About Face
Artist Peter Harper makes a lasting impression
By Stephanie Sumell 02/09/2012
Three and a half years ago, a friend’s unusual proposition led Peter Harper to what he calls “the project of a lifetime.”
“A photographer named David Holloway won an award and wanted to show up to the ceremony wearing a giant gold chain with a (bronze) cast of his entire head on it,” said Harper, an artist and instructor at Cal State University, Channel Islands (CSUCI). “I told [Holloway], ‘come to the studio and we’ll see what we can do.’ “
Though Holloway soon realized a bronze necklace would be too heavy for him to wear around his neck, Harper offered to make a plaster mold of his face anyway.
The resulting chin-to-forehead impression looked amazing, Harper said. “You could see every line and detail, all the way down to the pores of his skin. I thought, ‘there’s a project here and I don’t know what it is yet.’ ”
Harper began making face molds of everyone he knew and then casting them in bronze.
“My friends were amazingly willing guinea pigs,” he said. “In the early goings, I was pulling out people’s hair left and right.”
Eventually, he fine-tuned the process so that it was as comfortable for his subjects as possible.
The 45-minute mold-making process requires the subjects to lie on their backs with shower caps on and straws in their noses while Harper applies three separate layers to their faces: a release cream, a silicone-based rubber, and plaster.
Harper said the experience is “exceptionally unique.”
“People say, ‘Wow, that was amazing. I’ve never felt anything like it,’” he said. “I have people come out laughing, I have people come out crying, and I have people come out just profoundly moved.”
After generating a small collection of bronze faces, Harper set them side by side to examine what he had done.
“Something beautiful happened when I grouped them together,” he said. “You couldn’t tell male from female, white from black— all that stuff disappeared and the commonality of humanity emerged.”
Harper said his project forces people to look at one another in a different way.
“You can’t make that initial assessment you’ve made your entire life. You begin to look at each face for what it actually is and who the person was at that exact moment. In this country, we spend so much time judging one another based on [superficial things], we sometimes assess without really looking.”
Harper was inspired to create a mobile studio for making the molds. “I got a massage bed, some blankets and a moving crate,” he said. “Everything could be packed in the back of my Toyota Prius.”
With the help of his assistant, CSUCI graduate Chris Finney, and other student helpers, Harper has made 249 molds of people from all walks of life.
“CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to people starting jobs out of their garages, struggling actors in restaurants to famous actors, a couple of kids starting up a band to some of the greatest musicians of all time,” he says. “It’s an unbelievable scope. The goal is to have 365 faces, one for every day of the year.”
Though finding participants for the project is usually easy, Harper said he would like to mold the faces of a Nobel Prize winner and a president. “I would take any living president, either current or ex,” he said.
Once the project is complete, Harper plans to have a touring art show featuring the bronze molds and their accompanying film footage.
“It will start in L.A. and end in New York,” he said. “I want to bring it to parts of the country that don’t get edgy, cool art shows.”
Harper also plans to publish a book. “It will have pictures of all the faces in it,” he said.
As much as Harper enjoys the molds, he is involved in many different creative endeavors as well. “I sculpt, I draw, I paint, I write music, I sing,” he said. In fact, he comes from a family of artists. His brother Ben Harper, is a world-famous musician, and his other brother, Joel Harper, is a successful children’s book author.
“In my family, if you said you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, people would say, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ ” Harper said with a laugh. “As a child, I was encouraged to do what I love, whatever that was.”
He tells his students to do the same. “The most important thing that I tell them is to think for themselves and recognize who they are,” he said. “I try to get them out of that herd mentality.”
Harper said it is a privilege to make art that has had an impact on other people’s lives. “This project makes [people] feel like they are a part of something that is larger than themselves. That’s a beautiful feeling.”
For more information about Peter Harper’s mask project, visit www.last3rhinos.com.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT