Today’s offering, quicky as I want to go write, is two masks for upcoming raku classes – 2:  one with a group and one with just one girlfriend, same teacher, Ray Bogle, who is amazing with raku and I’m hoping I’ll learn some of his magic.

Anyways, this is clay so it must be made ahead of time, dry and for raku be bisque fired before it is thrown in the furnace that is raku.

I’m taking a chance with this flat mask because things that are sprigged on (that means attached and not integral) can easily pop off in the wildly fluctuating heat to cooling of raku but nothing ventured nothing gained and I’m in the mood for flat masks.  I will make 2 more tomorrow.

The danger with this one is all the curves and different heating since raku in a trashcan does that – that it’s all one piece I am hoping will protect against problems there.  But what’s the point if you can’t hold your breath and see if the kiln gods are going to be kind?

Did you know that in some ceremonies the mask is to protect the audience?  Because of the power that comes from the person wearing the mask transmitting spirit power (or, for us, archetypal power), the audience needs the once removal to be safe during the ceremony.  I love that.

I have a class I teach on Vision Masks where you do the outside AND the inside of the mask.  You can see an old post about them here.

Here’s a Wylde Women’s Wisdom quote for you:

There are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, even die for, fancying they mean this or that or the other of things dear to them.  John Ruskin