Ceramic artist Beverly Toyu says the process of making masks is an 'aha' experience

A regular at Portland's Saturday Market, Toyu was in Eugene on Saturday for the 20th annual Asian Celebration, which packed a bigger crowd than organizers ever recall having seen before into the main hall at the Lane Events Center. The celebration continues today.

"When I started making the masks, I realized that what I was doing was allowing people to see their inner sacred selves," Toyu said. "It was an `aha' experience."

While spectators crowded around her booth, Toyu began creating a life mask for Aimee Yogi, a University of Oregon library technician and the celebration's crafts coordinator. "When I was in Italy in 2003, I purchased a carnival mask," Yogi explained. "The next year, I bought a Faye Nakamura mask in Eugene. I was starting this collection. So I thought, why not a mask of me?"

The casting process took about 20 minutes. Toyu had Yogi lie back on a massage table inside the booth, then draped her with a blanket and white towels as though preparing for surgery, leaving only her face exposed. All the while, Toyu spoke quietly and reassuringly to Yogi to make sure she stayed relaxed. "When I cover your face with plaster, it will be quite dark," she said. "You've probably been stressed out with setting up the festival, but now that it's set up you can just relax."

Using her bare hands, Toyu rubbed mineral oil over Yogi's entire face and the front of her neck and into her hairline. The oil keeps the plaster from sticking to the subject's skin. "Now, don't open your eyes," Toyu said, "because I'm putting oil on them."

Soon, Yogi's face was glistening like a sunbather's. Wrapping their ends in soft tissue paper, Toyu gently inserted two plastic soda straws into Yogi's nostrils to give her an airway through the plaster. Then she mixed about two gallons of ordinary plaster of Paris in a plastic bucket on the floor by the head of the massage table, working it with her hands to a marshmallow consistency.

Meanwhile, she kept talking. "Think of someplace, maybe a beach in Hawaii, where you're relaxing," she said. Hawaiian music, not coincidentally, floated throughout the room from the Asian Celebration stage, and about a dozen people now stood outside the booth, admiring Toyu's rack of display masks and whispering and pointing at Yogi.

The oldest person Toyu has done a mask of was 88 years old. The youngest was 3. Toyu also makes more conventional ceramics, like tea pots and bowls, but masks account for most of her business. "I keep the molds," she said. "I have a whole barn full of people's faces."

Toyu took a large handful of wet plaster and plopped it onto Yogi's forehead. "Unfurl your eyebrows," she said, bending down, her voice low. "Be your bliss. Be a goddess." She smoothed the plaster down over Yogi's eyes. "This is going over your nose now. You just want to breathe naturally. Think, `I can breathe fine.' Just be in your meditation, watching your breath. Think good thoughts." Toyu smoothed plaster down over Yogi's mouth and onto her chin and neck.

Three minutes after she started, Toyu had finished the plastering. Yogi lay there motionless, breathing gently, with a 2-inch-thick mask of brilliant white plaster covering her face, with only the straws protruding. Toyu touched the plaster now and again, assessing its hardness and temperature. She wanted to pull it off at the right moment after it had begun to set but before it was fully hardened.

"Just another minute or two," she said. "It's still a little damp right here." Toyu stood with her hands on Yogi's shoulders, talking softly, occasionally checking and rechecking the plaster. A friend took pictures with Yogi's digital camera.

And then it was time. The artist had Yogi hold the mask against her face with her hands as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the massage table. The mask unpeeled slowly from her skin and Yogi held it in her two hands, looking down into a bowl-shaped mold of herself.

Her real face was white with plaster dust, while the inside of the mold showed traces of her flesh-colored makeup. The process had taken 10 minutes from the first daub of plaster to peeling off the mold. Yogi said she wasn't frightened by having the plaster on her face, but the casting process was definitely an odd experience.

"It's sort of disorienting," she said. "It was nice to have her hands on me and have her telling me it was going to be OK."

Yogi looked down at her mold. "It looks very Asian," she said. "That's my Buddha face. My Hawaiian, lying-on-the-beach face."

Feb. 20, 2005