The thing that fascinates me so much about masks is how you can capture the whole human experience.

You move an eye, or you adjust the mouth, and it goes from a smirk to a smile.

I really try to use these as tools to bridge other cultures, other experiences, because there are so many similarities when you just sort of take away all of the extra stuff.

VO: Indianola is a tiny town whose name hints at a storied history.

It's located within the Port Madison Indian Reservation, land designated for the Suquamish people by the Point Elliot Treaty.

But since the early 1900s, Indianolas population has been largely non-native.

By 1916, a 900 foot pier reached across the tide flats enabling ferry service from Seattle by the Mosquito Fleet.

The pier remains, but now visitors take the Bainbridge or Kingston Ferry, as I did when I visited woodcarver Jen Angaiak Wood.

Originally from Fairbanks Wood is descended from the Yup'ik tribe in Alaska.

She landed in Indianola a decade ago, happy to have lucked int a forested home on tribal land where she combs the local beach for driftwood pieces to create her dynamic masks.

Jen: So my ancestors would have exclusively used driftwood.

I mostly use, you know, windfall trees or kiln dried wood.

But one of my goals is to be able to collect up driftwood and carve that.

Yeah, especially when you can find like a really interesting twist of one or has an interesting grain.

But my overall goal is to be able to find a bigger piece that I can actually carve a full mask out of.

Are you looking for asymmetry, or do you just sort of let let it be?

My focus is always on just letting it be.

Wood is a living art material, and so it's also telling me what it wants.

A few blocks up from the beach, Wood's home sits among tall evergreens.

At the edge of the yard, a cedar shed serves as a carving studio where Wood uses traditional tools from Yup'ik and Coast Salish traditions to create animated, asymmetrical faces inspired by stories from her heritage.

So this is the one I'm working on now.

It's based on a story called The Blind Boy and the Two Loons.

It's kind of a sad story, but it also is about being kind, knowing that you make mistakes just like other people make mistakes.

These will eventually be the two loons.

Okay.

So these are going to be bird heads.

This will be the last part I carve though because these beaks are going to be so narrow.

Oh I see them emerging there.

Yeah.

So and then this will be the boy's face.

And in Yupik masks, when you see a face within a figure, it oftentimes is, something called a Yua, the inner spirit of whatever it is that the main mask is about.

It can also also represent transformation.

So from human to animal or animal to human.

You have the boy and the loons, and they're separate beings.

But they're brought together in this story.

In the story, yeah.

So what are the tools that you used to get it to this point?

So I learned how to carve using chisels, wood carving chisels.

And so this is the set that my parents got for me when I was in high school.

So I still use these.

The high school handwriting.

-Yeah.

-Right here.

Since weve moved to the Seattle area, Ive met some coastal artists.

So Coast Salish, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian people who have helped me learn how to use, their traditional bent knives.

And these can be similar to old style Yupik carving tools, except they had a similar handle, but it would be a longer blade and just one bevel.

So one side was sharp, and these are two bevel tools.

So that has changed a lot of my carving, because I can just get more dimension than I was able to with just the chisels.

VO: Immersed in the scent of yellow cedar, Wood uses her whole body to carve.

Her torso and legs brac as her arms push into each cut and the soft wood peels like butter.

Watching a face emerge from the wood is like seeing the moon suddenly appear from behind thick clouds.

Surprising, yet familiar.

As she looks at a mask in progress, it begins to look back, making artistic eye contact.

But no mask is complete until it's given its place in the universe, a Yupik tradition that Wood completes in her home garage.

The Yupik term for these is Ellam Yua, which is, essentially “the person of the universe.” And so, on old Yup'ik masks, they always had universe rings, and they are connected to what's called the circle and dot motif, which you see on a lot of old, Yupik work.

And the idea is that it places us firmly in the universe and connected to everything.

So it's an important element of almost all of my masks to have some form of rings around them.

When you're putting these together and paying respect to the tradition, how are you bringing your own ideas in, your contemporary ideas in, what are you doing to make it modern?

I really like using found materials and I'm really drawn to pieces that are like really dynamic.

Maybe there's bright colors or some kind of movement that's implied.

These I selected to mimic fireweed.

And then of course, wire, a lot of colored wire.

You started making masks in Alaska.

Now you're here in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by very tall evergreen trees.

How does it feel different, making art here?

I think one of the biggest differences is being down here, my work has gotten larger.

Like I carve larger masks.

I also learned how to carve from rounds of wood, which means you can get a lot more depth.

My goal is to really emphasize that indigenous people are contemporary people.

A lot of stories we hear, a lot of narratives are from the past.

It's important for me in the work that I do to, you know, wave my hand and say, but we are living beside you now.

We're not just in textbooks.

We're not just old stories.

I live now.

My ancestors used materials that were current to them in the moment, and so it just makes sense to me that I am also using materials that are current to me now.

The word Yup'ik translates to real people, which fits with woods approach to masks faces a personality precisel because of their imperfections and unexpectedness.

In this way, she's channeling real people, contemporary and ancient, and challenging us to question her own false fronts, all from a dot in the universe called Indianola.

Art by Northwest was made possible in part with the support of Visit Bellingham, Whatcom County.