And a little child...

Yesterday I was in charge of an artist workshop for Alchemy, specifically a costume/mask design/construction workshop for those who were interested in the March from the Dark Side.

The most interesting thing was not the adults who were there, but an 11-year-old boy whose dad brought him because he’s interested in crafts and costuming. We’ll call him Charlie for privacy’s sake.

I showed him the Wilder Mann book for reference and then offered him the materials I had at hand. He decided to make a mask out of an old Amazon shipping envelope.

We got out the sketch pad, and I suggested a design something like this:

Just one big eyeball, with horns.

Charlie and his dad began to work by locating his eyes and mouth and cutting those out. By the time I circled back around to them, Charlie had cut a piece of burlap to hot glue to the envelope. (Charlie was a dab hand at hot glue, his dad said.)

I took a sock we had in the supplies and cut the top off to make an elastic back to the mask. Charlie and his dad then cut that into two strips and hot glued them to the sides.

Charlie decided to go with two eyes instead of one big one, and he pointed out after I sketched them in that if we painted them onto the burlap, he wouldn’t be able to see. I re-sketched them lower, leaving the originals to become eyebrows.

He then painted in the whites, and decided the irises should be red. (Of course.)

While I was working with another person, Charlie took the remainder of the sock and cut slits into it, which I pointed out looked like feelers or octopus legs (like Cthulhu, although I refrained from mentioning the Elder One to the child). I cut another one for him, and he put those where the mask’s mouth should be.

Finally, I took two pieces of cardboard, did a little cutting/folding/gluing, and Charlie hot glued those on as ears, painting them a combo of red and white to match the eyes.

And here he is:

Isn’t that great?

It was great fun to watch Charlie do the whole ABORTIVE ATTEMPT > GESTALT > SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION process, something I didn’t have to teach him because it’s built into us if we don’t get it taught out of us in school or squeezed out of us by our fear of failure.

And kudos to Charlie’s dad, who had seen the workshop on Facebook and — because his son is into crafts and costuming — brought him to this thing and encouraged and helped him the entire time. The kicker: Charlie’s dad is not a burner and had no clue that this was part of something like Burning Man, of which he had only the vaguest sense of the recent mudbath in Black Rock City. I was completely charmed and impressed.