Mask class shows youths they can be creative

By ALEXANDRA BERZON
Anchorage Daily News
Published: July 31, 2005
http://www.adn.com/life/story/6767053p-6655671c.html

Jake Hawks' mask was molded to mimic his face, but to say it looks like him would be a stretch.

Painted white, the entire plaster mold is covered in sharp porcupine quills sticking straight up out of small black X marks, with red streaks dripping from the eyes as bloody tears, the mouth wide open and slightly off-kilter, like the protagonist of the Edvard Munch painting "The Scream."

But Hawks wasn't thinking of Munch. He designed the mask to evoke the icon Pinhead from the popular horror movie franchise "Hellraiser," whose head is a pincushion with nails sticking out.

"I figured all of us here are hell-raisers," Hawks jokes.

He's right. Each of these teenagers has been trouble to someone at some point.

Now they're living a strictly regimented, sharply disciplined lifestyle at the Alaska Military Youth Academy.

Their days are full: Wake up at 5 a.m. for exercise, attend job training in the mornings and academics in the afternoon. The idea, explains Platoon 2 team leader Michael Ralston, is that if you keep them busy enough, these "at-risk" youths will stay out of trouble.

"It only takes the human body 17 weeks to adapt," Ralston says. "They're with us for 22 weeks. They don't get a chance not to change because our schedules are so full. They don't have time to get in trouble."

Another thing they don't have much time for is arts and crafts.

But for two days out of their six-month stay at Fort Richardson, the boys shift gears to create highly stylized personal masks in a church basement. It's pretty much their only chance to not follow orders.

"It's one of the few things they do where they are encouraged to do their own unique thing instead of conforming," says residential counselor Diane Smith, whose home holds 17 masks she made at past workshops.

Patti Bruce, a program evaluator for the Alaska Division of Behavioral Health, initiated the classes seven years ago and now volunteers to gather supplies and lead instruction.

"I say paint whatever speaks to you," Bruce says. "You don't have to be an artist to do this. Whatever you do is perfect.

"The mask is such a powerful thing. They're touching their faces in a way we've never touched our face before. They're expressing themselves, who they are right now."

"This is therapeutic, but that's not something we tell them," Smith says as she combs through the large plastic boxes full of supplies.

 

Teamleader Ed Amituanai waits while plaster strips applied to his face harden enough for easy removal.

"You never know what's going to look attractive to a kid, so we've gotta come prepared," she says, pulling out goodies -- doll's eyes, imitation jewels, beading thread, fur, dyed and colored feathers, natural feathers, yarn, hemp, satin cord, fish net, seashells, bells, leather.

A large woman with short, slicked-back gray hair and glasses, Smith has a commanding presence. Every so often, when she wants to get the boys' attention, she yells "Eyeballs!" and right on cue gets a chorus of "Eyeballs, ma'am, eyeballs" in response.

Most of these boys haven't done an art project in a long time.

"When I was in high school, I was assigned an art class, but I never went to school," says Nick Zimmerman, preparing to make a plaster mold of Kevin Chagnon's face. "I didn't care about school. I was too busy doing other stuff. I was into drugs, getting into trouble.

"My mom worked nights and she was never home, so I could do whatever I wanted. The cops started knowing my name. I wanted to get away from what was going on inside the house, so I called my dad, and he said I had to prove to him I really wanted to go to Phoenix to stay with him, so I came here.

"I'm going to go down to Phoenix to work in forestry, and then I'm going to work as a mechanic, preferably Ford. I've worked on snowmachines in North Pole."

Zimmerman, a short boy with a big grin, places plastic wrap around Chagnon's smooth, blond head and ties it in the back. "It's a doo-rag, G," Zimmerman says, laughing.

"Hurry up, I'm tired; I want to go to sleep," jokes Chagnon, who squirms beneath the Vaseline. "This is disgusting. I'm never going to do this again in my life.

"I'm not a very artsy type person," explains Chagnon, who appears in good spirits despite his protests. "I'd rather sit on the couch and watch TV. But this is better than being at the barracks. This isn't my type of thing really. It's quite boring to me. But I have to do it. It's one of those things -- you shut up and do as you're told."

Chagnon, like all the boys, has a shaved head and wears big black boots, baggy black pants and a gray shirt with his last name stenciled on it. He calls the other boys by their last names and uses military-inflected language like the word "negative" to mean "no."

But it's not hard to imagine him in his former life with long hair, a nose piercing and a tongue ring. "I don't like the military. I don't like waking up at 5 a.m. I like snowboarding, skating, biking."

He's planning to create a mask to emulate his favorite skateboarding apparel company, with a granite design, sunglasses over the head and an eyebrow ring.

FIRST POSITIVE STEP

Chagnon, unlike most of the boys, is from out of state -- Colorado. He is looking forward to returning there and going to DeVry University, a private career college with locations throughout the country.

"I dropped out of high school when I was a sophomore," Chagnon says. "I never had an education; I wasn't doing anything. I worked at Subway.

"I figured there's a lot more out there than Subway, so I came here to get my GED. I'm going to talk to a representative next week from DeVry to see what I need to do and what they'll expect of me. This is just a first step in my life. Well, the first positive step. Most of my steps were not good."

One out of three cadets drop out during the residential phase of the Alaska Military Youth Academy, which is funded through the federal and state governments.

The program starts with "pre-challenge." Ralston describes it as "two weeks of screaming and yelling." This platoon has already lost 20, down to 31 boys from 51. Cadets who make it through the program get a check for $300; they earn an additional $1,200 a year later, provided they check back in each month with a report on their activities.

Jack Barnhardt is placing plaster strips on another cadet's face at the next table.

"I'm going to join the military when I get out of here. The structure, it's hard but it's easy to follow. Nothing changes. We know when we're getting up, and we know when we're going to bed. It's easier that way," he says.

Barnhardt is on "hard core," which means he's being punished. He has to walk around with a heavy backpack, eat dinner standing up and perform other duties on demand. This morning, on Ralston's command, he hauled a 300-pound rope back and forth 400 yards. Ralston said he initiates such tasks to keep the boys on their toes.

"I'm good at messing with their heads," Ralston says. He points to a cadet across the room. "That's Cadet Sledge. He was on hard core, and I gave him a rock, and all day he couldn't do anything but hold that rock. I said, 'You're a burden,' and as the day went on he got a bigger rock that he had to hold."

Sledge's face is covered in plaster. He squirms and shrieks a little in frustration, unable to respond to people talking about him right in front of his face.

"They know that I know everything," Ralston says. "I went to school to be an FBI agent. I have degrees in criminal justice, child psychology, investigations. I can use all of those. I've also studied bomb building, and I'm working on an architecture degree."

"Somehow he knew where me and this other cadet was hiding the chew," Trent Lee says. "My eyes got this big. How does he know? He gave us the brand, where we were hiding it. It was amazing!"

Lee appears earnest and sincere. "I made a mistake, but when we do PT (physical training), I give 110 percent. Everyone knows that."

EMPTY MY HEAD

The next day, the boys come back to paint and decorate their masks.

Lee ends up making a mask covered in moss, leaves and twigs that he gathered at Fort Richardson -- it's one of three military-themed camouflage masks created today.

"I'm gonna be an Army Ranger down the road," Lee explains. "If you go through sniper school, you have to make your own suit out in the woods."

Some masks become only distantly related to what they started out as. Seth Blanchard painted a giant marijuana leaf on a head smoking a pipe. When he was ordered to remove the blatant drug reference, the mask morphed into a Hasidic Jewish man complete with a yarmulke carefully constructed of felt with wire, as well as the traditional payot -- long sideburns -- made out of beads hanging from the top of the head and a thick beard. The pipe became a black stick with a miniature bird on the end.

"They wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do, so I got mad and painted it black. Then I put white hair on and the beads, and it looked like a Jewish man," Blanchard explains.

As most of the boys are cleaning up, Jaramiah Hundley is still painting. He stops to consider his thickly layered mask.

"I figured I was going to try something with feathers, and it popped in my head to go tribal. I don't know how to explain it. It's culture, religion, family."

Hundley's mask is black, with three gold horns sticking out of the forehead, overlaid with red feathers and soft, gold leaves. The eyes and nose are painted gold; the face is framed in black and gold beads and gold-painted porcupine quills. There's thick hair around the eyebrows and the beard.

"I'm going to definitely hang it up, right above my mama's head," Hundley says.

Hundley turns to Jared Jefferson across the table. "Hey, Jefferson, what do you think of when you look at this?"

"I don't know," says Jefferson, standing over the mask, taking a moment to think. "There's so much detail that's conveyed. It's unreadable."

"I don't even know what to think of this," says Hundley, shaking his head. "It's religion and culture -- things pass down."

"If you throw that at someone, you could kill them. I think it's a warrior mask," says Jefferson.

"I've never done anything like this," Hundley says. "I've never done any kind of art. I love doing this. I've been asking other people if I can paint stuff for them."

Smith, the counselor, surveys the creative work now scattered about the room.

"I'm always amazed how it starts out and it doesn't look like they're going to do much," she says. "Mr. Hundley thought he was done a long time ago. He didn't know he could make something like that. They find out they can be a lot more creative than they think they can be."

Hundley decides, upon Smith's suggestion, to enter the mask in the state fair.

"It's my first time putting this much time into something," Hundley says. "I would do more if I had another chance. It gives me time to think, empty my head."

Outside the church, the boys form orderly rows, suddenly switching back into military mode. They're now distinguishable from one another only by the personalized alter egos in their hands -- clown, Army ranger, Jewish man, devil, beaten-up boy, Confederate flag. They march into the bus in unison, chanting.

"Left, left, left, right, left."