Curator & Collector

Resized image of the Arthur Vickers-made Leadership Desk taken from the Vancouver Sun

First Nations artist Arthur Vickers has designed and made a new “Leadership Desk” for the Premier’s Office in Victoria’s Parliament Buildings (see the story in the Globe and Mail, and also the story and photo gallery in the Vancouver Sun).

The desk is a wonderful work of art that was both built and painted by the artist. Vickers made sure that the grain of the wood went the same way all around the desk. The desk doubles as a bentwood box, and the lid comes off. There is also a place to put one’s legs, so the shape is, for a bentwood box, atypical and complex.

Resized image of the rear of the Arthur Vickers-designed Leadership Desk taken from the Vancouver Sun

Like his brother, Roy Henry Vickers, Arthur Vickers has a gallery on Vancouver Island, and has been inducted into the Order of British Columbia. The two brothers were born to an English-Canadian mother and a First Nations father.

Those interested in the aboriginal art of the Northwest Coast may also be interested to note that Vickers’ website is being updated, and includes several video clips scattered over various pages. I was particularly interested in Vickers’ retelling of the story of the circumstances of the birth of his older brother Roy in the matrilineal Tsimshian First Nations culture at Kitkatla:

The first-born, Roy, was coming along. And the chief in his wisdom at the time realized that if Roy was born, he would be nothing in the First Nations culture because his mother was not part of one of the houses of the community of the eagle, the orca, the raven, or the wolf. And so he threw a feast, and adopted my mother in early 1946. Of course Roy was born, and some fourteen months later I was born. And I don’t think I could think of a more amazing place to grow up.

The website is certainly worth a visit, as is, I believe, the gallery in Cowichan Bay, which I hope to visit for the first time in the future.