The Ink People Center for the Arts will present “A Universal Feeling,” a collaborative international mask installation conceived and created by interdisciplinary artist Tony Fuemmeler of Blue Lake, Oct. 5 to 25 at the Brenda Tuxford Gallery, 422 First St., Eureka.
The gallery is open Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment.
An opening night reception is set for Oct. 5 from 6 to 9 p.m.
This exhibit will feature emotion masks by 60 artists from around the world, each imbuing their own artistic and cultural perspective within their contributions. A press release for the exhibit says, “‘A Universal Feeling’ represents an international scope, an intensive conceptualization and logistical framework, as well as a grand effort to bear witness to human emotions — how the individual in a community expresses emotion via the art form of mask. With ‘A Universal Feeling,’ Fuemmeler works with the idea of how people experience and express their internal lives.
It is an exploration of how emotional expression is at the same time a personal experience and a communal one. The installation aspires to surface the beautiful similarities and delicious differences in shared emotions and celebrate the variance of human experience the world over.” For this project Fuemmeler designed a set of mask forms inspired by each of the six universal emotions: fear, joy, surprise, anger, sadness and disgust.
Each of the artistic collaborators received an unpainted papier-mâché mask based on one of the six. Collaborators were then tasked with “completing” their mask, in their own way, leaning into their art form, identity, style, experiences, history, aesthetic, nationality and culture(s). Each artist collaborator was invited to allow these lived experiences to inform how they completed their work — in essence, adding themselves to the mask.
The press release says, “Fuemmeler’s project stems directly from his long-standing interest in the relationship between the individual and community, the paradox of concealment and revelation in a mask, and the back-and-forth play of collaboration. There is a tension in these explored ideas within this installation, asking questions like: How do we balance a sense of self and a sense of group? How do we show aspects of ourselves even as we cover other parts? How do we release ownership in an invested way?” Fuemmeler says, “ I am excited about the opportunity to share this exhibit with Humboldt County. This collaboration — one I’d been dreaming of for years — is one where I could create the initial masks and prompt other artists to complete them.
I was excited to really maximize the potential of this sort of exchange by connecting it to an idea I found really invigorating: how our relationship to emotions is particularized by our lives.” This is the third regional showing of this collection — the first in the fall of 2019 at Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg, Oregon, and the second in August 2022 in Portland, Oregon. “It’s a dream come true to have the exhibit travel to locations that are the home of some of my collaborators, in this case local actor and mask maker Daniel Baer and the late Joan Schirle,” Fuemmeler said.
For the past 20-plus years, Fuemmeler’s primary work is in theater mask making. In addition, his repertoire includes puppetry in a range of styles, movement direction for puppets and masks, devising new works, directing theater productions, producing, performing and also working as a teaching artist. A 2003 graduate of Dell’Arte International, he relocated to Humboldt County in 2022 to take a position as interim head of training at Dell’Arte in Blue Lake.
“I have long admired Tony’s work, and have had the pleasure of playing his masks onstage in several settings,” said Sean Andries, executive director of Chehalem Cultural Center, where the exhibition premiered in late 2019. “The ability of a well-crafted mask, full of life, to reveal the true sense of the performer who wears it has always transfixed me. When I heard about Tony’s vision for ‘A Universal Feeling,’ I was immediately intrigued.
By collaborating with artists from many cultures and backgrounds to ‘finish’ the masks he created for this special project, Tony has found a new way to reveal the nature of the artist within.” Fuemmeler is a mask maker, puppeteer, director, and teacher based in Blue Lake, where he also serves as the head of training at Dell’Arte International. He is also faculty at Dell’Arte, where he teaches mask making and performance in actor training and arts in correction programs.
Recently, he has worked with Playhouse Arts and the Humboldt County Office of Education on providing Humboldt County educators ways to approach social emotional learning through the art of mask. Until 2022, he was based in Portland, Oregon, and worked in multiple local theaters as well as on stages across the country and abroad. He is a graduate of the University of Kansas and Dell’Arte International and has also trained in traditional mask carving and masked dance in Bali with Nyoman Setiawan and I.
B. Gusto; neutral mask and bouffon with Giovanni Fusetti; and leather mask making and commedia with the Sartori family at the Centro Maschere e Strutture Gestuali. He continued his exploration in devising mask plays with the internationally renowned German mask company Familie Flöz.
Fuemmeler also creates commedia, open and larval masks for actor training at schools and universities across the United States. This exhibit was originally made possible in part by grants from the Yamhill County Cultural Coalition and Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council, as well as 40 individual donors raising $8,683 to close the gap to make this project happen..
