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Northwest Arts Market Showcases Talent |
| Northwest arts market
showcases talent |
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| Posted: August 15,
2007 |
| by:
Chris Stearns |
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Photos by Chris
Stearns -- The Northern Star Dance Group was one
of the main attractions at this year's ''In the
Spirit: Northwest Native Arts Market and Festival.''
The festival was held the weekend of July 21 at the
Washington State History Museum in downtown Tacoma.
The Native Arts Market is sponsored and run jointly
by the Washington State History Museum and the
Evergreen State College Longhouse Education and
Cultural Center.(Bottom) Wasco artist Pat Courtney
Gold displayed her baskets at the recent ''In the
Spirit: Northwest Native Arts Market & Festival'' in
Tacoma, Wash. |
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TACOMA, Wash. - The second annual
''In the Spirit: Northwest Native Arts Market and Festival''
was held the weekend of July 21 at the Washington State
History Museum in downtown Tacoma. Each year the Native Arts
Market gives marketgoers the rare opportunity to view and
buy artwork in a single location from some of the top talent
in American Indian and Alaska Native art and design in the
Pacific Northwest.
The Native Arts Market is sponsored and run jointly by the
Washington State History Museum and the Evergreen State
College Longhouse Education and Cultural Center.
Tina Kuckkahn, Ojibwe, is the director of the Longhouse
Education and Cultural Center in Olympia. Kuckkahn is proud
of the Native Arts Market and sees the market growing in a
few years to not only fill the downtown History Museum plaza
but also the Glass Museum and Art Museum. ''We're very happy
with the growth of the market in just its second year. We
have had the opportunity to support Native artists not just
in the Northwest but also around the Pacific Rim.''
Kuckkahn added, ''For instance, we were able to bring in
Maori master canoe carver Takirirangi Smith from New Zealand
for our new International Residency Program. That in turn
gave Smith the chance to work on canoes with our local
Northwest tribal canoe carvers, which is really a once in a
lifetime kind of opportunity.''
Melissa Parr, curator for the Washington State History
Museum, added that ''without the support and contributions
of the Longhouse Center, we couldn't have done this
market.''
In fact, the market is just part of a larger effort to
showcase Native art and artisans in the Northwest. Earlier
this year, the Washington State History Museum opened the
second annual ''In the Spirit'' juried art exhibit at the
museum. The ''In the Spirit'' exhibit showcases the work of
32 of the top contemporary Native artists in the region,
including the husband and wife team of David and Lorene
Boxley, Pat Courtney Gold, Lillian Pitt, Jerry Laktonen and
Phillip John Charette.
This year, Pitt, Wasco from the Warm Springs Reservation,
took home the best in show award for her groundbreaking
sculpture of sandcast glass, ''In Flight.'' Other juried
award prizes went to Carol Grant Loomis and Linley Logan for
second and third place, respectively.
Artist Jerry Laktonen, who is Alutiiq, began art after a
career in commercial fishing in Kodiak Island, Alaska. His
work is contemporary carving based on traditional Alutiig
designs. Laktonen's work is on exhibit in the museum, but he
also chose to staff his own booth at the market. He
explained that the concept behind a large, intense and
gripping wooden mask called ''Mask with Fire on Top'' was
based on his view of the American Indian boarding school
experience and the mask echoed the patterns of abuse and
outrage.
Artist Lorene Boxley, Tlingit, also was a vendor at the
market where she exhibited many earrings, necklaces,
bracelets and pendants of abalone shell, as well as woven
baskets that she harvested in the southeast Alaska island of
Hoona, part of Tlingit territory.
Boxley said, ''A lot of people don't realize how dangerous
it is to work in abalone. The dust from the shell that comes
off when you are sanding or carving is highly toxic and can
permanently damage or even shut down your respiratory
system. Another thing people don't realize is that even
after you harvest the yellow cedar, the preparation of the
cedar for baskets takes two years, so when you see a
finished cedar basket, you are looking at a piece of art
that took over two years to make.''
Loa Ryan, who is Tsimshian, is another master basket weaver.
In 2006 she won a first place in her division at the Santa
Fe Indian Market. Her Tsimshian name is Balumnaech, which
means ''first sighting of the orca fin in the early
morning.'' Ryan studied under master weaver Delores
Churchill before branching out on her own. She calls her
work with cedar ''very rewarding'' and said she was ''very
happy'' with the market this year.
Pat Courtney Gold, Wasco, has just won a prestigious
National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for
the Arts. She is one of only 12 artists in the entire United
States to win the award this year. Gold also works with
baskets and will travel to the Library of Congress in
Washington, D.C., this September to be honored, along with
the other 11 fellowship award winners. Gold takes her
culture and tradition very seriously. In addition to her
basket weaving, Gold directed and produced a DVD in 2006
called ''Northwest Native Basketweavers'' to profile and
preserve the spirit and design of traditional Native arts.
With artists like Gold, Ryan, Boxley and Laktonen, the odds
are overwhelming that the Northwest Native Arts Market and
Festival will continue to grow and take its place as a
premier national destination Native arts market.
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