Mouse Woman drawing by Luke J. Parnell



The Beat


A monthly newsletter about the art of

First Nations on Canada’s West Coast


This is the thirty-ninth issue of The Beat, a free, independent newsletter that brings you up-to-date on the art, artists and events of the First Nations on Canada’s Pacific Coast.

NEW! Follow on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/coastalartbeat

We respectfully acknowledge the Coast Salish Peoples, on whose traditional territories we live and work, and all the First Nations of the Pacific coast.

++++++++++++++++++++


Three Generations of Weavers at Time Warp
L to R: Evelyn Vanderhoop (show co-coordinator), Delores Churchill, Carrie Anne Vanderhoop Bellis and daughter Rosalie

Photo: Anne Seymour



Weaving is the theme at the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver on Hornby Street downtown. On Saturday February 26 2 to 4:30 pm, renowned artists Delores Churchill, Evelyn Vanderhoop and Lisa Telford are part of a program including dancing of the robes to traditional drumming. This is the last event for the exhibition Time Warp, which closes on February 27 2011. For more information see http://www.billreidgallery.ca



Entwined Histories at North Vancouver’s Presentation House

Photo: Ann Cameron


The North Vancouver Museum and Archives at Presentation House and the Squamish Nation opened the exhibition Entwined Histories: Gifts from the Maisie Hurley Collection on January 25. It will run until November 6 2011. Much more than a display of a collection of objects, the exhibition tells the fascinating story of a relationship between an unconventional and dynamic woman, Maisie Hurley, and the beleaguered First Nations of British Columbia. Hurley is credited in legal circles as the first non-native champion of Aboriginal title, the legal basis for Native land claims. There is much more to the story, and the objects, the videos and the printed material make the visit to the museum a rich experience. Co-curators of the project are Dr. Sharon Fortney, and Damara Jacobs of the Squamish nation, who holds an MA in Art & Visual Culture Education. They are pleased to be part of the first collaborative exhibition between their people and the Museum of North Vancouver. For more information see http://www.northvanmuseum.ca




(detail) from Luke Parnell’s Phantom Limbs


In the city of Barrie Ontario, north of Toronto, Haida/Nisga’a artist Luke Parnell and Meryl McMaster’s exhibition at the MacLaren Art Centre continues until February 21 2011. The thematic double-solo exhibition “questions the life of historical images today” and is a version of a Toronto exhibit shown last winter.

Parnell’s work Phantom Limbs, 48 small wood carved people entombed in plexiglass boxes, was inspired by the 2002 repatriation to the Haida Gwaii of the remains of 48 Haida ancestors from an American museum. Other works by Parnell are A Brief History of Northwest Coast Design, each plank representing an historical era, and a pole Evolution. A brochure with essays by the guest curators accompanies the exhibition. More information can be found in an article at http://www.simcoe.com/community/barrieinnisfil/article/911128


While this is not the busiest season of the art auction world, notable year end statistics have been published. The financial picture that emerges in the art world generally is a very healthy one: Christie’s has announced sales of $5.3 billion in 2010, the highest total in the company’s 245-year history. Bonhams, which holds regular sales of First Nations art, did not divulge its actual sales figures, but stated that 2010 was its best year since 2000.

Many media carried news of dealer Donald Ellis’s sales coup at the New York Winter Antiques Show in January: two Yup’ik masks from the Donati collection and a Tsimshian antler club sold for a total price of $4.6 million. A more detailed discussion of the works offered for sale is at: http://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/8936-donald-ellis-gallery-exhibiting-at-winter-antiques-show

The Vancouver Art Gallery has requested the loan of two of the masks sold by Ellis for its upcoming exhibition The Colour of My Dreams: Surrealism and Revolution in Art which will run from May 28 to October 2 2011.



Rebecca Belmore, The Namds and the Unnamed (detail) 2002

Collection: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery UBC


The Satellite Gallery at 560 Seymour Street in Vancouver will show The Named and the Unnamed, Rebecca Belmore’s 2002 installation which memorializes the women who have gone missing in the city’s downtown east side. The installation includes a video of the artist’s riveting performance piece on a street corner in 2002. The show opens February 4 and continues until April 10 2011. It is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Faces at the Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia. For more see http://www.belkin.ubc.ca/satellite/rebecca-belmore-the-named-and-the-unnamed


Brian Jungen will have an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto in 2011, a new body of work including his pieces made of found or unconventional materials, some recently shown at the Catriona Jeffries Gallery in Vancouver. The artist says he will use “materials I think you would be familiar with through the landscape of rural Canada, like car body parts, animal skins, and things like that”. His exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton runs until May 8 2011. A conversation with Brian Jungen and Amy Fung is in the art publication Vue at http://vueweekly.com/arts/story/mass_production_made_unique/



The Kunsthalle im Lipsius-Bau, Dresden


An exchange of museum exhibitions on the theme “The Power of Giving” between Dresden Germany and the U’Mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay British Columbia will take place simultaneously this summer. The aim of this collaborative project is to present relationships, similarities, differences, and the importance and necessity of the gift-giving as an economic and social characteristic. A selection of about 50 artifacts from the U’Mista’s collection of masks, regalia and other objects will travel to Germany.

The Power of Giving: The Potlatch in the Kwakwaka’wakw Big House from the Canadian Northwest Coast will open at the historical Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau in Dresden on May 7 2011. See

http://www.skd.museum/en/special-exhibitions/preview/the-power-of-giving/index.html

In Alert Bay, running from April 21 to August 28 2011, The Power of Giving: Gifts in the Saxon Rulers’ Court in Dresden and the Kwakwaka’wakw Big House, is a show of unprecedented importance for British Columbia. A selection of artifacts from the Dresden museums Rüstkammer (Armoury), Porzellansammlung (porcelain collection) and Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault) will be exhibited at the U’mista Cultural Centre, chosen on the theme of gifts and extravagance.

More information about the U’Mista Centre can be found at http://www.umista.org


The Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre at Whistler continues its exhibition The Squamish Community: Our People and Places, archival photography and art.

During the Whistler Winter Arts Festival from February 11 to 13 2011, admission to the centre is by donation. Artists Ray Natraoro and Delmar Williams will be working on a new 30-foot Welcome Figure.

Dancers of Damelahamid will be performing at 11 am and 2 pm on Saturday February 12, and Alex Wells, Lil’wat Hoop Dancer on February 13 at 11 and 2.

An Aboriginal Art Show and Sale will be held February 12 and 13, with all proceeds going directly to the artists. Call Retail Manager Kim Stanger at 604 964 0994 to participate.

A Beginner Jewellery Making Workshop will be give by Aaron Nelson-Moody on Saturday February 5 from 10 am to 1 pm, $80 per participant.

Chief Janice George will give a Salish Weaving Workshop on Friday February 25 2011, from 1 to 3 pm. To enroll, contact info@slcc.ca


The Appleton Galleries has re-opened at a new site in Vancouver: 1646 West 75th Avenue. The gallery carries Inuit and First Nations art. To book a viewing appointment, call 604 685 1715.


The Talking Stick Festival 2011 began in Vancouver on February 1 with its opening night gala. There are several aspects of the Festival: the Roundhouse series of nightly and very varied performances by First Nations artists, the Community Series in various locations, pay-what-you-can, and Festival Plus, performances and the daytime workshops Artists Talk Series to debate issues related to the arts. The latter covers grant writing, funding, marketing, touring and specific master classes.

http://www.fullcircleperformance.ca/content.asp?ChapterID=2&subchapterID=5&pageID=4

The TSF Community Series includes a Saturday February 5 performance by Janet Rogers and Haida Kwii-Ge-Ii-Wans Roberta Kennedy Our Timeless Stories at the Aboriginal Friendship Centre on E. Hastings at 2 pm. The Native Youth Artist Collective welcomes lively performers of music and the spoken word at Britannia Community Centre Theatre at 1661 Napier Street the evenings of February 8 and 9. Watch out for performances by slam poet Zaccheus Jackson.


Close Encounters: the Next 500 Years is an international exhibition of contemporary indigenous art held in many venues in Winnipeg until May 8 2011. Five centuries ago, Europeans began their relationship with indigenous people as they settled the Americas. This project “radically reconsiders encounter narratives between native and non-native people, Indigenous prophecies, possible utopias and apocalypses and proposes intriguing possibilities for the next 500 years.”

The largest exhibition ever organized on contemporary indigenous art, Close Encounters brings together over 30 Indigenous artists from across Canada, the United States, South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, including newly commissioned work from Rebecca Belmore, Faye HeavyShield, Kent Monkman, and Edward Poitras. Other artists connected to British Columbia and showing in these exhibitions are: Brian Jungen, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and Mary Ann Barkhouse. Candice Hopkins, formerly exhibition director of Western Front in Vancouver and now Sobey Curatorial Resident, Indigenous Art, at the National Gallery of Canada, is one of the curators of the project.

http://www.artsforall.ca/index.php/AFA/article/close_encounters_about_the_exhibition


Prominent Haida weaver Isabel Rorick will speak at Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology on Sunday February 20 2011 at 1 pm. Her work is included in both MOA’s Signed without Signature: Works by Charles and Isabella Edenshaw and the Bill Reid Gallery’s Time Warp

For more information about the Museum of Anthropology and its events, see http://www.moa.ubc.ca


In New York, Nuu-chah-nulth artist Connie Watts will speak to visitors to the Museum of the American Indian Gustav Heye Center about traditional and contemporary Northwest coast art at 10 am, and at 1 pm, on Wednesday February 9 2011 in the Infinity of Nations Gallery. The Museum’s event calendar is at

http://go.si.edu/site/R?i=MDXtlN-YrdSmY2HvJIbX-Q.


Swans , a serigraph by Coast Salish artist Dylan Thomas 2011

Photo: Alcheringa Gallery, Victoria


From February 4 to Monday February 7 2011, the Alcheringa Gallery in Victoria has a print sale, a 20% discount on recent releases and graphic works by leading artists from the Northwest Coast, Papua New Guinea and Aboriginal Australia, including the Torres Strait.

The Gallery’s website is http://alcheringa-gallery.com


The Victoria Film Festival will take place from February 4 - February 13 2011. It showcases a wide variety of culturally and artistically diverse films from around the globe. A film of interest is Wawaditla, directed by Lou-ann Neel and Michael Glendale. Screening on February 5th, Wawaditla tells the story of Chief Mungo Martin's famous big house. See http://victoriafilmfestival.com


Bloggers Nathan Bauman and Bruce Byfield are starting a Northwest Coast Art Meetup Group. The first event is at 7 pm at 422 Richards Street in Vancouver on February 22 2011, a talk by artist Michael Dangeli on Art and the Potlatch. A number of collectors, First Nations artists and many others have already signed up.

More information is at http://www.meetup.com/The-Northwest-Coast-Art-Meetup-Group/.


Charlotte Cote has written a book, Spirits of Our Whaling Ancestors: Revitalizing Makah and Nuu-chah-nulth Traditions, about the Nuu-chah-nulth nation’s culture and the role of the whale and whale hunt within it. Professor Cote will be giving a talk on Tuesday, February 15 at 6:30 pm at the Seattle Public Library North East Branch at the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild meeting.



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



NEW! We have just launched a Twitter website for The Beat at

http://www.twitter.com/coastalartbeat


Comments, story suggestions and new subscribers to this free newsletter are welcomed. Please write to: editor@coastalartbeat.ca

Past issues are available at our website http://www.coastalartbeat.ca


Thank you to David Dumaresq, Paula Fairweather, Sharifah Marsden, Deborah Jacobs and many others, for your assistance. The Beat is an independent, not-for-profit project written and published in Vancouver Canada by Ann Cameron.

Copyright 2011 Ann Cameron.