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A visit to Dorothy Grant’s

Posted in art, art appreciation, art buying, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Dorothy Grant, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2008| 2 Comments »

Around the turn of the millennium, the Haida clothes designer Dorothy Grant had a shop in the Sinclair Center in downtown Vancouver. When she moved, we lost track of her. But I noticed her at a lecture a few days ago at the Bill Reid Gallery, where she was flashing a pair of earring by Gwaai Edenshaw, and yesterday we made a point of dropping by her new store and studio just off Broadway and Main.

Grant’s downtown store felt like a small clothing boutique, differing from countless of others only in her designs and impeccable tailoring. Her new location feels more like a work space; you go down a hall into a retail space, but the activity seems to be taking place either in the studio and meeting place up the stairs or the work area on the other side of it. The entire area is dedicated with art from Grant’s personal collection: A mask by Beau Dick, a print by Robert Davidson, a glass box by Alano Edzerza, and some recent glass plaques by Grant herself (which leaves no doubt that she could have become a gallery artist rather than an applied artist, had she chosen).

The location is open to the public, but you have to ring for entry, perhaps a reflection of the fact that the space is in the middle of an industrial area that, while not seedy, has probably seen better days.

Or perhaps the locked door reflects that this is more a work space than a retail outlet. It certainly seemed so during our visit, with Grant planning with a couple of other people (for a photo shoot, I think), and only stopping briefly to greet us in the friendly and energetic way that, from the little that I’ve seen, appears to be her most common public persona.

Whether you are female or male, you could easily drop a few thousand dollars going through Grants’ racks. But that few thousand would be exceptionally well-spent, especially compared to what you would get elsewhere for the same price in terms of cut and sturdiness of material, let alone the designs. And if you can’t afford that sort of money, you can still find blouses, shirts and jackets for a few hundred dollars, some of which will be heavily discounted if you arrive at the right time of year.

Even as an old-married, I can’t really speak to Grant’s line for women, although nine years ago I bought several blouses and vests as presents. But, from a male perspective, Grant’s line is a relief from mediocrity. Most men’s clothing is drab and unimaginative, and the most you can hope from more upscale offerings is better tailoring. But Northwest Coast designs are one of the few options for men who want a bit of flamboyance without being inappropriately dressed or having to fend off taunts about their sexuality (the sort that are supposed to be jokes but aren’t, if you know what I mean). And Grant’s simple, but bold designs are works of art in themselves that lend an elegance that nobody would dare to question.

Personally, I have arranged my life so that I only need a suit – much less a tuxedo – only for marriages and funeral. However, if I ever did, Grant’s versions of either, with designs on the lapels on one side would reconcile me to the uncomfortable garments. I might still feel uncomfortable wearing them, but at least I would know that I was artistically and well-dressed, and perhaps signaling to the world that I was indvidualistic, if not outright eccentric.

My life being as it is, I will settle for buying two or three buttoned shirts or polo shirts from the store – and I don’t especially like polo shirts.

I did succumb to a light black jacket with an eagle design on the back and a raven wing design on the left arm. Julie, the store manager insisted that I could carry off the look, and a survey of my image in the mirror suggested she was right. A look at the price tag reinforced her view, so I left with a different jacket than the one that was on me when I came in.

“That will bring all the ladies to you,” she said as we were leaving. I started to mutter about how little good that would be for me as a married man when an old customer arrived wearing a similar jacket.

She turned to him for reinforcement of her claim. He agreed, and called after me, “Better stay away from my part of town, man!”

I’ve looked in a mirror. Given the human material that the jacket has to work with, I remain dubious of Julie’s claims. All the same, I’m sure that I’ll return to Dorothy Grants’ the next time that I want well-made clothes with a bit of flare. When we have so much Northwest Coast art on our walls, why shouldn’t I be wearing some as well?

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Ron Telek’s “Transformation Mask: Human to Eagle”

Posted in art, art appreciation, art buying, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, mask, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Ron Talek, sculpture, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 11, 2008| 2 Comments »

As I go through Northwest Coast galleries and web sites, one of the things I am always looking for are miniatures masks – ones under about eight inches in height. We have several wall areas – mostly above doors – that are too small for anything else. Even more importantly, a miniature is a sign of a carvers’ skill. Yet I don’t see many worth buying, perhaps because miniatures tend to be either student pieces or ones designed for the tourist trade, and experienced carvers cannot charge enough for their time to produce many. As a result, I was especially pleased when I noticed that Ron Telek’s “Transformation Mask: Human to Eagle” had come back on to the market. It’s an unusually fine miniature that shows his customary skill and imagination.

How the mask came from Terrace to Vancouver and I picked it up at the South Terminal of the Vancouver airport (which was not, to my disappointment a foggy runway used by single prop planes like something out of Casablanca) doesn’t matter. Enough to say that it did, and I did, and the mask now resides at the busiest crossroads in the hallway of our townhouse.

What makes the mask so haunting is its ambiguity. Although a human is turning into an eagle, the dominant face is more of an eagle’s. From the left eye, whose socket is lined with abalone, a human shape with a bird’s head seems to diving. Or so it appears; if you look at how the spirit’s head and arms are arranged, you’ll notice that they suggest another beak. You have to wonder, too, if the shape is the departing human soul or, given the deepness of the eye socket, if the transformation is being achieved by the plucking out of an eye.

Then, if you look at the right eye, you’ll notice that it is bare wood. However, in the eye’s lower third, like a cataract, is a piece of leather with a small shape that resembles the one leaving the left eye. Does that mean that the transformation is all in the eye of the imagination and not literal? That the transformation, or the need for it is based on faulty vision and understanding? Or is it a supreme act of will?

Also, despite the title of the mask, what dominates is a largely bird-like face with a full beak and one taloned foot where its left ear should be. So who is transforming into what? Perhaps the transformation is of the human into the form of his helper spirit or true self. Certainly, the bird face seems serene, perhaps even amused to judge by the line of its mouth on the beak. It is the human spirit that seems in pain or exaltation. By contrast, the eagle seems more stoic and less affected by the transformation. Perhaps for the eagle’s nature, transformation is natural, and it is the human spirit that finds passing from one form to the other uncomfortable.

These ambiguities make for an asymmetrical design – something that is relatively common in Northwest Coast art, but which is part of the foundation of modern mainstream design. By showing elements of both, the mask increases its ambiguity even further. To a certain extent, the asymmetry is reduced by the long cedar braid on the right, but the mask remains, like the figure it represents, halfway between two different states.

In the end, you can say so little about the mask that the uncertainty adds to its fascination. The only thing that you can say for sure about the mask is that it is finished with Telek’s usual attention to detail.

I don’t know why the previous owner decided to sell the mask, but I’m glad he did. Unlike the previous owner, we don’t plan to let it out of our hands. We wonder, though, where we will find other miniatures to match its complexity.

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Alano Edzerza’s “The Thief”

Posted in Alano Edzerza, art, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Edzerza Gallery, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2008| 2 Comments »

One of the pleasures of buying art is the thought that you might recognize a young artist before anyone else. The pleasure is not in the fact that the piece increases in value, but in the knowledge that you recognized excellence before anyone else. Currently, buying a print in Northwest Coast art by Robert Davidson or Susan Point requires no special insight – the excellence of both has been well-established for years. By contrast, when Trish and I purchased an acrylic copy of Alano Edzerza’s “The Thief” today, we were taking a gamble.

However, it’s a gamble that we are sure will prove our foresight as Edzerza’s career continues to flourish.

Under thirty, Edzerza is an artist who is beginning to make himself known, especially in glass, graphics, and large scale installations in businesses and offices. Unlike most artists, he also knows the business side of art, and few other artists are in so many galleries, or can boast so many shows so early in their careers.

Last summer, he also became owner of the Edzerza Gallery, which showcases both his work and pieces by other up and coming actions, making him one of the only First Nations artists to run a commercial gallery. I know of several young artists who hope that he will provide a fairer deal than other galleries, and at least one who believes that he does.

I have heard one person denigrate Edzerza for producing giclee prints, as though running off prints from the computer was an abomination rather than a convenience.

More tellingly, I have seen lines in several other people’s artwork pointed out to me that Edzerza might have copied. However, if that is so, the practice is common enough among young artists. Even such an icon as Bill Reid borrowed and imitated at the start of his career, and nothing is wrong with the practice so long as an artist eventually outgrows it.

A more valid criticism is that Edzerza’s imagination is still more two-dimensional than three-dimensional, to judge by his jewelry; not that anything is wrong with his jewelry except that it is not at the same level as his graphics or glass work. Just as importantly, he is also still mastering color, tending to use only one per work.

But, at the same time, Edzerza already shows an exceptional sense of design and a strength of line in his works. Not only are his works effective compositions, but, at least twice, he has found new pieces in closeups of existing works. He simply has an eye for design, and, with this trait, I have few doubts that his limitations will cease to exist in the next few years.

It helps that he seems to have a curiosity and memory for design. The one time I met him, he seemed very current about what other artists were doing, and the way he studied the Henry Green bracelet I was wearing when I passed it to him suggests a capacity to learn.

Just as importantly, Edzerza has an eye for drama, tending to show figures in motions rather than static ones. For instance, in depicting the over-used story of how Raven stole the light, in “Smoke Hole,” he focuses on Raven erupting from the smoke hole, charred and on fire. The result is one of the most arresting retellings of that myth that I have ever seen, because he has chosen a dramatic moment to represent.

Although I find graphics like “Smoke Hole” and “Think Like a Raven” powerful, we chose to buy the acrylic of “The Thief” because we believe that it has the potential to be a breakthrough piece for Edzerza. Even if it is not, it is still one of the most effective piece that he has done in a career that already does not lack for highlights.

“The Thief” is another depiction of the Raven engaged in stealing the light. However, unusually in Edzerza’s work, it is a still and formal piece. Almost a mask, it shows the child that the Raven has transformed himself into in order to accomplish the theft, surrounded by the body of the bird that he really is. But a hint of Edzerza’s characteristic drama rests in the enigmatic smile of the child, which – unlike the sleepy eyes — is not only decidedly not innocent, but mirrored by the raven’s beak above it. The disturbing smile suggests the theft that is about to happen or is in the process of happening.

Like much of Edzerza’s latest work, “The Thief” is in grayscale. However, there are more shades within “The Thief” than in any other of Edzerza’s works that I have seen. I strongly suspect that “The Thief” is a study in chromatic complexity, and (whether he knows it or not), one of the first steps that may eventually lead to a richer use of color in his future works.

Even if it doesn’t, grayscale is a fascinating world of its own, as anyone who has ever worked in black and white photography can tell you. In “The Thief”’s case, the color palette suggests the moon, which, depending on the version of the myth, is either what Raven steals, or else soon results from his theft. Especially in the acrylic version, the composition has something of the rich sheen of argillite – and, although argillite is generally worked by the Haida, rather than by a Tahltan like Edzerza, the resemblance suggests a carving as much as a graphic. This impression is heightened by the position of the raven’s head over the child’s forehead, an arrangement often seen with transformation figures on masks. Could Edzerza also be using grayscale and the illusion of depth it creates as an exercise to improve his three-dimensional imagination?

Whatever exactly Edzerza was intending, “The Thief” remains the best northwest coast composition I’ve seen this year. It’s a contemporary piece, while remaining firmly rooted in tradition. I am proud to be one of its custodians, and look forward to ferreting out its secrets in the coming years. And if Edzerza becomes as well known as I suspect he might, I will be just as proud to loan it for the inevitable retrospective on his career, when it is recognized as a pivotal moment in his career.
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Piece-work and Northwest Coast Galleries

Posted in art, art buying, art galleries, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , , , , on November 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »

I could be wrong, but I’m starting to see a darker side to art galleries – at least, the ones that specialize in Northwest Coast art. If you are a potential customer, you are unlikely to see this side. Most of those who work in a gallery are as passionate about the art as the customers, and – especially if you are a returning customer – will happily talk for hours. I wish, though, that I could be sure that the artists receive the same courtesy. I’m starting to wonder.

This doubt began to flicker when I first became aware of a common figure in the galleries: A first nations person – almost always a man – hovering around a gallery, looking as though he feels out of place. Sometimes, such a man has a knapsack or even a large duffel bag that he lays very carefully on the floor. If he doesn’t, at some point he will take out a carefully wrapped bracelet or other piece of jewelry from his pocket. Typically, he waits until the gallery is mostly deserted, and then gingerly approaches the nearest gallery employee. He is, of course, an artist hoping to make a sale, and his manner is very much that of a supplicant, nervous if not outright afraid.

Then, yesterday, a gallery owner regaled me with stories of how artists used to be lined up outside his door in the morning. Sometimes, he said, there would half a dozen in line, including many famous ones. The first one or two might make a sale, or even the first three, but, after that, the owner said, he usually lacked the money and was suffering from too much sensory overload to buy anything else. So, at least half the line would have waited hours for nothing.

At the same time, I’ve heard grumbling from several artists. Sometimes, they’re talking about how they feel that a particular gallery has cheated them. But, just as often, it’s grumbling against the gallery system in general. They complain that the galleries sell their work for three times what they were paid for them. And the younger ones especially complain that no major gallery for Northwest Coast art in the province is owned by a member of a first nation (although perhaps Alano Edzerza’s new gallery will change that).

I don’t want to be dramatic, but such scenes make me uncomfortable. Not only are the artists at the hub of the system, but Northwest Coast art is an assertion of identity — both personal and cultural — for many artists. It’s an assertion that, despite everything, they and their culture are still here, and being respected. Yet the scenes are not so different from those associated with day-laboring farm workers. Not that people doing piecemeal work aren’t entitled to dignity – they obviously are – but it seems an added injustice that people who are the main producers, people of real talent and sometimes genius should be subjected to this kind of treatment. Yet some don’t even feel at home in the places where their work is being displayed.

Not all, of course have this reaction. Some artists are capable of handling the gallery system with skill and finesse. Others hire someone who can do the business of selling for which they personally have no aptitude. Still others either have enough talent or reputation that a gallery will adopt them and do everything in its power to promote them. But many aren’t so lucky, and they resent the situation without feeling that they can do much about it.

I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe galleries can be justified as a form of promotion that ultimately helps artists’ careers. But I’m starting to think that more artists need to learn more about business so that they can hold their own. Or maybe more Northwest Coast artists need to become gallery owners themselves. Others might group together to form an online co-operative and create a market for their work that bypasses the gallery system.

Personally, I am listening to the artists, trying to separate out individual animosities from trends in the hopes of finding which galleries, if any, are the most ethical. I am also starting to wonder if I should be dealing more with the artists directly – although I’m not much for negotiations myself, even if I have some experience with them. It’s not a situation that has clear answers, but I won’t be easy about my art-buying until I have some.

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What I look for in a northwest coast mask

Posted in art, art buying, Bruce Byfield, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 27, 2008| Leave a Comment »

A carver who has just started selling his work asked me yesterday what I look for in a mask or sculpture. I hadn’t thought beyond the fact that, like any piece of art, a mask must give me a thrill of recognition on first or second glance, so I replied by pointing out what the masks of his that I like best had in common. But sometime in the night, my mind started turning over the question as I slept, and, by morning, I could send him a far more detailed list of what I look for.

A few weeks ago, a gallery owner said to me that a good mask must tell a story. I agree with him, but the way I would phrase things is to say that a good mask must let me see through the artists’ eye. That is, the subject matter must inspire the artist, whether on a personal or a cultural level. I might not know exactly what meaning a mask carries – particularly since some artists still conceal some of the meaning, on the grounds that the meaning is tied up with titles or rights that belong to a particular family. However, I know when that sort of meaning is there, because, if it’s not, a mask is just a piece of wood with a couple of holes in it, and probably designed to sell to tourists.

In addition, the subject matter must be either a new treatment of an old subject or a new subject altogether. For instance, in two-dimensional design, I could live quite happily without ever seeing yet another version of Dogfish Woman based on Charles Edenshaw’s design of over a century ago. But, while I thought I felt the same way about Raven stealing the sun or moon, Alano Edzerza’s “The Thief” (search on the page that the link leads to) proved to me there was still outstanding work to be done on the theme.

Completely new work is more difficult, but there are enough myths that are not depicted these days for dozens, even hundreds of work. For example, ever since Bill Reid did “Raven and the First Men,” that particular creation myth has become the dominant Haida one, despite the fact that at least one alternative exists.

In the execution of a design, my tastes are wide-ranging. I can enjoy equally a modern work that hints at the tradition rather being in it, like much of Ron Telek’s work, or a work done along traditional lines, like some of the work of Henry Green (who, in other moods, can have his own share of innovations).

However, I am still learning my way around the various traditions – so far as an outsider can – so I am on firmer ground when it comes to technique. The artists I most admire, I find, do not carve lines so much as surfaces, giving their work a subtly different orientation from two-dimensional artists. They do not use garish colors or coat the wood as if it was the bottom of a fence post intended to be buried in the ground, opting instead for either blended, subdued colors, like the best of Beau Dick’s masks, or else being content entirely or partially with the bare wood, taking advantage of the bare grain to enhance their carving..

Finally, for me, the best-carved masks are revealed in their finishing details. It is not just a matter of careful sandpapering, or making sure that no stray blobs of paint have fallen unnoticed, although that is part of it. I have seen surprisingly poor finishing on expensive masks in some galleries, with prices that were the same or higher as much more careful work.

However, for a mask to be really first-rate, its artist has to regard the finishing details as another opportunity for creativity. If there is abalone, the pieces should be matched. If a strip of copper is used, it needs to be exactly the right size.

At times, the finishing details alone can make a mask succeed. For instance, there’s an eagle head dress by Norman Tait and Lucinda Turner whose quality is raised even higher than most of their work because of two details: The horse-hair eye lashes that conceal the eyes, creating an impression of blindness, and the random bits of abalone in the carving representing the head feather that occasionally catch the light the way that the highlights of a bird’s feathers sometimes do.

I’m not sure this detailed list is much use to the carver who received it. I assume that he was looking for hints of what might appeal to potential buyers, and I doubt my tastes are typical. For a lot of people, including some collectors, art is a high-priced form of wallpaper, and what they want is something pretty and safe, or possibly simply exotic.

By contrast, what I want is something that catches my imagination and eye in equal measure – something that I can see every day for years and appreciate a line or an imaginative touch. Realizing that I hold this ideal, I suspect that, while my answer may not have useful to the questioner, it has been useful to me in intermittent efforts at self-knowledge.

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Northwest coast art and I

Posted in art, art appreciation, Bruce Byfield, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, West Coast art, tagged , , , , , , on October 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »

In the last few weeks, I’ve realized that my fascination with Northwest Coast art goes back further than I originally thought.

When I was seven or eight, I was mad for mythology. I started with Greek and Roman mythology, and, before I was ten, I’d worked steadily through Egyptian, Norse and every other coherent set of tales that I could get my hands on.

Part of that mix was various North American First Nation tales, and, most of all, stories from the Northwest Coast. All myth fascinated me indiscriminately, but Northwest Coast myth was special, even in the fragmented retellings for children that were – and still are – the most common form of presentation. Unlike the other mythologies, they were about places I had seen, or at least could travel to in a day or two.

That gave them a special interest and grounding in reality that even the Greek and Norse myths – my other two favorites – could never hope to match.

One off-shoot of this interest was that, while at four I was dressing up as a cowboy with chaps and cap guns, four years later I was pleased at souvenirs that included a bamboo spear with a rubber point, and a Plains-style headdress that draped my face with artificial raccoon tails. Watching westerns, I started cheering for the Indians. They had imaginative mythologies, and the cowboys had none.

At about ten, I also started buying my first pieces of art: souvenir totem poles made in Japan and China. Even then, I knew that their straight lines and garish colors showed no real knowledge of what they were representing, and that they shouldn’t be sold alongside tipis, but, so far as I knew, they were all that were available. Better, to my childish mind, an inadequate souvenir than none at all.

My aesthetic sense took a slight turn upward when my father brought home a raven graphic he had designed at work to go on the panels of a phone booth for some special event. It was a simple design, black and white, with the raven’s head turned to the right and the wings and feet symmetrical. I suspect now that it was copied from some other design, since so far as I know, my father had no interest in Northwest design. Probably, it showed no more understanding of form than another special booth he did for Vancouver Chinatown, in which his efforts to improve the characters ended up making them illegible, but it did include authentic U-shapes and ovoids, however unimaginatively they were depicted. I loved it, displaying first a version on cardboard then one on plastic for years in my bedroom.

Enough interest remained that when Trish and I went shopping for engagement rings, we quickly dubbed the conventional ones tacky and unimaginative and went shopping for Northwest Coast designs. People laugh now when we tell them that we bought our engagement rings at the Vancouver Museum and Planetarium, but, back then, the first Northwest Coast art galleries hadn’t appeared, and you could buy Bill Reid and Roy Vickers limited edition prints in the gift shop, as well as high quality silver jewelry.

Unfortunately, in those days, we weren’t much interested in the names of the artists, and now, years of daily wear have effaced the signatures inside – to say nothing of much of the detail of the designs.

Over the next few years, we bought a few limited edition prints, including one by Clarence Wells and several by Richard Hunt, and always we were thrilled to afford some real art (the memory of those souvenir totem poles were haunting me with embarrassment). But our purchases became fewer and fewer over the years, partly because of periods of poverty and partly because other interests and priorities intervened.

Then, well-sunk in middle-age, I realized that I could finally afford the bracelet I had always wanted – and did so. Within a few months, my old interest came rushing back. I started frequenting galleries. Looking at the prints on our walls, I found many of them formal and fussy compared to what was being done today. I began reading the available information about the myths, finding it hard to track down and almost as incomplete as the retellings I had read as a child, but tantalized all the same.

Now, as I write, the art-fever is on my more fiercely than ever. I suppose that the interest will taper off eventually, but maybe not — no sooner can we afford a modest piece than it seems that two or three others worth having hove into our attention. But, far from being a recent whim or interest, it’s really an interest that goes back to the days of my earliest literacy and imaginative awakening.

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“Spirit Moon Mask” by Ron Telek

Posted in art, art appreciation, art buying, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, masks, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Ron Talek, sculpture, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »

After several months of down payments, we’ve added the first mask to our collection of Northwest Coast art: “Spirit Moon Mask” by Ron Joseph Telek.

Telek is a great original – perhaps the great original in Northwest Coast art today. Inspired, they say, by a car accident in which he was legally dead for a few minutes, his work is largely concerned with images of transformation and shamanism. While his work obviously comes out of the northern tradition in British Columbia, it breaks with the tradition as much as it keeps it.

His work is quirky, asymmetrical, and fully of little details, and often more than a little disturbing. I’d call it the carved or sculpted equivalent of a Gothic novel – a dark, romantic, and highly individualistic style. Others have called him the first surrealist of the Northwest Coast, and likened some of his more disturbing images to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

His imagination alone would make him one of the top carvers and sculptors on the coast today, but Telek is also a painstaking craftsman, much like his uncle Norman Tait, whom he once studied under. Like Tait, Telek is a master of using the grain of the wood to enhance his subject matter.

The same is true when he turns to other materials – there is a walrus tusk he did a couple of years back languishing in a Vancouver gallery which is so eeriely beautiful that it had to be moved further away from another piece of ivory so as not to outshine it.

Another characteristic of Telek’s work is that, in contrast to what might almost seem his imaginative excess, his finishing details are always meticulous and restrained – you won’t find any tarting up of a mask with rings of unmatched abalone or endless cascades of horse hair in Telek’s work, the way you do in less talented artists. And you never do see paint, which other artists sometimes cake on to hide defects. Like Tait, if Telek adds a finishing detail, it’s for effect.

And if all this wasn’t enough, Telek’s imagination seems endless. Other artists may have periods in their development, in which work after work resembles each other, but Telek’s periods don’t seem to last for more than a piece or two before he moves on to something new. Possibly, this restlessness works against him in the galleries, where many buyers want something familiar, but, I prefer to think of it as one more sign of an inventive and agile mind.

“Spirit Moon Mask” is one of Telek’s smaller, tamer pieces, but it strikes an interesting balance between tradition and the west coast contemporary style of architecture. But the type of odd details that make his other work so lively are there. The wall-eye, the bit of abalone that could either be a nose-piercing or a wound, the strained-looking cheekbones, the arms of the spirit rising from the moon that look like tentacles, the spirit’s arched back and round-mouthed scream — for such a simple piece, the number of unusual touches crammed into the mask is overwhelming.

Since our townhouse is small, we had been thinking of limiting ourselves to one work by each artist who attracted our attention. But, already, we are talking about making an exception in Telek’s case. Perhaps, too, we’ll save for eight or nine months and buy one of his really big works, even if we have to rent the townhouse next door to display it properly. Frankly, we’re hooked.

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Review: “Bill Reid: The Making of an Indian”

Posted in art, art appreciation, Bill Reid, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 15, 2008| Leave a Comment »

At times, I’m not sure whether I’m a romantic or a skeptic. On the one hand, I love popular legends and mythology. On the other hand, I love efforts at debunking. Was Richard III the victim of propaganda after his death? Did Benjamin Franklin pass information to the British? Was Bonnie Prince Charlie a semi-literate sot who guzzled his way through the 1745 Rebellion? Topics like this always fascinate me, even when they fail to convince. For that reason, I find Maria Tippett’s Bill Reid: The Making of an Indian endlessly fascinating, even when it seems dubious or exaggerated.

If you don’t live in Canada, particularly in British Columbia, you might not know why Bill Reid is a subject for debunking. Briefly, Bill Reid was a jeweler and a sculptor working in the Northwest Coast tradition. He is generally considered the chief figure in the renaissance of Northwest Coast art, and the major Canadian artist of the late 20th Century, with his work on the back of the Canadian $20 bill and one of his sculptures on display at the Canadian embassy in Washington. Ten years after his death, he remains so admired that if an artist, gallery owner or collector of Northwest Coast art refers to “Bill” with no surname, they are referring to Bill Reid — a touching and clear indication of his ongoing importance.

Tippett clearly admires Reid’s work, and its fusion of European and First Nations sensibilities. However, she also states that Reid was bipolar, and – on very little evidence – that he was sexually promiscuous and adulterous. More importantly, she suggests that it is wrong to see him as the sole instigator of the Northwest Coast art revival, and that, especially in the last years of his life, he carefully crafted his own image as an Indian to further his career (hence the title).

These claims were greeted with outrage by a number of reviewers when the book was first published four years ago; a review in the Georgia Straight, for example, referred to the book’s “slash-and-burn” approach to its subject. In the end, though, it is surprising how little her claims actually matter. Regardless of their truth or falsehood, even Tippett cannot deny Reid’s importance as an artist.

Personally, however, I wish that Tippett had balanced her claims more, and, in places, elaborated on them. A man struggling with mixed European and First Nations ancestry in the mid-20th century, and later with Parkinson’s disease has every right to depression and moodiness. As for her claims about his sex life, they are based to a large extent on hearsay, and, not really the concern of anyone except Reid and his wives. I suppose the claims have to be there for the sake of completeness, but they have little to do with his art, which is almost completely void of the sexual elements in 19th Century Northwest Coast art.

Similarly, it is true that other artists were keeping the tradition alive when Bill Reid began his career. However, to imply as Tippett seems to that the tradition would have its present popularity without him seems absurd. True, artists like Ellen Neel and Mungo Martin were active in the 1950s, but to suggest that they could have sparked the current interest without Reid seems questionable; he developed into a first-rate talent who influenced dozens, and Neel and Martin were second-rate at best. Might-have-beens are endless, but, without Reid, the tradition would probably not be nearly as popular as it is today. Even artists of the excellence of Robert Davidson and Norman Tait might not have been able to promote it, not because they are any less talented than Reid – they’re not – but because they lack Reid’s flare for self-promotion.

But self-promotion, of course, is something that artists are not supposed to engage in, according to many outsiders. Apparently, they are somehow truer to their craft if they live in poverty. And Tippett seems to share this self-righteous puritanism in full measure – if anything, she seems more shocked that Reid should cleverly promote himself than that he should sleep around. She reacts with a cynical naivety, using anti-Indian statements by Reid from earlier years to create the impression that his political activism in his last active years was a calculated marketing decision. She does not consider the possibility that marketing can be based on honesty, much less than Reid’s adoption of a First Nations identity may have been a resolution to his life-long conflict about who he was.

Still, better a debunking book that lacks generosity than a hagiography that ignores its subjects’ faults. Tippett could argue her case better, but, even if her interpretation is faulty she at least presents a portrayal of a human being – and one whose faults, real or imagined, don’t change his importance in the least.

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Haunted by art

Posted in art, art appreciation, art buying, Bruce Byfield, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »

As I wrote a few months ago, how a building is used can create an atmosphere. A hospital, for instance, nearly always make you uncomfortable, even if you are not involved in anything going on there. After thinking for a couple of weeks, I can think this same truism helps to explain the appeal of buying art.

For me, buying art is not an investment. Nor is it a hobby like collecting coins or stamps, in which you try to collect a complete set. Still less is it a sense of ownership; I firmly believe, for instance, that you should not buy art that you have no room to display properly, which is why we wouldn’t buy a Northwest Coast button blanket – even if we could afford it. We simply don’t have the fifty square feet of wall space to display one properly.
Instead, buying art is an effort – a slow, piece by piece one, in our case – to transform the atmosphere of our living space. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone does something similar if they live in one place long enough.

But, in most cases, furnishings are chosen because they are comforting or show an awareness of the latest trend. You find very few people, even interior designers, who create rooms that are a bold statement of personality or aspirations.

About the closest you usually get to such a declaration are the people who buy an antique house and spend years living with sawdust and the noise of construction until they have refurbished it into as close a replica of the original as modern tastes can stand. In effect, such people make the house itself a work of art.

Living in a townhouse, I’m not in a position to do that. Nor do I have the tolerance for breathing dust and living with table saws and lathes for years on end. But, what I can do is decorate my living space with what I think is the most inspirational or provocative art that I can afford.

Some of the art that we have bought or hoped to buy is not comfortable – some of it makes people whose idea of decorating is pretty pictures very uneasy. But what it all has in common is that it is the product of the human mind at its best, If some of it is challenging, that is all the better, so far as I am concerned. I want to be challenged and inspired by the best as I go about my daily business. I don’t want merely pretty pictures.

In fact, I am convinced that you are better for surrounding yourself by art. Where a prison or a hospital upsets, art soothes and relaxes. It makes you more observant as, living with a piece day by day, you slowly unravel the secret of why it is a triumph of design. It also, I find, inspires you to live up to it, not only in little ways, like trying to keep the place neater so it is a suitable environment for the art, but also in large ways by challenging you to do your best in your work or pastimes, to make yourself worthy of your surroundings.

That is why those who think that art is only the concern of a small elite, as well as those who mistake art for fashion are both wrong. Art, like exercise, is good for everybody, and you can’t replace excellence with conformity. Really, it’s as simple as that.

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A Beau Dick sketch

Posted in art, art appreciation, Beau Dick, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Tsonoqua, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2008| 1 Comment »

Kwakwaka’wakw carver Beau Dick is one of the names on my short list of people from whom I would one day like to buy a mask (for the record, the others are master carver Norman Tait, Nishga’a surrealist Ron Telek, and Tlingit carver Stan Bevan). Not only does Dick have a subtle sense of color that is rare in Northwest Coast mask-makers, but he manages to find endless creative possibilities in two main figures — Bukwus, the wild man of the woods, and Tsonoqua (also called Dzunuk’wa), the wild woman – producing countless masks of both without repeating himself very much. And, like the others on my list, he is meticulous about finishing details, although he often chooses a rougher look than Tait, Telek, or Bevan. So, last month, when I came across a few sketches by Dick for about the price of a quality limited edition print, I was instantly tempted to buy.

The first Dick sketches I saw were at the Inuit Gallery in Gastown. One was a colored pencil sketch of a mask with a quick gradient background, one was a mask done in charcoal, and the third was a colored sketch of a dancer. At first I thought them unique, but a week later at the Latimer Gallery, I saw some similar works, as well as some colored pencil sketches of dancers that I suspected were done from photos. The Latimer Gallery pieces were dated about four years later than the Inuit Gallery mask sketch, and were about two-thirds the price, although I judged them not quite so interesting.

From what I was told at the Latimer Gallery, the mask sketches were the result of a period in which Dick had sketched his designs before carving them. He had tried this experiment at least twice, once in 1999 and again in 2003. I don’t know, but I surmise that he either was not especially satisfied with the results, or found the exercise not useful for his carving since (so far as I know), he only tried the experiment a few times with masks. I hope one day to learn more.

Meanwhile, I was disappointed to find that the sketches weren’t as unique as I had imagined. Instead of coming down the next week to buy the mask sketch at the Inuit Gallery, I went to other galleries instead.

But, last Saturday, Trish was well enough to take a brief tour of some of the downtown galleries. When we reached the Inuit Gallery, she was as intrigued by the sketch as I had been, and we bought it on the spot, bearing it home in a mailing tube sealed with tape at both ends to keep out the rain and wrapped in a plastic bag. Tomorrow, it goes to the framer.

What interests me in the sketch is partly the subject matter. If you have ever been in the northern rainforest alone, especially near nightfall, you have no trouble understanding how Tsonoqua entered the local myths; she’s the sense of something terrifying moving just behind the trees.

But, just as importantly, the sketch is interesting for the way it is rendered. If you examine the lines of the face, you’ll see that they are not lines so much as surfaces. Even a single line, like the ones on either site of the mouth are not so much lines as areas, and their shadows are likewise. In other words, Dick is sketching with a carver’s eye.

The only exception to this approach is the hair of both the head and the shaggy eyebrows (although even the individual hairs tend to be thick). The mixture of the two different approaches only adds to the oddness of the face. So does the red patch on just one of the cheeks.

The sketch is rough, but not so rough that Dick didn’t give it a bit of a finishing touch with the gradient background. I suppose that some people would consider the roughness a fault, but, really, what else do you expect in a sketch?

Anyway, a calculated roughness is a common characteristic in a lot of Dick’s work, and seems to suit a character that has been living rough.

One day, I might be lucky enough to find the mask that matches the sketch. But, for now, the sketch is a small and slightly curious addition to our small art collection.

B

Tsonoqua Mask by Beau Dick

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