Friday the 13th in 2020 ... The Mask Made Me Do It
Friday the 13th of March 2020 was officially my last day. I had been planning on going solo with Philbrix Studioz and doing my own thing. The plan was to live at the studio, pumping out art, touring horror conventions, and doing freelance design on the side. I needed to get hands-on and get more creative. I needed to get away from marketing, advertising and analytics and focus on art. Of all the people I admire, the ones I admire most are those who are truly DIY. Hip-hop artists like Ecid, I.C.P., El-P, All Xul Elu and Esham to name a few. Artists who write, rap, produce, engineer, perform, manage merch and created their own label to house it all. (Compare the credits on an early Esham record to a Taylor Swift record and you’ll see what I mean.) The plan was set, and it was time to act, and then a national emergency was declared. The world was shutting down, and taking my plan with it.
POST-APOCALYPSE … MONTH 1
What I wanted to do most was sculpt. With the Paramount now shut down, that wasn’t an option. I had been working on some stoneware House of Krazees style masks there but they still hadn’t been fired yet. And how could I sculpt anything from home if I couldn’t fire it and make it permanent?
I started with painting some Jason masks I had gotten from Wish. I had made a black and white House of Krazees mask way back in 2001 and had just recently in 2019 made another (orange) for a friend. I took my four favorite vinyl horrorcore records and wanted to see if I could translate them on to the Jason mask and branch out beyond the pumpkin look.
The Forever Face style was the trickiest, but turned out great. I set up a candle lit photo shoot one night for fun, shot myself in my new masks, and shared them on Instagram. It became one of my most popular posts and people started requesting them. Then, Billy Obey of Alla Xul Elu reached out to me. They loved the adaption of the Forever Face on to the Jason mask and asked if I could make some for their store. Unbelievable. I was fucking stoked! And… nervous as hell. Could I do it? Was it feasible with the cost of materials, timeline of shipping and creating them, plus handrawing every single one? I ordered a batch of masks off of Wish again to do a sample run of 10 and get some data locked in. What I got was different from before. These ones were shittier. Had big plastic plugs left in them, and holes that needed to be sanded out. After spending hours just prepping the masks for the first layer I had decided this wasn’t going to be a reliable method. I couldn’t let a project be dictated by unknown timeline and quality. Plus, I wanted to sculpt, not just draw.
It was all around me… latex masks goddamnit. I had been painting plastic ones, making clay ones, altering others, why not do that whole damn thing? Monster mask making was the solution to being able to sculpt and make it permanent as well as replicable. I’d be able to sculpt, design, paint and reproduce art all from my home. No more co-dependency on a downtown studio.
THE APOCALYPSE CONTINUES … A PATH IS SET
April, I’ve started doing research and digging into how to make latex masks. I found most of what I needed from Ed Edmunds of Distortions Unlimited. I watched a lot of other videos and read other articles (including Stan Winston’s school), but Ed’s videos were the best. A simple way to start, easy to understand, and minimal. I started making lists, ordering materials, and noting ideas, methods, and anything substantial that came to mind.
First, I had my girlfriend life cast my face so I could use it as an armature to sculpt off of. Here is my face, and below that is my first sculpt on it that I ripped off and recycled. I wasn’t feeling it and it was too far off to know if it would work as a mask or not.
I decided to start with what I knew, Bango Skank! This was the first sculpt that I molded and made a mask from. At the beginning of April I had decided to start making latex masks and on May 7th I pulled my first piece of raw latex from a mould in my basement studio. I began making Bango Skank Clown masks. Curiouser, and curiouser… I wondered if this would work for a Forever Face Jason mask? I decided to give it a shot.
The very first pulled and painted Bango Skank mask. Pretty much still figuring out everything at this time. How to cut, paint, rubout, etc.
I had a hell of a time with this (and will get more into that in another article) but I pulled it off and made two latex Forever Face Friday the 13th style masks. Once I figured out a couple painting schemes that worked, myself and others were starting to think they were pretty awesome. Time for another hail Mary. I sent the pics and the story of the evolution from the plastic to latex to Alla Xul Elu on Instagram. And they responded! We worked out a deal and there it was. The most horrifically awesome and beautiful thing I could imagine seeing on my phone… a PayPal payment from Long Live Evil. This was really happening. Holy. Shit.
AN APOCALYPTIC EXECUTION
I probably shouldn’t share this, but I’m going to. At the time I struck this deal. I had actually only made 6 latex masks in my life, and all that was over the last month. But it was time to rock. I fucked up a lot, and I learned a lot more. Needless to say, I hit my deadline and my first commissioned gig as an artist was complete.
In the 6 months since pulling that first mask out, I have made and sold 154 masks and 70 other various latex art objects. The first run of Forever Face the 13th masks sold out in under 36 hours and the second run, just finished on this week of Friday the 13th in November of 2020, sold out in 3 hours.
I’ve had 4 commissioned products, 3 art shows, sold at the swap meet, and got my Etsy store off the ground and have had over 90 sales at the time that I write this. I still do freelance design work as well, and Philbrix Studioz is now a legit company. Yeah, 2020 has been a bitch and I may have been the most broke I’ve been in a decade, but for Gravity Bleeds (the artist), it’s been all right. I could have made more money, or done more; sure. But no matter what you accomplish, I think it’s good to reflect on those accomplishments and use that as fuel for your motivation to move forward. “Never stop moving, a shark’s way of life. -Sadistik” As the Kottonmouth Kings once said, “I don’t know where I’m going, but I know where I’ve been.”
As I reflect on this journey, from Friday the 13th to Friday the 13th, 2020, I’m happy. And that’s rare for me. Thank you for reading, and a huge thank you to everyone who supports independent artists.
Keep making shit.
– Gravity
