A painter and printmaker, Alysanne McGaffey studied at the San Francisco Art Institute during the formative years of the Bay Area Figurative Movement and the Funk Movement centered around the school and San Francisco's North Beach. She earned a BFA at the College of Notre Dame, Belmont, California and a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from Lone Mountain College, San Francisco (now USF), with a focus in oil and watercolor. As well, she holds a teaching certificate for community college Adult Education, Fine Arts. Ms. McGaffrey has taught children's art and currently teaches private classes for adults in her studio. She is past president of the Coastal Arts League, Half Moon Bay, Calif.; a member of ARTshare, Women's Caucus for Art, Sanchez Art Center; Pacific Cultural Arts Commission; Coastal Arts Commission; and the Board of the new Silicon Valley Art Museum (proposed).

Thoughts:

I first saw masks during grade school field trips to the Museum at Seattle's University of Washington. They were the marvelously scary ritual pieces created by the Northwest Coast Indian. I loved the form then as I do now. My family built a summer cabin within the Tulalip Indian Reservation on Puget Sound. In summer, we helped the Indian families pull their beach seine nets for the silvery salmon and floppy flounder, but we never witnessed a native carver. That art had died out until the University revitalized interest in the work in the 60s. With those powerful masks in mind, I designed this piece, beginning with duality as the theme. The acrylic face demanded a look of its own, different from the underlying ceramic face, a balancing of the two not quite equal sides. I have done a lot of interior work and I think it shows in this mask; though still divided and non-symmetrical, the mask becomes all of one piece.