Radiotherapy Mask Progress.

Lisa's mask, unadorned.

I've begun working on my radiotherapy mask for You , Me, and the Big C in earnest now. The aim is to repurpose a radiotherapy mask as a piece of art, based on the story of the person whose mask it is.

(For more details about what this is and why, see this earlier blog post).

The person whose mask I have is Lisa Reed, and you can read her story of living with cancer here. Please note that it is very frank, and speaks of the physical and mental anguish the cancer caused her. 

The Process:

I considered covering the mask in papier mache as a base, but I decided on plaster infused bandages (the kind used to make plaster casts to treat broken bones) instead of papier mache because I think the plaster conjures more of a feel of hospitals and treatments.

The plaster went on quite nicely - my mother helped with that. She works in an A&E and so plastering is something she does every day! (I used to work in an A&E too, but it's been years since I used the plaster.)

The arm sticking out of the mouth is a reference to Lisa explaining that her tongue had to be rebuilt using muscle from her arm, and her sentence, "my arm is learning how to be a tongue".

In her story, Lisa mentions that she became an expert in soup-making because soups were something that she could eat, so I tried to  inlay soup recipes into it the plaster, but once it had all dried, the recipes hadn't stuck so I had to get some PVA glue and water to get them to stick down.

I only remembered to take a photo of this stage just after I'd started painting the face!

The mask, painted.

Then I begun painting the mask. I've decided to go with quite a cartoony, comic book face, in reference to the Wonder Woman t-shirt Lisa says she wore. The face is winking too - she's defiant and she's upbeat which is the note I feel Lisa's story ends on. Through all she's come through, she is unbowed and she is determined.
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It was a little difficult painting on the textured surface of the plaster, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

It's been a long time since I used acrylic paints, and it's nice to be using them again.

I'm now at the stage where I'm starting to add all the bits and pieces I'd collected to the mask. I'm not entirely sure why I went in the direction of attaching items, largely toys, to the mask, rather than painting it or something else, but the idea occurred to me straight away and I went with it.

Thanks in part to the donations of kind folks, and partly due to my own searching, I had quite an odd selection of things to arrange on the mask. I'm sure anyone who found themselves in my living room unexpectedly right now would think I'm some kind of maniac. I have medical consumables, mixed up with hacked up dolls and toy cars!

Most of the bizarre things I've accumulated for this mask.

I've attached a pile of the doll parts to her right shoulder, and a doll's calf to her jaw, along with trucks and tow trucks to represent our bodies being "our own salvage yards" and Lisa's jaw being reconstructed with parts of her fibula. She has the packed bag on her left shoulder.
I will say, hot glue is messy and I'll have to go back and do some tidying! My skills with it need some work!

In the photo below, the most recent one, I'm seeing what the mask looks like with a defiant Wonder Woman stood atop the dinner table that caused Lisa so much heartbreak and pain.

The mask as it stands at the time of posting.

I've not got a huge amount more to do on this, and I will post another update here when I can.

And Next?...

I'm going to see how the mask looks adorned with a wig - preferably black in keeping with the Wonder Woman idea, and maybe add some more details to the jaw and tongue to highlight them.

​My main worry at this point, is that this mask will look very strange, quite bizarre, and quite surreal when it's finished - even grotesque. I don't think it will look "pretty".
I don't know if it should.

I do know that when asked to repurpose this mask as art, based on Lisa's story, these are the ideas that occurred to me.

Lisa's story uses quite bizarre and surreal imagery, and talks about things that are not pretty and sometimes quite visceral. I've been fortunate enough to not experience cancer first-hand, or even really second-hand - not up close - so I'll admit to not knowing what the experience is like. But it strikes me from what I do know about it, and from reading Lisa's story, that it is not pretty and that it takes one's life to some strange, bizarre, visceral, even grotesque places.

​I'm hoping that this mask will be appropriate for that.