Dakota5



Tim Burton August 25,1958 - Present [|Tim Burton Presentation]



Artist Statement

For the mask project for Art I, I decided to remake Corey Taylor’s mask. He is the lead singer of Slipknot. I decided to do this because I used to be highly obsessed with the band. I had Slipknot shirts, Slipknot cups, Slipknot coffee cups, all of their cd’s, posters, everything. I remember going to Hot Topic before I started 8th grade and purchasing Slipknot notebooks and Slipknot pens so that I could even get Slipknot school supplies. Slipknot, Slipknot, Slipknot. It was almost as if that was my God. I idolized Corey Taylor and Slipknot. When I entered high school, I started to truly find my identity and it definitely wasn’t Slipknot. I turned to God instead of idolatry. As the years have gone I have lost interest in the band. Sometimes I can still listen to their music and enjoy it. But they are no longer my life. The Slipknot phase lasted from 6th grade until 9th. It was a pretty good chunk of my adolescence. So that is why I chose to do the mask. It was almost like a final goodbye to my old self.

The mask itself presented a lot of troubles. I didn’t know if I could paint the plaster, or carve into it. I eventually arrived at the idea of wax. I was going to coat the mask in wax. I melted down countless crayons and poured the wax onto my mask. As for the black around the mouth and the eyes, I did a batch of just black crayons and brushed it on there. The same goes with the gashes and cuts on the mask, that was a batch of red crayons brushed into the gaps. I ran into an issue of scarcity for the crayons I needed. I was running out of colors. I had to go around to each teacher and ask of they had any crayons that they would be willing to part with.

Another challenge that presented itself was the hair. I decided to completely do the mask. I wanted to include Corey Taylor’s distinct red, purple, and blue hair that he had while he wore this mask. I used yarn and had to tear the yarn apart piece by piece. That was a major time consumer. After that I had the challenge of coloring the yarn, as the yarn that I had purchased was white yarn. I decided to soak it in food coloring mixed with vinegar. I let it sit overnight and hung it up to dry. When I woke up in the morning, the hair had lost a lot of its color. The color was streaky and spotty. The red looked like an orange mixed with pink. It all looked wrong. So, I decided to soak it again; same result. I added more food coloring; same result. I quickly realized that this method simply wasn’t going to work. So, I separated the strands and painted every strand. I used acrylic paints to do so. I mixed the paint with food coloring that way it would give it a little softer texture. It didn’t help very much. I hung them to dry. When I woke up the next morning, the hair was extremely rough. It was like straw. I had to separate each piece again. Next, I attached the hair to the mask using hot glue.

My last step was to make an environment. I was running out of time. I didn’t want my environment to take away form the mask, so I didn’t want anything big. I was fishing in my basement and came across an old acoustic guitar body. The face of the guitar was missing, it was perfect. I taped the hair to the rear side of the guitar and dangled the mask in the guitar body. It worked perfectly.

That was the journey of making Corey Taylor.