Students in SIU-Carbondale professor Peter Smith's design communication classes spent this week working on individualized masks.
Smith says his students could use paint, fabric, jewels, and cutting to customize the white masks to show their interpretations of cultural expression.
"They do a write-up on each of the topics. In this case, (the student) did research on breast cancer. On the back will be a quick write-up that says why they chose up. On this other one, (the student) may have had a fascination with Egypt, so maybe that is the idea behind this. But then they have to translate that white mask."
The completed masks will be exhibited in the first-floor Quigley gallery in Room 119 starting Friday, November 1. Smith plans to assemble the top 150 masks created in his classes since 2008 into a traveling art exhibit to local hospitals.
"The hospitals have their patients do 10 masks, and we'll add them to the 150. All these masks spinning in an air movement, I can just see how it's going to look. I think that's the goal- they reach out to SIU to the architecture-interior design students. You mix it with the patients and you have this combination that's constantly moving to other hospitals," says Smith.
Some of the hospitals include the St Louis Children's Hospital and the University of Iowa Hospital.
