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."

Mask - Inuit

Look closely at this mask and you'll see features of both a seal and a bird. It's thought that perhaps the carver wanted to portray a spirit that would belong to both the ocean and the air. The tribes from Western Alaska created spectacular carved masks. They were intended to represent the spirits of nature. Those spirits control the harsh elements of the world allowing man to survive only with their favor. This mask was used by hunters to honor a seal-like spirit in the hopes of guaranteeing a steady supply of game for food. Quite a bit of the 18 x 20 inches of this mask is made up of feathers. However, it still looks like it would be heavy on the head.

Mask - Wolf Forehead

Wolf Forehead Mask is the description of this mask. Yikes, look at that tongue. Hungry would be how I would describe this creature and a formidable presence. The red in this mask fascinates me. From that tongue move up to the red in the nostrils, the red around the ears, inside the ears and on the cheeks. Red is a powerful color. Whoever would wear this mask would be a major force. Dated around 1880 from the Northwest Coast, it's made of wood, hair, copper, opercula shells, cloth, and pigment. At 15 inches by eight and eight it would be hefty enough to be wearing at any type of ceremony for any length of time.

Reading about the wolf in the Northwest Coast culture, I found this...

People respect the wolf for its strength, agility, intelligence and capacity for
devotion. The wolf's vocal range and communicative powers are impressive,
and Northwest Coast peoples traditionally believe in the potency and magic
of speech and song. Wolf is sometimes an agent of transformation, and
is a popular figure in crest, story and shamanic art.

And here are any number of wolves set to flute music, enjoy...

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.

Phillip John Charette ~ Raku Amikuk Mask

Phillip John Charette's Raku Amikuk mask is on permanent display in the Native American Arctic Room Collection of the Portland Art Museum. Charette says that the mask sculpture "teaches us to be aware of our surrounding and to tread lightly when we are in unfamiliar territory. This mask is good for anyone who does much travel in unfamiliar or dangerous territory."

At a size of six by five feet the mask is quite large. It's main body, ears, hands, and labrets are hand sculpted and carved. It has been Raku Fired with custom glazes made by artist. Charette also made the Dichroic glass beads that are located on the forehead. Those beads represent spirits that influence this being. There's a great deal going on in this mask. Take a look at the teeth, the outer feathers and labret bones. They are hand sculpted porcelain. The red oak frame is bent using a traditional method and attached to the mask with rawhide. Charette used horse hair fired porcelain to create the outer feathers and are meant to represent chaos in traditional spirtual beliefs. Instead of traditional Owl feathers Charette used dark turkey feathers to "represent spirits in the universe this being can see." The back of mask is painted with spiritual symbols.

Phillip John Charette's Native American name is "Aarnaquq", which in the Yup'ik language means "The One Who Is Dangerous".

In addition to masks, Charette also makes flutes. Here he is performing "Raven Finds the Meal".

The Real Eagle Woman

Today I share with you the mask at the Portland Art Museum. Before the mask was behind a case someone once stole one of the little eagles. They simply took it off the braid and smuggled it out of the museum, maybe they even crossed a river with it. It showed up later and someone recognized it, the museum got it back, now she's behind glass. Sort of an ironic twist of events, that she lives so caged when she is all about being free.

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.