>THE MAN BEHIND THE MASKS
Artist David Arrigo has found a niche by providing goalies with eye-catching designs
When NHL goalies want to add some flair to their protective gear, they call David Arrigo. The Hockley Valley artist has created more than 1,000 designs,
David Arrigo is the go-to artist for NHL goalies who want an eye-catching mask design.
Not bad for a guy whose Grade 9 art teacher nearly flunked him.
The Ontarian started out painting murals at sports bars in the 1990s, graduated to portraits of hall of fame inductees in 1999, and now paints jaw-dropping sports-themed pieces around the world.
In 2007, his career took off in a new direction when he met the father of goalie Mike Smith, now with the Arizona Coyotes.
“(Smith’s dad) asked if I did masks,” Arrigo said by phone from his studio in Hockley Valley, an hour’s drive northwest of Toronto. “I didn’t want anything to do with it, because I thought I had to recreate the wheel.”
Months later, the elder Smith handed over his son’s blank mask and convinced Arrigo to get to work. The final product was a Grinch-inspired work that some say started the trend of “pimping of the mask,” Arrigo says.
“Voila. Many years later, here I am, still going strong.”
One of his Smith designs — the creepy Alice Cooper mask, a realistic depiction of the heavy metal singer wearing heavy, dripping eye makeup — recently went viral after the goalie wore it on a throwback jersey night, when the Coyotes hosted the Vancouver Canucks.
“What’s a better throwback than a little rock-and-roll like Alice Cooper?” said Arrigo, adding he’d been “bugging” Smith to let him plaster an image of Cooper, a big fan of the Coyotes, on a one-of-a-kind mask.
The rocker seemed to approve, tweeting a photo of himself next to Smith and the mask at the March 5 game: “With the @ArizonaCoyotes to help #MikeSmith scare the puck out of the @VanCanucks with his new mask by @darrigoart!”
Arrigo has created more than 1,000 mask designs, with NHLers Carey Price and Brian Elliott also among his clients. The players and the artist come up with the design idea together and Arrigo executes it, using spray paint and airbrushing. He estimates he’s done around 20 for Smith alone, and while they’re usually on the same page sometimes “we can get pretty heated.”
Each mask takes 10 to 40 hours and costs from $650 to $1,800.
He says he’ll continue the work until “people get sick of me,” but his main passion is murals, commissioned for events such as the Olympics, Toronto’s Pan Am Games and NASCAR races.
He’s adorned masks with everything from Star Wars characters to scenes from horror films to kids’ names and says pretty much anything goes — adding that he draws the line at nudity, gore or anything “politically incorrect.”
Arrigo says picking a favourite mask would be like choosing a favourite child, but the attention attracted by the Cooper model has clearly blown him away.
“I knew it was going to raise a lot of eyebrows. I just didn’t expect worldwide involvement. . . . This was insane,” he says.
As for the Grade 9 art teacher who barely gave him a passing grade, Arrigo says he doesn’t blame her and benefitted from the experience.
“That’s what shaped me into what I am today,” he says. “Nobody remembers the person that didn’t try.”