|
 LMC:
Laura
has a sister who happens to be Carol Hicks, who is an accomplished
sculptor. How is that for striking gold?
DL:
Carol
was always a talented artist and sculptor. The mask thing developed
from over-exposure to me and my workshop of horrors. Some of the
pieces she’s done are, I think, incredible. Her “Monster On
Campus”, Christopher Lee Mummy, Edward Scissorhands, Boris Karloff,
a lot of those editions, are just beautiful. She has a real knack
for capturing specific actor likenesses. Her current project is a
collector mask/bust of Zacherley, the TV horror host. She’s also
talking about doing a Maria Ouspenskaya (the gypsy from “The Wolfman”),
a Florence Marly “Queen Of Blood”, a Brundlefly, and Ernest Thesiger
Dr. Pretorious, a Braniac, the Monster from “Frankenstein
Unbound”…all kinds of cool stuff.
LMC: How
did your collection grow to the staggering size it is now?
Persistence? Money well spent? Good luck?
DL:
Money,
well….spent. I’ve been collecting masks since I was a kid, so I’ve
gotten things from all kinds of sources. I do a lot of trading with
other mask makers, where I trade them unpainted castings of our
editions for unpainted castings of theirs. That works out nicely;
it’s fun for all of us to do our own finishing work. And then a lot
of them I just had to pay for, and sometimes I get masks as birthday
and Christmas presents from Laura too. Its expensive but it sure
beats alcohol or drug addiction, right?
LMC:
You
also have a treasure trove of masks albums. Do you just get
pictures in the mail all the time from mask collectors?
DL:
In a
word, Yes. Lately, some folks find it cheaper and easier to email
me photos, which is better than nothing, but it can’t compare to
being sent an actual photograph that I can hang onto in my
archives. Real, printed photos are the best. You wouldn’t believe
how many thousands of rare mask photos I’ve accumulated in my
library.
LMC:
Let’s
hear about the craziest picture you received (and see it if
possible)!
 DL:
There are a lot of contenders, but I’m going
to go with the first answer that popped into my mind. Some years
ago a good friend of mine, Mike ‘Madman’ Shkolnik bought a huge,
futon-sized block of solid foam rubber. He carved and tore away at
it until what he had left was a pretty darn impressive foam replica
of an exploding mushroom cloud. He had me paint it which I did
using red, orange and yellow fire colors at the bottom gradually
turning into darker and darker shades of gray in the big smoke
cloud. He had this thing designed so that he could actually wear it
on his head as a mask! It was absolutely bizarre, a demented and
truly one-of-a-kind piece. And I loved his name for it: “Warhead”!
Madman currently has one of the very best, funniest, most creative
and original websites I’ve seen, the Mad Martian Museum Of Modern
Madness at
www.madmartian.com. I highly recommend it
to all weirdos.
LMC:
Do
you think there is a sizable amount of collectors out there? How
does the general population get past the notion that masks are made
to wear on halloween and then be thrown out?
DL:
It
seems like the number of serious mask collectors (and even silly
ones) is growing by creeps and bounds these days. As for getting
people over the idea of masks being cheap things that get used once
and tossed out, I think that’s changing with or without input from
private maskmakers and collectors. The public sees more and more
masks in the $60. - $100. price range every year at Spencer’s and in
the seasonal Halloween chain stores, so just like everything else on
the market, I think people are now expecting to pay a lot more than
they had to ten or twenty years ago. So that shift is gradually
taking place anyway. I remember the first time I ever paid $125.
for a mask. It was a king’s ransom! Of course you don’t care how I
actually got the money; my point is that today, $125. would
be a terrific bargain for a lot of the stuff that’s out there!
LMC:
Is
there any hope to grow a larger fanbase?
DL:
Absolutely! I’m told that my mask guide book had the effect of
turning a lot of readers into full-fledged collectors, and I think
things like the Latex Mask Central website can only be good for the
hobby in the long run. I’m glad somebody has taken the time and
done the work to put this kind of website together. It must be
great fun for collectors to search the Archives and see all that
wonderful work by so many talented, creative people. And I think it
will be useful in the area of helping collectors find the pieces
they want.
 LMC:
How
did you get involved with the production of masks? Did you tinker
with clay when you were young?
DL:
I
collected them since I was a kid but I never actually tried making
my own latex masks until a friend of mine named Chris Striker, who
was also a collector, encouraged me to try it. He said he had an
airbrush and air compressor that he never used anyway, and that I
should come on over and set up shop in his garage and make my own
monsters. So I bought some clay and latex and plaster and started
fooling around with it in Chris’ garage! Evidently the fact that I
was over there so much made me somewhat responsible for breakup of
Chris’ marriage. He probably still owes me a favor for that. I had
made little things out of clay before, very crudely, and I had even
tried making a few masks before that, out of papier-mâché and
Sculpey clay. But they were really weak, amateurish masks. My
first latex mask was a grumpy-looking hooded demon I called The
Great Green Grunch Of Grimbindelzitch. That was in about 1984. I
still have one, but the mold is long gone.
LMC:
How
much mask work do you do?
DL:
Too
much, probably.
LMC:
You
do all kinds of work, from painting, casting, repairs, etc. Is it
enough to keep you more than busy?
DL:
No,
but it’s more than enough to keep me busy.
 LMC:
How
often do you sculpt a new mask?
DL:
I’m
ashamed to tell you…Sometimes I’ve gone for two years in between
sculptures! And the weird thing is, I love doing it. It just seems
like the things that my clients have paid me for are a higher
priority. I get so busy sometimes that, first thing I know, I’ve
lost all track of time. Like, I’ll be thinking it’s Monday morning,
and then I’ll realize it’s actually Monday morning six years later.
Sculpting can be good for you in a therapeutic sort of way, I
think. I need to start taking more time out from painting and
repairs to sculpt more of my own new pieces. Soon, before my next
death.
LMC:
What
motivates your designs?
DL:
It
depends. I’ve done stuff for friends to wear to conventions, like
the “V” Alien, stuff that I needed to have a mask of once I had
acquired licensing rights, like “The Beyond”, or sometimes just
because I saw something in a movie that left such a strong
impression on me that I felt I had to bring it out of the 2-D movie
and into my 3-D reality, like the “Tombs Of The Blind Dead” Templar
Knight zombie. Now those guys were SCARY! If you mean my original
designs, as opposed to movie re-creations, I sketch monsters all the
time and I have enough mask designs in mind that I could probably
keep all the mask sculptors in the world working permanently! Now
if I could just pay them all, that would make it easier. I
like all kinds of different creature designs though! Sometimes I’ll
see a sculpture someone did and it will have such amazingly
realistic wrinkles in the skin that it will knock my shroud off.
But I’ll be equally impressed by a mask that’s really freaky and
shows a lot of imagination in the design, even if the surface
detailing is less impressive. I like a lot of different kinds of
monsters…Maybe I’m just easily impressed. But its always cool to
see people’s new works!
Page 4 |
;)
;)
;)
;)
