Costa Rica's ecological masks.

Earlier this year, Melvin Gonzalez Rojas and Neftali Rojas Morales visited south-western Florida and brought along a sampling of the Central American tropics in their suitcases. The two Borucan Indians, both gifted artists, were invited to attend part of a six-week exhibition at Sarasota's Marie Selby Botanical Gardens to showcase the exquisitely crafted, three-dimensional rain-forest masks that they and fellow master carvers create on a remote indigenous reserve in southern Costa Rica.

Borucan mask-making pre-dates the Spanish Conquest and the diabolical balsa wood or cedar versions devised in its wake still play an important role in the cathartic annual celebration, El Juego de Los Diablitos, a stylized, three-day battle against "European invaders" in which the Indians emerge victorious. But Gonzalez Rojas, a twenty-seven-year-old with shiny black hair caught loosely in a pony tail, remembers when plastic Halloween masks from the capital of San Jose began replacing the event's original handmade ones. His father, seventy-five-year-old master carver Ismael Gonzalez Lazaro, took note of the change as well and set out to revive interest in the craft by imparting the tricks of his trade to a dozen young school boys.

Decades later, most of the original apprentices are still at it, including Gonzalez Rojas, who, two years into his fledgling career at age ten, chalked up his first sale and has been successfully carving, painting, and selling his masterful creations ever since.

Classes with San Jose painters Ana Banientos and her husband, Fernando Paramo, in the mid-1990s introduced the young men to contemporary painting techniques, which they quickly fused with traditional carving methods and a developing concern for the region's endangered rain forest, located an hour's walk from the village. Inspired by Gonzalez Lazaro, whose designs often incorporate a few native animals, the younger carvers began filling their work with growing numbers of brightly colored jungle flora and fauna, usually clustered around the coffee-colored face of a Borucan shaman or forest protector. The new hybrids were an immediate hit with buyers and the "mascara ecologica," or ecological mask, part paean to Mother Nature, part distress call over her decline, was officially born.

The carvers were already selling their work at galleries in San Jose and even Europe when they met North American textile artist Lauren Jawer in 2003 while she was on a family vacation in Costa Rica. "I fell in love with their work and got involved because I wanted to find an audience for it," she explains. Through her Mariposa Indigenous Art, the fair-trade import company she founded, the young mother of two began promoting the masks, as well as high-quality woven items that village women produce on backstrap looms. In 2004, she joined forces with Marie Selby Botanical Gardens to bring the Borucan crafts and a few carvers to Sarasota for an exhibition, and that sell-out event was followed by a second show this year. "It's a perfect fit for the gardens," notes Marilynn Shelley, manager of community classes and exhibits. "I think the rain-forest connection really makes sense for us because a big focus at Selby has to do with the conservation of epiphytes, especially orchids and bromeliads, and their natural habitats. And I think they [the masks] help make people aware of what's happening to the world's rain forests, that they are quickly disappearing along with the little creatures that inhabit them."

Fortunately, because the balsa wood they use is a fast growing, renewable source supplied in abundance by neighboring farmers, the Borucans can carve for years to come without endangering the Costa Rican rain forest. And because of a continuing apprenticeship program and steady sales at good prices, there are plenty of young people willing to give it a try. Not all are suited to the task, but age is no barrier to succeeding if Rosales Morales is any example. The former farmer, a youthful thirty-nine, debuted just five years ago and has already developed into a formidable talent. What's the secret? "Patience, ability, and passion," explains Gonzalez Rojas without hesitation.