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Thursday, June 10, 2021
GO! magazine — A&E in Northeast Oregon
‘Missing Your Face’
■ In-person reception June 18 at Art Center East
By Lisa Britton
Go! Magazine
LA GRANDE — Although the
current exhibit at Art Center East
debuted on May 7, an in-person
reception is planned for June 18
from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
“Missing Your Face: Masks of
Location, Isolation, and Transfor-
mation” features the works of two
mask makers — Matt Fagan of La
Grande and Tony Fuemmeler of
Portland.
ACE is located at 1006 Penn
Ave. Art exhibits are free and open
to the public. COVID restrictions
apply — please social distance and
wear masks when entering the
building.
The idea for this show started
several years ago. The thought,
Fuemmeler said, was to bring
together two mask artists from op-
posite sides of the state.
The show went on the back-
burner, though, until 2020 when
everything came to a halt due the
coronavirus pandemic.
“Everyone was in various emo-
tional places. There was a lot of
unknown,” Fuemeller said.
The spark reignited and the art-
ists set to work making masks.
“That kept me going through
isolation,” Fagan said.
The word “mask” has perme-
ated our lives in the past year, but
the creations by these two artists
are nothing like you’d see in the
grocery store.
“The ‘mask maker’ hashtag was
a lot more fun before COVID,”
Fagan said with a laugh.
Fuemmeler’s background is
theatrical design, and most of his
mask-making is for the theater.
“The mask is not about disguise,
but the literal face of the character,”
he said.
His work is infl uenced by the
comic masks of the Italian Renais-
sance, and contemporary theatrical
Submitted
“Tree Spirit” by
Tony Fuemmeler
Submitted
“Shannon” by Matt Fagan
“The ‘mask maker’ hashtag was a lot more fun before COVID.”
— Matt Fagan, on how the word “mask”
took on a new connotation in 2020
masks of the 20th century.
His work for this show features
a variety of three-dimensional
masks, as well as two-dimensional
ink prints.
To create the prints, he photo-
graphed a mask and then superim-
posed an image. His goal, he said,
was to illustrate the infl uence of
places we’ve been.
“I found myself fascinated with
doubling the human form with
a sense of place,” he said. “I was
thinking how we carry place with
us — what if I showed that liter-
ally?”
Fagan’s path to making masks
was by way of something to do in
Submitted
Submitted
“Exuberant” by
Tony Fuemmeler
“Space Cowboy” by Matt Fagan
his spare time.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in
English, and a master’s in writing.
But when he fi nished the program,
he didn’t have much desire to write
anymore.
So he started painting.
“It was just for me,” he said. “I
just painted canvases for like 10
years.”
Those paintings became deco-
ration at a comic book store he
co-owned in Chicago.
“I used that as my gallery,” he
said.
Then, in 2003, he made a mask
for his Halloween costume.
“I really enjoyed it. It was the
fi rst thing I’d made in three dimen-
sion,” he said.
He continued making masks.
“Once a year I would make my-
self a mask for Halloween,” he said.
He moved to La Grande in 2014.
He continued making masks, but
ramped up his process to prepare
for this show, which features 30
creations.
A virtual tour of the show can be
found at artcentereast.org.
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