Photos by Troy Harvey / Special to The Star Participants in the mask-making workshop at Bell Arts Factory use recycled materials to complete their creations.

Deborah Hazen's regular gig is as the go-between for the city of Ventura and WAV, or Working Artists Ventura, a downtown community of galleries, businesses and live-work spaces that is slated to open late next year.

But on a recent Saturday, her job title was a lot less complicated: glue lady.

Those words were scrawled on a sign hanging from the table behind which Hazen stood, a hot-glue gun in her hands.

On the other side of the table was Hector Ivan, 7. He pointed to the precise spot where he wanted Hazen to put a dot of hot glue on his nearly completed art project, a mask he had painted fire-engine red.

He grinned as Hazen used an index finger to push a bead into the glue for a count of 10. Then he pointed to another spot. Dot, bead, count. Dot, bead, count. On it went until Hector at last held the mask up to his face and turned to peer at his mother, Marisol Ivan, through the eyeholes.

"The kids are really getting into it," Hazen said of the mask-making workshop, which drew dozens of young children, a handful of child-free adults and even a trio of teenage girls to the community room at the Bell Arts Factory on Ventura Avenue.

The workshop was one of three free community events presented in anticipation of this weekend's Spring ArtWalk in Ventura — and in hopes of inspiring local residents to join in the Parade of Masks Finale for WAV to take place at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

Long associated with glittering masquerade balls and the carnival atmosphere of Mardi Gras, the masks will help celebrate the end of Ventura's first two-day ArtWalk.

And as indicated by the parade's name, the masks also are intended to draw attention to WAV. When completed, the $57 million project will offer "green" housing for artists and mixed-income families as well as market-rate condos with ocean views and, on the bottom floor, an assortment of arts-friendly businesses such as jazz cafes, coffeehouses and galleries. (For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.place.us.)

Ground was broken on the Thompson Boulevard-Ventura Avenue site in January. For now, it looks like little more than a big patch of dirt — hence the use of events like the mask parade to help keep it in the public eye, said Hazen.

Brochures for the workshops referred to the creation of ocean-themed masks in a nod both to WAV's sound-alike word, "wave," and to the project's location just a few blocks from the beach.

But such distinctions were of little concern to mask workshop participants, most of whom appeared more inspired by the availability of recycled craft materials than by the suggested ocean theme.

Working at a table with two friends, Foothill Technology High School freshman Lizbeth Molina covered her newspaper and plastic milk-jug mask with a layer of white paint, then started experimenting with the placement of a strip of turquoise satin ribbon and a clutch of evergreen feathers.

At a neighboring table, a young boy stood on his chair, the better to angle his paintbrush into the nostrils of the multiple, tube-shaped noses of his mask.

And at yet another table, Thousand Oaks resident Dorothea Heger and friend Corinne McKean, a French teacher at Newbury Park High School, worked not with papier-mache but the dried husks of palm fronds harvested from the streets of Ventura after the last big windstorm.

"This is so beautiful naturally, I just want to enhance it," said Heger as she decided against gluing a shiny sequin shaped like a tropical fish to her frond.

An abstract painter by profession, Heger instead added a whisper-thin coat of metallic paint to the mahogany-hued husk, then attached a thin string of shells by which the piece could be hung on the wall.

"I've always wanted to do masks," she said. "This has been so much fun, and so inspiring."