Susan Point
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Native American Salish artist Susan Point did not take up art until she was in her late twenties, but since then has immersed herself in the study of traditional Coast Salish art and culture. She says: "Coast Salish art is relatively unknown to most people today as it was an almost lost art form after European contact -- the reason being that Salish lands were the first to be settled by Europeans. Because of this, over the years, I have spent a great deal of my time trying to revive traditional Coast Salish art -- and also attempting to educate the public to the fact that there was, and still is, another art indigenous to the central Pacific Northwest Coast". Point's striking and distinctive art -- from jewelry in precious metals to prints, paintings, and monumental pieces in wood and glass -- has won worldwide acclaim and a worldwide audience. An innovator with a strong personal style, she likes to express ancestral concepts and designs in media such as glass and bronze as well as the more traditional wood. "In creating my art", she says, "I feel a need to continually express my cultural background and beliefs yet, at the same time, my work continues to evolve with changes both within and outside of my community". Michael Kew describes the traditional art, culture, and beliefs of the central Coast Salish, which of all the Northwest Coast cultures is among the least familiar to the general public. Because much of the art was closely associated with private religious expression, it was seldom displayed or sold to collectors. Peter Macnair contributes an engaging and enlightening biography that looks at the artistic evolution of Susan Point. Bill McLennan briefly examines thetradition of housepost carving among the Coast Salish and Susan Point's interpretations of these large woodcarvings.
Charles Edenshaw
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This is the first survey of the iconic figure in Northwest Coast art- Charles Edenshaw. Bringing together the largest number of works by Charles Edenshaw ever assembled, offering a rare opportunity to view his legacy. Working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he was an exceptional carver of wood, silver and argillite, imbuing traditional Haida design with an innovative and elegant personal style. Recognized in his time as an outstanding carver, his work continues to be a great inspiration to those who visit the many prominent museums around the world that hold his acclaimed artworks in their collections. Not only do these remarkable objects tell us much about Haida culture, but they are truly sophisticated in their aesthetic achievement.Co-published by the Vancouver Art Gallery and Black Dog Publishing this is the largest retrospective of Edenshaw's work to date. The book sets up the Haida tradition and explains Edenshaw's Haida roots, including interviews with descendants from the region. Edenshaw's distinct style is addressed along with the issues surrounding attribution with the Haida artworks. Charles Edenshaw carved into wood, argillite and precious metals. His work has been collected by anthropologists and curators in an attempt to record Haida art and culture before it died. Other Haida artists in the tradition include Charles F. Newcombe, Franz Boas and John R. Swanton.Much attention is given to the legacy of Charles Edenshaw and the contemporary artists that he influenced, the book includes an interview with contemporary artists Raymond Boisjoly, Neil Campbell, Robert Linsley and Isabel Rorick. Edenshaw's work is photographed here in this first major monograph on the important Haida artist, ideal for anyone with an interest in Northwest Coast art.
Bill Reid
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According to eminent French anthropologist Levi-Strauss, Reid "brought Northwest Coast art to the world scene, into dialogue with the whole of mankind." In this artistic biography, Karen Duffek gives an account of Bill Reid's life and work and of his role as artist, innovator, and ambassador of Haida art. After describing the processes by which Reid came to reconstruct the formal rules of a complex artistic tradition, Duffek focuses on his mastery of new techniques, particularly in making jewellery, techniques which others now emulate. In the key chapter "Beyond the Essential Form," she uses Reid's own categories of his work as "copies, adaptations and explorations," to give a candid appraisal of his artistic achievements -- from massive poles to gold boxes, from intricate bracelets to the great bronze Killerwhale statue.
Robert Davidson: the Abstract Edge
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Shore to Shore
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Stanley Park, Vancouver, September 2014. A fourteen-foot bronze-cast cedar sculpture is being erected. Dignitaries from all levels of government are present, including leaders of the Coast Salish First Nations and representatives from Portugal’s Azores Islands. Luke Marston, carver/artist, supervises as his three-year project is revealed to the world. The sculpture--titled Shore to Shore--depicts Luke’s great-great-grandparents, Portuguese Joe Silvey, one of BC’s most colourful pioneers, and Kwatleematt (Lucy), a Sechelt First Nation matriarch and Silvey’s second wife. Silvey and Kwatleematt are flanked by Khaltinaht, Silvey’s first wife, a noblewoman from the Musqueam and Squamish First Nations. The trio are surrounded by the tools of Silvey’s trade: seine nets, whaling harpoons, and the Pacific coast salmon that helped the family thrive in the early industries of BC. The sculpture references the multicultural relationships that are at the foundation of BC, while also showcasing the talents of one of Canada’s finest contemporary First Nations carvers. Combining interviews, research and creative non-fiction narration, author Suzanne Fournier recounts Marston’s career, from his early beginnings carving totems for the public at the Royal BC Museum, to his study under Haida artist Robert Davidson and jewellery master Valentin Yotkov, to his visits to both his ancestral homes: Reid Island and the Portuguese Azores island of Pico--journeys which provided inspiration for the Shore to Shore statue.
Sonny Assu
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Rebecca Belmore: March 1819
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Dana Claxton
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Brian Jungen
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Brian Jungen is an artist who treats his dual cultural heritage as a resource, as a site for creativity. His work is complex and multifaceted in its exploration of cultural identity - whether national, international, or transnational. He plays with ethnographic conventions and undermines the cliches of contemporary globalized culture, making unusually beautiful objects that are located at the intersection between the readymade, appropriation, transformation and translation. This publication functions not only as a record of Brian Jungen's exhibition at Witte de With, but also as a textbook that complements and extends the existing writing on his work. Through a diverse range of approaches in essays by Edgar Schmitz, Jessica Morgan and Clint Burnham, and in an interview with Homi K. Bhabha, this book provides numerous coints of entry into Brian Jungen's artistic practice. Book jacket.
Kent Monkman
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Artist Kent Monkman's all-encompassing project, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, takes viewers on a journey through Canada's history, starting in the present and going back before Canadian confederation. Throughout the book there are clever albeit controversial commentaries told by Monkman's genderfluid, time-travelling, supernatural alter-ego Miss ChiefEagle Testickle. Her narratives takes viewers through the history of New France and the fur trade, the nineteenth-century dispossession of Indigenous lands through Canadian colonial policies, the horrors of the residential school system, and modern Indigenous experiences in urban environments. Shame and Prejudice challenges predominant narratives of Canadian history andhonours the resilience of Indigenous peoples. This book accompanies Monkman's largest solo exhibition to date, which is currently travelling across Canada at venues including the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the GlenbowMuseum in Calgary, and the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. The exhibition includes the artist's own paintings, drawings, and sculptural works, which form a dialogue with historical artefacts and artworks borrowed from museums and private collections across Canada. The book is trilingual with all text in English, French and Cree.
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
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For lesser known Indigenous artists, there may not be books published about their work. However, you may find reviews of their exhibitions and works in Canadian newspapers, magazines and journals.
Debra Sparrow
Charlene Vickers 
Bracken Hanuse Corlett 
Allison Carrie