A window into the Northwest First Nation Art and Culture
A window into the Northwest First Nation Art and Culture
Brian Bob holding one of his yellow cedar carving: "Dancing White Female Wolf In Moon Spirit"
Through his art, Brian Bob creates a window into the rich culture of his First Nation heritage. He sees art as an ongoing, living and breathing process, and a way of expressing his profound respect for the world we are part of. Brian whose traditional name Qwuyutsapool translates in English to “policer of the wolves”, was born and raised on Vancouver Island off the Canadian Pacific Coast. Inspired by the legacy of his ancestors, he studied the work of his elders to learn the traditional techniques to the art of carving and has been perfecting it for the past 40 years.
From Left to Right: Brown Eagle, Black Killer Whale, Yellow Cedar Eagle
Brian’s father, Wilson Bob, was the hereditary chief of the Snaw-naw-as, a Coast Salish First Nation on the East Coast of Vancouver Island. He was a strong artist, hunter, logger, fisherman and political activist; and always encouraged Brian to express his culture through art. For the Coast Salish peoples, red and yellow cedar, known as the “tree of life”, is the traditional choice of wood used for carvings, canoes, paddles, houses etc, and this choice of medium is reflected in Brian’s artwork. Brian’s mother, Fran Touchie from the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation of Ucluelet, also supported Brian and gave him the necessary tools to inspire his creativity and encouraged his beginnings as an artist. The Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation from the West Coast of Vancouver Island practiced whaling from traditional dugout cedar canoes that were hand carved by master carvers, a skill passed on from generation to generation. Being influenced by both families, Brian carries through his art, the uniqueness of the two Pacific Northwest culture and traditions.
Before being the carver he is today, Brian was first a painter. Traditionally, creating your own tools was part of the Nuu-chah-nulth process of becoming an accomplish artist. Brian embraced this tradition by making the paintbrushes he would use to paint out of his own hair. His learning process also involved studying the animals he would portray in his artwork. Brian would study the animal’s habits, their expression of emotions and the ways he personally connects with each animal. “When I work on a carving, of an eagle for instance, I focus and change my energy on the spirit of the eagle. This energy always changes depending on the piece I am working on and depending on the animal I am representing in my artwork. Some people see this process as a form of meditation; I simply call it becoming. It allows me to work on my intuition, to grow as an artist and most of all to see how we are all connected into a bigger portrait.”
Title: Salmon & Eggs
Driven by aesthetic values and influenced by his social, cultural and political background; Spirituality is what resonates the most intensely from Brian’s artwork. Transcending language barriers while sharing his spiritual beliefs and the beliefs of his ancestors is one of the most important aspects of his art. Through his carvings, Brian honours how everything in our world is composed of a same continuous energy or spirit and how everything is therefore interconnected. During our interview, he told me: “I was encouraged as a young artist to focus on the essence of the animal's spirit I am depicting in my artwork. To make a connection, to honour its role and its place in the cycle of life.” “Salmon and Eggs” [ See picture above], is a perfect example of how he visually honours and celebrates the Circular Way of Life through his art. This carving depicts a stained yellow cedar salmon featuring eagle heads carved along its upper body and carved salmon’s eggs with inlaid abalone shells along its lower body. Here, Brian tells the story of how Eagle's spirit lives within Salmon. The salmon gives itself as food to the eagle and gives up its own existence to support the eagle's life. By doing so, the spirit of the fish lives on and is therefore transformed into Eagle. The abalone shells decorating the fish’s belly, represents the eggs that will later grow into many mature salmons which will feed future eagles insuring that the cycle could begin again the following year.
When I asked him how he first started carving, he told me how his uncle, Tom Touchie, was a totem maker whose work reflects the Touchie family's connection to the Nuu-chah-nulth traditional territories and how Wallace Touchie, Brian’s grandfather, was a great canoe carver. “Everything my grandfather did, he did with the same creative energy in his life. That has been the biggest influence in my art and wanting to impress and honour them both, I followed their path and started carving.” Throughout the years, Brian developed his own distinctive style based on his personal intuition and desire to honour his Nuu-chah-nulth connection to his mother and his Snaw-naw-as relation to his father. Brian creates artwork collections of the animals representing the northwest coast of British Colombia to give a well-rounded presentation of the area and its culture. His iconography includes salmons, eagles, ravens, killer whales, hummingbirds, sea otters and these are only a few examples of the motifs that inhabit his artwork collections. Working mainly with locally sourced yellow cedar, one of the world’s finest type of wood, valued for its strength, extreme durability and outstanding beauty, he also works with white pine (also known as sugar pine), for its straight grain and uniform texture and often embellishes his carvings with abalone shells and copper.
Title: Red Salmon II
His carvings demonstrate a fine balance of traditional and contemporary art form and the talent of an artist who has master a unique style of woodworking. Traditionally, Northwestern woodcarvings were more abstract in style than Brian’s carvings. With his artwork, the animals represented are more easily recognizable as he embraces a more realistic iconography. All his work is hand carved on locally sourced wood, sanded and stained to add color or coated with a clear finish to protect the wood and enhance its beauty. His colour palette can go from a natural yellow cedar tone, to black, passing by red mahogany and some colourful blues. Brian explained to me how his colour palette is deeply connected to the different seasons. The reds and the blues are symbolic of spring and summer, while winter and fall are represented through an earth tone color schemes. For example, Brian represents the spring salmons in blue while the spawning salmons returning to their natal rivers are stained in vibrant a red, black or green. Brian also enjoys working with interference paint, an iridescent pigment that changes colour depending on the angle the artwork is viewed from. Traditional carving technique and subject matter are then brought together with a contemporary style and colour palette in Brian’s work to create a unique and personal view on the Northwest art.
It is essential for Brian Bob to create works of art in an honouring way, to respect and honour the life we have been given and to demonstrate the significance of the concepts of “Oneness with the Creator” and “Oneness with all Life”. His art practice is also a way of honouring and sharing his cultural heritage: “With my artwork I aim to create a window into the rich culture of my people. I like to honour the energy that my mother and the Ucluelet people passed on to me. And I would also like to mention how the Reflecting Spirit Gallery played an important role in honouring my cultural heritage and how it has always respected and encouraged the traditional teaching of our First Nations communities in a contemporary presentation.”
Title: Consumer - Ling Cod
http://www.reflectingspirit.ca/artists/brian-bob
