Thermal Mask

The title is kind of a pun as this piece is a response to the Themel challenge.   :)

What are our faces but the masks we present to the world?  Mostly my "public persona" is this one - no matter what is going on in my life, I try to adhere to the lyrics of that old song, "Grey skies are gonna clear up / Put on a happy face / Brush off the clouds and cheer up / Put on a happy face...." as I think most of us do.

This piece was so much fun to make.  I held up my iPad, and using Photobooth, took a photo of my "Public Persona" face using the thermal filter.  After that, I painted some white buckram with a background aqua in Setacolor paints as well as the green of the face, then traced the outlines of the other facial colors on Mylar, and sculpted colored cheesecloth to correspond with the various colored areas in the photo. I stitched them on when they were dried, and quilted the buckram to white felt.  Boom, done! (And I say this only because I have struggled with many of the past challenges and this one seemed to make itself.) I am still toying with the notion of sewing on a thin binding or facing the edges.  But that will happen the day I sew the sleeve on (probably the day Martha says the challenge pieces are all due somewhere for an exhibit!).

I had a ball working on this piece, bouncing to tunes on my iPod (lots of Mary Chapin Carpenter), and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of making it.  I think it's fun and may start using it as my avatar online.