Other Voices, Other Rooms

In the past couple of weeks I started doing some internet research on the artwork of northwest native Canadian culture. I don't really remember what started it. Oh, I guess it was a section in The Gift about the potlatch ceremony in Haida tradition and the copper engravings they would make and trade as gifts. (The book, by the way, is a fascinating piece of prescriptive sociology wherein the author compares systems of gift exchange with those of commercial exchange and then goes on to show how useful it would be, for both artists and their audiences, to think of artworks as gifts rather than commodities. Check it out if you have any interest in art or economics or anthropology.) The engravings reminded me about those interesting repeated shapes in totem poles and other artifacts of the Pacific coast, how they fit together like psychedelic poster artwork of the 1960s, and how they often depict mystical animals inside of or attached to other animals.

So that got me all excited for awhile, and then while I was looking at some mind-altering Haida comics online (who knew such a thing existed? The Japanese, apparently.), I remembered a really great Dover colouring book I had as a kid, of North American Indian art. And then I recalled also having a calendar of black and white Inuit art prints. I hadn't thought about it in a long time, and the pieces I could picture from it struck me as weird and magical.

So, soon I was at the library, borrowing a book called Dorset 75, a 1975 annual collection of graphics from Cape Dorset in what is now Nunavut, and it was just the stuff I was looking for. I didn't know it before, but the Inuit began printmaking only in the late '50s after being shown how by a guy named James Houston who was trained in the Japanese style. That partially explains the look of a lot of this stuff, but the Inuit also have this inimitably naïve style that is elegant, childlike, and otherworldly all at once. I soon fell in love with the work of Pudlo Pudlat and Peter Pitseolak. I also have to show you this piece, because it just happens to be titled "Our Igloo"!


And then I discovered that the National Gallery of Canada's website has tons of fantastic prints you can look at online, with plenty from the golden age of the 60s and 70s. I've made a little video here of my favourite stuff from the two sources. There are a couple of black and white pieces whose look I'm hoping to somehow adapt for my alleged comic-in-progress. Also see if you can pick out "Thoughts of the Walrus" by Pudlo Pudlat, "The People Within" by Jessie Oonark, "The Woman Who Lives in the Sun" by Kenojuak Ashevak, and "Joyfully I See Ten Caribou" by Pootoogook.



Last weekend Alison and I travelled to Fredericton to attend, with my family, a memorial for my aunt Chooch. I told you about her in November. We were kindly driven there and back by my dad's cousin and her family. The memorial was held in the Charlotte Street Arts Centre, a large school that has been converted into studio and gallery spaces, largely thanks to Chooch's long and relentless pushing for it. I'm not sure how many people were there, but it must have been over 500. It was quite inspiring to see the great effect she had had on the entire arts community there. Many many people had thanks to give and stories to tell, including the local MP and New Brunswick's lieutenant governor. My dad also did a great job with the closing words. Ali and I returned home determined to get our asses in gear and consciously connect with our own community, rather than just enjoying our lovable but insular igloo.

The Shape of Your Absence

Bring me the bitter and frightened tears
of those who loved you best;
replace my own, too subtle in their flavour
ever to toast you fittingly,
full as they are of opportunity
lost and memories of your dog.

Even the friends and artisans
whose works and lives you still inspire
with an honesty and love that already survive you
(and, yes, the voice I suddenly remember)
can't parallel their view with them
who now must look ahead
into a brutal world more sad and alien
than anyone's mother should contemplate
or any husband dare consider.

Let me just observe them in a spoon
if I might not taste their salt,
that sympathy may train my palate's grief
and pain expose my heart —
I will not shrink from the gift
of their pure sorrow.

- Andrew