Spotlight: Ben Goldman’s Corona Masks

Ben has been busy during the pandemic. I caught up with him via Zoom, and we talked about his latest project. Here’s the article Ben wrote for the newsletter describing the process. Thanks for sharing this journey with us, Ben!         

~alexis

By Ben Goldman

My Mask Series explores the nature of identity. Maybe doodling during a zoom call triggered the exploration (hopefully not during an inquiry!). Or maybe it was a dream? 

The first painting was a rabbit-mask selfie with triangle cutouts to see. Somebody said it looked sad, but I felt happy and inspired enough to paint 30 more versions of me.

If you’re reading this, it’s all but certain—according to the unintuitive mathematics of common ancestry—that you’re descended from Nefertiti (along with everyone else alive today).

That’s one of many discoveries in my latest book Nature Breakthroughs: 5 Steps to Transform Yourself and the World, in which identity is one key element in my model of change. Identities are the only “things” that never change; our relationships to them (and between them), however, can change a lot. 

So many roles that meant so much to me (middle son, brother, student, left-hander, teenager, radical, expert, husband, boss, Jew, teacher, father, candidate, lover, author, artist, bicyclist, entrepreneur, and so many more…) have all but dissolved. I didn’t paint any of those familiar selves, nor am I sure what’s left; except, how suffocating the politics of identity can be.

So, into the woods I go, a key aspect of the nature breakthrough method I teach at my workshops: finding your true nature in nature. There, on Lenape lands where I conduct them, I chopped up a fallen tree to create my Mask Totem, the next phase of this artistic adventure.

In addition to months of hand carving, robotic technology was mixed in, courtesy of William Paterson University’s Sculpture X workshop.

The final totem from that gifted oak includes five double-sided busts of my own likeness adorned with archetypal masks from the painted series that spin independently like stacked Tibetan prayer wheels atop a crouched body, incorporating everything from the most natural tree stump to the latest technology and fakest commercial consumer products.

I pushed the concept one step further with the augmented reality of virtual masks using LensStudio software accessible on SnapChat.