Totems to Turquoise

Before there were swish art galleries with black beret clad patrons sipping expensive Bordeaux, people wore their art. Or, in the words of Jim Hart, Haida artist and chief, "For our people, what we wear is who we are. Our jewelry and our clothing represent where we come from. We wear our history."

A recent exhibit at the Vancouver Museum, the expertly curated "Totems to Turquoise" depicts how two distinct Native North American regions have been creating exquisite jewellery pieces for generations. The exhibit contrasts the colourful geometric forms of the Southwest desert tribes (Zuni, Hopi, Santo Domingo, Taos, other Pueblos, Navajo, and Apache) with the stylized mythic creations of the Coastal Northwest (Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, Tsimshian, Gitxsan, Nisga'a, Tlingit, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, Haisla, and Coast Salish).

Following on the footsteps of the VAG's Haida exhibit earlier this year, the Vancouver Museum depicts the mythology and background culture that forms the basis of the pieces, such as the importance of Raven the Trickster in Northwest Coast myths and The Spider Woman in Southwest. These are important figures in these tribes cosmology, and figure in jewellery pieces from the ancient to the contemporary.

For me what was interesting to see was how each region uses the colours and materials around them to express themselves. The Northwest Coast pieces are mostly done in the traditional red/black/white style that you see so often around Vancouver so as to take it for granted and this makes sense because it is a tradition of jewellery "carving", a craft that does not stray too far from that of totem pole carving or bent box carving. In the Southwest, the land of red rock and clear blue sky, you see a lot of pieces done in coral and of course turquoise, brilliantly coloured stones set in a careful mosaic to reflect the importance this culture places on having everything in balance.

The two distince styles are portrayed thematically for the first part of the exhibit, which I found very useful, but in the room showing pieces by master craftsmen, the Northwest Coast pieces were very much separated from the Southwestern ones and I found I got burnt out on one style after a few cases. So I walked back and forth a lot.

If you're interested in seeing jewellery by influential artists, Charles Edenshaw, Bill Reid, and Robert Davidson are all represented, who's style you will no doubt recognize, as well as Charles Loloma, Preston Monongye, and Kenneth Begay from the Southwest.

There are a lot of pieces in this show, and many of them are tiny so make sure you allow a lot of time to wander around and really take the time to see the components in each piece. The show will run until March 25, 2007 and if you go this week you can also check out the "No Place For a Lady" exhibit which has been held over until January 1st. The permanent exhibits are also well worth a look if you've never seen them.

Vancouver Museum
1100 Chesnut Street in Vanier Park
(in the Planetarium building)