Jan Sneesby Aaron
"Yangtze Memories"
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| (Photos by Patrick Fraser) |
My husband and I toured China last fall. Everything we saw created lasting memories. Throughout the trip, we saw dozens of extraordinary masks. Building on the memories became a natural inspiration for my mask.
My starting point was the colors I thought best represented what I saw: the red of poppies, the golden yellow reserved for Chinese emperors and bright blues of costumes at both the Peking opera and the Tang Dynasty Theater. Further, I knew the perfect place to begin—the little bag of scraps acquired during the Yangtze River cruise by a fellow traveler who asked the tailors on board for them. I pieced a small sampling of the beautiful silk brocade scraps and that “fabric” is the face of my mask, and hat.
After that, the rest fell into place. True, there were challenges along the way. How to join the two sections was attempted by using Velcro but ultimately resolved by using the hot glue gun.
At first I thought of calling my mask “Made in China.” But my impressions of China were more positive than the connotations associated with the use of that phrase. Because the brocades came from the cruise portion of the trip, I decided to name my mask “Yangtze Memories.”