found objects as a major part of her work, as she feels this suits the tacky, gaudy subjects and also because she loves to paint on wood. She scours the charity shops, skips or car boot sales looking for interesting surfaces, the size and shape directs the painting. Her paintings all have a sense of kitsch Britishness that is both funny but sometimes jarring to the viewer.

Mark Spitz

Old Punk

QUESTIONNAIRE DE PROUST
What is your greatest achievement?
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Tenderpixel Gallery (tenderpixel.com/agnes.html) are showing the work “The Knowledge: Land of Wisdom & Land of Achievement” by artist Agnes Poitevin-Navarre.(www.cushionculture.com) Coupling the grammar of cartography with elements from the Proust Questionnaire, the artist explores notions of identity and value. By democratically marking survey responses of people from all walks of life onto a series of London borough maps, the artist highlights emergent patterns of collective wisdom, personal achievements and aspirations.