I was recently featured in a section of South Florida PBS's Art Loft program, and it is a great way to view my process. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUZEdbU9bHU
I started making leather masks around 1999 when a friend (my ex boyfriend Mike...thank you Mike!) , who worked at Fred Eisen Leather in New Hope PA, gave me a few small scraps of leather. Fred has a working leather studio in his shop. I took my little scraps, and some instructions on how to wet mold leather, and made a couple of simple masks. Because that was about how big the pieces of leather were...eye mask sized. And I had recently seen a small molded-leather eye mask.
Excited with my new creations, I showed Fred what I had made, and he offered to give me some pointers for finishing the mask so they looked professional, and offered to sell them in the shop. I took him up on the offer, and they did indeed sell!

So I started making bigger, more detailed and more complicated masks. And they continued to sell. In the meantime, I was working full time at a vintage clothing shop in the same town (the iconic Love Saves the Day, which also used to have a NYC shop of Desperately Seeking Susan fame), and teaching horseback riding lessons (teaching at a hunter jumper barn, but dressage and trail riding is my passion) a couple of days a week. I made masks at night. Around 2005, I got a huge order through Fred, for over 1000 masks, for an event in Monaco. This order, which took close to a year, working at night after my other jobs, allowed me to leave my daytime job and start working full time as a leather maskmaker.

I was always crafty, but if you'd told me I would make a living making leather masks, I would have said that it was pretty unlikely, I was never a mask wearer (probably because I wore eyeglasses all my life, which I couldn't do without...til I got Lasik a couple of years ago :) ), and wasn't ever particularly attracted to masks when I
would see them at shops or Renaissance Fairs or what have you. Maybe that's why my masks are a bit different...I really didn't have too much of a pre-conceived notion of what they needed to look like. But I quickly realized that I love making them. Nearly 17 tears later, I still love the process. There is something of a "let's see what I made" feeling to it, as the leather changes a bit as it dries over night (after I hand shape in all the molded detail), and I never know for sure how my dying or painting will come out, not the least of all because I am applying color to a tan, not white, surface. And when I put the sealer on, after all the coloring is done, the colors change and blend and richen as the sealer sort of sinks them into the leather. So it's something of a surprise, to see what each masks turns out like, which I find exciting.

My designs are driven by various inspirations...things I see during the day, an animal I come across that I want to try to make in mask form, customer requests, sometimes just a color pattern in a magazine or what have you that looks beautiful and I want to try to interpret in mask form.

I currently live in Key Largo, FL, where I have been since 2014. I spend every other weekend in Key West and sell my masks in person at Mallory Square a couple of times a month. I still get some horse time in, thanks to being able to volunteer as a stall cleaner - caregiver - occasional exercise rider for the horses of the Key West Mounted Patrol.

I have been fortunate to have my masks seen in TV shows, commercials, movies...worn by dance companies, theatre groups, operas, musicians, rock bands,
dj's...including Boardwalk Empire, Pretty Little Liars, Welcome To Me movie, Absolut Vodka's Absolut Greyhound commercial, Mike's Hard Lemonade "Hibachi" commercial, Atlanta band Quiet Hounds, UK band Canterbury...

Thank you for visiting my Etsy shop!