New Brunswick artists make masks into art to help community process pandemic

Masks are an every day sight that were not so common two years ago.

And just like any other everyday item, artists were not going to let it pass without finding the art, meaning and symbolism in its simple form.

For the exhibit Isolated//Together, 14 New Brunswick artists were chosen to design wearable masks to mark the cultural impact of them during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The results are masks made from unconventional material — and they're definitely not meant to stop the spread of the virus.

Instead, one is made from local grasses from Hillsborough, woven to cover the mouth with long red and blue tasslels. There is a beadwork mask and another made from metal, using the face as a canvas.

"It's a different way of presenting the masked face and reflecting it back to culture" said Joel Mason, the artistic director at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre in Saint Andrews, where the masks are being displayed.

Mason said this project is not something new. Wearable art goes back to plague times in Venice and Italy, where people wore long bird-like masks, and even further back to ancient Egypt.

"[We] take some huge events that we have a hard time processing ... and we reinterpret them and give them back as a way for us to, all together as a community, make more meaning," he told Information Morning Saint John.

Mason said while it hasn't been easy to display art in a gallery during the pandemic, it hasn't been impossible.

He said said Sunbury Shores is doing an interactive gallery, where visual artists set up shop in one of the windows, display their art and paint live from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. People can watch from outside if they don't feel comfortable going inside, maintaining social distancing.

The gallery also had a haiku workshop and posted the results on another window.

The project was initially a collaboration with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and Atlantic Ballet of Canada.