Terresa “Michuar” White is Yup’ik Eskimo. Her grandmother’s family is from the Kuskokwim River region near what is today the Alaskan village of Bethel. Her mother was born in Fairbanks, Alaska and her father’s family is French Canadian. Terresa lives with her partner and their two pups in Portland, Oregon. Her “Granny” Clara impressed upon Terresa, her brother, and their cousins traditional Yup’ik values in the nontraditional setting of rural Oregon. She was taught at an early age the importance of family ties and ancestry, of sharing food and work, of listening to children and elders, of showing respect to all people whether human or animal. Inspired by the art of traditional Yup’ik mask-making, Yup’ik stories of transformation between animal and human people, and Northwest Coast Native design, Terresa works with a locally-mixed, white earthenware clay to create multi-media masks. For pigment, she uses watercolors, chalk, pastels, charcoal, acrylics, and other pigment she finds at rummage sales. She incorporates into her work wild turkey, pheasant, and domesticated game bird feathers as well as organic materials such as driftwood, shells, small bones, and seaweed that she comes upon in her backyard, on alley-way meanderings, and on family kayaking excursions throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Artist's Statement

The faces of my masks emerge from memory—my own, and the memories passed to me by my ancestors. They are shadowy and I sense them dimly until they appear, recognizable at last, through my working of clay. I am inspired by the stories of transformation shared with me by my Granny Clara. My masks transform me, bring me closer to her ways of knowing and to the Alaskan village life she left as a young woman with my mother. I am stirred by the carved masks of traditional Yup’ik mask-makers. Mine are contemporary, exploring traditional themes and their interplay, confluence and divergence, with my urban life in Oregon. Mask-making is an intuitive and physical experience for me. I begin working the clay for each mask with no more than a dusky shadow in mind of what will materialize. My hands, my most-used sculpting tool, eagerly set about animating the story each mask has to tell with very little interference from my mind. And when the person of each mask finally comes into view, I experience delight and relief similar to spotting down the road a relative who has safely traveled a long journey for a visit. In fact, when a mask is finished, I often whisper to it, “There you are! Hello!” I hope my masks reveal to you something about their stories. And I hope their faces remind you of your resilient animal body, your inborn ability to greet the sweet stories of your life with guiltless pleasure and your dark stories with courage and personal transformation.

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