Like fellow Nuu-chah-nulth carver Patrick Amos (Lot 28), Frank Charlie has been an advocate for the revitalization and promotion of Nuu-chah-nulth-style art for decades. This mask, from 1981, really embodies Charlie’s embrace of customary Nuu-chah-nulth designs and sculpture. Drawing inspiration from historic Nuu-chah-nulth masks, it depicts a humanoid Killer Whale with an anthropomorphic dorsal fin protruding from its forehead. The mask is carved in red cedar and painted in blue, black, white, and red, with four bundles of hair pegged into the backside of the dorsal fin. Everything about this mask recalls 19th century Nuu-chah-nulth sculpture and painting, with a very strong profile, vertical and diagonal painted blue banding, red dashes, and eyes that are strongly pinched in their corners and turned up and down, almost into a cyclone-icon-like shape. The blue painted details around the mouth and above the eyebrows are formed into stylized waves, alluding to the ocean home of the Killer Whale. This is an earlier and strong example of contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth sculpture.