Wrapping it up

And here is the first fully-finished version of my Capitano.

The last steps in the process were adding the hair, which in this case is from an unshorn sheepskin, and adding a layer of shoe wax to set the dye color and protect the leather. A small amount of a special kind of tar is added to the wax to create a tiny bit of texture and patina.

Stefano is leaving Paris tomorrow for Marseille and later Venice, where he will deliver this particular mask to my teacher Giovanni Fusetti, as a gift to thank him for his help in securing this internship and for the enormous role he played in my training at Dell'Arte.

So, today was supposed to be my last day in the atélier. But as I was working on this mask, a frequent client of Stefano's arrived looking for a mask for one of his students to use in a fencing scene. And he became fixated on my mask! So, while I was intending to spend Monday and Tuesday at the Louvre, I will instead return to the atélier (Yohan will be there) to put out one more copy of the mask. Maybe the guy will buy it! If not, it will stay with Stefano as a gift. It's an extremely gratifying way to end the internship.

I fly to LA on Wednesday. Tomorrow I will do my last stroll through the streets of Paris, since I haven't been to Montmartre yet. Which means: no Louvre! (it's apparently an absolute nightmare on Sundays.) I was also hoping to squeeze in a trip to Chartres to see the cathedral there, but that and the Mona Lisa will have to wait until my next trip here. Tant pis.

This evening I went with Stefano and Yohan to a meeting of the Société des Createurs des Masques, a new organization of prominent Paris maskmakers who are collaborating to promote their work. The organization includes Jean-Marie Binoche and Erhard Stiefel, who makes masks for Ariane Mnouchkine (neither of them were at the meeting, however.) The group has launched a fascinating project: they're all creating a mask for the character of Richard III, and in May will present the masks (and in most cases, an actor playing the mask) to each other and to the public. The point is to demonstrate different interpretations of the character and different techniques (leather, wood, resin, papier-maché) for making masks. It's a pretty cool idea. Wish I could be here to see it...