My name is Caroline Guyer, and I'm a leather worker who specializes in making theatrical
costume leather masks.
I live in beautiful Key Largo, Florida in the Florida Keys.
It was clear from the beginning that whatever kind of creative artistic aesthetic is in
my head translates well into a leather mask.
I love studying the animal faces.
I like looking at animals, so I'm happy to study them and see if I can make a mask.
And at the same time that is what people seem to want more and more of.
I'll never forget a customer asking me to do a rabbit.
I was struggling with it at first trying to figure out how to do these animal faces, and
I did the rabbit, and people loved it.
There seems to be like a creepy rabbit mask thing that's almost like a modern, or type
of collective unconscious kind of thing where people really respond to creepy white rabbit
masks.
Over and over again regardless of what movie they've been in they're in movies again and
again and again.
So I find that is something that kind of persists year after year.
And then, of course, wolves are always popular.
And then I'll have people that will be like, can you do one of my dog?
I have people who wear them, people who hang them on the walls, and then people who do
both, will just leave them on the wall until they have a masquerade event to go to, but
I certainly sell to people who are only gonna wear them, and people who are only gonna hang
them on the wall.
I create the masks entirely by hand.
If I have an idea of a mask that I want to make, and I don't have a pattern yet for it
in over 20 years I've got hundreds of patterns.
I'll research the design and create a pattern.
And then I trace that onto the piece of leather, cut it out with a blade, and then I wet that
piece leather, blot it dry, and then I wait until the leather gets to just the right point
for it to be molded, and that varies from piece of leather to piece of leather, and,
also, depending on the humidity in the air, stuff like that.
When the leather is at the right point to be molded I sit there and I mold it all by
hand, and then I set that on the floor, or on a towel, or something, let it dry overnight.
Most masks I'll do an airbrush base, so I go outside and I airbrush the base on, and
then after that's dry I buff it up a little bit, and I add some detailed hand painting
with acrylic paints.
And then when that's dry I brush on an acrylic sealer, and when that's dry I sand the back
so it's comfortable.
I add some felt padding if that's needed.
Some masks need it, some don't.
And then I'll put on ribbon ties, or sew on elastic straps, and it's ready to go.
I work very hard to make them comfortable, and that is one of the hallmarks of my masks.
And that is why a lot of the groups, theater groups, dance companies come back again and
again for my masks because you could put them and almost forget about them is my goal anyway.
And that is one of the nice things about the leather is they tend to just breathe a little
bit more than a synthetic mask.
I could just make masks all day long, and I have a dream project that I need to do eventually
where I want to do all the different breeds of goats because there are so many different
kinds of goats, and I would love to do a beautiful mask representational of each one.
People who buy masks seem to enjoy goat masks.
And then it's always fun to do something like a leopard, or a mountain lion.
If it comes out good that's the kind of mask where I'm like, ooh, look what I made that's
kind of pretty, you know, just like the animal is.