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Urchin

My first urchin was in Neah bay years ago. Sushi before there was sushi.

10 years forward on the other side of the globe I found my feet in the sand with Clarissa Rizal at a fish market looking at a fish market. She asked me there what do you want to do with your art? I told her I want our Coast Salish art to have recognition and know that I didn’t do all this work for nothing. I never forget her turning her head toward the night as the coastal wind from across our waters blew the wind in her face. I feel the same she said.

“and what gets you there nephew”.

I felt honored to be called nephew by a weaver taught by masters.

“persevering and discipline” I said

“Look at that” she said standing on the coast with me pointing to feather fans over the fish to keep flies away. “what I love about being far from home is these people that pray and give thanks for their food like we do”.

It tapped into me the core of why we have our art shaped around salmon and ceremony.

I went on to explain that I wanted to break barriers in art to recognize unsung heroes the way few painters did in renaissance.

“Like who”. she asked

worker ant

blue jay

raccoon

Auntie making be Gangsta holding fake guns in Kaohsiung

she stopped me and said “like the way people talk about mouse woman”.

“Exactly” I replied with movement I can’t explain A weaver who recognized my understanding of many languages that accepted me and understood my vision made me feel worthy.

It was 90 degrees on the low end as we worked in the coming days. We ate mostly snails and as I was growing tired of it she told me, they are like lipids sonny when she saw me grow tired of them.

Near the end of that trip she asked about my concept for art moving forward long term.

“I want this division of our people to have some resolve.”

“you will accomplish that because we are just one people after all”. She said that two days before we were left in Kaoghsiung without a translator or way to the airport. It was the artists who came together to ensure we found our way home but it was that moment of a conversation I felt committed to I never let go of.

I made it home and off the plane I was wearing a bamboo art piece on my head and countless gifts the people shared with me on our way out for sharing culture with them. A tall man with a shaved head saw how Native I was wearing all my regalia because I could’t pack it pulled up his sleeve to show me a Spindle whorl design and said “Haida”. I didn’t have any way to tell him because I was exhausted the history but I just gave him a nod.

Years later I got a phone call from her asking if I was doing what I aimed at and I told her yes.

“good” she said “keep making goals”.

from our talks I went back to the sketches I discarded and uncovered the intention I noted to her. An idea of the first otter to break Urchin and was reminded of Nuu-chah-nulth print work int eh 80’s and 90’s that had to do with the subject.

At times I find myself where I can’t carve but am able to explore some old things If I’m patient enough.  When the time is right and I feel it in my bones I can’t pull myself from the page that rights me.

Carving the pole for a destination not far from where we had that conversation. A friend recommended I listen to “Crying in H Mart” as I carved into the cedar I had to put it down after the first chapter to make this.

When Zauner talks about going to a market yearning for her experience of packages items with things written on them. I was so reminded how we have no written language. I know so many words I don’t know how to write but I know their sentiment and what I take with me in that is story itself.

I’ve admired my aunties who weave and my late uncle Bruce for knowing how to make things not packaged but treasured.

When I talked to my auntie who weaves who taught me some of the dialect I know she told me a phrase “come give me a kiss, I know you are good”

I heard this from other houses only because I earned my way into that love from being there.

Their upbringing had so much to do with hurt but they held onto the better parts of what was there. Without a package I took my idea I kept with me all these years as people sell art without meaning. I give this to those who are Salish and Tlingit because Clarissa would want me to.

Alex Jackson gave us a design and despite the way I thought of things so technical I offer this as concept.

One can own all the currency in the world but not to engage is to be like a billionaire on a deserted island.

I chose the concept of Otter and Urchin as the example of balance for an entry into a window. The black hole of urchin is to know that life is shared. From you my heart is whole. You keep me alive and I give you thanks.

I’m moved beyond words by the work of her daughters and the work Jennie fostered for this to be here and witness. It shows that endurance and discipline are not forgotten.

Hello, World!

Catching my breath

These are just words but if I don’t say them now. In scribbles and sketches. I miss you. This place I’m caught between calls for me to work myself over. Without it I am nothing to earn my way. Without downward spiral friends to back me up and have courage to say these things I have no feat.

paint from the heart

before there were heralding eagles and hawks. From the earth blelups and kai kai or skia kai along with few knew to put our hearts into the land we stand on. Be there. Wear stripes without colors but truth. Into these folds we are not lost. Hard is the work to see another day but in these arms I hold dear the treasure that you’ve kept alive with me. Nothing aside you but commitment beyond hurt.

If all I have is work I have to take a moment to know it doesn’t break me and I’m not lost without being corrected by the values I’ve not taken but the stripes I wear inside.

I lived on sense of urgency for a few years now to make me see if I can survive that I can put it all out there and play my hand at the table. Art was for those with money in the generations before us. The abundance of it makes me sad in some ways.

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I don’t want to leave this world without regrets. From a childhood friend who admired the line of INXS ‘don’t ever change’. It’s to mean to me you transformed at a time with me that didn’t align. All the same I take this design language for my kin to recognize this transformation in abstract and I can dream I can dream about you.

half full but always whole

Into the Void

If I could go back in time, the aim of my work is the work of things I cannot change. Mountains I cannot lift up and rivers far more powerful the flow I cannot see my brothers before me into the ocean. The feedback of Hendrix and far cries of music that help me move myself forward are driven like feet ahead of my step.

I’ve protested few times, In my heart I would like to think what I do behind the scenes has mad a difference.

the age of my parents gave me some calm and this song captures these waves. I have nothing behind me if I have no story. Auntie Judy talked about a Thunderbird being but the size of a Hawk.

If I am fortunate I will see that through. I cam into this world a screaming child needy and wild.

The hurt of your heart I cannot mend but in my way I want to reach back in the houses I travelled with all the aunties and grandmothers to heal that severed nerve. Before the world was with the animals, I see you my friend, a being, a light before there was time.

Few if any will understand the beautiful dissonance of song that we long for that falls on our ears. I am tragic and I am void, but I am not destroyed if you took the time to put words on a page and have the courage to rage it out.

This week I realized I lost 1/3 of my work last year. I shut it out until I read your words. I cried like this

but I regained myself from the help of the aunties and grandmothers.

This wold is whole, you are not void. Something will hold you up with the wave of who you are. When I was lost and felt I had nothing I found my energy in villains and motivation. There was a time we are that, written at convenience, lands stolen we once stood on.

Depth of my heart I resonate with hurt. I know because I know. The art I make now doesn’t sell like the marketable works but it’s true to my heart.

I want you to know, you are loved. Deeper than an ocean but the sand on you feet when you see the break of the clouds. You are an energy bigger than you know.

From the place you have been, I have been in those shoes. Let music move this with you forward. You are far from absent, you are a present and connected. In my heart you are seen, valued and loved.

Red It

I remember the movie Pee wee’s big adventure, how crazy it was on screen sitting in a seat where someone had and adventure playing a clown for amusement. A clown scene that haunts people close to me to this day but it is all but an image. A moving picture in context with sound that grips you in your seat.

I love music as if nobody could tell. It conveys a story. Across any genre like any.

Seeing color as I do, I’ve finally arrived at place I made my career open to share how I see things in recent years. Muted, tones of the water and sounds of the trees and the water. Upon reading Red Paint by Sasha Louise Lapointe. I send a message back to you now that you live here on our place. The figure that stands across from the museum in Tacoma echoes ancestry that you longed for because of your namesake. I sat beside your name before you’ve become who you are and I can witness from afar how it has become a beacon. I’m but an artist and I said it to you years before that your grandmother, your namesake would blush and who you are and how you will move many people.

Comptia Koholowish is in my heart today along with many to know it is not our day of Independence.

I am no where near the experiences you drive from your writings or honesty but I have pages inspired yet to publish god willing. Far from recess of where we came from. I’ve written in my past about my father and the Indian Relocation act and why I don’t fish. Being Indian as foreign as the word is to us and as you said, would your ancestor or my ancestor know the name “Indian” or the English names we are bound to.

Words escape me but in between us even though we haven’t met I have great respect because as I was at a fireworks stand where a Boston man bragged about his family founding Puyallup, I could turn an eye to my friends to know the river we were along is like a vein no one will understand. I don’t wear paint and many of our people don’t, I have appreciation for it and the power it is and always will be.

The art I make is driven by the many songs of many houses no one can take away from me because they can not go back in time and be there before things were different. My love for Bane in the Batman mythos comes from his single line “but we are iniated”. No one can know depth of the writing you share and I am proud of you for sharing it.

to Taqsablu from Qwalsius

Transformation

Days have weighed heavy on me for what I felt I have no endurance but from cries of howling wolves that call to the moon I know I’m moved by the shifting landscape.

Making these things that stand long after I’m gone keep me sleepless with so many decisions shaping something with the stroke of my knife in these trees. It is no more clear to me than ever, the times I take a moment because of my Uncle George and go eat something and rest.

As the trees thin and tides have shifted.

This work we do like coal miners will go away soon and this story pole reminds me our work will go away soon. In these pushes of what I do. Greg Colfax mentored me and trusted me with no judgment to bring me into his shop and I remember and never forgot a design he made so beautiful it made me tear up as a sketch.

It was an imagination of sun coming down to touch us and be the break of the day.

That was over 20 years ago and I had no money in my pocket but I was just a dog, not a stray. I valued the comfort he trusted me to be with his dachshund who connected me to humility. I was able to honor him and appreciate those far arms reaching out if I could, bounce that light back to him.

He forged for me a path to give me a path and it’s only in his journey I want him to know he is loved and inspirational and transformative. Sitting with Uncle George and Greg I carved to learn my crooked knives in my hands to make something I wanted to make him proud of his teaching because I know I would never be Makah but I was welcome into a house to appreciate and deeply value the work of the people who do it and the time it takes.

On the day the pole was raised my son held the drum I got from him and stood by him as tribute to this connection to know we are far removed but if you see me and this drum in my hand it’s a long journey earned from value.

When it rains I look at the puddles from my small boots when I was a boy, Joe David said don’t say little, say younger. You are not little.

When I met Tsawayuus, I was was taught these things don’t work in sequence and we have some way of seeing the rainbows in the rain. He gave me the teaching of the tools in my hands and sent me off to Neah Bay. I learned from George David then and without him and my Uncle Jerry I would have no leg to stand on. It was only from long time understanding these heroes are but people as I am but they held onto and hold onto a fire that comes from this land, deep roots of time.

I was moved by my family who is always a wave pushing me up from far currents.

like I noted in earlier posts, the burning in your nose of the ocean, that is nothing any screen can remake. Nytom made that clear on this day. He blazed a path and is nothing short of sharp in his innovation for knowing how to speak and keep us in focus. A brilliant designer who has spent time with my grandmother and my mother and so many people with great energy and honesty.

On this day I wanted so much for my uncle Palqatsa. I remember being young riding in an elevator me and Zisloleets will open these doors and we can talk where our language isn’t foreign. Those elevator doors opened in a hospital where I could stand up for my people and see that vision through.

Uncle Subiyay and auntie Taqsablu carried so much on their shoulders. This day I want to mark as the family in between and mostly my uncle Arley and Breezer. Teaching me to look after myself and even if I’m just learning to weave nets, it is work in my hands and do it good.

What I couldn’t say on this day is loosing family and far roots of this pole.

I had always planned to have people there that couldn’t be there. It took hugs from extensions of my roots before I hugged them to know if they are not now, in absence as my grandma Jane taught me

I went up went a long way up to a mountain only once to remember a friend lost from my heart and the friends.

We weren’t fisherman or hunters just artists that wanted to do our work. When I came down from that mountain from my trip to Neah Bay, with thunder in my heart I came back so I could revise myself. Like a bolt of lightning isn’t a straight line, this river looking back over the shoulder of the mountain is glacier fed.

If I have no money in my pocket tomorrow and my jeans are worn I love them all the same. I am seen and heard by this small universe around me. This journey is enduring, deep and beautiful as dark as the shadows of the corner of a lonely room can be.

The light can also overwhelm you like staring into the sun, from depth of all nations I am touched by, this is not an Indian song but it is just a song I echo back to my mentors and their love for lifting me up to do this work. The leaves fall from it still in my mind if I look at it but it still grows and will have stories of its own.

A new day

I never imagined I would make the work that I do today as a career. In my childhood being an artist was the butt of many jokes from teachers and it made me want to never be one. I would still admire the work of my great grandmother and her oil paintings in the houses of our family. Her small model carvings, The rattles and culture items I maybe took for granted because I didn’t know we were different that other people.

Her name was Faye Bosshart. As I gained my ranks up the ladder many people assume I learned from something handed down in training. My grandfather, my father etc. This isn’t so because of the Indian relocation act and many policies imposed on our people.

I put that away for years until it I shaped it into making music with friends. It subsided my calling but as calling does it pulls you in. In the time I met people early on there was bragging rights about slavery and our Salish lands against us. To them it was a joke but to me it was something I kept to myself and that it was nothing to do with brag about. I was consoled by my Auntie Jen at that time and she said “they ride on the wake of their ancestors but they don’t know what that means to them” Today I am rewarded that the tide has turned on knowing what is right against wrong.

I can’t say I’ve had a hard life, I’ve been sheltered and reflect on how good this life is. In art and music there is an ever long internal battle of what is good enough, putting work out for people to judge your ideas and without context they are empty. I have great respect for my peers and those before me who forged a path that gave me a leg to stand on.

Where the lightning reaches the water and the clouds break a new day dawns.

Not all songs are tuned to a beat that is not our own. It took years for me to find this song from a cousin who started to teach me language and give me a window into a world I was part of and didn’t understand.

from deep inside I felt Lummi in my heart when I heard this.

The work of of our people is not forgotten but felt by this land. From far reaches I know song and what moves me. I can say with all honesty I would have no name if it weren’t for M. Alexander. Enduring war in real life not in a game. Sent to a war he didn’t ask for but went into for defending lands of our people when he was just a boy and came back transformed like the Changer. Nothing he asked for but in my heart from my grandmother I feel his love for the people and it keeps me going. I accept I may not be a musician but I can sing.

In the rage of NFTs I’m compelled to say something about this. I want people to know our culture is NFS, not for sale. If you buy my art that is one thing but dancing a blanket or wearing paint, that is no joke.

I tried for a while to wrap my head around why headdress bothered me so much. It is because it made our culture into a joke or fodder. It reminded me of In the Absence of the Sacred

things I learned from my elders that are now in favor about connecting to the earth. My cousin shared good words with me to remind me that as Natives here we shelter the ones who are well off and need to look to the ones who need direction.

My arms can reach only so far but for the lost, my life and devotion is and always has been for recognitzing these overlaps of our people not our differences.

Our people wared once before but we are in the same canoe now thee days. I don’t know my language as much as I would like but I know enough. In this my heart is true. I’ve learned not to judge my limited view of people from this from far reaches of the people I am blessed to have met on this journey.

Most importantly, Reuben Wright Jr. and Charlie Cantrell.

Deep fans of Pearl Jam know Mother Love Bone

When I carved the story pole I made for Chief Leschi at long stretches of being nocturnal his song came on. Maybe an animal walked in that barn but all the same it kept me going. It was necessary at that time. A needle in my thread, there to teach me something I took for granted.

I had envy for my peer Jeff and had now idea what would befall him. He has been nothing but kind to me. I know I can’t reach to him but in my heart I pray. I want him to get back up and make a Godzilla for my family because it’s not what I do but he can. Like the wolves I looked up to from Tsa-qwa-supp I am in this toil and it hurts me to know this is something I can do nothing. I love you brother and I want you to make art again.

far reaches of what I can give my hand is on your head, my hand is in yours.

Hold on brother, I am far removed from you but you were there for me when I needed inspiration and positivity.

In this in between you are I feel your intention and know how much you move people with your work. We are not blood but you are in my heart. You said once you were no Picasso but I love that work inside you more than you know.

Our heroes are gone, the time before us is not written but this image made me rethink how I make art. Eventually I can make art we talked about. No Picasso but you I earn this fire from your hands and devotion to loving our people and I want a song to be with you when you come out of this. I imitate these songs and give the best I can to sing these things. This told we find ourselves I wish I could pick you ups and dust you off. All I can do is sing this song for you in this time of darkness I hope you hear me.

You break the forth wall with me and my emotions wash over for heroes we have. I want you to get out of the be who you wanted to.

Jeff in the best light

from my brothers heat, I want you to wake up and be here as you were. Push this fire forward.

Time if Nothing Else

I realize this blog is void in some ways remembering the weedle from the Northwest past but it’s here. If anyone cares to think much on the characters and shift in my design, they look up. A simple reflex but a gesture. I am nothing though without the ground beneath my feat.

I am nothing without the footing.

….

my heart slows

twisting turning turmoil and resolve I’m wrestling with feelings as we all do. This sets beside you. In far reaches from me I grasp at straws for sense of tragedy. In my teens I remember this song that never left me.

I lost my cousin when I was just a boy and thought myself a man and had no idea what it mean to look at the blood moon for the first time to know my friend who' share my memory gone.

That yaear a song clung to me, many were made and so many in it’s spirit but this comes back to me and in my belief the reason I think I make these posts at all stem from feeling and truth. That I am human and can feel and share these ideas if I am trusted.

The deepest dagger sank into my heart.

It’s not the song but the force within that gives me great heart hurt.

I will See You In the Stars

If I knew you could see thru me...

before a time we knew but one we talk about with reverence. We don’t connect to it without paws like animals because we wear these things in our history. You showed me a great light a belief that in darkness there is a light in the house. Mountains of knowledge we come from, Knowing if there are tales to tell they could reach the tops of mountains with dotted eyes pierced by the moon reflecting on your tiny feat.

this story is a fork in the road but it’s not forgotten. I am but a memory to you and you to me someday. We survived as wolves went on to be dogs. I have to believe you could see through me for a purpose greater than greed. I’m doing my best to make lemonade from lemons.

You left me at an empty table one I will never forget but one that changed the direction of my life.

I’m gifted perspective having tumbled down the mountain to make it to a rivers edge and be grateful for another day another night to make imagery that can resonate with someone who needs it.

A Night without Armor

Few things inspire curiosity of story as much as Batman has for generations now. Before James Bond and Ironman, the dark knight was the original antihero. Looking forward to how Matt Reeves demonstrates a new view and show an old dog has new tricks up his sleeve.

Happy Valentine's Day

A happy Valentine’s day to you all. Just keeping it short today with the idea of this heart shaped box.

Like a puzzle love is a mystery. The very process of folding a bentwood box has it’s own complexity. I can say honestly, I’ve never made one but maybe someday. These are but images imagined that called me to make them into something and that journey continues. As life is an adventure in itself it has it turbulent times, Different ideas become launching pads for new ideas and new days.

Like the land gives me roots, that cedar that shelters me, carries me in the water. I am humbled by that heritage and all the beings that are part of a forest from a place I call home.

A Place in Between

For the majority of my youth and even young adult life I wondered why I had gravitated towards the villains of film only to find that many do and it was not just me. Even then there was part of me that has a realization that a lot had to do with seeing every portrayal of my ethnicity as the other in opposition mostly Westerns of course, writing a narrative for a demographic. This is the business of that model.

I grew up with the James Bond movies as anyone else did and time of that model has shown a progression that puts people at odds as with the climate of tension we live in. Nonetheless, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t fond of Bond’s choice to come in form of Daniel Craig so many years back now. Like anything in life change is hard even for something you’re not so committed to but all the same, it was that. A new face different name, a white savior is what I chalked it up to not knowing much but going with the narrative that was going on at the time.

On his final film I can admit how wrong I was about it all. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I can say in my defense that I made a turn when Skyfall was released and the writing went into depth which I think happened from the industry itself. It upsets some and that is just change. If anything as an artist I see that we are all learning how empty certain things are without honesty. Of course there will always exist a place for entertainment that is purely over the top but it has been good to see the tide rise in writing beyond simple things.

In the latest take on villain and plot I can see why this was pushed back and the benefits that served the film. For one the plot itself being too close to home on a global reach for it’s premise but also a need to give Craig his just due for his swan song as James.

Safin

The opening sequence was nothing short of greatness with the cinematography and edits. I can only say I was disappointed that I didn’t see this the first time in a theater with premium sound quality which I did the second view.

What compels me to write about this at all is my doubts that were dormant for years that lay to resolve. First that Craig owned his time as the arc of his character written for him. Second the achievement of writing villains with motivation just complex enough to keep a mystery floating in the middle for tension.

Far off are the days of empty villains, or at least I hope, where there is nothing more than being evil for evil sake and a hero to save the day. People can blog or post to their hearts content about how angry they are that things have changed but this started with Darth Vader decades ago, a tyrannical father figure who ultimately showed the compassion of character while being a villain.

There is a power to cinema or at least there was once. I say that because it’s so abundant now and the ability to make video is in everyones hand that has the patience to edit which I can say I’m one at least in the documentary genre which leads me to another villain that was well written.

Syndrome from incredibles

As his lines were written well “when everyone is super, no one is”.

Which brings me back to the humanity of Craig as Bond and it’s achievement. I also think of how well Tarantino wrote the reality of assassins in his films. Two sides of the same coin comes to mind. For some the arc of Craig’s Bond hit too close to home as it explored the unglamorous side of a spy beyond fantasy but a world with repercussions.

Daniel Craig Bond

One might wonder why I post these things as they don’t relate to my art of culture but all I can say is like I always have, I exist in this time and I’m shaped by these things around me. I’m not a villain wearing a mask or one riding horseback coming after anyone. I was born in my homeland and this thing that has grown up around me is sometimes a mystery.

It’s only by being a father that I’ve learned how much Native people have been written deep as mythos that I am aware of these things.

It gave me a reason to dig into my empathy for one dimensional characters all these years and see them evolve in writers rooms from countless people speaking up and making things a little more ‘close to home’.

I can appreciate fantasy and fiction as much as anyone else but as they say truth is stranger than fiction sometimes and the world has woken up to that. At the end of the day family at the core of story resonates deeply. In this final chapter of the James Bond work with Craig and it’s storyline this truly hit home. The idea that some of us are born into a world writing us into who we can or cannot be. Unknowing of the opposition that sees you written into a role before you enter the playing field.

I recall an interview with Mike Meyere on Inside the Actors studio when he talked about his father saying to him “even a villain is the hero of their own story”. He made comedy from what the Bond films had turned into.

I met people in my youth who had me in their crosshairs for differences that existed decades before my existence. It had been a mystery to me how that even was and I’m ashamed to say I was oblivious but then again how was that my duty?

Many of my great uncles are gone now and many of them were enlisted in war. As I knew them, I knew them as humble people returning home to do day to day jobs, nothing profound. They laid a foundation for me to become an artist with a conviction to reconnect with the land and the ground beneath my feet.

Equally so all my aunties who made that a point and preserve knowledge by living their lives, not as the center of attention but the movement of being.

I’d like to think they would value the distance we’ve come all while standing still in the place we’ve always been on these shores. Even if I was seated I was moved by a story and that is universal, I’d like to think so at least.

Far reaches

Looking up or down. For divers it’s all the difference.

Committing means a lot and absence of truth or integrity is part of that. We’ve all been burned in our lives. Ambitions larger that ourselves. It’s grounding but we are reminded of the values of what is holding us up. Hands of love, patience and elder far beyond beauty that is empty.

At turns of my grandmothers brushes with death nurses aided her and I think of what that meant to her. The light that emulated from her being and what it means to be that person who sees that glow before it fades. Something in me wanted for so long capture this idea of respect for that moment before the light goes out in a beautiful capture of what would be absent soon after.

My grandmother was my world she always will be, nothing can change that.

Years follow her absence but I want to make work she aimed me towards. Be Bigger than you know. Challenge yourself and see beyond yourself but the good of others.

when XM radio was new I remember driving her around just so she could hear songs of her time. On one occasion though I turned the dial wrong and by chance it came onto this song.

Before the time you had ability to rewind or go back.

I drove her back home because I told her I met Chris Cornell once and she was so excited about it. I picked up my guitar and tried to figure it out. It was just a song, just a moment.

Little did I know that I would meet those people even in passing years later.

Far beyond that fire lit within me then I know that place.

I played a show at under the rail with my friends long ago feeling larger than life. My family in the audience and when I came back to them days later all they said was, we think you’re on drugs, which I wasn’t. I was so upset and let down but I connected to tattoo culture and friends I turned my back on music.

Years later I picked up my guitar in the studio and think of that time I met Cornell and how I wanted to howl like him. I’m reminded how I told my grandmother about Mark Arm and Lane Staley.

It made me a bigger person, the fact that she wanted to know a new song moved me forever. So when I landed in Tokyo to learn that Cornell offed himself this song came to mind knowing she’s gone, something I can never take back. I have to pick up these pieces. Know that these things that move you are far reaching.

I was reluctant to put my hand at brushes but it came to me this idea that if you can pick yourself up, you can dust yourself off and make a new.

A New Day Will Dawn

I can never explain how my art is made because it just happens. Like asking a song writer the same thing or a writer of novels.

Northing more painful than the void of idea.

Over the years I’ve met many who tell me they couldn’t draw a straight line to save their lives and I think I understand that to a degree now. I share that about my relationship to numbers and measure conversation.

I say conversation because in all of our places of knowledge we work in we have a community. We gravitate towards forces that pull us in. Pavlovian but by nature. Sometimes I think the beauty and tragedy of our being is the very idea we know so much. We are all just explorers really set out on adventure.

Years before I started my path as an artist others laid a foundation just like anything else it changes. There was a time I looked to one painting or sculpture from this or that artist but I always wanted more from them.

When Bruce Cockburn released “Waiting for a Miracle” I admit I bought it only for it’s art cover. I wanted to connect to something that was Native desperately for feeling so alone in my plight for connecting to being Native. It was all there in the album cover though. Robert Davidsons design the moved Native art of our region forward.

I was looking to an outside world for feeling of worth and didn’t realize the value of songs I had been raised with from many houses until I was able to look back at how I clawed my way up from inside a dark place believing that Coast Salish art was erased or irrelevant.

hał čed

I talked about severance of Chief Sitwell for many years. It come back to me until I watched the Reverent. Capturing a number of ideas in film and the power of it.

There are two sides to every tale. In my belief there can be healing in that. Some stories are written before we get here, battles before our birth. One becomes a born enemy of a family one does not know for years. This is complication of progress and time sped up to be effective but damaging.

To be clear I am not descendant of Sitwell but I value everything and his warriors for my existence

The father who raised me comes fromf Whitebird. I am far away from that bloodline but it drives this idea from Chief Joseph. Not that I will Fight no More Forever but I will love my people far beyond my time.

Our things transform and new songs are made. I am moved to tears at times to see these things happen before me.

I understand Patkanim betrayed my old family but it was before my time and there is nothing I can do to erase that damage. What I can do is make a design that honors sacrifice and reverence for our mountain and warriors before my time with great love and admiration to get me to this place at the foot of a mountain to have ko, To have salmon and company. It gives me paws.

We are nothing without this land and what it give to us. So much knowledge lays beneath our feet and within our bones we don’t thing about.

Still foreign families write music about us and all humanity.

Another you there will never be

In a brief downtime I watched a presentation byf David Boxley Sr. A key point at 29:20. I remember the first time meeting him as a young person and an impeding pressure to forge the path for dancing and preservation. If I could tell him the field he coudln’t go into was a real meaning that gave way for “wolf of the sky” to make sense of.

Many sacrifices have been made for us to make art because if nothing else I was taught that art is a luxury not an essential for survival. I am happy and moved by him acknowledging Nathan because he mentored Steve as much as Holm mentored me.

Alaska Natives joked as well as the BC people about the “Seattle tribe”. and I laughed at it when I was a teen but when I feasted with them and met David in person to learn what that meant I felt I was the butt of a joke. At that same time I was given an essay about “Snakes and Clowns”. about Tsa-qwa-supp.

Pookubs taught me humility and not to lose the forest through the trees.

In my way I want to write this to thank him for humility and to also understand that if I don’t see the world as he does or the people he comes from I have my place in this world and it is the land that drives the art, not me. There is room for many personalities in this house but this house of Si ał is awakened and we can appreciate our place but also know the limits of our reach.

I’m proud to regard his son as my friend but also to say we are fighting to protect our culture equally so. We can be wolves of different houses and co-exist.

There will never be another Mungo Martin, there will never be another Young Doctor. Robert Davidson is not the song of Bill Reid. As artists we are just remixes of the right ingredients and food for thought.

I had to learn many languages with the uncles who made me into a man now. We don’t all wear masks or wear capes but we are still moving the tides along.

My Kiya would say as a teacher as much as Taqsablu that it’s not about the paint you wear but the time you wear it and to take it off when the time is done.

If there is a wolf in the sky there is a wolf in the water.

Sentimental Values

Today I’m posting with heavy news that my studio had been broken into a couple weeks back. It lead to not only important items needed for the day to day operations but included sentimental items. I’ve been playing catch up to keep projects with crucial deadlines in priority and some have suffered along the way. Mainly printing as so much was taken from the office that I am working to replace still.

All that aside, I’m still working as I do with optimism and hope. I believe that the items taken were for survival of one kind or another in desperation in the times we’re living in. Far from being happy about it, this will take time to recover from but I believe in the people who support my work and those who have reached out during this time as snow covers the ground here on this Valentine’s day in the Pacific Northwest and across much of the country.

Earlier in the week the installation I had been commissioned for was installed and I managed to get video of it to share here. It accompanies work I had done for what seems like forever ago when we all went into lock down and riots took place in Downtown Seattle. The piece that went up depicts a wolf figure holding on to a clock that has the moon in place of the standard hands and numbers. A face looks down on the wolf that is holding the structure symbolic of both protector and watched over. Facing a light that comes directional from the waterline bouncing light onto the right side of his figure with the mountain as the backdrop tucked behind the trees.

As with anything of value, art takes time. I learned quickly with public art anything you see of significance went through a lot just to be in its place. For me with almost any project I’ve taken on it required new tools of some kind or at the very least the replacement of others whether it be brushes or even an outdated hard drive. With the items I’ve made by hand or even the skill I may have taken for granted they required time over money itself and are irreplaceable and valuable lessons within them are treasured experiences.

At the end of the day we’re all caught up at times in our day to day. In isolation which many of my fellow artists can relate is a part of our reality we make peace with early on. On one hand I get to meet a lot of new teams and learn their dynamics but few are long lasting but for clients, galleries and museum relationship or colleagues like anything those are crucial to keeping grounded.

When I started making Valentine’s prints with James Bender and Bruce Cook III years ago it was spontaneous and out of the love for making art and challenging one another to what we could make just to make something. My work with sculpture is informing my graphics and my graphics informed by the idea of light composition and in turn bouncing back and forth.

I’ve been asked many times over the years where ideas for my work come from and I honestly couldn’t point to one source. It’s a mixture of so many things whether it’s a movie or a song or remembering a walk I took when I was stuck from years prior that drifts back into my consciousness while I’m sitting at a table or driving on the freeway stuck in traffic.

In the case of my print I am releasing this year for Valentine’s day which will have to be delayed, it is ambiguous in character. I don’t know of any old story of Wolf and Hummingbird in particular. Regardless, I didn’t question the idea as it came across the paper. I included a sketch in the time lapse video where I thought I would make something dark and try to have empathy for a serpent figure and it wasn’t working and it ended up in an entirely different composition. The beauty of these projects that are outside of commissions holds the freedom to let something happen that I am not approaching with a set depiction or premise. What did stand out looking on it was the need to break the fourth wall of sorts and explore the depth and dimensional exploration that could still read overall and be true to the style of work that I’m finding myself work in now at this moment.

Happy Valentine’s day to you all.

Wave Moving Forward

Like a well known story made into a movie where you know how it ends but you have to watch, such is life. We will all pass along some day eventually but I’m certain that everyone has certain figures in their life that feel immortal. I know for myself that was Bill Holm. By the time I started on my path as an artist Bill had already become legendary for his devotion to understanding and participating in Native culture in the Pacific Northwest. That had been somewhat controversial in the eyes of some however his passing has helped me pinpoint my discomfort around appropriation and it’s definition in my view.

There are some who felt the he was appropriating culture when looking back on that long life he lead it was a very different landscape. It’s no secret that Native culture has been all over the map in the public eye. On one hand it’s heralded by boy scout culture and then absolutely despised by some who feel it is downright immoral. The more I look at Bills background on paper and what I know from personal accounts with him he was able to serve as a bridge in his time here. As with any heroic or pivotal figure there are formative years and from what I understand he was drawn to Native culture and the diversity of it as it is not one thing.

I worked with him for the first time after spending years working under the guidance of one of his main students Steve Brown. The Bill Holm Center was formed and I was taken back to be invited to be part of it. At that time I was asked to curate works with Bill, Robin Wright and Susan Point. I met Bill formally for the first time although I’d attended several events before but never really had a deep conversation with him. I found myself sitting across the table with him at a small teriyaki restaurant in Seattle. We were waiting for Robin to find a parking spot where we were dropped off and I could feel the silence creep in painfully as I thought what to say so I just admitted I was nervous to meet him and be working on curation with him. He smiled and just said “well, I’m just a man like you. Someday you might be in my shoes and someone could be nervous talking to you but you’ll still just be a man”. It put things into perspective which I’m sure he’d gotten used to by that point.

Bill at the Ivar’s Salmon House

I should note that over the years I’d never actually carved with him but I had learned a great deal second hand from Steve and my late great Uncle Jerry techniques in tool making and process that are part of my life to this day. I was honored to be commissioned to do two painted murals for Camp Norwester at his persistence to have me do. His aim was to have Coast Salish representation from a Coast Salish artist and I was happy to spend time with him and his wife Marty on that island with my son.

Norwester Wolves in progress (still from time-lapse)

After working on the mural I was asked to come up and help with a canoe that was to replace one Bill had carved in the 80’s that was damaged beyond repair from a storm on the island. Given that the island was far off it was quite the experience. I should note that there, there is no amenity to the like of electricity beyond a generator so work was done purely by the light of day. There was a great reward from that experience I wouldn’t trade for the world carving alongside my mentor with my son and his as Bill would stop by and sit to visit periodically and socialize.

Looking back on many things he shared with me I’m mostly moved by his openness and honesty of feeling he didn’t know it all. On one trip I took a walk with him and shared my frustration about losing out on grants because I didn’t fit in the categories of traditional vs contemporary. He shared how despite his successful career he’d been questioned by scholars for his efforts that didn’t fit their narrative which brings me to the first time I heard about him in a negative light early on. There were a handful of people I met early on who talked down written word about Native art with the belief that one can’t learn culture or art from a book. I later realized that most of that came from a perception that his success stemmed from a book that simply brought attention to and value to Northwest Coast Native art as a window into a universe unto itself. Never did I feel his writings were a way to tell people how to ‘be Indian’ as some had claimed.

I would love this image remixed by someone integrating Alf with Bill at the center.

I’m including this Stan Lee image I love because it is analogous and conveys the depth of this loss in our Northwest Coast art practice and culture. Bill didn’t invent Native art just as Stan Lee didn’t invent storytelling or comic books. It was the power of persistence and dedication that eventually scratched the surface for people to appreciate and value for what would have otherwise been shrugged off as unsophisticated. To further the analogy Lee was not alone in establishing a base line and with Holm to say the least Bill Reid (Haida) was a driving force as well as Mungo Martin (Kwakwaka’wakw).

Bill seldom seemed challenged by much of anything and kept his determination and independence. Sitting with him I often admired his cane he had carved himself and asked about it once and he said, he knew he' was going to need it and that was truly in spirit of the art tradition of what Tsa-qwa-supp called utilitarian. Form and function meeting with art beautifully matched.

Back to why I’ve included this photo. I imagine the vast knowledge he retained visually about the nuances of the art styles he admired and supported. He was vigilant about education in pressing how diverse Native culture was and remained into a future where it wasn’t static or confined. His work was opening the eyes to some who would not see it otherwise and waking up heroes the like of Joe David, Tsa-qwa-supp, Robert Davidson, Calvin Hunt and so many others.

In this snapshot of time I have felt like I was able to be a hero of a bigger picture.

Bill pressed me to write about my perspective which I never felt was all that informed having not come from a formal education yet it dawned on me how I was trained in a sense by a non-systemic form of learning by practice amongst Indigenous means that had never been truly broken despite laws that outlawed it for a time. One of my beloved elders noted Bill as a thread that was necessary to keep the line in tact where it would weave back strong and that the creator needed them for this purpose. As I grew confidence in writing and public speaking I pressed Bill back for a quote regarding the impact that his Analysis of Form had on misleading people to feel Northwest Coast Native art was a formula and to some the only way to practice art that was valid and true.

After many visits where I would share my presentations on my laptop at his house, looking back I know how much pressure that would be but he gave me a quote he said he was comfortable with regarding the issue.

“Had I known Analysis of Form would have been used as a ‘how to do Indian Art’ book, I would have been much clearer about it’s intent and culture groups that it covered” - Bill Holm 2006

I did a few talks where he was in the front row when put that up on the screen to quote him and I’d ask if I got it right. He’d nod and sometimes say ‘pretty much’ which got good laughs.

What I can say and not say enough is how humble he was and how inspiring and infectious his curiosity was and never wavered. He never struck me as someone to hold back knowledge for any sense of power or superiority and if nothing else it was quite the opposite. He could be stubborn about methods of work for sure but if you walked him through the methodology of it he wouldn’t come back to it. Which gave me a powerful revelation about a mentor who is truly about the art and moving it forward.

Burke Museum event. Photo by Jack Storm

When I was truly terrified to speak Bill was a wave pushing me forward and lifting me up. He never worked against me as an ego but all giving and transparent. Our culture here is moved and shaped by the water. There are nuances by which one can only understand by way of doing or experiencing as oral histories go and the act of creating such has been since time immemorial. I never felt Bill was in his journey with a goal to have a Native name which he has many, or fame and fortune which the art world is not why the majority of us find ourselves wading in the water.

Ember 2010

In 2010 I made a print I called “Ember” for his 85th birthday. The notion was to signify someone who carries the light forward. When I showed him he noted that it looked not only Northern but very Tlingit. I know he wasn’t being mean in any way but once more encouraging me to find my own way of expression rather than cater to influences for sake of validation. So when years later I made North and South he was happier about the composition and it’s meaning. It’s a design that would be used for the Burke Museum and later a piece that would be made in a mixed media work that would be part of the permanent collection.

What leaves the story on my side somewhat open ended is what I could design that captures the idea of what he’s made possible and it may be a carving, it may be a painting or something animated. Whatever that might be I’m saddened by his absence for now but I will surely never let it leave me because when someone truly impacts your life it stays with you forever.

Bill wrote articulate observations of an art that took generations to build that was nearly overwritten but like a swell builds momentum so much energy transcended that into the hands of a generation rising. Someone once noted a concept that particular forms were the most ‘evolved’ and it referenced a stylistic group. I re-read the book “Indian Art of the Northwest Coast: A Dialogue on Craftsmanship and Aesthetics” that was based on conversations between Bill Holm and Bill Reid the past two days where artist seldom look beyond the pictures which I am guilty of. When talking about a Coast Salish Spindle whorl Holm defended Coast Salish art by pointing out it’s function from the culture it comes from where one cannot judge another culture by direct comparison. Proximity alone does not equate similarity. However, he noted always to me the importance of positive and negative and the relationship of similarities of the old traditions and not to dig into the weeds here that will be for another post of which I’m motivated to venture.

I normally tie up my posts with a song link but given the uniqueness of this situation there are too many and ones that do not have ties to public sharing or links. Even so I can say I know they are many and ones that come to mind stem from not Coast Salish alone but Kwakwala language, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Haida origins. This is only my view in remembrance.

What I can say is whether his energy was a spark that carried fire, a pebble that created a wave or sound that travelled through the air it’s an energy that touched the lives of many. In my small world it was a wave that carried me forward and I am forever grateful.

Out of the Red into the Black

It took years for me to understand the term “black Friday”. Growing up Black was always ominous. Red equally so. Black as darkness, red as urgent and dangerous.

It was only years later when my father shared his explanation of a bigger picture about accounting that it made sense and for anyone who doesn’t know I’ll make it brief. Business in loss not making money are ‘in the red’ and those profiting are ‘in the black’.

I’m opening this post this way on premise of a crossroads of sorts.

On this day I want to share one of my early memories of witnessing a billboard sign that read "Letting an Indian Fish is like letting a fox in the Chicken Coup". Somewhere someone has got to have a photo of that. I remind my son that this time of year while we are a focus of inclusiveness we have been deemed villains for many years by no means of our own making. I feel if the phrase holds true 'survival of the fittest' , we are here because the land and values are a part of who we are. There was a time Uncle Reub shrugged off some of our people wearing gear from the army surplus although it he was proud. Our fisherman were warriors on the water for years while people cut up our nets and damaged boats. History doesn't lie and this day I ask my friends who follow my work it would not be possible without the efforts of my people where bullets flew overhead and rocks were thrown at men who were all within their right to provide for their families for survival.

I truly believe in alliance and the need for it in time where the word ‘tribal’ has become a negative phrase. It builds a narrative of negative response now and has for some time. Yet here we are advanced with technology like no other with means of communication separated from the very ground we stand on regardless of where we are. To quote the fictional character, Tyler Durden “the things you own, start to own you”. I think that’s how it goes.

I’m not big on politics because I feel it’s bigger than me but as an artist like a comedian I can have commentary so this is just that.

I’ve always admired the works of Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. With Rock, on his first album, when that was a thing noted in his bit about a comparison of fighters. That ‘the lower you are on the social latter, the better fighter you’ll be”. As they say ‘it’s funny because it’s true’.

When I was on a consulting job a pitch was made where a man got up to with his opening slide of his powerpoint in bold words stating “we are all immigrants here'“. To which I was shifting in my chair, this was in Tacoma the land of my people and this guy was from Philidelphia and non-Indigenous. Little did I know a fellow consultant chimed in to point out she was Indigenous. Much to my surprise she grilled this guy for saying what he did and outlined why to the table. I felt a relief because all eyes were on me because I was labelled coming in as the Native artist and she didn’t carry the label herself. I backed her up of course and I made an ally, not because we had gone into something with a plan but the very fact that our histories and identity would be overwritten as a script that fit a narrative.

There are people and there will always be people who want things to be as they were in the ‘good ole days’ when ‘fill in the blank’. The idea we are free of racism is a long way away and as Chappelle once stated, America has to have an honest discourse with itself. This is to me what I hear people talk about so often in the mainstream of pop culture when they hate Thanksgiving having to deal with relatives they don’t see. On the flip side of that Native people in our confined spaces have learned to make room for different personalities and deal with our differences. This isn’t to say it’s perfect because as a result of disconnection with our language and our practices have adapted.

Alcohol and drug use is a part as it is in any colonized people. It’s an escape and impoverished people all over know this.

I’m asked so often annually as I expect when Thanksgiving rolls around what I feel about it and I’ve grown from it not unlike Chappelle’s skit he talks about as the person he was at stages in his life.

When someone asked me about Thanksgiving in my teens I’d shrug it off because I didn’t think anyone would listen honestly.

When asked about it as a man in my twenties I was ranting and angry for what I couldn’t explain because I didn’t have the way in to explain how backwards the notion was.

As a father of a teen now I am writing this with hopes that my son won’t have to deal with the question in anguish.

The world is not black and white alone, it’s many things and America as we know it is a work in progress. There are so many things one could lose themselves in diving into rabbit holes. If this experiment is to work it means shying away from sweeping ‘dark’ history under the rug and having a willingness to acknowledge atrocity in order to move forward.

As I’ve said time and time again ‘consider what the phrase “land of opportunity” means from an Indigenous perspective’ I say this because I’m grateful that at a young age when I didn’t feel right not standing for the pledge of allegiance in elementary school because I was beat up and called ‘an Injun’ in my homeland that I had support of my grandmother along with a small group of friends who were from different ethnic backgrounds. It gave me hope in my small town as a possibility of what we are seeing unfold today as we acknowledge injustice and solidarity.

work in progress…

There will always be differences and one cannot out match the other on the side of who was slighted more because that’s equally unproductive.

What matters is communication and to acknowledge the land you stand on because it’s a foundation that grants you a place to be.

Returning to the lessons of my father if we are indeed looking to get out the red into the black there remains a lot to be accounted for.

Excuse Me

It’s a day late but as they say better late than never which couples well with ‘never judge a book by it’s cover’. I’m opening with this to set the tone that this is not so much art driven as it is to recognize a Veteran who I never met but impacted my life in a very random way.

I grew up gaming with Nintendo consoles and later a wii. Eventually as my son grew past ‘childish’ things as gaming advanced we played Xbox on a regular basis. I was taken back by how many people were gaming that I wouldn’t have thought did but then again I doubt anyone would consider me a gamer and I use that term lightly for the hardcore gamers out there. I guess what I’m saying is I’m not totally removed from it and therefore engaged in it as much as someone who plays basketball would call themselves a pro and get dunked on.

Ok all that aside. My story in this instance starts with a break up and a slump that had me down for a while. Gaming gave me an escape from long hours of working on projects that were mostly a long game of commitment. Sculpture in woodwork and my work in general is something that takes a long amount of planning and execution to find it’s realization. So as I was playing and connecting with people on top of a small solid group of friends I know in real life the extension gave me insight to people who are less connected in real life where it’s focus is mostly a common goal. To me that goal is to escape not unlike taking in a book or movie for engagement. This was a new dimension to venture something I didn’t know and be humbled by people who would spend hours supporting creatives who shape worlds as an extension of our own.

Being in a small group of Natives who game casually one night I stumbled into what would become an eclectic group of unlikely friends. Three Pacific Northwest Natives, an Englishman, a Latino and an ex military man from the South. We were an unlikely team but in that dynamic, our contrast lead to great conversations may of which were uncomfortable but insightful.

This leads me to this post I’ve been wanting to put up for a while but was reluctant to until now.

As gaming goes with live gaming connecting in competitive genres people can be brutal to say the least. I learned this by playing Titanfall on it’s early release where people can take that game so serious they would find your social accounts and blow you up if you performed bad on a team they were on in a random lobby. Eventually I improved but learned just how serious people took the experience. Not unlike Twitter or any social platform people can get worked up and make assumptions without real face to face engagement so it can cut both ways in that regard.

One evening as my friends that I know in person were offline I was messaged in randomly to help with a task a team needed another player on and so I jumped in. That decision changed the way I thought about gaming onward. I think mainly because it was a call for help where I could at least contribute something to a common goal. In that group was the Southern guy rough around the edges but honest and kind, perhaps brutally honest but memorable to say the least. I enjoyed having difficult conversations that informed us all as a whole over the couple years we gamed with him. In all I was reminded how we all just look and appreciate people we connect with even if it’s for a brief moment of time but genuine. I was reminded how unlikely it would be for us to interact if not for the internet and a game. It made things fun and I looked forward to logging on and learning a point of view I’d learn something from even if I didn’t agree.

Sadly, as we were all getting to know one another in our group like anything, like a band perhaps things fall apart. Not in the way that we didn’t get along but real life takes priority and while I was moving into a new house I wasn’t online for a while. In our group I learned Duck was diagnosed with a terminal illness he was alluding to but didn’t want any help from us or pity. He enjoyed his anonymity and privacy. He did share how he felt shut out because he was older and we accepted him and he enjoyed the recognition we gave him. One day he didn’t show up and that day turned into a week and then into a month that became a year and so on. In that time passing we started to regard him as the Yondu character from the Marvel universe and I think he may not have liked it but it fit his personality and it has a sentiment that is true.

I guess I write this down to get outside of an idea that Natives only write or think of their own mythologies. As much as I do I’ve grown up in a time where we are connected and influenced by the time we grow up in. Just a human experience, not unlike anyone else necessarily but maybe reflecting more on it I suppose.

It’s a day after Veterans day and one of our friends shared this photo we did our detective work on and wanted to recognize the impact of randomness and the personas we have online have threads of us within it regardless.

Happy Veterans day Duck.

Survival in Inktober

I’m just going to say I wrote a blog post following this that took days and then didn’t save it so this is going to be brief.

Over the coarse of carving I tore my shoulder

Over the course of the past year I had been working non stop to take on what looking back on was what felt like an impossible task. I agreed to create five major sculptures of which to day three are complete and installed. In the process aside from the pandemic we all faced together I had a small advantage in that I work isolated 90% of the time. I felt optimistic yet like anything in life, no matter who you are or what you do, things happen. This meant limited access to supplies I needed in the studio and critical for time sake. Making due and working this way made me appreciate the foundation I was granted by mentors and the experience they’ve handed onto me along with new ones that come from, as they say ‘necessity is a mother of invention'“. Equally so being a creature of the night as many creatives are I was challenged by the idea that if I went out I wouldn’t see anyone. There is a comfort that if I chose I could go out and have interaction and with the uncertainty of what the virus was or how it would impact my social responsibility as someone who values very much the interaction with elders I was between a rock and a hard place.

I had been working for a 5 month stretch without much rest and just as we installed the third sculpture I had been finalizing the fourth going onto the fifth. Moving timber as a day to day operation I felt a pull in my shoulder. It wasn’t fast and in a matter of days I found myself questioning whether a trip to the doctor would be safe or not. I eventually received treatment and found a long delay as would be expected with circumstances.

At that point carving wasn’t an option and rest was mandatory by orders with a wait on judging the assessment of surgery. Time has a funny way of making you deal with things when time stops still and this was no different. It made me appreciate and feel for the businesses who had no option but to shut down, for our health care workers on the front lines, people who have lost loved ones.

On the flip side of that I was motivated by the outreach of what people were doing to stay connected even in small gestures doing what they could no focussed on what they could not. I sat at the desk working to regain a comfortable way of sketching if I knew I couldn’t carve and as October was coming in and the installation was finalizing I found motivation to apply myself to Inktober which I had missed out on while doing other work. I also took time with my son to watch movies and shows and get my head out of the hole as it were.

Mr. Wick

Inktober is an annual event that calls on artists to do a daily exercise of making work in ink with provision that pencil can be a foundation but to stick to a theme template set daily with a subject matter. No size restriction, no subject specifics just make your interpretation of a word. It’s good to do this to challenge yourself and break comfort zones you wouldn’t normally visit. No prize money, no glory, no penalty if you don’t follow through just dedication to the art and what it might teach you.

The first week is relatively easy just like a work out plan to get in shape once you’ve committed. There are many spin offs within the Inktober challenge and I posed that previously that Danike Nolie made a few years back.

Fish Day One

Out of the gate I wanted to do something different than my comfort zone. I generally draw salmon or sea life related to my Coast Salish roots. I also wanted to apply dimension and movement to images if I could. Lastly, I wanted to avoid making polished images and draw freely without templates and lose the feeling of the relationship between the concept as it unfolded before me.

What I was keying in on right off the bat was the markers that were beat up over time and not wanting to go to the art store if I didn’t need to. I recalled how in high school we’d make the most of what we had using old felt markers as blending tools. I also found myself using Yupo (synthetic paper) to transfer ink onto other papers and experiment with the effects like printmaking as it was all ink afterall.

By the second week that is where you wonder if You have it in you to keep going because the list is daily keeping momentum is a challenge.

Outpost Day 15

Outpost was where I hit a wall truly. Outpost generally thought of as military I over thought the subject as an Indigenous person and feeling defeat. I wasn’t going to glorify that iconography but revisit it somehow. I’ve always looked to our Mountain as a guide or marker. The trees and the land itself as a calming source of stability. I drew the wolf figure somewhere between a cartoon sketch stretched out into 3d from a lot of our woven baskets I grew up admiring in my childhood.

Closing into the finish I had watched several movies I hadn’t for a while or even at all. One in particular the last chapter of John Wick. I had actually been wondering how I would go out with a bang to close out the last day. I recalled the mythology built in the series of an assassin who killed three men with a pencil. Pen mightier than the sword as they say and it’s all captured in the series itself. So it only seemed fitting to capture something outside my comfort zone as I’m not a portrait artist by any stretch and found an entertaining youtube personality who I watched as I was trying to further my self education in the field. Angel Granov is worth a watch or two. Even it I didn’t apply what he’s done it’s a source of entertainment and appreciation for people who work in that type of work. He isn’t an ‘inker’ from what I understand but the fundamentals are there in his videos.

That said I wrapped it all up and made it to the finish line and can say I made it to the end of October Inktober 2020.

Day 31 Crawl