When I entered the classroom I was confronted by a big man holding his hand as blood ran down his arm and onto the floor. His bloody knife lay on the table. “I just checked to see if my blade was sharp enough,” he said. Then the teacher, Mark George, arrived, saw the blood and laughed.
“If you cut yourself put pressure on the cut, and hold it above your heart. We will help you. If you need to go to emergency, we’ll take you. Don’t be like those women in my last class. One said, OOH, and ran out, dripping blood. Her friend grabbed up all their stuff and ran after. They never came back. We wondered what happened to that woman.”
I was already scared about cutting off a finger. But the wood looked and smelled lovely. I decided to carve a flat mask. First I needed to cut a wooden oval on the bandsaw. Luckily an older man, Thomas, offered to cut it for me. While he used the power saw, I imagined what that saw could do to my fingers.
I drew a simple face on the wood and started to carve. The chisel was not cutting into the wood. My knife was jumping. My blades were not sharp enough. Then I noticed the wood was turning red. I was so concentrating on carving I didn’t notice I’d cut my finger.
As I shaped the eyes the expression emerged from the wood. At first I was so focused on trying to hold the wood properly, that I didn’t notice the eyes of the mask were watching me, sad eyes in a thoughtful, androgynous face were looking directly out at me. I was amazed to suddenly see so much feeling emerging from the face in the wood.
Thomas had been helping me use the gouges without impaling myself. He said “Look at that expression. You are not even copying a pattern or a picture. You must be a natural carver.” I felt totally happy. I almost believed him. I carved a little frog on the mask forehead. Then I painted the lips full and red. I left lots of the wood natural to show the curving grain. I painted the eye pupils black, the eye sockets blue, the nostrils red. The face looked back at me thoughtfully. Then I painted the frog green with red lips. The mask could be Frog Prince from the Haida legend.
Instructor, Mark George, broke up my love affair with my first mask. Mark told me First Nations people believe a beginning carver must always give away their first mask. I was so shocked. How could I do that? It would be like giving away a child. I reluctantly gave it to my partner Laura. That way I could see it hanging on the wall in our house.
At the time I didn’t suspect Laura would dump me a few years later. She moved out and took the frog prince mask with her. I hadn’t gotten it in our division of property. I don’t even know if she wanted that little rough mask. Maybe she was just being polite and didn’t want to insult me by giving it back. And part of me wanted her to keep it. The mask might feel like a distant connection when I was crying missing Laura. I said goodbye to my first mask.
During that first carving class I became obsessed with the wooden mask. I bored Laura, and most of my friends, with details of my carving lessons: the smell of yellow cedar, the teacher grandson of Chief Dan George, old Thomas who sat next to me and helped me keep my fingers. When my brother-in-law learned how long it took to make the first mask he told me not to give up my day job.
Dina, a work friend, had visited Bali and loved Balinese masks, especially one particular mask of a forest spirit. She had really wanted to buy it. But it cost five hundred dollars U.S., and she just didn’t have the money. She still longed for it and showed me a photo. It was a black, life-sized, woman’s face, done in the Neo Art Nouveau style, with that particular Balinese touch. It was mysterious and seductive, a strong dark beautiful woman with long blond hair, like Dina’s. But it was also the deep jungle forest. The face was miraculously made of the jungle. It was formed of palm trees, ferns, tropical flowers, and strange shadowy animals. How could this be? The face was the jungle, and the jungle was the face. The lips were a golden butterfly. The eyes peered through the ferns as if trying to escape. I felt myself being drawn into those eyes, into the jungle so I could almost smell the moist ferns and hanging moss.
I decided I must go to Bali, find that mask, and learn to carve it. Dina said it was much too dangerous to go to Bali at this time, especially to go there alone. There were insurgents, terrorists, rival political gangs, and thieves and corrupt police. When Dina was there she had been close to a murder. But I had to go, so I went, alone.
