Things got a little twisted at Cinema Makeup School on Jan. 26. That’s when Eryn Krueger Mekash and Mike Mekash, the husband-and-wife make-up team working on AMC’s American Horror Story, did a live make-up demo of the show’s Twisty the Clown make-up.

CMS Director of Admissions Lee Joyner served as the pair’s model as they recreated the character, played by John Carroll Lynch in American Horror Story: Freak Show. CMS Chief Academic Officer Michael Spatola emceed the event, which was open to the students, graduates and the public and drew more than 100 viewers; latecomers were ushered into two overflow rooms to watch the demo on video feeds.

The artists answered audience questions as they applied the make-up, and told stories about their work on the show while they explained the application step by step. After the presentation, Mike Mekash noted some of the challenges the pair faced in applying the make-up for the show, including shooting in New Orleans.

“The humidity in New Orleans is about 90 percent,” he said. “Just walking out of the trailer out to set, you just start sweating. We had to come up with a make-up that you could just sweat through.”

But, he said, the actor kept the mood light, telling funny stories in the make-up chair, and, in true clown fashion, creating balloon animals.

The school plans to host other public make-up demos in 2015. For more information, go to cinemamakeup.com/events.

Photos in gallery by Deverill Weekes