BY SYLVIE PEDERSON
Tickle Your Fancy
W
MASK OF METHUSELAH,
PAPER, BY BONNIE BARTELL.
hat culture doesn’t have a tradi-
tion of masks? All over the world
masks are associated with reli-
gious rituals, carnival, theater, opera and
dance. From Switzerland to India, people
hang masks on their doors to ward off the
evil eye. Whether lofty or low, spiritual or
earthy, serious or playful, the fascination
masks exert has deep, primitive roots in our
psychology. The mask-bearer has permis-
sion to be another, and through masks
another world is allowed to enter our own.
Whatever their function, masks also
possess an aesthetic dimension, and the lat-
ter is primary at Karin Clarke’s current
Mask Invitational exhibit, for which the
gallery invited 11 local artists to create
masks. The result is a playful array of
masks bearing the stamps of widely differ-
ent imaginations.
Ceramics: Faye Nakamura’s exquisite-
ly carved and painted ceramic masks
include two large-format, full-head masks,
one inspired by Japan, the other by Egypt,
and five smaller eye-masks. All are deco-
rated with incised motifs (flowers, dancers,
women’s faces), delicately carved flowers,
seashells, or snakes. Colors are soft and
luminous.
Paper: Paper, in skillful hands such as
Bonnie Bartell’s, can acquire surprising
sculptural properties, as in her all-white
Mask of Methuselah. Though quite varied
in form, Bartell’s masks are highly playful,
often inspired by a punning imagination.
Maskerade Ball uses a softball with a bright
pink-and-gold eye-mask on. Framed Mask
for Invisible Man consists of an empty rec-
tangular frame decorated in fluorescent
pink. Her Three Masketeers is a triple mask
created out of a long narrow panel of col-
ored paper.
Mark Clarke’s From the Toy Box, a
three-headed mask, also demonstrates the
versatility of the paper-and-cardboard
medium. The central part represents a toy
soldier’s head wearing a bright red cap, one
side of its face painted green, the other dark
red and purple. To the right emerges a boy’s
MAKE A WISH, MIXED MEDIA, BY JUDITH SPARKS.
With Masks.
reddish gold profile, whose expression
evoked for me the folk hero and prankster
Till Owlglass. To the left springs a bird’s
torso, painted gold over black. These toys
are from an attic’s trunk, far in aesthetics
and sensibility from today’s manufactured
toys, but I suspect they would speak
instantly to the imagination of any contem-
porary child.
Painting and collage: Clarke’s Mask
depicts a young, gently enigmatic face,
painted in rich but muted complementary
tones of reddish and greenish browns.
Below, collaged letters spell the word
MASK. I found this discrete painting to
have enduring power.
Wood: In Sculpture on my Mind, Clarke
assembled wood pieces of different sizes
and shapes, stained almost black, to create a
tall mask in a “primitive” vein with a dif-
ferent face in front and back. On one side,
an abstract sculpture functions as a head-
dress that evokes abstracted birds in flight.
For Mask Head and Head Mask, Jim
Bartell used cedar boards cut out and
carved into profiles. Nails, together with
copper wire flattened and coiled, create
beards, hair, and facial marks.
Mixed media: Judith Sparks’ pieces
show remarkable diversity of means,
moods and inspiration. Make a Wish is an
intriguing assemblage of animal bones, the
largest suggesting a human skull-mask.
Strings of seed beads dangle from its chin,
each with a wishbone as pendant, and dice
peer out of its sockets. Meanwhile, in
Scarey, Sparks makes clever use of a single
photograph of President Bush printed in
different sizes, grain texture and darkness to
create a photo-montage in the shape of a
flower bouquet, as well as a political spoof.
In contrast, Beverly Soasey plays with
minute variations on the mask-shape theme
in a series of five masks painted sienna and
red with black accents, and decorated with
feathers, sticks and beads.
Other media used include metal (Harold
Hoy), glass (Annah James), wood appliqué
(Barbara Kensler), hydrocal (Miriam Kley)
and stoneware with found objects (Betsy
Wolfson).
After viewing this display, visitors may
well be inspired to dream up a mask of their
own in any medium they fancy. “Mask
Invitational” is at Karin Clarke Gallery,
Oct. 21-Nov. 15.
ew
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NOVEMBER 6, 2003 21