FROM PAGE ONE
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
A7
Fulfer:
Continued from Page A1
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Piper Larison, of Enterprise, left, uses an airbrush to paint a silicone mask as JR Rymut cleans
one of the fi ckle airbrushes during Rymut’s Haunt Camp class on creating prosthetic masks
Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021, at The Place in Joseph.
Masks:
Continued from Page A1
“I’m hoping to go into
theater production, you
know, plays and stuff so
I could maybe apply it to
that,” she said. “I’m not sure
if I will need it, but it’s fun.”
Others will only remotely
use the skills professionally.
Catherine Zeigler, of
Joseph, doesn’t plan a career
in the entertainment fi eld.
“But the face she was paint-
ing could be found on a tree,
so in a way it did connect to
her chosen profession.
“It’s kind of like a tree
brought to life. Right now,
I’m trying to add highlights
to it,” she said. “It’d be
like something you’d see in
Alice in Wonderland.”
Parker Siebe, of Enter-
prise, also has no plans to
use his new skills profes-
sionally. The mask he cre-
ated came from a source one
might expect from an artist.
“This came from an inspi-
ration of a fantasy novel
called ‘An Ember in the
Ashes,’” he said, adding that
the mask portrays one of the
silver-faced special forces in
the novel.
“They’re called the
masks because of the masks
they wear,” he said. “I did
not get the silvery tone I was
hoping for, but I like it.”
He won’t be doing it
professionally.
“But I felt like it was a
great experience,” he said.
The process
Rymut, who went to fi ne-
arts school, said she also
worked in the museum fab-
rication industry where she
did molding and casting, as
well as a little work in the
fi lm industry.
“I stumbled into this
career after the fact, and
I wish that I had done an
introduction to these really
interesting careers in the arts
that doesn’t get a lot of intro-
duction in the fi ne-arts cur-
riculum,” she said.
She explained the process
she’s been teaching at Haunt
Camp. It starts with molding
a life mask in plaster of the
student’s face, a positive and
a negative.
“In order to cast a soft sil-
icone prosthetic, we created
these hard, stone molds out
of Ultracal plaster,” she said.
“The core of the mold — the
positive — is made using the
students’ lifecast faces, so
the plasteline clay sculpture
JR Rymut/Contributed Photo
Clay character sculpts are affi xed to plaster casts of the
students’ faces. When these are casted in another shell of
plaster, the clay is scraped out and then silicone can be
injected.
they create on top will form-
fi t their faces perfectly. After
sculpting, another hard shell
of plaster is added over the
top of the clay. The clay is
scraped out, leaving a void,
in which silicone can then be
injected.”
Then she shows the
result.
“This is what this piece
looked like when it was still
in its character stage,” she
said. “The fi nal step is you
mix up silicone rubber, you
pour it into the molds, you
squish these two together
and then when you de-mold
this, you have this piece,”
she said showing the fi n-
ished but unpainted silicone
mask.”
The hard-plaster molds
are the only parts that last.
The silicone is a single-use
item.
“For all of the hours that
go into making a silicone
prosthetic, they’re a one-
time-use only,” Rymut said.
She said the plaster molds
allow the artist to create a
virtually infi nite number of
silicone masks.
“You can cast as many
of these as you want. If
you were doing this for a
fi lm set, you’d maybe cast
15 of these pieces if you
were going to be shooting
it for 15 days,” she said.
“Every one of those days,
there’s going to be an actor
in a makeup chair for mul-
tiple hours as these silicone
appliances get applied to
their face. It’s direct skin-to-
skin contact, so every area
of the underside is going
to be glued onto the face.
When you remove it, it gets
destroyed.”
Then comes the painting.
Some is done by hand and
some with an airbrush.
The future?
Rymut hopes to expand
Haunt Camp to more than
just a few weeks before Hal-
loween. She already regu-
larly teaches the skills at the
Wallowa School.
“I’m trying to get part-
nerships with other schools
and nonprofi ts in order to
have this program,” she said.
Her goal is to provide an
artistic education that trans-
lates into practical job appli-
cations, both in the arts and
beyond.
“I’m hoping to run
the full course, in which
we would build an entire
haunted house attraction
for Wallowa County,” she
said. “Learning these skills,
they are analogous skills to
all sorts of industries. Even
our bronze industry here is
all molding and casting. So
once kids learn these prin-
cipals of molding and cast-
ing, they can use those skills
in a bunch of positions. This
is one very specifi c way to
get an entertainment indus-
try job is knowing how to
make these prosthetics. Next
year, I’m hoping to run an
entire course where we put
an entire (course together,)
and that way I can teach set
design, set carpentry, scenic
painting, a bunch of these
other creative skills.”
“Very important to the
Haunt Camp vision is intro-
ducing kids to creative
industry careers, but also
important to me is to create
an unusual course that has
wide appeal to high school-
ers, including those who
may be less interested in tra-
ditional art classes,” Rymut
said. “Anyone can join
Haunt Camp and I hope to
get a broad range of partic-
ipants in the coming year.”
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for the Oregon Department
of Forestry, but in 2020, an
injury prevented him from
fi nishing the summer on
the front lines. Not want-
ing to see the time lost or
wasted, he decided to begin
researching a possible
Africa service trip.
“My foot was defi nitely
not ready, so I was like, ‘I
got time, fi nally,’” he said.
Fulfer’s research led
him to the group Interna-
tional Volunteer HQ, and
the prospect of teaching.
“... And they also
allowed me to not only
teach English to elemen-
tary students, but I can also
teach chess and basket-
ball, which are two of my
passions. I do a chess club
here, and I coach basket-
ball (at the high school),”
he said.
He further researched
some of Africa’s poor-
est cities, which led him to
Arusha.
“It was the rural area in
Arusha,” he explained. “It
was villages that still prac-
tice Maasai. ... I thought that
was incredible. As a history
buff I love the history of
the Maasai, and I love the
Swahili language, as well. I
think it’s beautiful.”
He spent the next year
researching more about
IVHQ, Tanzania and look-
ing for ways to make the
trip happen.
“If I wouldn’t have bro-
ken my foot, I wouldn’t
have done it, I am guessing,
just because we need the
(fi refi ghting) money. … I
fi gure if I’m going to miss a
ton of time, I’m going to do
something I am defi nitely
passionate about. My goal
was to set the example, and
then hope that maybe one
of my students can see that
and then do that later.”
He embarked on the
three-week journey June
26.
Culture shock
Part of what has driven
Olan Fulfer/Contributed Photo
Olan Fulfer helps put shoes on a girl who didn’t have shoes
during a day he worked with the Hope and Soul charity in
Arusha, Tanzania.
Fulfer to a focus on help-
ing students, players and
anyone around him are the
challenges he faced grow-
ing up in the late 1990s and
early 2000s.
Drugs were prevalent
in his family when he was
a youth, and he also faced
a major challenge when his
mom was killed in a domes-
tic violence dispute. Fulfer
was just 12 at the time.
The trials help him know
what to look for if his stu-
dents are facing diffi culties.
“I struggled mightily
with mental health issues
as a kid (and) teenager,”
he said. “The talks with
the kids, when I see them
struggling, I can relate. I
know. I’ve seen the domes-
tic violence. I’ve seen pov-
erty. I’ve been wanting for
food. What my goal is as a
teacher and a coach is that
all my kids are taken care
of, (that) they’re OK.”
Yet even his lived expe-
riences and research were
unable to prepare him for
what he witnessed in and
around Arusha.
“I remember thinking
that was a rough childhood,
and then I went here, and
I saw what a rough child-
hood is,” he said. “These
kids, their parents passed
away, they’re begging for
food, but what is amazing
is they are all passionate
about school.”
They also have a desire
to obtain what Fulfer said
got him out of a tough
position.
“They want to be at
school. They know, as well,
that education is the key.”
He said the classes he
taught English in were
packed. Chess was a major
hit, with several students
showing
“phenomenal”
ability almost overnight.
Basketball, he said, often
turned to soccer.
Chess, he explained, was
taught because students
can even use it as an ave-
nue to show their intellect
and as another opportunity
besides education.
“The service work was
the teaching,” he said. “I
knew they had a massive
need to teach, and what
I wanted to also do was
make sure that the stu-
dents that I had were taken
care of. I knew that I was
going to buy shoes, I knew
that I was going to provide
clothes, food, that kind of
stuff . ... My (other) thing
was to provide an out that is
See Fulfer, Page A8
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