Xenia Man Creates 16th Century Art on Main Street During First Friday

XENIA, OH - Robert Schneider of Xenia has been working with leather since 1994. As one of the talented leather crafters at Tim Sontag's Xenia Shoe & Leather Repair, he handles the contemporary tools and materials of the trade with a practiced hand.

During last week's First Friday event, however, Schneider had the opportunity to demonstrate how he combines his skill as a leathersmith with his love of the old world stage. When he is not hard at work at the shoe repair shop, Schneider is creating artistic masterpieces in the form of hand-crafted, theatrical masks of the commedia d'ell arte.

Loosely translated from Italian, commedia d'ell arte means, "the Italian comedy." Performers in this type of theatre use the masks to create different characters, just as was done some four centuries ago. Of course Schneider is not just a prop maker. He also knows how to bring the masks to life before an audience.

Schneider is a member of i'Scandali, a 16^th Century Italian improvisational street theatre troupe based in southwest Ohio. The group's members are Renaissance period re-enactors affiliated with the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. The international research and re-enactment organization focuses on the arts and skills of Europe prior to the 17^th Century.

Schneider began making the colorful and expressive masks five years ago. "Creating the masks is very rewarding," Schneider said, pausing to speak for only a moment as he prepared a dental molding compound with which he creates the shape for the mask based on the face of its intended owner. "You are literally making a new character out of leather."