My albatross seabird mask is inspired by the 18th-century poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I made the piece using found / upcycled materials: the base is paper mâché, and the decorative ornamentation (sea shells, rags, beads, fishing cork, keys, jewelry, animal teeth, sand dollars, and more) were collected from second-hand beach objects in Southern England, Big Sur California, and the Gulf Coast of Florida. In the poem, an albatross helps a ship escape from an ice jam, but the mariner shoots the bird, bringing disaster to the ship and forcing the mariner to wander the earth in endless guilt. I interpreted the poem as a contemporary warning about environmental destruction. I describe all my work as a personal mythology filtered through ancient folklore. My masks, outfits, and sculptures use the materials of the old customs: ribbons, bells, flowers, horns, and vibrant paints. I am particularly fond of the rich, old traditions of the British Isles which echo into the American folk customs I grew up with in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I see my work as an alternate reality, where the old festivals splintered into new forms with different fables. These variant stories are informed by science fiction and an increasingly apocalyptic-looking future.