A grinning face in the static forest

How the 2020 mask was made

The mask for this year, like many years, went through a lot of different prototypes before arriving at it’s final form. I tried many different things, but won’t be sharing those, because we’ll probably use them as fodder for upcoming years. I kept trying this one mask based off of a photograph, but just wasn’t 100% sold on how it was working. So, I went in a totally different direction and just started sketching on the back of an envelope for a bill (might as well use them for something, the Bellingham city utilities refuse to bill via email).

I thought about how this year is very different from year’s past. That we were separated by space, but linked by sound, image, and electricity. I thought about lines and rectangles. Engravings where the faces are made up of just lines. Topographical maps. I thought about the great cover art of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures (a stacked plot of radio emissions from a pulsar).

• 

• 

• 

I thought about the game of antiquated telephone we play where we try to stay as still as possible but imitate any movement we see in the one person we are watching. Eventually it snowballs and every slight exaggeration builds until we are all flailing and jumping.

https://youtu.be/oweHG701Qns

So I drew a line, and then one below it that just had the slightest variation, and one below it with a slight variation. And then I had a face. I tried one with a nose, and without a nose.

I tried ones with different brushes applied to the lines in Illustrator. I settled on a simple one with Gweth, but thought it needed something else. It was looking a little too Boogie Woogie from Nightmare before Christmas, so I gave the mask a few more holes, and then I gave it some cells/stones/planets in those holes.

• 

• 

• 

We were divided on which worked best, so we decided to go simple, because they made Gweth think of pimples.

• 

• 

And that’s how the mask was made this year 😀