Everyone asks me the same question: How did you end up making masks?

Let me tell you:

I have a strong background in theater, and ended up spending a lot of time in my late teens and early twenties working building props, masks, puppets, and scenery pieces for a local childrens theater. I’ve made a bison head with five foot long horns, giant bugs and an elephant the size of a pony… and as much as I loved making art on such a grand scale, my favorite has always been masks.

In 2007, I got married and my husband and I had a masquerade wedding. When buying our masks, I was awed by the work that was available out there- from the elegant fantasy work in leather to the traditional papier mache masks of the Venetian masters. It was then that I decided that was the permanent direction I wanted to take my art.

I started making my own papier mache masks with a decidedly muppet-esque flair. Then I was contacted by a poi spinner who needed a mask with some very odd specifications, the biggest one being that he needed it to be fireproof.

I had always wanted an excuse to try working with molded leather, so I was excited for the opportunity to try it, and once I put my hands to the leather I knew for sure I had found my medium.

Amanda Leetch

To me, bookmarks are magic! They mark the place where the world of the story intersects the world in which we live, the place where the world of words meets the world of the senses. To me, this place is marvelous and magical and very, very cool. This is what I get passionate about. The magic place should be honored, celebrated, made a focus of attention.

These Jewelmark bookmarks are greatly varied in form and style; each is a unique work of art, with a character of its own. Some are simpler and more serviceable for daily use, some are lavish and better suited for use with books of special significance: favorite reference books, the family Bible, a classic volume of historic significance. Some styles are suitable to serve also as jewelry for the reader as well as for the book.

Starting with a wired gauze ribbon, I doubled it and sewed the lengths together so that the design from one side shows mistily through to the other, and I used a wandering crewel-stitch to secure the pieces together. To further the impression of heavy mists described in the story, I made lots of feathery structures with tiny translucent white seed beads and gold, garnet, & translucent-gold beads. One of the things I liked most about the story that inspired the piece was the way it had of making alien things seem oddly familiar. So, hidden among the ‘mists’ are a lot of odd little things: round and faceted agates, freshwater pearls, fish, flower, insect, and bird beads of various sorts.

Laramie Sasseville

When I first read “The Quiz” it seemed like, eerily enough, the piece picked me rather than me picking the piece. The story didn’t even feel like something I would write, rather it was something about me. So perhaps it was because I over-identified with the work that I choose to go with a journal. I get a twitch in my fingers and checking account every time I come across another journal I find attractive, but why not? After all, it’s somewhere to write down your thoughts, you secrets and, if need be, the Answers.

Ashly Nagrant

This cocktail hat is based on Camilla Bruce’s short story, “Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse.” In some ways, it’s a straightforward illustration of the story, which is about the interplay between inspiration and fiction, or more precisely an illustration of the words of the story, which are dense with image and texture and color. The hat is divided, with a clutter of objects – a rose, an origami frog (a crumpled candy wrapper in the story), pebbles – beneath a bent dark red moon caught in a net along with words, mostly pronouns, words devoid of specificity but full of implication in their relation to each other.

All the materials used in making the hat were either recycled or repurposed, just as the muse’s inspiration is repurposed in making fiction. Much of the fabric is recycled from Anita Rowland’s wedding dress, with the rest recycled from a shirt I made a few years ago. The fabric beads wrapped in gold thread and the semi-precious stone beads are from Anna Vargo’s stash; the small semi-precious stones used as cabochons were Elise Matthesen’s (”Here, do something with this,” she said). The origami frog is made from holographic wrapping paper.

The extremely soft-sided fabric box holding the hat is an improvised liner for the utilitarian box, intended to make shipping the hat easier. Sometimes improvisations spin out of control, and that one certainly did. It will serve to protect the hat, as long as the buyer keeps the acid-free paper as padding.

The hat has two toupee clips to hold it on the wearer’s head. They snap open like little snap barrettes, and as long as they are able to grab a few hairs in the combs, they’ll hold the hat on most securely.

Kate Schaefer

Originally, I’d planned (and started!) a much different sort of piece, a sort of layered collage. It kept not wanting to go in the direction I had for it, so I finally realized that the image I had in my head was not going to come out just yet, if ever. Instead, I thought about the visceral images in the story, the bits and phrases that kept sticking with me. I kept thinking of how the woman in the story was introduced—earthy and organic, intoxicating in her wildness, in her refusal to be bound by convention. She struck me as strong and independent, fierce and primal, trying to pass for normal but unable to hide the truth of herself. I think a lot of women are like that.

It also made me think about strong women who sabotage themselves one way or another, how we will often give up innate parts of ourselves to make our partners happy, how we suppress our more feral sides to make our lives run smoother. I wanted to create a piece that would allow someone to tap into that wildness inside, to channel it into coming out . . . just a little bit.

Erica Olson

I am a scientist and an artist. Up to recently my time has been 75 % science, 25% art. It is now evolving toward more art, less science. In the coming years it will be 100% art.
I favor water media (watercolor and acrylic). Bookbinding is a hobby.

The story by Cecil Castellucci is about memories; the ones you want to keep and the ones you would like to forget. I see the book as a place to keep the memories. The abstract painting on the fly leaves is my impression of a neural network. The painting was cut to make the front and back fly leaves and there is no possibility of reconnecting the parts. It represents lost memories. The blank pages are for the memories that one wants to keep. When the book is closed the neural network on the clasp is reconnected keeping the memory safe.

Lise Bernier

I chose Camilla’s story to work with because it so wonderfully describes the relationship between artist and muse. It is said that the muse – whether she dictates writing, binding, beading, singing or painting – knows her artist more intimately than anyone else. It is also said that we must not neglect our muses. In ancient times, shrines were built to honor the muses and cults existed which venerated them at springs or fountains or caves. Today some believe that the muse is no more than a myth.

When I begin to bind a book, the text with which I am working becomes my muse, informing the color, shape and structure of its eventual container. For this book, the text of the story clearly revealed the colors, texture and decoration of the finished piece. It is the text that creates the book; my hands are merely the tools through which the story operates. I find that my work flows more smoothly when I maintain an awareness of the muse who guides me. This book came into being like magic; there was no hesitation between its initial layout and the final bead being tied to the spine. I can say, after binding it, that the muse is no myth. She is real, and this is my offering to her.

Erzebet Yellowboy

I’ve been a big fan of Dora Goss from way back. I just loved her stories in “The Forest of Forgetting”. Her work just seemed to have an affinity to my dioramas. As soon as I heard she had a story in Interfictions 2 I signed on to do a piece based on it, sight unseen. I couldn’t have picked better if I had tried! The wonderful Jules Verne-esque story (from the other point of view) worked perfectly with the Victorian imagery I use. I also liked the sense of exploration and discovery that you find in period magazines and in fact used some for the foreground and background of the box. I decided to create a scene that didn’t show the Martians as they are alien. Instead, I found an old hero (from a 1901 volume of the London Illustrated News) and put him in the sky as the Empress dreams her new word. I hope the gentleman pictured would be pleased.

Connie Toebe

I’m a doll artist blending natural and man-made materials to create mythic creatures. I loved this story and the way that making a piece of art for it stretched my boundaries (and hurt my brain! ouch). Making the Empress was both very fun and very challenging. I’m fascinated with seeing the ordinary as alien and the alien as ordinary in my art and this piece is a reflection of that as well as an illustration of a most excellent and thoroughly enjoyable story told from an alien point of view.

C. Jane Washburn

When I create sculptures out of wool, I usually let the wool inspire me. Creatures take shape out of wool roving as I poke and prod the cloud of fibers with a felting needle. The craft of needle-felting uses a barbed needle (like a bee’s barbed stinger) to enmesh loose wool fibers together into a structure. The more you stab, the tighter the fibers become, the more solid the creature.

This creature had a different genesis: the story “To Set Before the King,” by Genevieve Valentine. I read Valentine’s piece as a reflection on stepmothers; in it, a pivotal time in an au pair’s life is interwoven with a fairy tale about good maids and evil stepmothers, and a cook/butcher’s reflection on her/his work to turn a carcass into food. The language is spare and beautiful, the tale as bright and sharp as a thin needle, and then as moist and smooth as breathing. Reading it, I was especially struck by Valentine’s image of a golden dress, embroidered inside with bees: “When he zips the dress closed she can feel the bees spring to life inside the dress, a thousand tiny stings.”

In the sculpture inspired by this story, I’ve taken the bee image and merged it with the butcher’s thread of the short story. A bee stands with wings folded, one arm reaching behind her back to clasp a meat cleaver. When I turn her around, I chuckle at the irony of a bee with a cleaver, rather than a stinging point.

Lisa Bergin