STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTOS BY KIRSTIN WEBSTER

Jordyn Dooley is used to people making masks to depict how they believe others see them or how they see themselves.

So, she was surprised when a little girl explained why she had cut her mask so it ended at her cheeks.

“My Dad likes Batman,” the fourth-grader told her. “He’s really strong and he really takes care of me so he reminds me of Batman.”

The little girl was one of 14 fourth- and fifth-graders at the Idaho School for the Deaf of Blind who was taking part in a four-day camp at Galena Lodge run by Higher Ground Sun Valley.

Dooley, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ new enrichment educator, had volunteered to teach a segment making masks.

“I just got my masters in art therapy at Florida State University and so I’m trying to develop programs that combine education and the arts with physical and emotional goals,” said Dooley, who interned with Higher Ground over the summer.

Dooley told the kids about examples of masks—about how Batman took on a different persona and did amazing things when he donned a mask.

She told them about the Time of the Brave Mask, a fearful Nigerian mask that incorporates horns and spikes, leopards and snakes—a metaphor for the mysterious and potentially destructive power of spirits that later became a metaphor for racial identity and invisibility for some in the United States.

And she told them about Indian totems and how Native Americans used animals to embody certain characteristics of spirits they hoped would guide them through life.

“Some of these children have significant disabilities and I wanted them to feel empowered. I wanted them to be able to communicate through mask making,” said Dooley.

Dooley asked the youngsters to think about what is strong and powerful to them, whether a superhero or animal.

Then she laid out a variety of ornamental items that they could use to translate strength and power. And she showed them how they could also cut out or write words to attach meaning to their masks.

 “Some of them didn’t necessary know what the word meant but they attached their own meaning to it,” she said. One girl, for instance, picked the word, ‘recipe,’ and I asked her why. ‘I just like the word, the way it looks,’ she said.”

The children were empowered as they got to choose from leaves, flowers, tissue paper and other mask making items. They learned problem solving as they figured out how to attach ears and create eyes like their favorite animals had.

When one student became squeamish because she got paint on herself, Dooley turned it into a fun thing: “Look, it doesn’t hurt and it comes off,” she told the child who eventually came to treat the paint on skin as a source of pride.

“Some of the youngsters had physical impairments or hearing impairments so for them this was a way to be part of a group, part of the process,” Dooley said.

The children didn’t set their masks aside when they finished tying the last bit of yarn on.

They wore the masks the rest of the camp, the masks having become a way for them to express their identity.

“They ran around in them, tried on their friends’ masks, got into character and used them as costumes,”  said Kirstin Webster,  internship and impact manager with Higher Ground. “The activity had an overall positive impact on their experience!”