Clay work

This mask was made at a get together with my ladies from my creativity lessons run this year. We all took turns to run an evening activity, and this was the result of a 'claywork' evening. It was quite remarkable for me! This is not actually the first mask, the first one I made was a really scary looking man's face. The other ladies came to look at it and agreed that it was rather creepy. So I set to it with my modelling tool, which was in itself a therapeutic act, and destroyed it to make another mask.

This time the result was quite different. I'd thought myself that the face looked like a Chinese old lady but hadn't shared my thoughts with the group before I let them have a look. One of my friends said that it looked Asian, but much, much happier! Which is how I felt about making it. I also stuck butterflies around the edge, I think you can just see one, and scratched in the words, 'wisdom', 'joy' and 'spirit'. Later that same evening I checked the internet for symbolism of the Chinese Wise Woman, not really expecting any results, but found that there is such a character, and that she symbolized wisdom and transformation - just like the butterflies I'd placed around the edge, and the word itself! I wonder what the scary man symbolized in the first mask? I think it may have been fear, so it's very symbolic that I destroyed it, to start afresh with a new transformation!

The friend who led the group said that clay doesn't lie. It's a very interesting medium to work with.