Behind the masks: Jason McLeod Jewelry updates its inventory for 2020 – C-VILLE Weekly

Jason McLeods artisan jewelry career path was informed by car crashes. Back in the early aughts, McLeod was living in Oakland, California, and running an advertising and graphic design business when a pair of back-to-back fender benders laid him up long-term in the hospital.

He needed something to fill the hours, and I just started making jewelry as a way to keep my hands and my mind busy, McLeod says. But when he saw the enthusiasm his uniquely designed rings and necklaces generated, he realized his hobby had the potential to become a business.

In the ensuing years, McLeod and his wife moved to Charlottesville and he displayed his metalwork at East Coast art shows, developing his brand and honing his craft, eventually setting up shop in an Allied Lane office space.

McLeod has established himself as a local artisan whose work has a unique, speculative twist. His online store is filled with Singularity pendants and Time Traveler rings, intricate creations as otherworldly as their names suggest. The goal, McLeod says, is to create products that look like theyre from the past and the future.

Hes succeeded with the newest product on his site: the Time Traveler Shamanic Mask. The fully functional mask is decked out with 18-karat gold and black silk, and comes with a leather strap. Its a steampunk fantasybut at $20,020, it might exceed the typical cosplay budget.

The price, of course, is a tongue-in-cheek reference to this year and its unprecedented events, without which this mask would never have been created. McLeod says he might be willing to negotiate on its cost, but hopes a wealthy someone will pay full price. Its part of the package, he says.

McLeod also emphasizes that, should his mask find a buyer, the profits will go to a coronavirus medical expense relief charity, giving the project a Robin Hood purpose.

Whether or not the first mask sells, McLeod plans to create moremaybe even a series. Future design ideas include tear gas-resistant goggles, he says, to remain applicable to 2020. But if the Time Traveler Shamanic Mask is any indication, he wont be abandoning his signature aesthetic. On the masks two respirators, McLeod inserted golden versions of the earth and the sunspecifically, its corona. (Get it?) Across the silver surface, hes etched tiny stars and other celestial symbols.

The celestial, global aspect is what initially inspired McLeod to make the mask. Part of whats really amazing about this quarantine pandemic thing is that its brought out theglobal group organism, he says. The macro, not the micro.

And yet McLeods own celestial path finds him in the business of sculpting those big ideas into a small, wearable piece of art.

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Behind the masks: Jason McLeod Jewelry updates its inventory for 2020 - C-VILLE Weekly