Nepcetat and Skateboards ~ Phillip John Charette

Yesterday I posted Phillip John Charette's Raku Amikuk mask, one of the Portland Art Museum's fine Native American masks. In searching for another mask for this week's Mask theme here at Fifty Two Pieces, I came across this image of Charette. He is holding an outstanding example of the most spiritually powerful of all Yup'ik masks, the Nepcetat. The advantage to this image is that you can tell that the mask is quite large because of the scale indicated by Charette and Bill Mercer to his right. Mercer used to be the Curator of Native American Art.

And since I'm running with Charette, I'll leave you with this mask that Charette created as a result of a challenge by some skateboarders in his neighborhood. The story goes something like this... one of the locals gave him a broken skateboard and challenged him by saying "I'll bet you can't make a mask out of this." Another skateboard and more parts arrived and this mask is the result.