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 twenty-fourth 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. With this issue, we begin our third year of serving these communities.
We respectfully acknowledge the Coast Salish Peoples, on whose traditional territories we live and work, and all the First Nations of the Pacific coast.
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Doreen Jensen, Hahl Yee
On September 18 2009 we lost one of the most dynamic and gracious figures in the world of art and culture of British Columbia’s First Nations of the coast. Doreen was an artist, a writer and curator, a community organizer and activist, an historian, and an influential mentor for a great many young artists. Doreen was born in 1933 into a distinguished Gitksan family in Kispiox, BC, and was one of the leaders in the creation of the ‘Ksan First Nations Historical Village and Museum in nearby Hazelton. After she moved with her family to the Vancouver area in the 1970’s, she continued her work as an “ambassador” for the Gitskan culture, which she understood and loved deeply. Among many other projects, Doreen contributed an essay “Metamorphosis” as part of her role in co-curating Topographies: Aspects of Recent B.C. Art an exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1996. Doreen’s essay for the catalogue is now online at http://www.ccca.ca/c/writing/j/jensen/jen001t.html
With Polly Sargent, she co-curated Robes of Power: Totem Poles on Cloth which toured six Australian cities from 1983 and was shown at the UBC Museum of Anthropology in 1986. Doreen was awarded an Honourary Degree of Doctor of Letters in 1992 by the University of British Columbia. An event to honour her memory was held at the Museum of Anthropology on September 26 2009.
A major exhibition of the art of Vancouver-based Dunne-za First Nation artist Brian Jungen is opening on October 16 2009 until August 8 2010 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. That museum is one of the Smithsonian Institution’s museums on the National Mall.
Strange Comfort, curated by Paul Chaat Smith, will include many of Jungen’s best-known work, some of which we have seen at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Catriona Jeffries Gallery in Vancouver.
A “Meet the Artist” program featuring Jungen and curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev will be held on Friday October 16 at 7 pm, in the Ring Auditorium, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
For more information, see http://www.nmai.si.edu
Brian Jungen is also participating in the group exhibition, Moby Dick, at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, from 22 September to December 12 2009. Curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev will lecture in San Francisco on Thursday October 22 2009, at 7 pm. at the California College of the Arts. For more information, see http://www.wattis.org
A series of Artist Talks will be held at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art beginning on Wednesday, September 30 2009: Nisga’a artist and dancer Michael Dangeli inaugurated the program on September 30. On Saturday October 24, Tlingit artist Nicholas Galanin will speak about his art. On November 25, Haida artist Michael Nichols Yahgulanaas will speak, and Kwakwaka’wakw artist Sonny Assu on January 20 2010. All these artists have work in the current exhibition Continuum: Vision and Creativity on the Northwest Coast.
For more information, see http://www.billreidgallery.ca
Until recently, Hilary Rhodes was one of the loyal and helpful staff members at the Bill Reid Gallery. She died on September 25 2009. Our condolences are offered to her family.
Two important works of art by Michael Nicolls Yahgulanaas and Thomas Cannell were presented to the public in early September. They are among forty-five pieces commissioned for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in February 2010 for venues in Richmond, Vancouver and Whistler.
The secondary site for hockey events is the University of British Columbia’s Thunderbird Arena. Cannell’s work, Thunder, is a 5-metre cedar panel showing a radiant sun, with two thunderbirds carrying salmon and eggs up to it.
Yahgulanaas has created a Haida Manga-style work called Take Off. A bird-like creature taking flight was created from copper encrusted re-cycled Volvo fenders and door, painted with black formline designs.
These pieces join others already installed at the arena, including Musqueam Joe Becker’s yellow cedar panel of a Thunderbird, a textile piece by Debra Sparrow, a carving by Chrystal Sparrow, and a carving by Irving Sparrow.
Lakota-Sioux artist Dana Warren is one of six curators presenting Code Screen 2010, a series of bi-weekly online exhibitions of contemporary Canadian downloaded to your computer from the web, as a countdown to Vancouver’s Olympic Games in February 2010. Visitors to http://www.vancouver2010.com/code can apply to be alerted when these new exhibitions are posted.
Another Olympic-related project, this for the Cultural Olympics, is an exhibition to be held at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver: Backstory: Nuu-chah-nulth Ceremonial Curtains and the Work of Ki-Ke-In. Ron Hamilton (Ki-ke-in) is a Nuu-chah-nulth artist, writer, scholar and fisher from the Hupacasath First Nation in the Alberni Valley of Vancouver Island. Ceremonial curtains from the past and Hamilton’s own work will be presented, as well as photographs, documents and interviews related to them. The exhibition will run from January 15 to March 28 2010.
For more information, see
Members of the Nuxalk First Nation in Bella Coola on the British Columbia coast have erected two important new monuments recently: a totem pole was raised in August 2009 by Chief Deric Snow at South Bentick at the old village site of Taleomy. The lead carver of the pole was Harry Schooner.
A memorial marker depicting Sisiutl, the Mack crest, to honour Dayton Mack, was raised at the old village site of Nusq’st, an important site for the Mack family. The lead carver was the renowned Nuxalk artist Skip Saunders.
The new monuments are an important statement, not only by the families about their heritage and identity, but also by the Nuxalk nation about its ownership of territory and traditions.
For more about the new pole at Talyu/South Bentick village and its significance, go to: http://www.nuxalk.net/html/potlatch.htm
The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford British Columbia presents a new exhibition, A Common Thread, running from September 24 2009 to January 3 2010. The museum, about 65 kilometers east of Vancouver, has organized a show of Mennonite, Sto:lo First Nations and South Asian textiles to “initiate a dialogue in an attempt to help define community, encourage connections between communities and share memories and stories through the exhibition of quilts and textiles.” A Sto:lo blanket in the exhibition dates from 1830.
Curator Scott Marsden will give a talk on the exhibit on Thursday October 8 at 7 pm, at the museum.
The Reach Gallery in Abbotsford is holding an exhibition from January 21 to March 21 2010 called Beadwork-A Radical Hybrid: Beading Practices of Yukon First Nations (Canada) and the Ndebele (South Africa). See http://www.thereach.ca
New publications related to British Columbia’s First Nations art are appearing in October.
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is launching his new book Red!
Echoes, Fire and Shadows was published for Preston Singletary’s recent exhibition at Tacoma’s Glass Museum. The illustrated catalogue is accompanied by a 45-minute DVD.
On October 3 Curator Barbara Brotherton of the Seattle Art Museum receives the Washington State Book Award General Nonfiction Prize for her book accompanying the 2008 exhibition of Coast Salish art, S’abadeb, the Gifts: Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists. The award ceremony is on October 14 2009 at 7 pm, at the Seattle Public Library.
Joane Cardinal-Schubert, a Blackfoot artist based in Calgary, was an inspiration to artists across Canada. Some of her works are in British Columbia collections, including one at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. She died September 17 2009. Tributes to her are contained in a Calgary newspaper article at:
The Grace Hudson Museum at Mendocino College in Ukiah California has an exhibition through November 8 2009 of work by Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952). Curtis was an American photographer whose fascination with the First Nations of the BC coast resulted in an feature film about the Kwakwaka’wakw nation. The movie has inspired great interest recently (See The Beat May 2008). Sherrie Smith-Ferri, director of Grace Hudson Museum, and Leslie Saxon West, Professor of Dance and Humanities at Mendocino College, and a serious student of Kwakwaka'wakw dance and art, will give a free presentation on Curtis and his film In the Land of the Head Hunters at 2 pm on Sunday October 11 at the College. The program will include a screening of the partially restored movie and video clips and still photos from modern-day Alert Bay, British Columbia. For more information, call 707 467 2836, or go to http://www.gracehudsonmuseum.org
The Surrey Art Gallery is presenting an exhibition of works by Ojibway artist Frank Shebageget from January to April 2010, and an exhibition of works by Haida Robert Davidson between April and June 2010.
The Grunt Gallery in Vancouver presents The Imaginary Indian, work by Tlingit Nicholas Galanin, from October 23 to November 28 2009. He juxtaposes French toile wallpaper with both authentic and commercially manufactured Northwest Coast masks and ephemera, camouflaging and appropriating a colonial aesthetic.
The pole by Haida artist Jim Hart mentioned in The Beat September 2009 is in transport to Lausanne, Switzerland, to the Olympic Museum there. It will be raised in mid-October. The Queen Charlotte Observer newspaper in the Haida Gwaii published an interview with Jim just after it left. You can find it at
http://www.qciobserver.com/Article.aspx?Id=4099
Jim Hart’s Celebration of Bill Reid pole in the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver has resulted in a project sponsored by Vancouver’s Douglas Reynolds Gallery to reproduce the red cedar Raven which crowns the pole. Raven has been cast in white weatherproof Forton FMG, in an edition of six available in early December. The white image of Raven is a reference to Raven’s appearance at the outset of a famous Haida legend. As the white Raven steals the light to illuminate the world for the first time, he is covered in soot during his escape up a smoke hole. Ravens since then are a sooty black.
There will also be a bronze edition of twelve of Hart’s Raven which will be launched in the spring of 2010.
The Spirit Wrestler Gallery in Vancouver has its third in an exhibition series, called Mini-Masterworks III, from October 24 to November 15. It includes small masterworks by artists from the three cultures the gallery represents: the Maori, the Northwest First Nations and the Inuit. See http://www.spiritwrestler.com
An exhibition of Haida Masterworks opened on September 26 at the Coastal Peoples Fine Arts Gallery at its Yaletown and Gastown locations in Vancouver. See http://www.coastalpeoples.com
Appleton Galleries are holding an auction of First Nations art on Sunday, October 4, at 1 pm, at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens Floral Hall in Vancouver. For more see http://www.appletongalleries.com
The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa will be hosting the exhibition The Drawing and Paintings of Daphne Odjig: A Retrospective Exhibition, from October 23 2009 to January 3 2010. Born on an Ojibway Reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Odjig was the co-founder of the Professional Native Indian Artists Association (colloquially called the "Indian Group of Seven") in 1973. This group included Daphne, Jackson Beardy, Carl Ray, Joseph Sanchez, Eddy Cobiness, Norval Morrisseau and Alex Janvier.
Odjig moved to British Columbia in 1976. The Ottawa show is the first solo exhibition by a First Nations female artist to be held at Canada’s National Gallery. See http://www.gallery.ca/odjig/en/
The Presentation House Theatre in North Vancouver will have two daily performances of aboriginal productions during February 14 to February 20 2010. Encircling Our Ancestors, Spirit Journey will be performed by the Le-La-La Dancers of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation dramatizing ancestral stories, daily at 7:30 pm. Every day at 4 pm, Hamumu Theatre Collective, also from the Kwakwaka’wakw people, presents Echo Story, an intriguing use of music, dance and puppetry intended for family audiences age 5-adult.
For more information, see http://www.phtheatre.org
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Comments, news 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, Martin Landmann, Chuck Ya’Ya Heit, Mark Bradt, Douglas Reynolds, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Leslie Saxon West, Martine Reid, and others, for your assistance.
The Beat is an independent, not-for-profit project written and published in Vancouver Canada by Ann Cameron. Copyright 2009 Ann Cameron.