Mouse Woman drawing by Luke J. Parnell
The Beat
A monthly newsletter about the art of
First Nations on Canada’s West Coast
Welcome to the eighth issue of The Beat, an independent, non-profit newsletter that brings you up-to-date on the art events of the First Nations on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
We respectfully acknowledge the Coast Salish Peoples, on whose traditional territories we live and work.
First Nations Art Exhibition in North Vancouver
An ambitious and well-chosen exhibition of Canadian First Nations art is on view in North Vancouver until Saturday, May 10. Stories of Our Time at the North Vancouver School Board’s Artists for Kids Gallery at 810 West 21 st Street, north of the Capilano Mall, is a rewarding experience. Works by artists such as Jane Ash Poitras, Brian Jungen, Kenojuak Ashevak and Bill Reid provide a multi-faceted view of Canadian aboriginal art. The collection grew out of an innovative strategy, the Artists for Kids program, to involve children with art and Canadian artists with children. Close to 2,000 schoolchildren will view the exhibition. But it is a serious and challenging exhibition, so don’t leave it to the children!
More information at www.artists4kids.com
Bill Reid Gallery Opens
On Saturday May 10 2008, the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art will open to the public in downtown Vancouver at 639 Hornby Street, near the Vancouver Art Gallery and the landmark Hotel Vancouver. The small but unusually beautiful museum building housed the Canadian Crafts Museum until 2002, and is wonderfully suited to showcase the fine collections of the Bill Reid Foundation.
The inaugural exhibitions are Bill Reid: Master of Haida Art curated by Director Emeritus Dr. George MacDonald and the permanent exhibition Restoring Enchantment: Gold and Silver Masterworks by Bill Reid curated by Dr. Martine Reid, a noted anthropologist and the artist’s widow. Included are works by Bill Reid never before displayed in public.
On May 6, the Coast Salish and other British Columbia Chiefs will offer a ceremonial welcome to the Haida Nation representatives who have travelled to Vancouver to honour the legacy of Bill Reid.
In anticipation of the public opening, Lt-Governor the Honourable Steven Point will preside at a private ceremony on Thursday where a Full Copper will be placed on the newly-installed pole carved by Jim Hart , hereditary Chief Edenshaw of Old Massett.
From May 10 onwards, the gallery will keep regular museum hours.
For more information, see www.BillReidGallery.ca
Susan Point
Musqueam artist Susan A. Point will receive a Doctorate of Letters from the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design . The 83 year old Vancouver art school will be transformed into the Emily Carr University of Art + Design this year.
There are a number of programs and services at Emily Carr for First Nations art and artists. For more information on support for aboriginal students, see www.eciad.ca/firstnations
People Amongst the People, the ceremonial gateway commissioned by the City of Vancouver under its Storyscapes program will finally be installed at Stanley Park and unveiled at an event in early June. Musqueam artist Susan Point’s sculptural project consists of three large gateways carved with Coast Salish designs, intended to welcome people onto the paths leading to the totem area in Vancouver’s Stanley Park at Brockton Point. (See The Beat October 2007.) The delay is due to the re-design of the area after the devastating effects of the storm of 2006.
Dana Claxton in Indianapolis
Lakota Sioux artist Dana Claxton , who lives in Vancouver, was awarded an artist fellowship by the Eiteljorg Museum for American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis. The Eiteljorg Museum has also purchased a series of five large-format prints by Claxton called On to the Red Road for its collection.
Squamish
Art for 2010
In preparation for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver, a Squamish artist Klatle-Bhi (Charles Sam) has been commissioned by Petro-Canada to carve a 25’ pole for the Games. The project was devised in cooperation with VANOC and the Four Host Nations Society, which represents the Squamish, Musqueam, Lil’Wat and Tsleil-Waututh nations in the lower mainland of British Columbia. The artist describes the underlying story of the pole as a representation of the four aboriginal communities, the cooperation of the aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities and an invitation to the world to the Games. While the pole will be raised in Vancouver for the 2010 Games, it will eventually stand at Petro-Canada’s headquarters in Calgary.
Haida Heritage Centre
In May the Haida nation will be hosting a group of curators and museum directors from Germany who are visiting Canada in an effort to re-think and modernize presentation of Canada’s First Nations in their museums. While the official opening of the Heritage Centre at Kaay’llnagaay near Skidegate will be on August 22-24 2008, the Centre is already open to welcome visitors now. The award-winning Centre includes exhibits on the human and natural environment of Haida Gwaii: Haida cuisine; a venue for performers who help keep traditional stories and songs alive; and the Haida Gwaii Museum, where ancient Haida artifacts, contemporary creations and natural environment displays are showcased.
For more on the Centre, go to www.HaidaHeritageCentre.com
The April edition of the online newsletter of the Council of the Haida Nation, Haida Laas, has an informative tribute to Haida weavers in an article by April Davis entitled “It is an Unbroken Thread” available at:
www.haidanation.ca/Pages/Haida_Laas/PDF/Newsletters/HL_April_08.pdf
The Haida Gwaii Singers Society ‘s project has begun distribution of Songs of Haida Gwaii , a high-quality digitized collection of archival recordings and a collection of new recordings, plus a book of traditional Haida songs. Telephone 604 536 5541 for more information.
On May 25 at 2 pm, Haida artist Michael Nicholl Yaghulanaas is launching his new book Flight of the Hummmingbird: a Parable for the Environment , at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. Originally a story of the Quechuan people of South America, the hummingbird tale is meant to arouse awareness of ecological threats. The artwork is in Yaghulanaas’ distinctive Haida Manga style. The book, published by Greystone Books (Douglas & McIntyre) is #4 on the B.C. Bestsellers List for April.
More information at www.douglas-mcintyre.com/author/677
Commissioned Work Unveiled in Prince Rupert
Important new works by Tsimshian artist and educator Russell Mather welcome students in two Prince Rupert high schools. In March a carved housefront Lu Sagayt Gyeks was inaugurated in Prince Rupert Secondary School (see The Beat April 2008.) On April 24 a painted panel was unveiled at a community feast at Charles Hays Secondary School. You can see the panel and the ceremony at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3WxIo-S-W4
Mather’s beautiful piece is in his most contemporary in style to date. As CHSS Principal Sandra Jones describes it, the panel “takes our previous school logo (hurricane symbol) and embeds the four crests of the Ts'msyem people as well as butterfly crests in the outer corners to bring all those without a crest into the work. Russell used the school colours.” Mather involves many students as assistants in his work, a great privilege for the young people. Congratulations to Mather and to the schools!
Museum of Anthropology
The UBC Museum of Anthropology’s annual Global Dialogue symposium took place April 24 to 26: Porous Borders: The Loss and Return of National Treasures. The best, and least attended, evening session “ BC First Nations International Repatriations: A Reflection ” focused on the case of the return of Sto:lo Nation’s stone ancestor from the Burke Museum. (See The Beat March 2008.) We look forward to hearing a frank account of repatriation processes and costs to all sides on these worthwhile and complicated projects. Perhaps next year the issue of copyright infringement of First Nations art could be addressed. The number of foreign-made (and ugly) copies of West Coast First Nations is increasing, especially in airports.
Also at the Museum of Anthropology, on Thursday May 8 at 7 pm, Vancouver-based Tsimshian performance artist Skeena Reece will premier We are all one , a new multi-media performance art piece to include dance, live visual effects and music that responds to the exhibition The Treasures of the Tsimshian from the Dundas Collection . The event will “bring issues of authority, ownership and repatriation into the sights of the living Tsimshian warrior spirit”. Free and everyone welcome. Discussion and refreshments follow.
For more information, email performance.at.moa@gmail.com or see www.moa.ubc.ca
Graduation Exhibition in Terrace
Curator Bill McLennan attended the graduating exhibition of the Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art at Northwest Community College in Terrace British Columbia on April 25, and brought home some fine photographs of the impressive work of the students graduating from the program. McLennan also spoke in Terrace about his research on First Nations Box Drums.
The Freda Diesing course is proving popular: all places are filled for next year and a waiting list is in place. Community support is strong and all students are supported by their band councils.
For more information on Northwest Community College, go to www.nwcc.bc.ca
Edward
Curtis Meets the Kwakwaka’wakw
American
photographer
Edward
Curtis’
landmark 1914
silent film of one of Canada’s Pacific coast First Nations culture,
In the Land of the
Headhunters
, is coming to
Vancouver, restored, re-evaluated, and with a live orchestral
accompaniment!
It will be enhanced with a new
arrangement of the original score and a performance by the
Gwa’wina
Dancers
,
descendants of the original Kwakwaka’wakw cast.
According to
the team who has worked on this collaborative project for years, the
film is presented both as a scholarly restoration of the original
melodramatic content of the film and musical score, and as a fresh
look at the material from a Kwakwaka’wakw point of view. UBC
post-doctoral fellow Aaron Glass is an important member of the
team.
A new website functions as the gateway to partner
institutions that are hosting a presentation of the film and live
performance events. At present the itinerary for this unusual project
includes Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver in June 2008, and
later, in November 2008, Chicago, Washington DC, and New York City.
The site provides a thorough scholarly introduction to Curtis's film,
to the central role of the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) in its
production, and to the new archival discoveries that have led to its
current restoration.
To access all these features, visit the elegantly designed website at
The Vancouver showing is at the Chan Centre at 7 pm on Sunday, June 22 2008. Tickets are only $15. For the Vancouver performance see www.chancentre.com/whats-on/event/details/land-of-th/
Drive By: A Road Trip with Jeff Thomas
A retrospective exhibition by
Iroquois/Onondaga artist
Jeff
Thomas
is at the
University of Toronto Art
Centre
from May 3 to June
7, 2008
.
With irony and wit, his photographic works “
explore
the symbolic juxtapositions of past and present, historical imagery
and contemporary reality, in the relationship of Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal peoples in North America”. Thomas also created a
notable exhibition in 2003,
Where
are the Children? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools,
sponsored by the National
Archives of Canada and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
At the Victoria Art Gallery Transporter’s Symposium: Tradition and
Innovation in Contemporary Aboriginal Art in November 2008, Thomas
presented on the theme
Aboriginal
Art Practice / Public Places and Spaces
.
For more on the current exhibition, see
www.utac.utoronto.ca
Six
Nations and Vancouver
An exhibition auto-mnemonic six nations by Mohawk Greg Staats at the grunt gallery at #116 - 350 East 2nd Ave in Vancouver runs until May 10 2008. In recent projects Staats has explored his family archive which includes images, sound recordings, diaries and various other documents This work depicts boreal markers on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in southern Ontario, the artist's birthplace.
For more see www.grunt.ca
Cowichan 2008 North American Indigenous Games
The Cultural Village, the
centrepiece to the Games, will be at the
Quw'utsun'
Cultural Centre
in
Duncan, owned by the Cowichan Tribes. The Village will include a
variety of events, celebrations, exhibits, receptions, symposia and
meetings during the Games.
The Cowichan 2008 North American
Indigenous Games are accepting applications for Aboriginal, Métis
and Inuit performers & artisans to participate in the Cultural
Village, August 4-10, 2008, Main Stage Concert Series and August
2-10, 2008, Artist Market. The Cultural Village is a family event.
Visit the NAIG website for details and
forms.
www.cowichan2008.com/cultural_program/cultural_village.html
Art Auctions
An American Indian Art auction will be held by Sothebys in New York on May 23. It includes a 30” Haida wood figure, a figure dressed as a bird, with an estimate of US $60-90,000.
A “Chilkat” Blanket, [designed?] by Robert Jamestown is estimated at US $35-55,000. Oddly, the Sothebys’ catalogue description of the blanket implies that there are no Chilkat blankets being made now, whereas there are a number of well known artists weaving both traditional and innovative “Chilkat” blankets for feast regalia and sale. For more on the auction, see www.sothebys.com
A June 9 auction at Bonhams and Butterfields in San Francisco includes “An early and rare Nootka figural bowl, with an estimate of US $125,000 - 175,000.” See www.bonhams.com/us/
In Vancouver, Seahawk Auctions will have a sale on May 31 in Burnaby. Among more than 400 lots, a complex and elegant Articulated Salmon Sisiutl Transformation Mask by Alert Bay artist Wayne Alfred stands out. Alfred’s mask has an estimate of $3800.00. www.seahawkauctions.com
A Tsimshian dance performance will be held on May 16 and 17 at 2 pm in the Rotunda of the George Heye Center, Museum of the American Indian in New York. The Dancers of Git-Hoan , Tsimshian for People of the Salmon, trace their roots and ancestry to the village of Metlakatla in southeast Alaska. Led by artist and culture bearer David Boxley , the Git-Hoan Dancers use masks as they sing and dance their stories of the Tsimshian people. The performance is part of a two-ay Festival for children Tenas Sun or Youth Day which also includes story-telling and hands-on workshops featuring bent wood boxes, canoes, and button blankets. See www.nmai.si.edu
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Comments, news and new subscribers are welcomed. Please write to: editor@coastalartbeat.ca
Past issues are available at our website www.coastalartbeat.ca
Thanks for assistance from David Dumaresq, Bill MacDonald, Sandra Jones, Bill McLennan and Kevin Leach.
The Beat is an independent, not-for-profit project written and published in Vancouver Canada by Ann Cameron. Copyright 2008 Ann Cameron