Text Box: Text Box: Artist Isaac Johns
Handmade masks 
and costumes
Text Box: Born in Morgantown, West Virginia, Isaac Johns helped make his robot costume for the Kindergarten Christmas play, and soon after, moved to New Orleans, where costuming is more the norm. At age eight, or so, he made a suede fringe mask for the first annual French Quarter Mask Market, and was encouraged to continue mask making by all of the artists, including Mike Stark and Tim Steele, who gave Isaac pointers in leather mask making.

     Mr. Johns worked for eight years as a designer with Patrick Seargent Design Studios in New Orleans, apprenticed with printmakers Stanley Fontaine 
and others, and designed the poster for the 
Howl Orleans Festival three years in a row.

     Although best known for his award winning costumes (including first prize in the 1995 
New Orleans Maskathon), his leather masks are
astounding. 

   After deciding on a design, Isaac makes the 
pattern and cuts it  from one piece of leather. 
He then painstakingly bends and folds it, almost
 as in origami, and completes his masterpiece with
 an airbrush paint or stain finish.
                        
                     For more art pieces, see 
                                    Greatmask.com.