www.flickr.com
|
www.flickr.com
|
The Observer - Articles:
Children danced, chiefs and matriarchs spoke and clan songs were sung to officially honour the raising of the three old poles in the Haida Heritage Centre at Qay'llnagaay last Sunday (January 14). Over 300 people from all island communities came to witness the historic event, including all the hereditary leaders or their representatives.
The Observer - Articles:
Three poles, none of which have been standing for 20 years or more, have risen again. With expert help, the poles, two originally from the village of Tanu and one from Skidegate, are now standing in the new tall totem gallery at the Haida Heritage Centre at Qay'llanagaay.
BCNG Portals Page:
Curtis Smith enters his solace, a small shack on his property in Vernon’s south end. The air smells of a just-smoked cigarette with a hint of dried sweetgrass, while drums and First Nations chants play on the stereo. An unfinished mask – a bird carved from alder wood – sits on a stool.
This is Smith’s life now, but at one time he could have whittled it away like the wood shavings that litter the floor of his work shed.
It was almost two decades ago that a drug and alcohol-fueled life of crime sent Smith in and out of prison, where he spent most of his 20s learning how to survive.
“When I was doing booze and drugs, I was trying to fit in. I was trying to belong. I hated my culture then. I grew up white, my mom was white, so I did drugs and alcohol to be someone I wasn’t,” he said. “In jail, you can either become a heroin addict, or you can do something with your life. I had some good elders in there. They were role models.”
News Tribune:
The museum is exhibiting Eskimo and Inuit carvings in its Weber Gallery through June 17. Thirty-one unique ivory, stone and animal bone carvings grace the entrance to the gallery. The sculptures depict traditional cultures of Eskimos from northeastern Siberia to western Greenland across arctic and subarctic regions and a specific subgroup of Eskimos in Canada called Inuits.
Award-winning Inuit artist lets viewers glimpse pain of her past:
An upcoming Art Gallery of Alberta show will feature a selection of cutting-edge contemporary drawing work by Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook, winner of the 2006 Sobey Prize.
Pootoogook, 37, is the third winner of the $50,000 biennial award, one of the richest cash prizes in the Canadian art world. It was awarded Wednesday in Montreal.
The Inuit artist is known for her raw and psychologically complex images, including drawings of herself being abused as a child.
CBC.ca Arts - Small Inuit sculpture by unknown artist sells for $69,000:
A sculpture by an unknown artist showing the legend of The Weasel and the Caribou sold for $69,000 on Tuesday evening at Waddington's auction of Inuit art.
It was the highest price in two days of sales of Inuit art at the Toronto auction house.
The Vancouver Art Museum has just opened a new exhibit of North American native art: Totems to Turquoise. It will be in town from October 27 to the end of March, 2007.
Totems to Turquoise showcases extraordinary artwork from the Northwest Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, Tsimshian, Gitxsan, Nisga’a, Tlingit, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, Haisla, and Coast Salish tribes, along with the southwest desert art of Zuni, Hopi, Santo Domingo, Taos, other Pueblos, Navajo, and Apache. It contains over 100 objects from the American Museum of Natural History’s irreplaceable collection of artifacts, as well as recent totem sculptures, traditional and modern masks, and photographs and videos.
This looks to be another strong collection of native artwork that was co-curated in part by Jim Hart, the director of the Bill Reid Foundation and Jesse Monongya, and was managed out of the American Museum of Natural history. it's already made stops at the Fernbeck museum and the Autry western museum in L.A.
(If you visit Totems to Turquoise in Vancouver, Coastal Peoples Gallery in Yaletown will offer you 10% off a purchase if you show your ticket stub when you visit the store).
Canada scrambles to buy precious native artifacts:
Federal heritage officials, museum curators, including those from Victoria, and aboriginal leaders are scrambling to create a multimillion-dollar war chest to purchase and repatriate the world's most prized private collection of native Canadian artifacts.
The treasure of sacred objects from 19th-century British Columbia is to be sold in three weeks at a landmark auction in New York.
The famed and controversial Dundas Collection -- for years the focus of a high-profile struggle between its British owner and the Canadian Museum of Civilization -- was acquired in 1863 by Scottish clergyman Rev. Robert Dundas at Metlakatla, a Tsimshian First Nation settlement near Prince Rupert.
Now the property of the missionary's great-grandson, London retiree Simon Carey, the collection includes several masterpieces of West Coast artistry and is deemed by B.C. native leaders "as significant to Canadian heritage as the Group of Seven."
If you (like, sigh, me), missed the xxx exhibition that was in Vancouver, we have another chance.
Totems to Turquoise is a travelling exhibition of first nations art. It's just closed at the American Museum of Natural History, and its next stop is in Vancouver, where it is opening in October at the Vancouver Museum in Vanier Park. It'll run until March 2007 in Vancouver (the only Canadian stop), followed by a stop in Los Angeles at the Autry Museum March-August 2007.
Celebrating the exhibition in Vancouver is the return of Bill Reid's Black Eagle Haida War Canoe:
Propelled by paddlers, the Black Eagle will bear artists Jesse Monongya of the Navajo and Hopi and Chief James Hart of the Haida to the shoreline in Vanier Park. The two artists will ask chiefs from the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh for permission to come ashore and hold an exhibit of native art called Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewellery Arts of the Northwest and Southwest
That canoe has been in use at the Museum of Civilisation in Ottawa since 1992, and is returning to Vancouver, where eventually it'll be the centerpiece of the new Vancouver Airport terminal in 2012.
I got the latest catalog from Coastal Peoples gallery in Yaletown -- Transcendence: a decade in perspective.
It means the fall collecting season is starting (snicker).
Seriously, though, their cover piece is by Susan Point, called Ravens and Moon, a carved panel, and it's absolutely awesome. There are any number of really interesting pieces in this set, none of which are in my budget this year. If you like Argillite, check out Darrell White's Raven and Clam Shell, in the jewelry, I was most taken by Rick Adkin's Eagle Earrings, and of the carvings in the more tradtional style, I loved Don Svanvik's Crooked Beak Mask.
I'm also going to call out a couple of things very special about this collection. First, it has a couple of Susan Point's glass "house poles" (and I swear, I'm going to own one at some point); these are sand-blasted glass panels that are done in the style of traditional Salish house totem poles, and they make for a stunning focus piece in a room. Her Where the Ocean Connects to the Sky is a wonderful example of these, but photos just don't do these works justice. They really have to be seen in person.
The other thing special about this collection is that it contains some carvings by Ron Telek of the Nisga'a nation. I've been interested in Nisga'a art for a number of years, but it's generally not as available as Haida or southern coast tribes, Nisga'a's traditional land is in the north of the B.C. province and inland, on the Nass River. Their style is much different than most of the first nations art you see, the works much more transcendental (almost every carving I've seen is a transformation of some sort), with heavily styilized features and deep cuttings. Much of the Nisga'a carving is in Alder instead of Cedar, which is a much more difficult wood to carve successfully. Unlike Haida, Salish or Kwakwaka’wakw artists, Nisga'a carvings are rarely painted, leaving the wood to accent the piece.
Telek's two works are stunning; take a look at his Raven Transformation Mask and look at the carving around the eye, and take a close look at the detailing of the transformation figures on the head, and how he's integrated the grain into the design of the work. His Hummingbird Mask is less ornate, but the work on the beak (and the length and curve) is wonderful. If there was one piece I'd buy in this collection, this is the one.
Coming soon.... I'll finally get serious about getting my collection online, and talk about the works, artists and why they're in my collection.... ah, the joys of getting my evenings and weekends back.
Recent Comments