Artist Statements
One of my favorite bands throughout high school was Slipknot. To me, they exhibited a presence in my life that overshadowed the drudgery I faced for most of my high school career. I was not a popular kid. I was often mocked, jeered at and teased for my own unique interests. A rumor even spread that I was a dormant psychopath who would eventually shoot up the school, and that I carried a hit list around in my pocket. Not a very favorable reputation. So for me music was an escape from that reality and Slipknot served as a guide to another realm.
The thing that Slipknot is best known for are the masks they wear for their videos and stage performances. Each mask was personally customized by the member who wears it, and it reflects a certain grotesque element that makes it unique from the others. But these masks are not to be confused as a mere gimmick. They are far more than that. In fact each mask is supposed to be an outward expression of the band member's inner self. As cliché as that may sound I rather like that idea, so it should come to no one's surprise that for my 3D Class, when we were asked to make masks for one of our assignments, I should take on the influence of Slipknot and create a mask that best reflects my inner self.
The Mask I ended up with is a reflection of the depression and isolation I felt growing up. For a good portion of my life I had no real close friends and rarely got invited to do anything outside of school and even when I did I still felt somewhat left out of the inner circle and closed off in my own little space. The mask I created was meant represent this by conveying a certain degree of both sadness and horror. A mask that when you look upon it you cant help but feel a sense of intrigue and fear for the wearer.
For this photo series, using photoshop, I create the appearance that my own face is being consumed by this mask, by this other personality that's been hidden away, and is now finally revealing itself and disposing of the true mask I wear each day. Each photo portrays a different stage in the transformation, starting out very slowly without much awareness to what is happening then progressing very quickly towards the end. To create this series I had to take a series of shots in different poses. Each photo in this series was a two shot process. The first with the mask on, then, very carefully, without much movement, removing the mask and snapping another photo in the same pose. Any errors were made up for in photoshop, and the actual blending of my face with the mask was done using warping and a layer mask in which I used the brush tool at different opacities to create the illusion that the mask was becoming part of my skin.
Though this proved to be a challenging endeavor, with many of these tools very new to me, the final product best conveys how I pictured this transformation in my head.