Blog / 2024 / Wishing You a Very Papier Mâché Halloween!

October 30, 2024

[video transcript]

When I say that I’ve never really thought of myself as a lady, this is what I mean.

And I want to say a big thank you to:

  • The South American artists who created the cat masks that were a part of my childhood. My father collected them at some point in his work travels, and I’m sorry I can’t say who made them specifically.
  • Winifriend for lending me some clay and the tools to shape it (again).
  • David, my ever-creative partner.
  • Jennn who took the footage of my sweetie kissing the childfree cat lady.

You can buy your own “childless” t-shirt here and your own “childfree” one here, but I should specify that I dyed the ones I’m wearing.

paper mache cat mask by Lambertville Halloween artist Gwenn Seemel
Gwenn Seemel
Cat Mask
2024
acrylic on papier mâché
15 x 12 x 12 inches
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

For the past few years, ever since moving to a tiny town with a heart made of Halloween, I’ve allowed my inner papier mâché lover out to play. It’s a medium I learned about in college, when I was studying the Bread and Puppet Theater, a political performance art group famous for papier mâché creations which was founded in the 60s in Vermont.

For the bobblehead skull and pumpkin, I built the masks on a form made of a bag of packing peanuts and then added to them by cutting out bits of cardboard and papier mâchéing them on.

For this year’s mask, I decided to go fancy. I asked my ceramicist friend if I could borrow some clay to sculpt the face. I’d be using my sculpture as the form on which to layer the papier mâché, so she’d get the clay back, but using it would allow me to get shapes I couldn’t get at home with my bag of packing peanuts.

After getting the cat face done, I needed to extend the mask back a little to cover more of my head. I’d originally tried to make a cat mask using a big balloon as a form and building off of it with cardboard pieces, but I didn’t like the way this looked. So I cut pieces out of it and that’s what I sewed and papier mâchéed onto the back of the new mask I was making. Then I added the ear structure. I didn’t think this was how the ears would look in the end, but I knew they were in the right place and I could build off them, which I did.

After that, it was a matter of priming the mask and painting it. But like most of this papier mâché adventure, I didn’t really have an idea of how I wanted to paint the mask before I got started. I knew I wanted it to look like a black cat, but that didn’t mean I had to only use black pigment. I decided to make a dark rainbow, starting with purple around the muzzle and working back to a green.

I based my mask on a pair of masks my parents used to have hanging in their garage. They’re what gave me the idea for the bulging eyes, and I thought I should add the teeth last, sort of like how they were added last here. But, of course, my mask is very different. Eventually, on the recommendation of my ever-creative partner, I made a full mouth piece that would hold all the teeth in place.

And that’s how I got here, to the finished mask. But the truth is that my costume is more than a cat mask. It also includes a “childless” t-shirt, because while I’ve never really thought of myself as a lady, I liked the idea of making my Halloween all about scaring JD Vance and all the other patriarchy-pushers.

If you’re American, this childfree cat lady wants you to vote democrat on November 5th! No politician is perfect and our system of government certainly isn’t either. But a vote for the party that’s full of Childless Cat Ladies is a vote for your right to make more of your own choices for your own body. It’s a vote for people who won’t install conservative bigots in lifetime judgeships where they can wreak their racist havoc on all of us, and especially black and brown people. It’s a vote for a country in which money-grubbing, pussy-grabbing, and riling up your loyal followers before sending them to attack the Capitol Building are all punishable by law. It’s a vote for a hopefully not-so-disastrous future.


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