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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Behind the mask: Spokane artist Annie Libertini made the masks for ‘Encanto’ concert on Disney+

By Nina Culver For The Spokesman-Review

A leopard appears at the top of a wall before making his way to center stage and breaking out in dance. Colorful toucans flit about the stage, and a pair of ring-tailed coatis make mischief.

These animals and others are featured in a new concert presentation based on Disney’s hit animated film, “Encanto,” and their creation is thanks in part to a Spokane artist.

Local artist Annie Libertini

specializes in leather masks, which she makes in her Hillyard home. Her work has appeared in several TV show, including “Gotham” and “Z Nation.” Most recently, she was called on to create 10 animal masks for a live-action concert version of the movie “Encanto,” starring the film’s original voice actors, hosted by Lin-Manuel Miranda and recorded at the Hollywood Bowl. Now streaming on Disney+, the film features Libertini masks such as a snake, a leopard, coatis and toucans.

What’s remarkable is how fast Libertini was able to create the masks. She was contacted Oct. 11 and happened to be between jobs. “If they had written me a week earlier or a week later, I wouldn’t have been able to do it,” she said. “They had a really short timeline. They needed these masks and they needed them soon.”

She talked over designs with the show’s costume team, who sent her swatches from the various animal costumes so she could make sure the colors matched. Then she got to work.

“Every design had to be approved by the Disney authenticator,” she said. “There were a few all-nighters in there.”

On Halloween day, she sent off her finished masks. They appeared on stage on Nov. 11 and 12. “It was a big, glitzy show,” she said.

Libertini didn’t see a future for herself in show business as a child, but she had always wanted to be an artist. Her family moved to Spokane when she was 9 and she graduated from Ferris High School before leaving for college. She earned a bachelor’s of fine arts in painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art then got a master’s degree in library and information science from Simmons University in Boston.

Though she loved art, Libertini was always practical about her choices.

“What I really wanted to be was an illustrator,” she said. “I thought that was more practical. Even when I was younger, I was thinking about that.”

The library degree was meant to be her backup plan if her idea of making a living as an artist didn’t work.

“It can be a very hard road, and I wanted to make sure I could work,” she said.

But she graduated with her masters in 2008 and library jobs were hard to find. She was laid off frequently as libraries lost funding, which left her more time for her art. She had first tried mask-making when she was in art school. “I was given some supplies, so I thought, why not?” she said. “I ended up doing more and more of it.”

Leather mask-making was a rather obscure form of art and at first Libertini was self-taught. “I didn’t know what half the tools did,” she said.

She was able to sell some of her masks online and at renaissance fairs. When she and her husband moved to Spokane in 2012, she began going to the Tandy Leather shop and talking to other leather workers, picking up pointers. “I started expanding my ideas of what could be done,” she said.

She began attending leather trade shows across the country and taking classes. Soon she was teaching leather mask-making classes at those same trade shows, which she still does today. She also teaches classes online at www.elktrackstudio.com.

Libertini thinks she got her start in show business from a costume designer who did an image search for masks. Her first effort was a few masks for the TV show “Once Upon a Time” in 2013. “It was very exciting, but it was very blink and you’ll miss it,” she said.

When she was six months pregnant with her daughter, she made 15 owl masks to be worn by members of the nefarious Court of Owls for “Gotham,” a Batman prequel series that ran for five years on Fox. The day after she brought her premature daughter home from the hospital, she received an email asking for six more.

At the start of the second season of fan favorite “Z Nation,” which was filmed in the Spokane area, she was contacted about making leather holsters and knife sheaths for the show, as well as painting skulls on leather jackets. “I must have painted 40 leather jackets,” she said.

Soon representatives from the show were contacting her about other things they needed, things that were definitely outside of her leather wheelhouse. Libertini was uncertain at first, but then decided it was a great way to put her diverse art background to good use. “I took printmaking, I took weaving, I took all the weird classes,” she said. “I made a fake dead rat out of fur. I knitted for them.”

Libertini said she really enjoyed her time working with “Z Nation.”

“It was really fun,” she said. “You never knew what it would be. It makes you think on your feet.”

When “Z Nation” ended in 2018, the crew scattered. But she still gets calls from people she worked with back then, asking her if she can create something for new projects they are working on.

These days Libertini spends much of her time raising her 6-year-old daughter but still teaches classes online and in person around the country. She has an Etsy shop under the name Libertini Arts, but mostly focuses on custom work and commissions.

“I love making masks,” she said.