Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;all_fakes, post: 3853748, member: 55&quot;]My own feelings are that there is not much controversy as such; but that individual artists who consider themselves Canadian may object to being called &quot;Native Americans&quot; and prefer the term &quot;Canadian First Nations;&quot; and vice versa. Other individuals may not really care; I personally try to be sensitive to the wishes of individuals, and often use both terms if talking or writing about the subject.</p><p>There is general agreement that the indigenous groups encompassed in the general term &quot;Northwest Coast Native Art&quot; include individuals and groups on both sides of the border, and certainly a particular family may have both American and Canadian members.&nbsp; Often the person may identify more with his or her particular sub-group than with a broader group (such as &quot;Duwamish&quot; rather than &quot;Coast Salish;&quot; &quot;Oweekeno&quot; rather than &quot;Kwakiutl&quot;).</p><p>As to colored vs. natural wood, it is not really the case that natural wood is more traditional; it varies by the type of item and the particular artist and his affiliation; and has changed over time.&nbsp; To some extent this is a matter of personal taste, for both customer and artist.</p><p>Items such as spoons in the past were often carved but not painted; but this is not an iron-clad rule, and has never been.&nbsp; Totem poles in the past often - but not always - had a mix of painted and unpainted areas; but in some groups, the tradition was to paint everything; and color usage has always varied both by tribal origin and individual taste.&nbsp; One could say that Kwakiutl artists generally use more yellow, and a color-scheme that might be considered garish for a Tlingit or Tsimshian artist, but I personally wouldn&#039;t call one color scheme more traditional than the other, if speaking generally about the entire Northwest Coast style.&nbsp; One Kwakiutl artist of the 1950s-60s had a catalog which specified that all her totems were available on commission either painted or unpainted.</p><p>At one time, an artist would usually chew salmon eggs and spit them into pigments as a fixative; once commercial paint became available, most artists began to use them.&nbsp; I personally wouldn&#039;t pass up a totem pole based on the use or non-use of salmon eggs in the paint. Likewise, there was a time when carving might have been done without iron tools; but most artists did not hesitate to use the best tools available to them.</p><p>Lastly, it is always true that traditions can change over time.&nbsp; One example: today, it is traditional for a Squamish artist to carve flat items intended to be hung on a wall, from soft pine, stained with a commercial stain.</p><p>But in the past, pine would almost never have been used for a carving; there were no commercial stains available; and the Northwest Coast Native carvers had no concept of decorative art, and never made anything whose purpose was to be displayed on a wall.&nbsp; Items made for use often displayed the family crests of the person who was the intended owner (not necessarily the same as the artist); and totem poles, one of the few items not intended for specific daily uses, still had a purpose, as did ceremonial items; and none of these were what a western person would call art, as such.</p><p>But I digress….[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in