Boogy Boogy Boogy! It’s the Spooky Mask Show. Artists of all experience levels have created their version of a spooky mask. In-person viewing appointments can be made by emailing Gallery@makeshiftproject.com Enjoy th-2.png

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Thayne Yazzie

Thayne Yazzie“The Fox”Mixed Media/Leather/Acrylic Paint8" x 10"$500www.thayneyazzie.cominstagram.com/thayneyazzie — Thayne Yazzie
**“The Fox”**
*Mixed Media/Leather/Acrylic Paint*
8" x 10"
$500
www.thayneyazzie.com
instagram.com/thayneyazzie

Jessyca Murphy

Artist Statement:

“According to [Simon] Critchley, your ideal self is the source of your conscience, but it’s also your internal critic. [...] Critchley says the demands of the ideal self can never be fully satisfied. You can never completely live up to it because having that ideal there is part of what gives your mind a structure. He says we are most acutely aware of this split when we feel shame.”
-- Abigail Thorne @PhilosophyTube

This piece is the first in a series of works inspired by medieval shame masks. Shame masks were tools of public humiliation imposed on people convicted of crimes and to warn the general public about their wrongdoings. The design of the mask was also meant to resemble the crime itself. For example, “bad” musicians who refused to stop playing in public were fastened with a flute connected to their nose and mouth, so that they could not breathe without making an annoying sound. There were also spiked metal contraptions that “gossiping” women were forced to place in their mouths, so they would be impaled when attempting to speak.
While this practice may seem tortuous today, shame (both in its public and private forms) still plays a significant role in our lives and relationships. The shame we’ve been taught to feel about our bodies, our feelings, and our urges, has become a point of fascination for many researchers and commentators. Especially when it comes to public shaming on social media as a means of enforcing morality.

With the popularization (and capitalist appropriation) of “body positivity,” many people express feeling shame about feeling shame. This is what Sonya Renee Taylor calls “meta-shame.” Even when we try to eliminate shame, it somehow manages to creep back into our minds. It’s almost like we don’t need masks any longer. We’ve learned how to humiliate ourselves all on our own.

This particular mask was inspired by my earliest memory of shame. When I was six years old, I had a classmate who always had warts on her fingers. She also wore the same cheap witch costume for two Halloweens in a row. I remember making fun of her to my friends for both of these social transgressions, pointing out the obvious connection. Then one day, I got a wart on my own chin. The doctor gave my mother a painful cream that we used to freeze off the wart and I spent days at home from school. I spent that time tortured by my contradictory feelings of shame. I not only felt shame for my blemish, but also for my moral failings -- that I mocked and judged someone else, especially now that I was experiencing the same affliction. You would think the second might cancel out the first, but it did not.

With this series, I’m not concerned with defining shame as good or bad, but rather I hope to illustrate how shame feels. For as gruesome as those shame masks were, I think there is some weird power in externalizing abstract sensations.

Anony Mouse

Artist Statement: Anubis, Egyptian god of the dead, escorts our souls into the beyond. Anubis judges departed souls by weighing hearts versus the feather of truth and justice. Souls of hearts weighing less than the feather are guided towards a heavenly afterlife. How will your heart fare?

Artist Statement: Sometimes the light at the end of a tunnel is a train. Sometimes it's salvation. Sometimes it's a bioluminescent lure. What if going towards the light is a trap?

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Alli Willis

Christian Anne Smith

Artist statement:

I like to tell stories through art. I love garish and fantastical characters. I enjoy human beings, and my art explores stories of human emotion as well as my passion for costumes, colors, textures and intriguing environments.

Growing up on the coast of Maine, I was surrounded by stories and images of the region's folklore. Seilkies, Mermaids, Ghosts and Pirates were all believably real entities to me. My childhood fascination with monsters and supernatural beings continues and influences the way I choose to portray people.

I also have a need to express with my art. I become inspired, and have worked hard to train myself to go into a sort of a trance that allows what's inside to come out. It's only later that I can look with any objectivity on something that I've created and perhaps get a glimpse of what I was feeling or thinking.

It is akin to the way one might analyze a dream.

I may start a painting or puppet with a certain image in mind, but I allow the original image to change or even get completely painted over whenever I start to see new things. I am often quite confused about how I am feeling until after I paint, draw, or build things and the truth comes to the surface. This is the way I best communicate with myself.

In this way, I suppose nearly all my paintings are also portraits of my life.

Thank you for your interest in my work. I hope that the world I have created sparks your own imagination and provokes many hours of daydream in the years to come.

Christian Smith grew up in the coastal town of Cushing, Maine. As a child she was fascinated by the region’s folklore. She was also blessed with a creative family that read to her every night and provided lots of crayons to encourage her art.

She learned early in life how much she loved to draw and tell stories through her artworks.

Christian Anne Smith studied illustration at Parson’s School of Design, NYC and has a B.A. in Studio Arts from Western Washington University.

Christian currently lives in Bellingham, Washington where she paints and teaches.

She is a member of the Waterfront Artist’s Collective, The Allied Arts Education Project, and is involved in various projects throughout the community that mix art and people.