Featured Masks and Komokwa!

Went to a small museum in Salem Oregon yesterday, the Hallie Ford Museum at Willamette University, and thought by far the most interesting room was these NWC masks... including a great @komokwa! Here's lookin' at you buddy!

 

1st one is a frontlet.... Hunt Family... maybe Richard..
3rd , Dempsey Bob , or one of his students.
last .........I know Calvin..

Thanks Pal , with the Joe David.......those are all top of the line works ..

 

Stunning masks, thanks for showing us.
I love when they use the grain of the wood in such a way that it is part of the features of the face.

 

I should have included pics of the carvers.... but the names were familiar: Hunt, Williams, a cool Susan Point glass piece...

 

Yes...I was struck by that too, AJ.
Remarkable, fine in the truest sense...powerfully evocative, especially pics 3 an' 5!

 

That mountain goat mask was made from mountain goat fur. Pretty cool!

 

interesting that a " Museum" , would have a collection of newer works !
Someone had a good budget..........

 

Most of them were donated by a husband / wife collector team, George and Colleen Hoyt:

https://hfma.willamette.edu/collections/hoyt/

 

that makes more sense .............. they had great taste..!!

 

I'm basically considered a nobody from nowhere , in the community....but....with one or two exceptions , I've handled work by each one of those artists mentioned .
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( tooting his own horn...)

 

You sent me down a rabbit hole with these, so I went directly to the Hallie Ford Museum's own documentation rather than trying to identify the masks from appearance alone.

That is a seriously interesting collection. These are works from the George and Colleen Hoyt Collection of Northwest Coast Art, and the museum actually publishes a 19-page guide identifying the individual artists and works displayed in this gallery.

The one you tagged @komokwa is Calvin Hunt's Komokwa, 2018. Hunt is a Kwakwaka'wakw artist born in 1956. According to the museum, the mask is made from red cedar, copper, horsehair and paint.

Komokwa is described by the museum as the Chief of the Undersea World, or the Copper Maker, in Kwakwaka'wakw and Haida traditions. He is associated with rising tides and whirlpools and with sea creatures including Sculpin, Octopus, Killer Whale and Loon. The museum specifically notes that this particular mask has a blue loon resting on top of his head. Those round forms surrounding the face may represent octopus suckers, bubbles or sea anemones.

I was also able to identify that wonderful white-haired horned mask in your photographs. That's Joe David's Mountain Goat mask, 2017, made from red cedar, goat hair, operculum shell and paint. David described it as a Tsimshian crest mask, and the museum explains that Mountain Goat functions as a guardian/guide associated with movement between the earth and sky realms.

There are some major Northwest Coast artists represented in this collection: Dempsey Bob, Beau Dick, Calvin Hunt, George Hunt Jr., Henry Hunt, Richard Hunt, Stanley Hunt, Joe David, Susan Point, Tim Paul and others. For example, the museum guide identifies Richard Hunt's Salmon mask from 1999, George Hunt Jr.'s Mosquito mask from 1993, and Beau Dick's Eagle helmet from 1987 among the works in the collection.

So your instinct that this was the most interesting room was pretty well justified. There is considerably more going on in there than a display of unidentified "NWC masks."

Here is my source, directly from the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University. It's their own illustrated/object guide to the Hoyt Collection and includes the artist biographies, object titles, dates, materials and explanations:

Hallie Ford Museum of Art – George and Colleen Hoyt Collection of Northwest Coast Art:
https://hfma.willamette.edu/exhibitions/library/2022-23/transformations-gallery/hoyt-collection.pdf

Definitely worth saving that PDF if you enjoyed the exhibit. It tells you exactly what you were looking at rather than leaving you to guess from the gallery labels.

 

nice pics , pal !!

 

Thanks for the research and interest, @Christine Steingass! I shoulda been more deliberate with taking note of the carvers / artists. Next time I will!