Pacific Northwest First Nations Art

Cultural Context

The Transformation

Long ago on the Pacific Northwest Coast, before the first people came , the world was in a state of constant flux. This was a time when animal people walked the earth, swam in the seas and flew in the skies. These animal people could shift from animal to person and back simply by donning the skin of one or the other. Earth dwellers only came to be in their present day forms when the “Transformer changed each into a particular species according to the person’s activity, attitude or behaviour at the time of the

encounter”

Here on the east coast the mythological “transformer” or “creator” of the Coast Salish people was the raven (represented symbolically at left).

Pacific Northwest Art Explained

abstract representational art with heavy emphasis on faces and heads

faces may be friendly or fierce

Friendly? Fierce?

Animals can be recognized through their teeth, jaws, tails, limbs and other distinctive characteristics...

Here we see two animals...

What do you think they are?

What about these?

The transformations founds in myth can also be seen in two dimensional design as forms are abstracted, entwined, rotated and placed in unusual places and often constrained spaces.

Haida Dogfish, Bill Reid

Purpose

1. To make the supernatural world visible and present.

Northwest coast art is intended to affect the viewer strongly. The artist is communicating about power (their own or their chiefly employer’s); they are also communicating about power itself. To the extent that the artist can strike the viewer, power is transferred.

affecting presence = supernatural power = social power

2. To make the social system visible - art provided the status symbols of the social system.

Apprenticeship & Learning the Basics

Traditional Northwest Coast art is structured upon and within a certain set of principles governing:

Design

Composition

Colour

South Coast Art StyleArea in green at left exhibited this style, here :)

Society was not clan based

Limited amount of art production

basis of art usually religious

Meaning and significance of symbolic images therefore often kept secret

Usually made of simple standard units such as ovals(ovoids), circles, U shapes (solid or split) and negative crescents, trigons, slits and T forms

heads exaggerated in size and rarely shown in profile - often circular, earless, and hairless

Animals usually shown in non-aggressive state in profile

X ray technique common

Ovoids

Really oval like in appearance

Convex bottoms and bilaterally symmetrical

Ovals represent joints in appendages, tails, wings, eyes, heads and palms

Most have floating inner units (positive and negative spaces)

U Shapes

Short form representing i.e. fish scales

Long forms representing i.e. wings

Commonly had curved open slits and rounded ends

U shapes could represent feathers, fins, flukes, tails, fingers, gills, scales and ears.

T shapes

Cultural Appropriation versus Cultural Appreciation

● Using someone else’s cultural symbols to satisfy a personal need for self expression is an exercise in privilege

● a lack of respect for the sacred history of another culture without having knowledge of its significance.

● a long history of Colonization has placed Western Anglo culture in the dominant position with respect to other cultures. Therefore, the use of the traditions, symbols, and codes of these cultures by western Anglo communities always includes the risk of oppression.

● What is wrong with this picture?● What are we doing today in this workshop?

Let’s Draw

Which image should we use? Why?

Contemporary First Nations Art

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun

Your Turn!Draw your personal totem animal in the Pacific Northwest First Nations style.

Use at least an 18” by 24” piece of drawing paper.

Trace the true outline of your animal lightly on your paper

Sketch in the formline outer contours of your animal

Use the shapes as illustrated for you on the handout to construct a symbolic representation of your animal (see Kim’s book for details on eyes, flippers, legs, etc. if you get stuck)

Choose a colour scheme and plan how you are going to colour your shapes by marking each shape lightly with your pencil. Do not mark the white.

Use the markers provided to colour your piece