Kwakiutl Polychromed Wood Mask

depicting huxwhukw, with long pointed beak, a low horizontal ridge above the hinged lower jaw, flaring nostrils and deeply hollowed eye sockets beneath thick brows, the pierced crown ornamented with tufted cedar bark; black, red, and white pigments.

Private Collection, New York

Aspen Art Museum: "Art of the Ancestors," 2004

George Shaw, Art of the Ancestors,University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2000, pp. 94-95.

For a discussion of this mask, see Steve C. Brown, 2004, p. 94: “Huxwhukw is one of the supernatural people-eating birds associated with Baxbaxwalanuksiwe, the “Cannibal Spirit at the North End of the World.” The long, narrow beak is perfectly suited  to its mythical task: cracking the skulls of human beings. Such depictions of Huxwhukw elicit awe and wonderment in ceremonial houses as the masked dancer executes his syncopated, birdlike steps and crouches around the blazing fire. Carved in a sparsely embellished style, this example superbly conveys the creature’s lively, fearsome qualities. In particular, the deeply carved, bulging eye, along with the raised beak in the line of the beak above the nostril, lends the sculpture a sense of realism and liveliness that would make the best advantage of the low, shadowy firelight that is the bird’s realm.”