Cast of aluminum, this life-size mask combines influences from machinery housings, plumbing fittings, plus Art Deco and early modernist design elements, unified into a sculpture that exists between the ancient and modern, the human and the machine.
Rugged features and pitted surfaces combine to elicit durability, resilience, and enduring quality, bearing both the marks of manufacture and the scars of storms weathered time and time again. Perhaps these storms were long ago, and this object serves as a messenger from times made obscure by the roll of centuries. Such an artifact could be considered a protective garment, ritual totem, burial mask, or depiction of a deity. Whatever the case, it has now been removed from the contexts that made and used it, and we are left tracing the methods of its origin in an attempt to learn its backstory. For when an object outlasts a civilization, the context is lost forever, the mold that shaped the mask when molten will never be known by anyone except the ancient foundry worker. For people move, languages change, value and belief systems evolve and meander, yet what lingers through the ages collects into a singular message: We were here.
These sculptures are created by way of sand casting, in which a pattern is placed in a box and sand packed around it, creating a cavity to the desired shape once the pattern is removed. Rough edges are cleaned up by hand and further details are machined into the casting, giving the mask its eyes and mouth. Weathering effects are accomplished with hammers, chisels, and other such implements, creating a texture mimicking exposures to repeated dents, scratches, grime, and abrasion.
Process Video
A look into the making of the mask:
Copyright Jonathan Sherwood 2025
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