This Man Makes Terrifyingly Realistic Donald Trump Masks
How an unemployed artist leveraged digital sculpting software, 3-D printing and social media to create a booming business like no other.
Photos by Kyria Abrahams
Step in to the Denver, Colorado, home of Landon Meier and a table full of bodiless heads greets you just past the front door. There’s a deceptively friendly Tyrion Lannister from the bloody “Game of Thrones” universe. He’s propped behind a tattooed, smiling Mike Tyson, who looks ready to accept your offer of candy while still perfectly capable of eating your children, like the real-life boxer once told an interviewer after a fight. Next to Iron Mike is an intense, slightly slack-jawed Walter White from “Breaking Bad” who can’t completely come out of the shadow of the massive crying baby mask behind it – the one that changed Meier’s life six years ago.
The supremely freaky crying baby mask made its initial pop culture splash in performance artist Jillian Mayer’s 2011 viral YouTube video “I Am Your Grandma.” When the mask appears onscreen, it’s hard not to rescind in horror, or as Meier observes: “It’s going to give somebody a mid-day nightmare.”
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