Multi-talented artist Mark Enright shares how he got started creating latex Halloween masks, his best tips for carving amazing Jack-o-Lanterns, why his mask & novelties business is called Mortar Heads, and how he found his love for horror.

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LINKS for More Mark Enright:

• Mark Enright / Mortar Heads on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mortarheads/
• Mark Enright / Mortar Heads on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mortarheads/
• Mark Enright / Mortar Heads SECOND Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mortarheadquarters/
• Mark Enright / Mortar Heads on Squarespace: https://mortarheads.squarespace.com/
• Mark Enright / Mortar Heads on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mortarheads208
• Mark Enright / Mortar Heads on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mortarheads/

FULL Written Transcript: HorrorFam.com Podcast Interview with Mark Enright

*HorrorFam.com Podcast Theme Music Plays*

Lauren Spear: Hi, Everyone! I’m Lauren Spear from HorrorFam.com and this is Episode 27 of the HorrorFam.com Podcast.

My guest today is Mark Enright of Mortar Heads! He does latex masks and a bunch of other things.

Hi, Mark! How’re you doin’?

Mark Enright: How’s it going, Lauren? Good to see ya!

Lauren: Good to see you too. And, as I said in the intro, you are the owner of Mortar Heads and you do latex masks. There’s some behind you… *gestures to the collection of masks behind Mark*

You… You want to talk about that a little bit?  *chuckles*

Mark Enright: Sure.

I do latex masks.

Mostly… Masks of action figures. Star Wars action figures.

Mark Enright (continuing): I just finished The Six Million Dollar Man.

Mark Enright (continuing): And I’ve done Micronauts…

Mark Enright (continuing): …and He-Man.

Mark Enright (continuing): Universal Monsters… The Remco mini monsters. I’ve done those.

Mark Enright (continuing): So, all those kind of action figure masks.

And I also make little goofy novelties like fake puke with realistic eyeballs.

Mark Enright (continuing): Melted snowmen sculptures.

Mark Enright (continuing): Things like that, too.

Lauren: I really like that

You have sort of whimsical art as well.

Lauren Spear (continuing): Like… I like that you aren’t afraid to do monsters with, like, bright colors and things like that.

Mark Enright: Yeah. Yeah…

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: If you saw my collection you’d say, “Ah, yeah. I can see why he makes the stuff he does.” Because it’s all, like, you see… *gestures around himself* Frankenstein. And then there’s, like, Burger King. And then there’s a Cyclops with a green wig on. It’s just weird stuff.

Lauren: Yeah! *chuckles* I like that though!

Mark Enright: I like stuff that I get a reaction from. The stuff that really kind of speaks to me. That kind of stuff.

Lauren: I liked… Recently, you did the “Video Vamp” with the…

Mark Enright: Ah. Yeah.

Lauren: The Dracula with the 3D glasses. That was great.

Mark Enright: Yeah. That’s a fun one. That was one of the ones I did for Mask Fest.

Every Mask Fest I’ll just make a bunch of quickie, thin-casted masks and I’ll just come up with some goofy concept for them. And that one was like, “Well, I’ll put 3D glasses on him.” It seemed to work! And it kind of continued on after Mask Fest too.

Lauren Spear: I also really liked the chicken McNugget that you did.

Mark Enright: Oh, yeah.

Lauren: That was like a recreation of the chicken nugget toys from the 1980s and early 1990’s Happy Meals.

Mark Enright: Yeah. That was a fun one. I did that for… There’s a…

Dano Brown — he does an all McNuggets-themed art show for Toy de Jour in Chicago and he asked me to be in it. And so I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do… I’m going to do that.” And it has, like, the chicken nugget… with a mask… The mask has a mask! So… *chuckles*

Lauren: Yeah. I had that one when I was a kid! *thinks* I might STILL have it…

Mark Enright: Yeah, I actually got the toy. Because a few months before that we’d been up in my mother-in-law’s garage loft and her… My father-in-law… He had collected all of these Happy Meal toys from the ‘90s and stuff. And so I… It was in that bunch of stuff that I got from there. When we got stuff out of there. So, I just thought, “I’m going to do this one. I’ve got it right here!” So… that’s the one I used.

Lauren: That’s great!

Mark Enright: Yeah. It was fun.

Lauren: Yeah. Um…

You mentioned Mask Fest…

Lauren Spear (continuing): You go to that every year and you’re going to that again this year?

Mark Enright: I’ve gone… Last year was my third time going and this will be the fourth year I’m going. Yeah.

Lauren: And that’ll be a place for people to meet you and…

Are you selling things there as well or…?

Mark Enright: Mm-hmm. *affirmative nodding*

Lauren: Okay.

Mark Enright: Yeah. I’ll have a table. And usually I’ll do a big kind of… bin. Like Old School style — like Dime Store style — where I’ll just make a bunch of kind of cheaper versions of my masks and I’ll put them all in this…

People call it a swimming pool, but it’s really like one of those inflatable coffin coolers. It takes up the whole table. And I just throw all the masks… I make a big pile of masks! And people can just kind of dig through it and look at the masks and find what they want.

Lauren Spear: Oh, well, that’s fun!

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: You also do Jack-O-Lanterns!

You’re really skilled at carving Jack-O-Lanterns!

Mark Enright: Yeah, I’m okay.

I’ve gotten kind of rusty because I haven’t done it as much the past few years. But I did a lot of the 3D sculpting for pumpkins where you don’t really carve out the inside…

Well… Some of them you do. But it’s mostly etching. I’ve done the etched ones where you kind of draw it on and then you carve out all the “white” – all the highlighted – areas you carve out the most, gut it, and then they put a giant light inside and you get kind of this really cool, you know, silhouetted orange-glowy image on the outside and it looks really great at night.

Mark Enright (continuing): So, I’ve done a lot of those for, like, Descanso Gardens and other places as well sometimes.

At Descanso they used to have live carvings and we would just do whatever. Like giant trolls and vampires and Frankensteins and pumpkins… It was just a free-for-all where you could just do whatever you want.

Lauren: But how did you get into doing that?

Mark Enright: You know, I just kind of…

Mark Enright (continuing): When I first started sculpting masks, I saw that there was a company out in Cerritos that had pumpkin… They were doing pumpkin carving.

And, at the time, I didn’t realize that it was just the etched pumpkins. I thought they were doing just the 3D pumpkins. Because I’d seen other people doing it here locally — at Descanso Gardens — and so I contacted them and I showed them some of my sculptures and they were like, “Oh, yeah. Come in! We’ll train you to do everything!”

Mark Enright (continuing): And then I got there and I realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t the 3D carvings. It was etched pumpkins. And they didn’t train me at ALL! *laughs*

I had to learn it all as I went!

Mark Enright (continuing): And it was kind of stressful at first because I tried to just draw the image on and I went, “How are people doing it so QUICKLY?!” And I realized that a lot of people just… They kind of trace it!

They just do, like, a really basic trace and THEN they go back in with the inks and make it all beautiful and THEN you carve it out. So, I was drawing it freehand and so obviously it was taking forever! And I was like, “Why is this taking so long when everyone else is just blowing through this stuff?!” I didn’t realize that they were just kind of transferring a lot of the images to the pumpkin first and not just freehanding it. So…

Lauren Spear: What do you…

Mark Enright: Once…

Lauren: Oh! Sorry. Go ahead.

Mark Enright: Oh. No. I was just going to say: Once I kind of figured that part of it out, you know…

Some people might think that’s kind of “cheating,” but it’s still pretty hard to even get… To transfer an item to a pumpkin… Because it’s SO strangely shape, you know?

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: It’s not even just round. It’s round and it’s oblong and it’s got ridges in it and it’s not that easy of a task.

Lauren: Yeah…

What do you use to transfer the image onto it?

Mark Enright: Basically you just photocopy an image however big you need it and then on the back you can color it in with, like, charcoal or something like that. Just color in the whole back and then you place it on the pumpkin where you want it. You just kind of tape it on there.

And then take an ink pen or just any kind of pencil-type item that’ll give you the edge to push in the image.

Mark Enright (continuing): So, then you just trace it and the charcoal on the back that you applied… It’ll kind of transfer the image for you. Almost like carbon paper, I guess.

Lauren: Yeah. Okay.

Mark Enright: Not that anybody even knows what that is anymore.

Lauren: *laughs* Well, I know what it is!

Mark Enright: Okay. *laughs*

Lauren: Hope… Hopefully some people will know!

Mark Enright: Somebody out there might know.

Lauren: Yeah!

Mark Enright: Look it up, Kids. *chuckles*

Lauren: At least people age 40 and above will know! *laughs*

Mark Enright: Exactly.

Lauren: So, um…

You got into doing the pumpkins AFTER the latex masks then?

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: Is that correct?

Mark Enright: It was really… I’d probably done masks maybe about a year…? And, before that, I was actually interning for a makeup effects company and I was…

I was kind of like looking for a career at that point. I was like… I kept trying different things and I decided I was going to go back to stuff I’d loved as a kid. Which was art. So, I thought, “Maybe I’m gonna try makeup effects!”

And I didn’t really realize it at the time but practical makeup effects — at that time, especially! — had gone away. CG had just killed everything that was practical.

Lauren Spear: Yeah. *knowing nod, remembering how CGI devastated her practical FX-dependent family in the 2000s*

Mark Enright: So, it was just like, “Oh. This is the PERFECT time to try to get into this business!” *rueful laugh*

So… So, it was a lot. It was kind of… I learned that I didn’t really want to be in the FX business. But I did stay in there for a few years and I made baldcaps and that kind of thing for a good four or five years, so…

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: I didn’t learn TONS of stuff — not as much as I’d hoped I would — but I learned enough that it’s really helped me. Especially in everything I do now, so… It was a good experience.

Lauren: Okay. *chuckles*

And you also… You like horror stuff.

How did you get into horror?

Mark Enright: I’ve just always been into horror. As a kid…

I remember my grandpa, when I was really little, we’d watch Godzilla VS King Kong and he would like bet me who was gonna win, you know? I’m sure he knew. He’d probably seen it before, I’m sure.

Lauren: *giggles*

Mark Enright: But he was like, “Okay. We’re gonna bet who wins!”

And, you know, there was Svengoolie on TV and I always watched Svengoolie. Because I grew up in the Midwest, so we were close to Chicago.

Lauren: Mmhmm.

Mark Enright: So, there was Svengoolie on TV and Kolchak: The Night Stalker. The was all these kind of… Horror stuff was always just around, you know?

Mark Enright (continuing): I never really had the monster models or anything like that. Or even Famous Monsters magazine. I don’t know why I never really saw that until later in life… But we had Fangoria magazine! That was really big.

Because we had cable TV, we got to watch The Thing and stuff like that. So, this stuff was easily accessible for young kids.

And, also, my mom worked for Singer sewing machines and her boss had a VCR in the office; and he had, like, all the Halloween movies! He had all kinds of movies, but I’d just watch Halloween one, two, and three over and over again. I’d just sit there all day and watch those movies! *laughs*

So, you know, that’s pretty much where it came from. My love for it.

Lauren Spear: Some of your masks in this most recent season look a lot like the melting Halloween III masks.

Mark Enright: Yeah. I try to do, like, some…

Just kind of like some Topstone-like stuff.

Mark Enright (continuing): Just make some stuff that’s not so…perfect.

Because when you do a lot of the things I do that are so… It has to look EXACTLY like this so that people know it’s…this…

It’s kind of fun to do just, like… Something I can just totally be free with and do whatever I want. So that’s pretty much where those came from.

Lauren: *chuckles* Yeah.

It’s… what’s it called? Wabi-sabi!

Mark Enright: Yeah!

Lauren: When there’s perfection in imperfection.

Mark Enright: Exactly.

Lauren: And…

You are going to Japan Soon?

Mark Enright: Yeah. *chuckles, noticing Lauren attempted a segue* “Speaking of wabi-sabi”…

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: Yeah. Next month, my wife and I are going to go to Japan and we’re going to do the…

There’s this island where they have a Godzilla theme park. So we’re going to do the zipline. You can zipline into Godzilla’s mouth!

Lauren: Oh, wow. That’s awesome.

Mark Enright: I’m afraid of heights, but I’m still gonna do it.

Lauren: Yeah. *laughs* I wouldn’t.

Mark Enright: *laughs*

Lauren: But, uh…

Mark Enright: I have no desire to do a zipline, but it’s into Godzilla’s mouth so… I’ll do it once.

Lauren: Uh… *anxiety laugh*

Mark Enright: Hopefully… *chuckles*

Lauren: Especially since Godzilla is one of your starting points for horror!

Mark Enright: Exactly. Always been a big Godzilla fan my whole life, so…

Lauren Spear: What’s your favorite Godzilla movie?

Mark Enright: I dunno. Probably Godzilla VS King Kong?

Lauren: Oh, okay. *chuckles*

Mark Enright: I mean, they’re all… They’re all kind of like a big blur. They all kind of blur together.

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: And I haven’t really sat down and watched one… I’ve probably watched more YouTube videos ABOUT Godzilla movies at this point than I’ve actually watched the movies over the past several years.

I know I even have a boxed set… The DVD boxed set somewhere that I watched when it first came out a lot, but… I dunno. I just always go back to, you know, Godzilla VS King Kong because it’s so goofy, you know?

Lauren: *giggles*

Mark Enright: You just gotta love it.

Lauren: Yeah. Um…

How did you end up calling your company Mortar Heads?

Mark Enright: It came from when I first started sculpting. I used to do all the sculptures in mortar. Brick mortar.

Lauren Spear: Oh!

Mark Enright: Because I was just kind of looking for stuff to make and we had this brick mortar around the house because I’d had to fix some bricks in the fireplace.

And it’s kind of really a lot finer than cement.

Lauren: Mmhmm.

Mark Enright: And… I dunno. Most people would probably just go get some clay or something like that, but I was… I dunno. I just figured, “Oh, I’ll try this.”

But it’s… You can’t really sculpt with it traditionally like you can with clay. Like 3D-wise. So, everything was kind of like a bas-relief where it was flat on the back. You had to sculpt it with it, like, laying down.

Lauren: Yeah…

Mark Enright: So, I would just take a 2D image and try to make it as 3D as I could. But then it would be flat on the back. And it would only be an inch or two thick.

Lauren: Oh, interesting.

Mark Enright: But if you’d look at it, from a distance, it would have like a 3D kind of look to it. So… *nods*

Lauren: That kind of reminds me of some of the stuff in the… Toscano gardens catalog? Have you seen… Like the gargoyles and stuff? Like the… *gestures with hands, looking for the right word*

Mark Enright: Yeah. It’s… it’s a lot like that…

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: I’ve seen people do stuff similar where it’s kind of like a head and shoulders… Things that you could pretty much attach to areas like that. For sure. Like a garden. Stuff like that.

Lauren: Yeah… It made me think of like… the Greenman! The things that you could, like, put on your wall!

Mark Enright: Ah, yeah! Exactly. That’s pretty much what it was.

But the mortar… It’s really kind of like sculpting with cake batter or something. It’s just really…

And, plus, you’d only get like 15 minutes to sculpt something. And then it would be just like a big rock.

Lauren: Ah. Mmhmm.

Mark Enright: So, I learned later on that you could put like a retardant in it and it would slow down the process so you’d have about four hours. So, you know, I would be out doing these sculptures for about four hours…

And, I guess, after a while the novelty of that kind of wore off. So, I moved to clay. Like WED clay — water-based clay.

Mark Enright (continuing): And once I started doing that I was like, “Oh, this is awesome!” Because I can sculpt whenever I want. I don’t have to… I don’t have to wait until it’s nighttime. Or wintertime. So it’s cold… so it doesn’t, like, cure instantly.

So, once I moved to clay and I did a few more in clay and then after that is when I started to get into makeup effects and I saw other people doing masks and I thought, “I’m going to do some masks at some point.” And here I am!

Lauren Spear: That’s really cool! *laughs*

Mark Enright: Thanks.

Lauren: You do a really great job of looking…

Like with the toy masks…

Mark Enright: Mmhmm.

Lauren: Like, looking at something and making it pretty much exactly THAT but bigger!

Mark Enright: Yeah. It’s… I dunno. It’s weird. I’m REALLY good at copying stuff. Sometimes my original stuff is not so great, but I’m really good at copying stuff. So, I’ll look at stuff and think “this looks off” but then I look at the actual item and the actual item IS off! So, that’s just the way it looks.

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: And I don’t really want to “fix” that. I kind of like that it’s off!

Lauren: *chuckles*

Mark Enright: And when you blow something up like 20, 30 times I guess it looks a little MORE off, but that’s what gives them a little bit of charm, I guess.

Lauren: Yeah. It makes it very recognizable. Because, like, kids who grew up playing with those toys will like… You know! You can look at it and go like, “That’s it.”

Mark Enright: Mmhmm.

Especially when I sculpted the Hordak mask from He-Man…

Lauren: Yeah!

Mark Enright: That… That sculpture is WAY goofy. It’s way off. Everything… NOTHING lines up. And it’s all… It’s just CRAZY! Whoever did this, they just did NOT take any time! They were just like “weh weh weh” *gestures slapping clay haphazardly onto a form* “Okay, it’s DONE!!”

Lauren: *chuckles*

Mark Enright: So, when I had to redo that one, it was like, “Oh, man…”

Probably now somebody would just 3D sculpt it and mirror image it and it would be done. But that one was kind of like… Probably the roughest. When I encountered stuff not being all symmetrical and perfect. But, yeah. It works out, I think.

Lauren: Yeah. It does. Yeah.

I still have a Mantenna figure from when I was a kid! *laughs*

Mark Enright: Yeah, actually, I’ve seen it. I remember you showing me that before.

Lauren: Yeah. *chuckles*

Mark Enright: I only had He-Man and Skeletor as a kid. But, unfortunately, I don’t have… Well, I have some now. But I don’t have the ones I had from when I was a kid. But yeah.

Lauren: Which one’s your favorite?

Mark Enright: He-Man…?

Lauren: Mmhmm!

Mark Enright: Uhhhh… definitely Skeletor. He’s always been my favorite.

Lauren: Yeah?

Mark Enright: I think he’s just the coolest. I mean, he’s just a skull with a hood on. You can’t go wrong with that!

Lauren: Yeah, and he has the bright colors and stuff too! I really like that!

Mark Enright: Yeah. Purple skeleton guy. I mean… come on!

Both: *laugh*

Lauren: Yeah!

And, um, well…

Have you seen anything cool recently in horror?

Lauren (continuing): That you were like, “Oh. THAT… That’s awesome.”

Mark Enright: Probably the last… What was the last thing I saw?

I saw Terrifier 3 and that wasn’t too recently, but I really liked that. I thought that was good.

Lauren Spear: Ah, yeah. Dan Roebuck’s in that!

Mark Enright: Yeah. I loved the Dan Roebuck scene. It was really funny!

And, I dunno, a lot of people say, “I don’t like the Terrifier.” But I don’t know. I kind of think it’s so cartoony… The kills and everything. It’s just so OUT THERE that it’s just so crazy and, like, since he doesn’t talk — he just uses expressions — he’s like an insane mime or something like that. So, it’s just… I don’t know. It’s just kind of funny to me.

So, I… I liked it! I mean, um…

What else?

That was probably the most recent one.

I did see Smile 2. I like the Smile movies, but I always… It seems like at the end the whole thing just falls apart, it feels like to me.

Lauren: Yeah!! *laughs*

Mark Enright: It’s really freaky and really scary and then at the end it’s just like… “Well, what do we do now?? BRING IN THE BIG MONSTER! Bring in the big monster!!” and then the big guy comes in — spoiler alert! — and then… that’s it.

Lauren: *chuckles*

Mark Enright: I don’t know. It’s kind of weird.

Lauren: Yeah. My dad and I have watched those and Christi — my friend who also writes for HorrorFam.com — reviewed both Smile 2 and Terrifier 3…

Mark Enright: Mmhmm.

Lauren: And all of us had kind of the same reaction to the Smile movies where it’s like, “Oh! This is really fun! … Until the end.” It was just kind of… *laughs*

Mark Enright: Yeah. Yeah.

I haven’t seen, like, the Nosferatu or anything like THAT new yet. I’ve been really bad at catching up.

I’ve been watching a lot of episodes of Quincy lately. Which is… *laughs* …not horror. But there’s a lot of death in it, I guess, so…

Lauren: I don’t even know what that is. *laughs* I’m sorry.

Mark Enright: Quincy is… Quincy: Medical Examiner? It’s like an old show from the ‘70s and ‘80s?

It was Jack Klugman. He was on The Odd Couple. He plays a Los Angeles County coroner.

Lauren: Hmm!

Mark Enright: And pretty much the show is… It’s like a drama. But he… Somebody dies or, like, a chemical gets spilled and a whole neighborhood gets infected and he comes in and starts yelling at people and doing autopsies and stuff like that.

It’s just a goofy ‘70s show.

Both: *laugh*

Lauren: Yeah… Dad’s been watching… I think he just got through the entire series of The Monster Squad TV show from, like, the ‘70s.

Mark Enright: Oh, yeah? I’ve watched that a couple times! That’s cool too.

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: Definitely.

Lauren: And Frank has been reading the EC comics and he did an article about that earlier this month.

Are you a fan…?

Mark Enright: Definitely a fan!

I don’t have any of those though. I do… I have checked out some at the library. Our library over here had a couple. And when my kids used to go to the library a lot, I would always check it out.

But I think they only had like a Vault of… Was it Vault of Horror or something like that? They didn’t even have…! I don’t know. It wasn’t even something recent. It was just like probably ten years ago.

Lauren: Hmm.

Mark Enright: But I’m definitely a fan! I’m familiar with the artwork. I’ve read books about it and everything. But I’ve never… purchased…

You know, I’d love to go out and purchase them all! But I don’t own any of them. But I think they’re awesome. Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah… *laughs*

Mark Enright: The whole story… They shut it down. It was… you know. Kids were going crazy because of it! “It’s bad for kids” and all this stuff…

And how they had to do the Comic Books Code and all that kind of crazy stuff about it. It’s just a really interesting story. But… yeah… I wish I had more.

Lauren: Yeah…

I just thought of that because of what you were talking about with the Quincy show… How it was sort of horror adjacent. Which made me think of some of the Shock SuspenStories and War Against Crime and the…

Mark Enright: Yeah. Definitely.

Lauren: The EC comics that weren’t Tales from the Crypt and Haunt of Fear and…

Mark Enright: Mmhmm. Yeah.

Lauren: But speaking of kids:

Do you have recommendations of [horror] films that are good for teens and tweens?

Mark Enright: Ummmmmmmmm…

My kids watched a lot of Goosebumps. Not just the recent movies but, like, the old TV show. My kids watched that a lot.

They were into the Hotel Transylvania movies… We used to watch those all the time.

Lauren Spear: I like those! *chuckles*

Mark Enright: Yeah. Those are fun.

Lauren: Well, the first one’s the best one, and then it’s kind of diminishing returns on enjoyment after that.

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: I don’t even know if I’ve seen the last one or two. But definitely, like, the first two we saw in the theater.

Lauren: The fourth one’s pretty much unwatchable.

Both: *laugh*

Lauren: I mean, we DID! But…ugh…

Mark Enright: Yeah. They were just like, “Do we make that? How many are we gonna make? Uhhhhhh… Four? Okay!”

Um… what else?

I dunno.

As far as horror, I remember my kids…

Because they would just watch regular horror movies. I remember me and my daughter watching the Friday the 13^th movies and Halloween III and when something really bad came on I would just be like, “Cover your eyes!”

Lauren: Yeah! *laughs*

Mark Enright: Because, I mean, I watched all those movies when I was like ten, so…

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: And I didn’t turn out great, but I turned out okay.

Lauren: *chuckles*

Mark Enright: I think they’re okay.

Lauren: Yeah!

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: That’s why I put, like, a thing about “don’t show to kids under five.” Because at that point, their brains can’t really tell the difference between reality and not.

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: You don’t want to damage anyone! *laughs*

Mark Enright: Yeah. For sure.

Lauren: But also, you know…

BE a parent!

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: Like, watch this yourself BEFORE you show it to your kids!

Mark Enright: Yeah. It’s kind of common sense.

Lauren: Yeah. I would THINK so!

Both: *laugh*

Mark Enright: I wouldn’t show my five-year-old Terrifier 3 or something like that! *chuckles at the absurdity* It would probably scar them for life!

Lauren: I know, right??

Mark Enright: But when she’s like 14 or 15, I think she’s going to be fine.

Lauren: Yeah…

Mark Enright: And they play video games and everything, so…

Lauren: *chuckles*

Mark Enright: They’ve seen stuff equally as bad on those video games that they do in the movies, so… *shrugs*

Lauren: Yeah. Still, it’s nice to get opinions from actual parents since I’m just, like, a Cat Mom. *laughs*

Mark Enright: Yeah. No. Definitely. It’s just been so long since they’ve been LITTLE little, so…

Lauren: Yeah…?

Mark Enright: And my memory’s really bad, so… *chuckles*

Both: *laugh*

Lauren Spear: So, you mentioned that…

You’re working on Bionic Bigfoot as your current mask

Lauren (continuing): …that you’re sculpting.

Mark Enright: Mmhmm.

Lauren: Did you want to talk about that a little bit more?

Mark Enright: Uh. Sure. It’s just kind of continuing the Six-Million Dollar Man…

Mark Enright (continuing): I did the whole Mask-a-tron set with their removable faces.

Because, last year, I just got into this thing where I was going to do all cyborgs. So, I kind of did a poll. I was like, “What do you guys want me to make? You want me to do the Death Star droid from Star Wars, the dog from Battlestar Galactica, or a Cylon, or…?” There was another one, but I don’t remember what it was.

But everyone voted on the Cylon. So, I was like, “Okay, great. I’ll do the Cylon!” But then I was like, “Oh, yeah… I forgot about Bionic Bigfoot! He’s a cyborg. So… I’m gonna do him first!” *laughs*

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: “Before I do that.” So…

Lauren: Okay.

Mark Enright: But I’ve been planning the Six-Millon Dollar Man series for a few years. It’s been… Thinking about it and how I’m going to do it and stuff like that.

So, last year, I finally sculpted all those. And now I’m finally getting to the Bionic Bigfoot.

It’s going to be a BIG mask!

Lauren: Yeah. It looked like it was pretty large from the photos that you’ve shown so far.

Mark Enright: Yeah. Because I don’t even have it fully blocked out yet. I still have the whole back of the head to block out. So, it’s going to be a really big, HEAVY, mold… But I think it’ll be cool, once it’s done!

Lauren: Yeah! I know it’s not THE Bigfoot, but…

Do you have any interest in cryptids?

Mark Enright: Yeah, totally!

Lauren: Yeah??

Mark Enright: Being a child of the ‘70s, Bigfoot was…

You’d see Bigfoot books at the school book fair and things like that. That’s… *nods approval*

Lauren: *chuckles encouragingly*

Mark Enright: I don’t know… I think he probably doesn’t exist because maybe they would’ve found him by now? Yeah. I dunno. But maybe there’s a…

What’s the Bigfoot film? It’s not the Zapruder film, that’s the Kennedy thing. There’s that film… that video of the Bigfoot walking…? *imitates the film*

Lauren: Yeah! *laughs*

Mark Enright: You know that’s been… That’s been debunked. And we all know that it’s a gorilla suit or whatever. But, yeah… I always think it’s cool.

It’s kind of like UFOs. I mean, you think “I’ve never seen one in my backyard, but… It COULD be!” Y’know? You don’t know for sure, you know. Until you see it in your, you know, backyard or whatever.

Lauren: *chuckles*

Mark Enright: You can’t really totally deny it! It’s just a cool…

But I think of all the cryptids, I think Bigfoot is probably the coolest, you know.

Lauren: Hmm. Yeah. Maybe! *laughs*

Mark Enright: Well, what’s your favorite cryptid?

Lauren: Well, I like the Mothman. That’s from, like, Frank’s area.

Mark Enright: Mmhmm. Yeah.

Lauren: The Jersey Devil’s pretty cool. The Ozark Howler. Chupacabra. *laughs*

Mark Enright: Yeah… Chupacabra’s my second favorite.

Lauren: Yeah. *laughs*

Mark Enright: The name is the coolest. *laughs*

Lauren: Yeah. *laughs*

Lauren Spear (continuing): They… They made, like, a[n] American cryptids board game. The Horrified: American Monsters [board game].

Mark Enright: Oh yeah?

Lauren: Yeah. We have that one and the Universal Monsters and World Monsters and all those… I like all those board games. *chuckles*

Mark Enright: Those sound fun.

Lauren Spear: And…

You were talking about Star Wars as well.

Lauren (continuing): I know this is HORROR Fam, but… you know.

Mark Enright: Yeah, Star Wars is the first… Well, it was a big…

Before I got into making masks and everything, I was a big kind of Star Wars collector.

Lauren: Mmhmm.

Mark Enright: I had a lot of action figures and models and that type of thing. That’s kind of what got me into making more stuff. Because I would make Star Wars characters out of the Mortar Heads – out of the mortar – and I would sell those sculptures to my Star Wars guys that I knew at my Star Wars club.

That’s kinda how… The whole thing kind of evolved from that.

So, when I started doing masks, one of the first ones that I did was a Walrus Man mask. The Kenner Walrus Man?

Lauren: Yeah!

Mark Enright: You know. With the big orange collar and the green head and the big kind of butt-faced tusks…?

Lauren: Yeah. *chuckles*

Mark Enright: That kinda thing. And somebody saw that one and said, “Oh, can you do a blue Snaggletooth?” So, I did a blue Snaggletooth. And then it just kind of snowballed from there and I did Greedo and I did Hammerhead and I did all the Cantina aliens.

Star Wars has always — especially the action figures… I love those things. I had ‘em as a kid and I think they’re…

Something about, you know, the simplicity of them and how you can totally instantly recognize them is just… you know… It’s just perfect. So… *shrugs*

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: They translate well. They translate well to masks, you know?

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: Essentially. Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. *chuckles* My mom used to have ALL of the Star Wars toys. I think she kept her Greedo, but I’m not sure if she was able to keep any of the others. You know…

Mark Enright: Mmhmm.

Lauren: Hard times, here and there. So… *rueful chuckle*

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: Lot of things got sold. But she did have, like, ALL of those old toys at one point.

Mark Enright: Yeah. I think all of mine got… lost.

Like, when the basement flooded, back in the Midwest.

Lauren: Hmm.

Mark Enright: When I moved, I didn’t…

I moved to California to be a musician. So, I didn’t really bring any of my Star Wars toys with me! *laughs*

Lauren: Yeah. *laughs*

Mark Enright: At that point, it was just like, “Hey, they’re in this toy box.” I knew they were there. And then, like, I think the basement flooded… You know. And then they just threw everything away!! And it’s like, “Oh. Whatever.”

Lauren: Yeah.

It’s interesting though that so many horror fans also have that kind of like… TOYS as a sub-interest! And Star Wars comes up fairly often as well.

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: Even just on this podcast, people have mentioned both of those things a few times.

Mark Enright: Yeah. Because I think those… They were so prominent back then. When… For people of, like, you know, my age especially. Because I’m like… 50? In my 50s!

So, in the ‘70s, we didn’t have all the stuff we have now. So, it was like there was movies, there was TV, there was toys, or there was musical instruments. So, you could ride your bikes or skateboard too, I guess.

Lauren: Mmhmm.

Mark Enright: But there was only a handful of things. There wasn’t video games or anything until later on. And even the ones we had… The Atari and stuff. They were really not that great. So…

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: Never really got into that stuff, so… *shrugs*

Lauren: Yeah…

Mark Enright: So, yeah. It’s… I just think it’s…

Especially now, since toys aren’t really for… I think as far as kids, toys are definitely directed more towards adults. Anyway. Because of that. So… you know…

Lauren: Yeah. It seems like there’s not as many things…

Mark Enright: Yeah. A toy today…

Lauren: …made FOR kids!

Mark Enright: Yeah. A toy today for a kid is a phone.

Lauren: Yeah…?

Mark Enright: Just give ‘em a phone and they can play video games or make videos and you know. *shrugs*

Lauren: Strange times. *chuckles*

Mark Enright: Definitely.

Lauren: *laughs* Um…

I know that you have an Etsy shop. Right?

Mark Enright: Mmhmm. Yeah.

Lauren: Is there…

Anywhere else where people can find your things to buy them?

Mark Enright: You can only buy them through the Etsy store. Or you can contact me through Instagram, if you want, and we can work out something through Instagram.

But I primarily sell them through Etsy.

Lauren: Okay.

Mark Enright: I do have a Squarespace site. Which is just Squarespace.MortarHeads.com or something like that.

Lauren: Ohhh. Okay!

Mark Enright: I don’t really sell anything through there. It’s just kind of like a lot of pictures of sculptures and…um…

Lauren: It’s your online portfolio?

Mark Enright: Kinda. Yeah. It’s got sculptures and masks and pumpkins and a couple paintings I’ve done and stuff like that, so…

It’s just kind of like… It started out as a portfolio for trying to get jobs.

Lauren: Ah.

Mark Enright: And it just kind of ended up being a website where I sometimes put images of stuff I’ve done.

Both: *laugh*

Mark Enright: But someday I hope to, like, start selling stuff through there too. Yeah.

Lauren: And your Etsy store is MortarHeads.Etsy.com, right?

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: Okay.

And so, if anyone wants to get a mask or novelty decorations — like the vomit… And I have a little ornament from you! It’s like a melting snowman. *giggles*

Mark Enright: Mmhmm. Melty the Snowman!

Lauren: Yeah! *laughs*

And on Instagram you’re @MortarHeads!

Mark Enright: Mmhmm.

Lauren: And are you on any other social media…?

Mark Enright: Um… I’m on Facebook too. There’s…um… I think my Facebook page is “The Art of Mark Enright?” And I just have…

That’s like my art page. But pretty much everything I post to Instagram just goes on there as well.

I have just a regular personal page too. That people can follow me at too. If they want. It’s just under “Mark Enright.”

Lauren: Oh, okay.

Yeah…

I left Facebook back in August of 2019, but I couldn’t delete it because then it would, like, delete the Instagram.

Mark Enright: Ah. Yeah.

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: Yeah. I don’t ever really post to Facebook. That much.

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: I mean… I look at it…

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: And people respond to stuff that I’ve posted! Through Instagram. I reply through there. But… you know…

Sometimes I’ll talk to mask people! Because it seems like there’s kind of a big mask community on Facebook. And Star Wars collectors too. They kind of all…

Since there’s no forums anymore, everything has sort of shifted to Facebook. So, it’s good to see stuff on there if you want to talk about masks or whatever. That’s kind of the place you’ve gotta go these days, I guess.

Lauren: Yeahhh… *heavy sigh* Originally, HorrorFam.com had a forum functionality to it…

Mark Enright: Mmhmm.

Lauren: But it just… It didn’t really work. People are already so ingrained in their social sites.

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: Yeah. It’s kind of a shame because with the forum format it was so much easier to, like, see… Like look up stuff. And you could see other subjects and other things. Like if someone was selling something, you could see, “oh, this sold for this much.” Or, if somebody had information about a certain thing, you could search it and find out information about it.

But with Facebook, you just gotta scroooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllllll back for, like, you know, TWENTY YEARS and find… you know… the first post that someone’s, you know, put in the Star Wars group or mask group and it’s just… you know… It’s not fun. Or easy. To do.

Lauren: Yeah…

Everything’s so FAST.

Mark Enright: Yeah. It’s just a lot of information. Sometimes.

Lauren: Yeah.

You mentioned that you also do paintings?

Mark Enright: I’ve done a few. I think after…

Probably drawing was the first thing I did as a kid. Like, art-wise.

Lauren Spear: Uh-huh.

Mark Enright: I used to just always draw. All the time. So…

But then, once doing other things… I kind of got out of drawing. But I feel like… I dunno.

After sculpting for so long, I think its made my drawings better? And so I’ve done little paintings here and there.

Like, I did a painting for my wife a few years back. It was all just Disney characters. Like, the good guys. No villains. Just all like… you know. Mickey Mouse and Goofy and Snow White and Dumbo and it was just a big kind of collage on this giant canvas.

Mark Enright (continuing): So, I did that.

And, last year, I did some Star Wars paintings of the masks I did. Just kind of like a half face on these little canvases. For May the Fourth. I did that.

Lauren: *chuckles thinking about “May the Fourth be with you”*

Mark Enright: And just kind of like watercolor, acrylic, and little bit of airbrushing and stuff like that. It’s…

I’m not a great painter, so…

But sometimes it’s fun to just kind of… If you get an idea for something, it’s fun to paint it sometimes. Or to make a mask of it. Or do something else. So… *shrugs*

Lauren: You do paint your own masks though! Right?

Mark Enright: Oh, yeah!

Lauren: Like, you do, like, EVERY stage of it!

Mark Enright: Mmhmm.

Lauren: Right?

Mark Enright: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah!

Do you do hair work as well?

Mark Enright: Some.

I’m not great with hair.

I mean, I… If you want hair that’s all, like, CRAZY and… *laughs* Doesn’t look GREAT, then I can do that.

Lauren: Uh-huh.

Mark Enright: I’ve never tried to hair, like, the perfect Dracula hair or do anything like that.

Lauren: Mmhmm.

Mark Enright: Most of my masks that have hair, it’s all sculpted hair.

Lauren: Yeah…

Mark Enright: But, you know, someday, I think… I plan on…hoping to be able to do that.

I did like a Gene Simmons mask! You know?

Lauren: Mmhmm!

Mark Enright: And that had a bunch of hair! But… It was kind of easy.

Because he had like this giant ponytail on top! So, you could kind of just make a big… You do all the hair and then you pull a lot of it up into a big bun! So…

Lauren: *chuckles & nods*

Mark Enright: So, that made it easy. You know?

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: But if it’s gotta be the Bela Lugosi… Like, all NICE and coifed and perfect…

Lauren: Mmhmm.

Mark Enright: You can’t just have, like… It’s gotta be REALLY nice. You know?

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: So…

Lauren: *chuckles*

So, what’s your favorite stage of, like…

Do you like…

Are you just happy when it’s all done? Or do you like doing the sculpting?

What’s your favorite part of what you do?

Mark Enright: Probably the painting. Because it’s fun.

Well, the sculpting is fun…! And then…

But when you’re done with the sculpture, you’re happy that you’re done sculpting. Especially when it takes, like, you know… Sometimes I’ll spend, like, 45 hours on a sculpture.

Not, you know, in a row… Not…

Lauren: *chuckles*

Mark Enright: 45 hours start-to-finish. You know. Over a month or however long it takes me to get it finished.

But, yeah. I usually…

Painting. Because once you paint it, then it’s done, and you can ship it off to somebody! So that’s usually the fun. The funnest element of it.

And then once you get to do a bunch of them, you kind of get it really perfected and it’s kind of… It gives you a chance to really perfect all the paint elements. So… yeah. That’s probably the funnest element, I think.

Lauren: Yeah! *chuckles*

You were doing sort of live demonstrations of your pumpkin carving at one point…

Have you ever done live demonstrations of your maskmaking?

Mark Enright: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… no. I haven’t.

It’s kind of…

It’s probably just because the process takes so long?

Lauren: Mmhmm.

Mark Enright: I know other people have sculpted at conventions and things like that. But I never was really that inclined to do that.

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: I don’t know. It’s just… It seems like it takes…

You really gotta get into it. Get into, like, a ZONE sometimes, I think. And to do that, somewhere out in public, doesn’t really… It kind of defeats the purpose, I think.

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: Almost like the pumpkin carving. We used to do the pumpkins — the 3D pumpkins — and people would come up constantly just asking you questions and talking to you. “Oh, can I see it? Can I see what you’re doing??”

And I kind of learned, over time, to turn the… That I had to sit backwards! Or… with my back to people. So, they could see the pumpkin!

Because, otherwise, if I’m sitting the other way, people are coming up “Oh, what are you doing? What’re you doing??” and you’re just turning the pumpkin around CONSTANTLY and you’ll never get it done!! *laughs*

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: So, I feel like demonstrating masks might be the same thing.

But it would be cool to have a mask class or something like that.

Lauren: Yeah! Like a Skillshare or something??

Mark Enright: Yeah. For sure.

Lauren: Something that you record and then just…

Mark Enright: Yeah. I have a YouTube, actually…

You asked me about other places where you could find me and I do have a YouTube channel! Where I’ve done… I did like a tutorial on painting eyes. Things like that.

It’s mostly just kind of on masks though. It’s not… There’s not too many tutorials.

I did one on making hoods. Like, on sewing a hood. I did do a tutorial for that.

Lauren: Nice!

Mark Enright: A while back…

Lauren: Is that also “Mortar Heads” like…?

Mark Enright: Yeah. You can just go to YouTube and look up “Mortar Heads.”

Lauren: Okay.

Mark Enright: I think it is.

Lauren: So, after people Like & Subscribe to this, they can go to Mortar Heads on YouTube and Like & Subscribe to that!

Mark Enright: Definitely. Yeah. There’s…

It’s not a very big YouTube. I think I have 30 followers or something like that. But I have little mask videos and stuff like that on there. It’s a fun little channel. So… *nods*

Lauren: Nice.

Yeah, I don’t… It’s hard to do, like, the Behind-the-Scenes stuff! Because it’s like the more you show people about, like, the process of everything… The less time you’re actually DOING it! *chuckles*

Mark Enright: Yeah. It’s nice to capture different… you know…

Sometimes I’ll record myself sculpting because it’s nice to capture certain aspects of it.

Lauren: Yeah…

Mark Enright: But to just always have it… Trying to broadcast what you’re doing…? It gets kind of… It’s difficult sometimes. You know. Maybe the…

It just doesn’t show up good or the video’s not really that great… you know. People aren’t really seeing… They can’t tell what you’re doing anyway. Or it’s just kind of distracting from your work. If you’re painting or whatever. So…

Lauren: Yeah…

Mark Enright: It’s… It’s difficult. But there’s definitely people out there doing it! And they can do it well. So…

But I think it probably… If you’re going to do something like that, it’d probably be more fun to do it in person if you could. Like go… If somebody’s doing a painting class or a mask class, go an actually take it from them rather than YouTube.

Lauren: Yeah.

Mark Enright: In my opinion, anyway.

Lauren: Yeah… *laughs*

Well, we’re coming up on the end of our time.

Did you have anything else that you wanted to talk about?

Mark Enright: Ummmmmmmmm… nah.

I think that’s it! I’m good.

Lauren: *laughs*

Mark Enright: Go to my… Go to my Instagram! And check out my stuff. And just… like my posts! That’s all.

And… Buy some masks??

Lauren: Yeah!!!

Both: *laugh*

Lauren: So, that’s Mortar Heads on Etsy and on Instagram and on YouTube…

And this is Mark Enright the maskmaker and artist and… yeah!

It was great having you on, Mark!

Mark Enright: Ah, great. Thank you for having me on!

Lauren: Byeeeeeeeeeeee!

Mark Enright: Byyye!

Images of Mark Enright’s artwork provided by Mark Enright / Mortar Heads. Images from films were purchased via MovieStillsDB. Image of Tina Spear was provided by Frank Spear.