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Two Wolves at the Dawn of Time (New Star $28)
In 1998 Dzawada'enuxw artist Marianne Nicolson scaled a vertical rock face in Kingcome Inlet to paint the 28 foot x 38 foot pictograph that marks the continued vitality of her ancestral village on the Kingcome River.
Pictographs are rock paintings most commonly done by Natives. Many pictographs are indecipherable even to ancestors of the artist. Knowledge becomes scarce when elders die, leaving no written explanations of the intricate and iconographic designs.
In Native cultures pictographs have a variety of functions, from signaling occupation to authenticating an event. Nicolson's pictograph is a modern and comprehensible work that incorporates traditional iconography taught by her uncle. It contains the image of Kwadilikala, a wolf origin figure still considered an ancestor of Gwa'yi villagers.
Nicolson invited Judith Williams, author of High Slack and Dynamite Stories, to observe the process of creation during several visits. Williams, a former Fine Arts instructor at UBC, considers Nicolson's work to be the largest and most finely painted pictograph on the coast in Two Wolves at the Dawn of Time (New Star $28).
After spending much time in the last remaining fully occupied Kwakwaka'waka inlet village called Gwa'yi, Judith Williams was also able to speak with a Gwa'yi man who attended the (illegal) potlatch that a 1920s pictograph commemorates. Molly Wilson allegedly undertook this large, two-part work in 1921 and 1927. (Potlatching was banned by the federal government in 1884 and actively suppressed as of the 1890s. This ban was dropped from the Indian Act legislation of 1951.)
The 1921 face of the pictograph portrays a Native copper. "It's a cross between a gold brick and a bank note,"; says Williams, "and it functioned as both an aesthetic piece and a system of currency in the Native economy.";
The 1927 side shows eleven white cows approaching the copper-an oddity for a culture that didn't keep cows. Williams unravels the story of this painting as the flashpoint of Native-White relations in the middle of the potlatch ban.
Williams believes that studying the limited information available on pictographs might lead to an enhanced ability to interpret other pictographs not yet dated or understood. Her concerns are both artistic and potentially political.
"I was delighted to find work in the wilderness,"; says Williams. "Pictographs are conceptually interesting-and not just as Native iconography-but as paintings period.";
After studying many paintings all over B.C., Williams discovered she could never stay fixed on the image; she was always looking back and forth between the image and the surface. "The art is embedded in the landscape; embedded in the stone,"; she says. "Observing pictographs, I find myself wondering where one goes with painting in contemporary art, with the notion of the flip between image and ground.";
Born in Vancouver in 1940, Judith Williams has been a member of the Refuge Cove Land and House Co-op since its inception. In High Slack (1995) she explored the conflict between Natives and newcomers in 1864 when entrepreneur Alfred Waddington tried to build a road from Bute Inlet to the Cariboo gold fields. 0-921586-78-7
[Lisa Kerr / BCBW 2001]
Pictographs are rock paintings most commonly done by Natives. Many pictographs are indecipherable even to ancestors of the artist. Knowledge becomes scarce when elders die, leaving no written explanations of the intricate and iconographic designs.
In Native cultures pictographs have a variety of functions, from signaling occupation to authenticating an event. Nicolson's pictograph is a modern and comprehensible work that incorporates traditional iconography taught by her uncle. It contains the image of Kwadilikala, a wolf origin figure still considered an ancestor of Gwa'yi villagers.
Nicolson invited Judith Williams, author of High Slack and Dynamite Stories, to observe the process of creation during several visits. Williams, a former Fine Arts instructor at UBC, considers Nicolson's work to be the largest and most finely painted pictograph on the coast in Two Wolves at the Dawn of Time (New Star $28).
After spending much time in the last remaining fully occupied Kwakwaka'waka inlet village called Gwa'yi, Judith Williams was also able to speak with a Gwa'yi man who attended the (illegal) potlatch that a 1920s pictograph commemorates. Molly Wilson allegedly undertook this large, two-part work in 1921 and 1927. (Potlatching was banned by the federal government in 1884 and actively suppressed as of the 1890s. This ban was dropped from the Indian Act legislation of 1951.)
The 1921 face of the pictograph portrays a Native copper. "It's a cross between a gold brick and a bank note,"; says Williams, "and it functioned as both an aesthetic piece and a system of currency in the Native economy.";
The 1927 side shows eleven white cows approaching the copper-an oddity for a culture that didn't keep cows. Williams unravels the story of this painting as the flashpoint of Native-White relations in the middle of the potlatch ban.
Williams believes that studying the limited information available on pictographs might lead to an enhanced ability to interpret other pictographs not yet dated or understood. Her concerns are both artistic and potentially political.
"I was delighted to find work in the wilderness,"; says Williams. "Pictographs are conceptually interesting-and not just as Native iconography-but as paintings period.";
After studying many paintings all over B.C., Williams discovered she could never stay fixed on the image; she was always looking back and forth between the image and the surface. "The art is embedded in the landscape; embedded in the stone,"; she says. "Observing pictographs, I find myself wondering where one goes with painting in contemporary art, with the notion of the flip between image and ground.";
Born in Vancouver in 1940, Judith Williams has been a member of the Refuge Cove Land and House Co-op since its inception. In High Slack (1995) she explored the conflict between Natives and newcomers in 1864 when entrepreneur Alfred Waddington tried to build a road from Bute Inlet to the Cariboo gold fields. 0-921586-78-7
[Lisa Kerr / BCBW 2001]
Submitted on June 25, 2003 in By David.
