Revealing Mask Appeal

A mask can reveal as much as it can conceal. It can serve as a window on our fantasies and dreams. We can be a star, mutant, bandit or super hero. A mask allows us to face up to our secret monsters and play the demon for fun.

Masks--much like fashion--let us express who we are.

The Newport Harbor Art Museum is hoping that art lovers will reach for a mask and reveal their support in coming weeks. The masks were created by more than 100 leading contemporary artists for the Night of the Masque fund-raising gala Oct. 1 at Emporio Armani, South Coast Plaza, to benefit the museum.

About 150 patrons previewed the works at the Costa Mesa store last Thursday.

The evening soiree also offered a sneak look at selections from Emporio Armani’s fall collection. But among the crowd, the luscious shearing and skin coats proved no match against the array of wildly creative masks on display in the store windows.

The museum supplied a handmade form off which the artists could work, although some opted to forgo the traditional form altogether.

Sandow Birk boxed in a full-face ski hat in a plastic bag as evidence of the urban crime mask; Anna Silver painted three large ceramic plates; Steve Zoller created abstract features with resin that hint at a nose and mouth, and Eric Orr saturated sedua, copper with magnesium, gold and blood over a flat square.

Other artists explored the relationship between beauty and fashion. Gronk brushed a primitive tribal mask on the back of a denim jacket; Rachel Lachowicz brilliantly stacked 18 rectangular face powder cakes in a box, and a cast paper mask was stitched up like a baseball in what seems to allude to plastic surgery by artist Loren Madsen.

The masks will remain on display and silent bids accepted until the Oct. 1 event, when Christie’s auction house will preside over the proceedings.