The Week of Masks ~ That Was The Week That Was

This week has been a week of firsts. It's the first week that we haven't followed a particular artist throughout the week. It's the first week that we've looked at masks. And it's the first week to have a post showing all of the images of the week. Below are three tables I created after finding the HTML coding instructions for making tables with images on Blogspot.

Amy started the week with two images of Eagle Woman. The second Eagle Woman mask is the one in the Portland Art Museum. You can catch her at the museum or on Flickr with the tags of mask and Portland Art Museum.


Next up was Phillip John Charette's Raku Amikuk mask that you can find in the Artic area of the museum. That mask was followed by a post with an image of Charette holding a Nepcetat mask from the collection. I couldn't help myself that day I had to include the skateboard challenge mask in the post with Nepcetat.


The week ended with the Wolf Forehead Mask and an Inuit mask of a seal. Along the way there were a few videos that included Native American flute music. As they say, "That was the week that was."

Eagle Woman, and other Masks

This is a week of masks, for fifty two pieces. I am showing Eagle Woman, not the exact mask at the Portland Art Museum, but a sister to that mask, almost like a mask for that mask. Because really, whatever mask one wears it says something so real about who is underneath it, that a mask should be portrayed as a mask that it is not.
Eagle Woman has a story. She was a beautiful maiden who flew away to live with Eagle, her true love, leaving her family behind. After years of living in the sky with Eagle she felt very lonely for the life she'd left. One day she couldn't take it any longer so she took her two babies and flew the coop. She got to a wide wide river, one her babies couldn't fly across. She decided to tie them into her hair and swim across, eventually finding her family on the other side.
Kids really dig this story, like most stories I know that are Native American it resonates to the soul, it weaves simple and complex human themes into an engaging metaphor.
Halloween is around the corner, I'm contemplating dress up themes. One idea is to be someone who dances because I have a goal to do more of that in the very near future. Maybe I can create a mask and weave a story about me into it, like Eagle Woman with her babies in her braids. I can play out the story of the person I've become, transforming for just one night.