Curator & Collector

Rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery in Vancouver, BC

During the recent 2010 “Winter”* Olympics, the Vancouver Art Gallery was open for free to the public; my wife and I saved ourselves about $37 by visiting the VAG, which also housed the BC Pavilion, at this time. The VAG has a no photographs policy, but makes an exemption for the beautiful rotunda under the dome. I’ve always liked the rotunda, with its bright light, high ceiling, and intimate horizontal dimensions. The building, which was originally a courthouse, was built by architect Francis Rattenbury. Rattenbury designed the best of the prominent, old buildings of BC, including The Empress Hotel and provincial Parliament buildings in Victoria, BC.

I couldn’t help noticing that the VAG appears not to have any references to Rattenbury on their website. Of course, the VAG also has no press release on its site detailing its attempts to move to much larger facilities elsewhere. Perhaps because I have some naively Philistine blood in me, I think the VAG should stay put in its present, beautiful, iconic location. The building may be a little small, but some of the temporary and very modern art installations might be considered a waste of space, and more than once I have felt that some of the modern art is embarrassed by the beauty of the rotunda. I’m all for expanding the Gallery, but not if it means removing everything from its heritage building.

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*The cherry blossoms had already been blooming, the sun was warm, and there wasn’t enough snow on the mountains. Some were calling it the “Spring Olympics.” Climate change deniers should take note!

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UPDATE: I’m pleased to see that I am not alone in my desire for the VAG to stay put; Miro Cernetig of the Vancouver Sun eloquently argues for the same.

Exterior of Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver, BC

Inside this small, unassuming building is a physical space that is his home to one of Vancouver’s oldest Anglican congregations and a number of artworks and artefacts of some significance. This church, which sits on Burrard Street in Vancouver’s downtown, was unlocked for the Olympics, when I visited it most recently.

Christ Church cathedral has always been special to me. I like the relative darkness of the interior, which reminds me of the even darker St. Thomas’s on Huron Street in Toronto; additionally, the colours and relatively small space remind me of St. Mary’s on Bathurst and Adelaide Street, also in Toronto. Christ Church is quite distinct from either of these, though.

For one thing, it houses a small collection of Bill Reid artworks, perhaps because the Bill Reid Gallery is located in the eponymous Cathdral Place immediately behind the church:

Bill Reid artworks

The atmosphere is warm and welcoming. Incidentally, according one person who showed me around recently, the roof is made to resemble the upside down hull of a wooden ship:

Christ Church Cathedral interior

Towards the choir

Of course, the organ, which is well-maintained and sounds magnificent in concert, is visually stunning:

The organ

The stained glass dates from different eras, but is always beautiful:

Stained glass window memorial to a military unit

As one can see in the full-size picture of the window above, the church is notable from a historical point of view as a “military church”; for one thing, visitors to the church can see, in a small room behind the choir, several memorials to the soldiers who died in World War I and also World War II:

The crowning glory, for me, though, is the visual storage cabinet showing the regimental flags of the Vancouver-area units that fought in WWI. Visitors can open the cabinet and see the regimental flags.

Christ Church cathedral, then, is a well-curated space that houses not only some of the military history of WWI-era Vancouver, but also a few of the artworks of one of Canada’s greatest artists. It’s a church whose memorials come from the community, and it exists for the community. Although I am no longer of religious persuasion, I’m very glad it remains an integral part of Vancouver’s city life.

Pierre Karlik’s 1980 work “Struggle for Survival: 9 Low Relief Sculptures of Games on Tooth”

While in the Northern House pavilion during the recent 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, I spotted this sculpture by First Nations artist Pierre Karlik. It proved to be one of the more popular artworks in Northern House, and all sorts of people stopped to admire and be intrigued by this sculpture in “ivory, granite, antler, wood, sinew.” Struggle for Survival seems, to me, to be a monumental work, perhaps a smaller, Northern equivalent to Bill Reid’s Spirit of Haida Gwaii–though perhaps with a more emphatic sense of humour.
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Obverse of the famous $1 million gold coin produced by the Royal Canadian Mint

One of the most popular exhibits at the recent 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver was the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion, which housed, in addition to the medals shown in the preceding post, the largest traveling coin in the world. I had previously blogged about this coin when it was touring the Middle East. At the time it was made, it was the largest, purest gold coin in the world. The Royal Canadian Mint actually makes these to order, so if you can afford the labour and the cost of the 100kg of pure gold (several times the face value of the coin), feel free to place and order and leave me a tip. The reverse of the coin, with a new take on an old Canadian symbol, is shown below.

Reverse of the $1 million gold coin

2010 Winter Olympics Medal co-designed by Corrine Hunt

As mentioned in the preceding post, I and several thousand other people lined up recently to see and touch the gold, silver, and bronze medals for the 2010 Winter Olympics. I’m not particularly a sports person, but partly because these medals were reputed to be so British Columbian, I spend eight and a half hours in line to see them. The experience was not disappointing, and the wait was worthwhile.

The medals were co-designed by First Nations artist Corrine Hunt,* and were produced by the Royal Canadian Mint. The undulating design of the medals was meant to recall the British Columbia landscape of waves and snow. When I first saw a picture of the medals some months ago, I remember not being ready; “that’s not how a medal looks!” I remember thinking. The design grew on me over the next while, particularly when I saw pictures of the Beijing Olympic medals, which are also atypical. At that point, I thought it appropriate that each country could feel free to give the Olympic medals a local flavour. When I saw the 2010 medals in person, though, I was converted completely. No picture can really do them justice. They not only look beautiful, they feel beautiful. Their textures are smooth, they are weighty, and they are very appealing to the eyes, with their undulating rhythms and surface designs of the Orca, depicted in modern, yet traditional lines of the First Nations of this part of the world. In short, the medals are definitely “West Coast.”

The reverse of the silver medal is shown below:

Reverse of silver medal from the 2010 Winter Olympics

I particularly liked the so-called bronze medal, which actually uses copper, a favored metal of many First Nations artists today. When I think of the bronze medals, I think of the two athletes who most inspired me during these Olympics: Joannie Rochette, who lost her mother two days before her two excellent skates, and Clara Hughes, the only Olympian to have won multiple medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics. It is a happy circumstance that sees such wonderful athletes receiving such wonderful medals in their own home country of Canada, and although Canada finished first in Gold, it was these two bronzes that inspired me most.

Obverse of 2010 Winter Olympics “bronze” (copper) medal

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*Ms. Hunt’s design in its entirety, the design that was the basis for the medals, may be seen in the background of the picture of her in the previous post.

Corrine Hunt, co-designer of the 2010 Winter Olympics medals

Today my wife and I went back to the Aboriginal Artisans’ Village, an event held during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Today, we met the 2010 Winter Olympic medals co-designer Corrine Hunt, who was selling her jewelry at the event. This brief meeting near the closing hour was very interesting for me; previously, I had read on the Royal Canadian Mint’s webpage that each medal forms a part of a design; nevertheless, having seen the medals in person, I felt that there would be too many of them to make up the design in question. Ms. Hunt confirmed for me that the medals, if taken together, would overlap with each other (and thus, each one still bears a part of the overall design). The actual design may be seen in the background of the above photograph.

Last weekend, I waited eight and a half hours to see and touch the Olympic medals; some might think that I and the other several thousand people that day were crazy, but the experience was definitely worth it. The next three posts will present the gold, silver, and bronze medals that I was able to see at that time.

Northwest Coast artist April White

It is, of course, the 2010 Olympics, and I am pleased to see an Olympic welcoming of the aboriginal art of the Northwest Coast in the public spaces of metropolitan Vancouver. On the weekend, I and my family took in several events related to the First Nations arts of the northwest Coast. Among the first of these experiences was a trip to Haida Gwaii House. There, I met April White, and saw her evocative work “Supernatural Beings” on the wall. (I hope I’m remembering correctly.) A similar work, which I particularly like, is shown below:

Image of “Killer Whale” by April White taken from AprilWhite.com

Although Haida Gwaii House was very small (one small room, essentially), I was very glad I went. I would love to travel to Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), and I was one of many people who entered a free draw to receive a chance at a trip for two to Haida Gwaii. It was also quite wonderful to meet Ms. White, and it was good for me to discover another Northwest Coast artist and her art.

Image of the Jody Broomfield-designed $3 coin, “Return of the Tyee”

Jody Broomfield, whom I met last week at the Aboriginal Artisans’ Village during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, was the one who created this beautiful design celebrating the return of the Tyee, or black salmon. This silver proof $3 coin was produced by Canada’s Royal Canadian Mint, and shows the salmon swimming in pairs. The circularity of the design mirrors the salmon’s association with the cycle of life (both its own and ours); the presence of paired salmon is regarded as auspicious in the art of the northwest coast’s First Nations.

It’s a great pity that at the same time as this salmon was produced, the West Coast salmon has suffered a dramatic and worrying decline in its numbers. I hope that government efforts, which are desperately needed, may be able to protect this fish so that we can indeed enjoy a return of the Tyee; perhaps Mr. Broomfield’s coin will help to raise awareness of the plight of the greatest west coast salmon.

Understanding the aboriginal art of the northwest coast is a worthy endeavor; fortunately, the first steps are not difficult. This post functions as a table of contents, or index, to the posts in my series on the formal elements of the aboriginal art of the First Nations of the northwest coast. The series took as its starting point Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast, by Hilary Stewart. The book is a concise, well-written and well-illustrated guide to the basic shapes and animals of northwest coast aboriginal art; additionally, Stewart covers, albeit briefly, the significance of the animals in the mythology of the northwest coast First Nations. After summarizing Stewart’s treatment of the various shapes and elements, and the use of negative space, there are three posts of my own in which I apply that knowledge to three selected Roy Henry Vickers artworks.

Part I: Understanding Native Art of the Northwest Coast
Part II: The Ovoid
Part III: U-forms
Part IV: S-forms and Split U-forms
Part V: The Negative Space: Crescents, Circles, Ts, & Ys
Part VI: The Animals of Aboriginal Northwest Coast Art
Part VII: Raven and Whale (Roy Henry Vickers artwork)
Part VIII: The Westcoasters (Roy Henry Vickers artwork)
Part IX: Solstice 2001 (Roy Henry Vickers artwork)

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Note: The collage above was created using Picasa, but this is a tool I wish Microsoft would put in its less clunky and more user-friendly Windows Live Photo Gallery; I’m not really happy with the collage, but my own skills are too weak in the area of manipulating graphical elements on the computer.

Solstice 2001 image from Roy Henry Vickers’ “Copperman: The Art of Roy Henry Vickers”

Solstice 2001 belongs to a period in Roy Henry Vickers’ art long after the highly traditional forms of Raven and Whale, and yet there is still much to be appreciated in terms of traditional forms and subjects, quite apart from Vickers’ own comments on the spiritual and cultural allusion of the snow and the dancer in the sky.

The centerpiece of the artwork is, of course, the artist’s Eagle Aerie Gallery in Tofino, BC. The gallery, built by Vickers’ brother Arthur Vickers, has a Roy Henry Vickers-favourite element: the eagle. The eagle has a beak that curves down sharply, the chief characteristic of the eagle in northwest coast aboriginal art. In addition, the eye, tongue, and mouth are shown traditionally. There are three black-outlined ovoid shapes in the eagle, and corresponding negative-space ovoid shapes also. The human face below the eagle’s head is depicted completely traditionally. The doors show upside-down U-forms. Moreover, the interplay between mountain and sky on the left takes the form of a flying bird’s wings, head, and beak.

It is in the shrubs and trees, though, where one realizes just how important traditional forms and ways remain to the artist. What looks at first like snow-covered vegetation turns out to be teeming with birds and fish. This might seem to some a little whimsical; when one knows of the role of negative space in traditional northwest coast aboriginal art, though, the birds and fish in the shrubs and trees acquire new significance. Curiously, in a stroke of artistic creativity, Vickers has inverted the usual significance of the colours in this tree (the one on the right): the outer line is white, and the inner, negative space, is black!

The presence of the birds and fish in the trees and shrubs around the man-made building speak to the unity of the world we live in, a world not of man-over-nature, but of humans-as-part-of-nature. The upraised hands of the doorway-figure point, literally and figuratively, above to a spiritual element. Perhaps the chief reason why this image speaks to me is due to this unity of nature, humanity, the divine, and hope–all clad in the peaceful, beautiful shades of winter grey, black, and white. The photograph of Eagle Aerie Gallery that serves as the header for this blog is my own attempt at a modest tribute to Vickers, his brother, and their wonderful northwest coast art.
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This blog post is the concluding one in my series on the forms of northwest coast aboriginal art; the next post will be an index or table of contents, and then I will be introducing two coins with aboriginal designs in the forthcoming posts. There is, of course, much more material to come.