Who is that Mask Man?

There’s no better company to be in than that of a person who loves their job. Maxx Empire seems as custom-built for his work as the masks he makes are for their potential owners. He’s a craftsman and a showman who takes his job personally, who invented this career because the one before it – jousting – was getting a little too painful. Anyone with that resume is worth getting to know.        

         “It takes away all your inhibitions,” he says of the “fiercely whimsical” masks he hand makes out of custom tanned leathers and a litany of other materials, depending on what he wants or what you want: Swavorski crystals, feathers from non-endangered birds, wood, steel, precious metals and many others for clients that have included MTV and Cirque du Soliel. He also does a lot of conventions, like Dragon Con in Atlanta, the biggest sci fi / fantasy / multi-media con in the US and loves watching the people who come into his tent.

         “It’s so much fun to actually watch them try it on. I’ll have people come and try on every single masks (up to) 300 of them – and they’ll do different things in each one of them,” he says. “People who would never dance in public are suddenly wiggling around – they’re checking out their profile. That’s what masks do – allow you to be drunk without alcohol.”

         The best part: “Invariably they’ll try the very first mask they tried on… It’s the one that called to them”   

         There’s another reason, however, that a person might instantly bond with a particular mask.

         “What’s different bout my masks (is that) I don’t use a mold; it’s just my hands forming everything.” With a mold all the masks would fit the same, but with his “One nose might be  little thinner one nose might be a little wider.” When a person puts on a unique creation and it fits perfectly it’s what Maxx calls “snicking” together.

         “Some (masks) will stay on without a string; it snicks to their face. They might like the look of a mask and when they try on one that fits their facial structure perfectly it’s magic.” You’d think style-plus-snicking would happen rarely – actually it happens several times a day.

         Maxx really was a jouster until the stress of running his own jousting company and the physical burdens of the job caused him to decide a hiatus would be a good idea. had worked with leather making costumes and saddles as a jouster so when he got the idea to make masks as a source of income it came pretty easily. His favorites to make are the Dread Mitra masks, with wild dreadlock-style “hair.”

       “I like the strength that comes down – I basically create a leather puzzle. Those are free-flowing art forms and I don’t know how it’s going to turn out and since I’m using so many different pieces of leather and so many things for hair, that lets me expand my horizons a little bit.”

         My personal favorite is the Elaborate Masks worn by Lisi Tribble-Russell, wife of director Ken Russell, in ourvideo a few posts back (4/10/09). It’s called the Athena, “after a fetish model who first modeled it for me,” he says of the very fantasy, feminine mask. “I free hand-cut every one of them so they’re all a little bit different.”

         One of the most majestic of Maxx’s masks is intriguingly paired with one of the silliest. These are the champrons, the horse masks which were made for a London museum curator for historical jousts they were recreating. There was the dragon and then…the cow?

         “My horse modeled for those pictures,” Maxx says. “I swear he felt he was cool in the dragon one and I swear he felt it was utter disgust that he had to wear the white cow.“

         So he was kind of a mad cow.

         There really is a transformative feeling to putting Maxx’s mask on that you don’t get from an ordinary, mass-produced kind; it doesn’t feel like you-in-a-mask, more like another aspect of your personality that gets revealed to you. His creations can be found at his website MaxxEmpire.com, and at Fairvilla Megastore , mainly in the Orlando and Key West locations.

     Take a note of the first one that really catches your eye – that will be the one that follows you home.