Artist Looks at Life Through a Mask

Halloween is around the corner, but that doesn’t mean much to Los Angeles mask-maker Joseph McLaughlin. Some of the masks he makes from feathers, leather, zippers and other materials are scary enough for holiday costume, but the 41-year-old artist said he doesn’t aim to frighten.

“I don’t do Halloween masks, I do art masks,” he said, as he arranged some of the 102 masks that he is displaying at San Diego’s Tarbox Gallery until Oct. 1. “I don’t do the your basic ‘Feathered Mask 101.’ I use the best quality materials. I don’t settle for anything that’s cheap and readily available to the masses.”

McLaughlin’s masks--priced from $80 to $5,000 each--demonstrate his attention to craftsmanship and the creative use of his media. One dramatic piece features a face of earth-toned feathers framed by a helmet of seashells and long porcupine quills. A more disturbing black leather visage has zippers defining the hairline of a scalp covered by straight pins.

But McLaughlin’s work also reveals a sense of fun and love of glitz. One face looks like a woman at a masquerade, with masked eyes, coyly parted lips, pearl-strand hair and a red-fingernailed hand standing on its base. His series of “Venetian Fantasies”--inspired by a visit to the February carnival in Venice, Italy--includes several molded, red leather faces that taper on top into flame shapes. An eye mask is decorated with the bead chains usually used as key rings.

McLaughlin said he started making his masks about 15 years ago, while working as a fashion

designer in New York City.

“I got tired of people not being creative on their own terms. I decided I have to do my own art form so nobody would copy me, so I did masks,” he said. He based his designs on the images that came to him in dreams and fantasies inspired by his frequent reading. McLaughlin moved to Palm Springs in 1980 to live with a friend and continue making masks. Four years later, when he was making masks full-time, he decided to move to Hollywood, where more people would see them.

Today McLauglin has two studios in Los Angeles and displays his work in the Smithsonian Institution, the Palm Springs Museum, the Los Angeles County Costume Collection, the Philadelphia Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. Because his work has been purchased by celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Larry Hagman, Frank Sinatra, Jim Henson and Bob Hope, he calls himself the “mask maker to the stars.”

McLaughlin declined to say how long it takes to create a mask. “Picasso never said how long it took to make ‘Nude Descending a Staircase,”’ he said.

But he said the process requires considerable time to scout out materials that aren’t from endangered species and won’t disintegrate, and to mold the mask, line it with velvet and decorate it.

As a result, most of his masks hang as decorations. But sometimes, McLaughlin said, he’s tempted to wear his own work.