Bartow addressed the theme of transformation throughout his career, and made all manner of works regarding life changes and and shape-shifting. This work includes carved, wooden face masks and glass castings of Rick's own hands mounted onto an adzed cedar plank; it reflects the strong influences of his close artist friends from the Pacific Northwest Coast, Japan, Mexico and New Zealand. Though spare in graphic elements, this work is poetically suggestive and sublimely beautiful. It is an extremely rare carved wood sculpture and is in pristine condition.

There are several key symbols here. In Māori culture, a greeting involving sticking the tongue out is called pūkana or whetero, and is often performed during a haka greeting ceremony. It is a deliberate, symbolic gesture used to express strength and other related sentiments. The outer mask is carved in a rough manner, has it's mouth open, the tongue out and it is split open to reveal a second mask, an inner life or a next phase. The mouth on the inner mask is closed. One mouth open / one mouth closed is an iteration of the Daoist Yang - Yin concepts of opositional but complimentary, interconnected forces, for example: open/closed, life/death, up/down, light/dark, beginning/end, etc. Rick added glass castings of his own hands to either side of the faces, with their palms facing upward in a posture of humility, prayer, offering, and receptivity.