From performance artist beginnings to multi-media art
Kevin Griffin, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, June 26, 2008
The bed is a classic four-poster with a canopy, exactly the kind you might see in the bedroom of an early 19th-century colonial gentlemen.
In this case, the bed was the kind once found in The Grange, the first home of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. In the hands of artist Rebecca Belmore, the bed was modified — aboriginized you might say. She added human hair on the bedspread and beaver pelts on the canopy.
The bed was the centrepiece for Wild in 2001. In the performance, Belmore showed up unexpectedly at the gallery on Saturday afternoons and slipped under the covers.
Continue reading ‘Artist slips under sheets at all-night art party’
Terry Ko/Canwest News ServiceA photo of one of the Bill Reid pieces stolen from UBC’s Museum of Anthropology.
VANCOUVER — All but two pieces of celebrated Haida artist Bill Reid’s stolen artwork have been recovered after the execution of two search warrants in Burnaby and New Westminster over the weekend, police said Tuesday.
“After searching both residences extensively, all but two stolen Bill Reid art exhibits were recovered intact. The substantive items, including the most prized, which is the gold box with an eagle, were recovered,” said RCMP Inspector Brendan Fitzpatrick.
Three people were arrested during the searches, but they were later released. No charges have been laid.
Associated Press - June 6, 2008 7:04 PM ET
SITKA, Alaska (AP) - A totem pole that has stood in Sitka’s Totem Square Park for 70 years could be replaced with a younger model - one that puts some clothes on the man on top.
The figure is said to be Alexander Baranov, a governor from early 19th century Russian America.
Historians aren’t sure why, but they think he’s naked. It’s possible that the original intent of the pole was changed to ridicule the Russian leader.
The totem pole was meant to commemorate a peace treaty signed between Baranov and the Tlingit Indians of Sitka.
Baranov is wearing clothes in the original design by a Sitka man, but carvers in nearby Wrangell may not have added them.
A local member of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska wants to change that.
Bob Sam is proposing a new pole be designed that would move Baranov to a new position lower down on the pole but give him his clothes back.
Six artists have taken top awards at the fourth Sealaska Juried Art Competition in Juneau for best contemporary and traditional Native art.
The winners, chosen by juror Steve Brown, an artist and expert on Northwest Coast formline, are: Continue reading ‘WINNERS OF SEALASKA JURIED ART SHOW ANNOUNCED’
Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Indians gathering in Juneau, Alaska, today will get a chance to prove they’re directly related to one of the very first Alaskans - a 10,300-year old mariner whose bear-chewed bones were discovered a decade ago in a cave on Prince of Wales Island.In return, molecular anthropologists collecting the participants’ DNA hope to add to their knowledge about how the earliest Americans spread across the western hemisphere - possibly along coastal sea routes - in spite of the ice-choked plains.
Continue reading ‘Native Alaskans trace ancestry to 10,000-year-old skeleton’