‘A Universal Feeling’

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-ma.