 Hi, my name is Luke Pornall and today I'm here to introduce North West Coast Master Carver Dempsey Bob Dempsey has taught and lectured and produced art through a Canada, the United States, Europe, New Zealand and Japan He was a leader in establishing the Frida-Decine School of Northwest Coast Art in Terrace, BC His work is in major collections in the the Canadian Museum of Civilization UBC's Museum of Anthropology The Colombian Museum of Ethnology, the Smithsonian Institute The National Museum of Ethnology in Japan, Canada House in London and the Vancouver Airport He has been featured in several video productions and publications such as the smart one in the hands of the Raven and Faces in the land with Dempsey Bob Carver He received non-array doctorate of laws in 2011 from the Athabasca University As well as an honorary doctorate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design He recently was named an officer of the Order of Canada As a master tell-ten-clink-it artist Dempsey Bob has contributed to the revitalization and Perpetuation of Aboriginal art in Canada for the past 30 years Today he is a celebrated BC Aboriginal artist and a dedicated teacher Ladies and gentlemen Dempsey Bob and we're gonna start off by showing Start start we're gonna start off by showing a 30-minute video. Thanks See it goes down to there, but it gets pretty slippery down here. It's a little rain forest here I'd like to come here and look at the mountains Trees just being in nature being out there. It takes a stress away from you, too You get too busy And then it calms you down It's a healing thing, I think This is the time that we go and get our wood for carving On this ornament. I did some drawings of little baby killer whales that are locking with large to large killer whales I put it on that house and we got some of our students to paint it We're going right back to the class of what was co-styled Growing up in Port Everett. There was no television. So we drew and we carved who used to carve our own toys That's where I got started. I quit for a while and then I went back 1969 I met Frida Deasingen Went to our class. I got except good shows and then I got my pieces in Ottawa the National Museum And I got some pieces in UBC People see it people see it and that's how my work got known when I was young I used to see faces in the mountains and in the forest and then I stopped talking about them because people thought I was weird And now being an artist I see them again That's when we lose living in a high-tech society. We lose that connection to the land And so that's what our students. This is our future generation We want to show that we have one. I've done a lot of teaching and Teaching to me inspires me and gets me going too The young people were trying to get across to the important the land is And how important our culture is. I look at my life now and it sort of things fell into place for me I was lucky. I think it's just a time. I Grew up in the 50s in Port Everett and there was a lot of elders there And they told us stories. I only wish I had listened more this beautiful woman And she took out his hat and all the fog went into his hat Then he found his way back to the village And then he found out that she had salmon So he married her to get the salmon And after he became wealthy He was treated her and so she left him and as she was leaving she called back the salmon that she gave him He said all the salmon and the smoke house went down to the creek came back to her And he was chasing after her and he's trying to grab her as he grabbed her she tried to fog What I do is I look at the shape of the wood of these ideas and then I Try to fit the one that fits into the piece of wood or shape And sometimes I let the shape of the wood Tell me what to make through the trees and mountains Because wherever you live affects the way you are and what you do Also the way you see I think an artist you got to be connected to the land Because the land is magic The land is spiritual our people have always been close to nature and We learn from the animals and we learn from the land We say like our ancestors, you know They go back to our land And that's what I see the faces of the land It's our ancestors who say that if you lose contact with the land Your spirit gets lost That's what inspires me like this mountain. I call it the magic mountain because it changes all the time Each time I see different faces here. You look at the mountains You look at the trees You look at the rivers everything's big This sculpture country technology was good wood Our people were extraordinary woodworkers, you know carvers and carpenters They did everything. I like to go and choose my own owner and I looked for trees that are in really good locations And ones that grow inside so that there's not very many knots for about 10 15 feet up and then branches out I'll find a nice shape tree and it saves a lot of time on the roughing and shaping of it Here to get the older one is dormant And so you really you really have to know your trees too You see the red stain on this wood. That's from the sack the sack comes up in the wood We say and what what happens now when the leaves are gone All the sap is out at the wood So it doesn't stain very much and what I'm doing here. I had a small Piece that I cut off the back of a mask and so it was so nice wood that I wanted to make something So I made this sort of small piece But now what I'm doing I'm taking it in to make it more sculptural to bring it out And what I did on the top was a little human part hawk Then the hawk here with his wings coming up here and then the eagle coming out of the mouth And then this is the human here and our traditional way is that we wear a crest on our on our forehead to show our clan symbols I get it to a point where It's almost like it it I Wanted to tell me how to finish it and then I do it and what I finish it. It seems like they They've got their own life then they have to leave The answer is that our art is old it's thousands years old and it comes from here They come from these forests they come from these mountains and they come from these hills Close now what I'm doing. I'm doing the final sanding and finishing and painting on it. This one's It's a raven That frog on top And the frog is the helper of the raven raven is a scripture and He was also a teacher to the stories where that's like what when he was traveling They said after the flood the people were very intelligent, but they started using it against each other. So See that the great spirits gathered the people all over the world different groups land on different mountains That's when we're about to light the world. I want you to have daylight represented knowledge Teachings you have to feed yourself, you know Happens as artists is you're giving you're giving all your energy goes into what you're working on And you get empty And you gotta fill it up with something to see the land to be in the forest They fill me up and then I'm good for a while again Most people like, you know, you work and work and work all your life and a lot of them You never realize what you really can do where your potential is And as an artist you gotta keep pushing keep pushing because like an art you can't just have talent Talent is cheap It's the dedication that's costly and the commitment and the hard work. You gotta be able to do the hard work It's really nice when you start to get it close and It's like it's you can see the progress on it and it's getting better. It looks more real If you piece like this one, it's it's nice to get it close and finished I don't want it to paint to take away from the sculpture So I'll just paint the eyes And I don't know I just sort of be out using less and less paint I have my own style, but it's hard to explain This is the eyes I think. I've been trying to carve these eyes I've seen For 20, 30 years now, it's become my style Most people are blind. They look but they don't see Artists train themselves to see and feel If you find your style, if you find your art You got to go where nobody has gone and you got to go by yourself As artists you can go so far in your learning but eventually you got to go your own way The hardest part was getting it inside of this Taking that out Getting a nice shape in there and thinning it. That was the tricky part I'm getting the nice shapes in there like Sweeps and the depth. You have to get the depth in the right places Our people from our culture Because we're all connected. We're connected to the animals. We're connected to the environment Time to revive the art and if we don't teach, it could be gone in another generation So we're passing on what we know. It's like my whole life has been teaching the carving And if we don't pass this on, what does my life mean? There's the contents of society and great art comes from good people, great cultures And I realize what art doesn't lie If it's not in you, it's not in you either Like when I'm carving, it's like there's somebody with me What I'm doing, I'm carving for my teachers and I'm carving for my ancestors And I'm carving for my grandfather and I'm carving for my people that we're allowed to That's why it's important. It's a big responsibility I realize like this gift that I have, it's not given to everyone So you've got to use it and use it well I share it I'm carving about 1969 And when I started, I didn't say I was going to be an artist And I started with a lady called Frida DC And she was an incredible teacher And I was lucky because I was ready to learn And as a small child, we used to carve and pour whatever We had no money, so we carved our own toys And there was no television, there was no computers, there was nothing And we drew And we listened to stories from our ancestors, from our elders And I was lucky, I was born into this family, like my grandmother is clinkett, she's from Atlan She comes from the Ward family Her father's name was Judson Ward And he was a clinkett carver from Huna, Alaska And he made the goat horn spoons and the sheep horn spoons And he made things for my grandmother when she was a small child My grandfathers are from Talgraf, Taltan So my mother's part Taltan, part clinkett And my grandfathers are Taltan And on my grandmother's side, we're all clinkett And I was lucky, I was born in this family because my grandmother's mother was a basket weaver too So I got some stories from my grandmother and from my grandfather Johnny Sinkoots And I was lucky, I listened to the stories And this is one of the stories he told me of the first mask, this mask He told me a story about a man, they called him the smart one because he kept the stories He was the keeper of the stories And I seen him one day and I just drew him out, like I'll draw all the time And I don't say, well, today I'm going to be creative I live it, I think about it all the time, I keep it in the back of my mind And what I do is like, I know certain things that work for me, like I read a lot I find if you stop learning as an artist, you stop being an artist And a true artist, you have to master drawing, you have to study And you have to do a lot of work, you have to do the exercise And what I realized that, like in our school, the best drawers are the best painters The best drawers are the best carvers, because the drawing trains you to see That's what I'm talking about seeing Like that mountain I was talking about, I brought my Mari friend from New Zealand, Darcy Nicholas You know what he saw in that mountain? He saw Mari faces And he saw a Mari dog, a war dog that they used to use in the war And he went back and he painted that And this guy, like what I realized in art, like I went to New York I went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York Early in the morning, I went there early because there's 10,000 people there So I went early in the morning and I looked at Monet's water lilies And the light was hitting it just right And you know what I saw in those water lilies? I saw masks, hundreds and hundreds of masks And I was just struck like this, oh he smoked and I started looking I was looking at all these masks and then he sort of, I snapped out of it like that And I said, he didn't paint masks, he didn't know any masks But I saw what I knew And that's what I meant, that you only see what you really know In art and life too And if you don't train yourself to see, it don't wait for you And it won't even look at you And that's what artists do, you have to train yourself to really see And I was lucky because I had Frida and Frida made us learn how to draw We had to learn to draw And how Frida did it for me was that she sent me to Alaska to teach And then I realized, like talking to Phil Genzi, he said You know, we actually taught for nothing Because when we went to Alaska, I had to carve them a mask to be able to teach in their, in their, at the museum I had to carve them a mask and give them a mask to teach And I had to do it in one day But I did it Anyways, those pieces we gave them are worth more than we ever got paid for So that's why Phil Genzi said, we get, we work for nothing And he said we did it because Frida told us to He said, because Frida said, and we went And I realized now why she did it for me because that's where my people are too I've got relatives in Alaska, on the clinkett side On the clinkett side And I met some and I started working with them And I learned some of our songs and our stories And it was really great opportunity for me And what I realize now is that she was really smart because that made me do my homework I was drawing and drawing I learned to draw a salmon from a little girl that was about 10 years old in Hoonah, Alaska And they could really draw Because she had innocence and she had the wonder and she was just open And I learned how to draw an eagle's beak from an elder there that made blankets He showed me how to draw the eagle's beak But I learned, I went there and I learned And a true artist is this You have to do your homework There's no other way Because what happens, the truth of art today is that You can't mature as an artist if you didn't do your homework And that's the truth of it all And that's why there's so many problems Artists have so many problems, you gotta do your homework And how I did my homework was teaching the children Drawing and drawing and drawing That's what Vincent Van Gogh meant that you have to draw like your life depended on it Because artists have always been seeking the magic line The magic line is the perfect line It's the line that has life The trouble with most sculptures today, they're like this They're stiff and they got no life It's because people can't draw You gotta get that motion in there The motion, the movement, the proportions Everything is in the drawing Drawing is a foundation of art It's a language of art That piece, the smart one I did that one about 1989 I got the idea and I drew it down In the morning, real fast I'll draw it, sometimes I'll draw eight hours just drawing Things will come to me Sometimes I'll think about a story Or somebody will tell me a story Or I'll see something, I'll see something in the clouds Sometimes sometimes in the water Sometimes on the mountains And then I'll start seeing things And it's sort of like These images start coming to me And I'll start drawing down real fast I find you gotta do it really fast Because you lose that feeling I try to draw really fast And I just get some real gas Then I clean them up later And then I'll work on them And what I've been doing with this one here I started that piece And then I was working in my basement And I had a workshop bench And I had a little light, a little window I put them on there And I went up to get some coffee And I came back down I turned the lights off And he was sitting there in the dark And I was just gonna turn the light back on And I looked at him And he was looking at me really strong And I said, holy shit, he's there So I just left him I just left him And then I sort of just let him finish himself I just I studied him And I let him finish himself And then I realized when I finished him That he was smarter than me Because he ended up exactly the way he wanted to be And then I thought about it He's better than I ever thought he would be And he was bought by a collector That was on the board of the Museum of Modern Art And he bought out one of my shows And he bought 40 pieces He bought 40 pieces of my work And he didn't even come He just sent his agent to buy it But This guy When I look at him now He looks totally different From what I thought Of what I did What I worked on him But that's the way it's supposed to be, I think But now I think I'll be remembered by him The smartphone Okay I did this mask, it was a wolf mask It's one of our stories about the wolf And it's about the woman that She ridiculed the wolves And she married a wolf And it's part of our history of our clan How we got the wolf and our family And that's one of the wolves Sons riding on the wolf headdress That's made out of alder That mask when I finished it Is the raven and the frog mask Most of my pieces are made out of alder And When I work in alder I work in green when it's wet And we get it when the trees are dormant And I do a lot of I study the trees too You got to know the trees You got to know the wood You got to know where it grew Because if it grew in the water It's going to be rotten in the middle If it grew out by itself There's too many limbs Too many knots Too many branches are broken inside the wood So you won't get good wood So you got to know the trees too These masks I did for a show It was at the Grace Gallery And this is the show that I sold the whole The whole collection to one collector When I work on ideas Like I'll start this one here That's actually a spoon The frog is a spoon It comes off of there And this is a piece bowl with the raven and the frogs And this was one of my nicest designs I went to school in 1972 In Hazelton, British Columbia And then I had to drop out We were starving And I had no money So I went back in 1974 And I did the advanced carving And after that I just studied it myself And as art is You got to keep You got to find your own way And that's what I've always done Because like I'll talk a little bit about My family and about When I went to school Why we left our home was because they They were trying to take us To the residential school That's why we left And They took my My older brothers and sisters And Why I teach Because we weren't allowed to do it And I said why Why should we let our beautiful art die That's why I'm teaching Okay I worked in jewelry I've done a lot of jewelry too And I've taken some of my sculptures And what I've realized That you've got to learn sculpture Sculpture is what gives things life The depth The feeling And I found that I like jewelry but I love sculpture And what I think you have to do What you do best And the sculpture is always Always with me I felt it And When I got into jewelry I did it for quite a while And then I decided that I was going to go into Sculpture because I was going to do jewelry when I got old Because jewelry too It's an art form And if you're going to be good at jewelry That's all you're going to do And if you're going to be good at sculpture That's all you're going to do Okay I got into bronze too I went to Italy And when I was over there I met this guy from Australia And he said, you know, like What are you doing here? Why did you come here to be like Michelangelo? And I just looked at him Because some really bad was going to come out Because I can't be Michelangelo You've got to be who you are I'm a Telfed I'm a Klinkett artist You know who I am And that's who I am And I could never be Michelangelo And why? Why should I be? What I want is to learn their techniques Just to put it into bronze Because I need a new challenge I probably did about 600, 700 carvings in wood And I think you've got to change Or you're going to go crazy This one high to artist He said, you know, if I have to carve Eagle and Raven bracelet I'm going to puke, he said And that's how I felt too When I was doing earrings I couldn't do them anymore I was going to puke And at Christmas time All the women, that's all they wanted Was earrings But I was lucky too Like I met some really good artists And I participated like at Commonwealth Games In 1978 in Edmonton And I worked with artists from Australia, England All the Commonwealth countries And we lived together And we told stories Like our stories, I told our stories And I've seen the familiarity Of all Indigenous peoples All over the world And so I've always been interested In traveling and sharing And I've been working now With the Maori from New Zealand Because their culture is so slimmer To ours And now, you know Like starting the school I felt that Prita Didn't get her full recognition As an artist So we named the school after her And because traditionally Women in our culture They didn't carve And women didn't even come around The carvers while they're carving That was our tradition But she was the only school We had, she was the only Place we could learn And Prita was our thread And anyways What Phil said about the teaching In Alaska was he said that We did it for the love of Prita That's why we did it All that teaching And she was smart too Because like what Prita did to me Was like after I got to Kasan And then she said I kept trying to learn from her And then one day she kicked me Out of the nest anyway She said, I've taken you That's the way you got to go by yourself And that really made me mad Because she kept teaching Donnie Omens So I was always competing with Donnie Omens But anyways That was the best thing she could have done For me because I realized that I had to find my own way anyways And then I had to Find my own art And my own truth And it's like art is like this It's like It's like the blues You can't play the blues if you didn't live it What are you going to say? What are you going to express? You've got to know that You've got to have the feelings You've got to have the experiences You've got to have the knowledge You've got to have the talent But you know like talent Is only a part of the gift There's about three parts Four parts of the gift The other part of the gift Is there's knowledge There's a work ethic And the other part is passion You've got to find your own passion And your own passion has to be real Otherwise you can't only go so far And then you're stuck And actually I think In a way artists you actually hold yourself back It's even your lifestyle It's your thinking It's even your learning It's like what I'm going to try to do Is something really different I'm going to make this sculpture really different Sometimes I'll start it upside down I'll start it upside down Because if I start it the same way And use my same processes It looks like my other work It looks the same as my other work So what I do I try to trick myself Into thinking different And starting it different And inventing whole new ways of working So it ends up different again And that's really tricky Because if you fall back on what you know It looks the same again Because you're using your same processes So these are some of the challenges I challenge myself I always try to challenge myself Like when I'm thinking about ideas Like for bowls or masks I think about bowls inside of bowls And I've made masks with rattles inside of rattles Inside of the bowl Inside of a bowl And I've made rattles inside of masks In sculptures I try to think really different And I draw a lot And what works for me On the creative part Is I read a lot I read all kinds of stuff And I find it gets me going Gets me going I'm going to read about other artists too And it inspires me And I travel I like going to New Zealand And when I come back from there I'm energized I'm renewed And I can work again And I'm filled up again And that's why I go there Okay I've been making these pieces And some of them are getting longer And some of them are getting bigger too But this is all I don't know why I like carving frogs I don't know But my grandfather told me a lot of stories And as children You're not supposed to mistreat them And if you do You get bad luck We call it awi Which means it's really bad And you're going to get punished Okay I did the fog woman And I carved her in a year And I took me one year to carve her And I spent all my time with her And she ended up different But it's a story It's a story about the raven And the salmon And the fog woman had two beautiful daughters And they were so beautiful That's why the salmon Come back to the rivers to spawn Just to see them one time Before they die And she had this basket That you could put her hand in And take out a salmon And that's her basket You'll see on the side there And we say when she combed her hair She combed out salmon out of her hair And that I used her hair as water And that was the hardest part Is to get the hair to look like water But I've done about 20 big totem poles And I wanted to do it Just a three dimensional sculpture So I did the fog woman She's 6'8 and the raven Is carved out of red cedar I moved the raven away from her Because he was He's a little bit taller than her And he was sort of dominating her And they wanted me to put her on this pedestal But I said no So we moved him We moved him down finally But we say that she lives at the head of the creek And that she's carved out of yellow cedar And raven's carved out of red cedar The red cedars are a spiritual tree They're a spiritual tree And yellow cedars are One of our main, main carving wood It's one of the best carving wood Okay I've been doing these sculptures now And they gave me this piece of wood In New Zealand And I had this idea in my head And it didn't work It couldn't work I was going to do a warrior The theme was we were doing warrior sculptures And I wanted to do a clink at warrior With his helmet And his visor and his face And so what I did was I switched it And then I could get the scale That I wanted in it And from that I started I started these sculptures They're like wall sculptures They're quite large And I had this one dream one time And I seen this mask And the faces were bubbling up Right over the top And right around the back And it was like It was like It was like It was like It was coming out all over the place And ever since then I've seen how the pieces went together How the faces fit How they should go How you could draw them How they would fit into the piece And that's what I've been doing With this piece here Like there's an eagle transforming there And there's an eagle up top And humans And these are transformations Down here too Faces I see them And they come to me Sometimes just before I go to sleep though I'll start seeing these things And I have to get up and draw them Otherwise they don't leave me alone And sometimes if I don't do something They turn ugly So I gotta get up and draw Okay This is a birch It's about And it's gonna hang It's gonna hang And it's a beaver It's hollow inside It's hollow inside And I thinned it all out And I glued it all back together And there's a woman on this side here This birch comes from Saskatchewan I've been working with some artists out there We've been working together On different sculptures This piece is quite long It's quite long It's all frogs again too I'll get an idea I'll start like I started on top I've seen this big guy I've seen him first And then I'll I'll start fitting it in Sometimes I don't draw the whole thing But I have an idea I'll have an idea in my mind And what I do is if I don't I don't make it Final the design I'll change it If I have to change down here I'll do it If it's going to get better The only rule is it's got to be good It's got to be better I'll do it I'll leave my mind open until I get it Close But I'll draw this whole thing on Just freehand And I find that's the best way To work is freehand Right on the piece You're not working with a drawing A flat drawing Trying to wrap it around it You're working right with a piece And here's a bear mother story And that the bear on bottom The bear mother and the cub there And I carved this I carved him right through Like I sculpted him right out Right out of the piece And I've been getting into These little sculptures And trying to push it Really push it And you see how it emerges From the wall These sculptures are just emerging From the wall But I'm using sculpture Still coming from our tradition But stories But pushing it in a different way And it's a different challenge And what I'm doing now Is like if it's not a challenge To me I don't want to do it I just don't want to do it This one here I started this one And we're going to do a collaboration With one of my Maori friends But it didn't work out And I went downstairs And I drew the top The eagle on top With a little man He's traveling, he too And the eagles are stories The eagles came from the north Came from our culture From our people in the north And that's the eagles That's the eagles coming That's the little guy In the bottom there with the eagle He's holding the eagle And the little man in the bottom I probably did about 20 totem poles now And so What I've been trying to do now Is I've been trying to change And challenge myself And I've been working on Some different bent boxes now And panels and all kinds of Carvings I've made Probably I said about 600, 700 pieces In wood And what I'm doing now Is I'm working with the Maori Experimenting with their wood And learning from them Learning their tools They use a lot of chisels And gouges We use our traditional Adzes and bent knives And what was really neat About Frida was She taught us our traditional tools With the bent knives and traditional Adzes We didn't have no money to get them So What we did was We just made our own tools We made a lot of our own tools And I was, you know, like myself When I started I didn't say I was going to be an artist I just sort of Kind of led that way And now I realize too Like my grandmother My mother They told me stories And they kept telling me stories That I was going to do something But they didn't know what it was And now I realize now That they They told me all those stories Because they knew I was going to do something And they knew I was going to be an artist And I don't know how they knew But they knew And they chose me and they did it And I remember those stories And that's what I've been carving That's what I've been doing And, you know, people Just want to talk about contemporary and tradition They always want to put us in the traditional Side with the dinosaurs But we don't fit Because if you understand Northwest Coast art It's some of the greatest Sculpture ever done At any time, by any nation At anywhere in the world That's how great it is And the modern artists Were inspired by Northwest Coast Not only Northwest Coast But it was valued art African art Because it was great art Great artists are not inspired by junk And what they stole from us Modern art stole from us Is freedom Freedom of forms Like our pieces One story could be a mask Could be a bowl Could be a song Could be a story Could be a canoe And, you know, we talk about modern art This is some of the things we talk about As artists, okay Like, I talk with artists all over the world Like, we had these discussions Like in England, New Zealand, Japan, London What was modern art in the beginning? Modern art was the Rebellion against the institutions And teachings of that time Like, what if Vincent Van Gogh came back And seen what we're teaching? Because what he rebelled against And what he died for Has become the institutions Of today Think about it So how do you teach rebellion? You can't teach rebellion That's the government side And, you know, that I think about our pieces Like, when you understand Really understand our old pieces They were more contemporary than us When we talk about contemporary art Or traditional At one time Everything was traditional Everything Was traditional To that time And everything was one time contemporary To their own time of making When they made that art It was contemporary to that time It became traditional through time And use and belief and acceptance of the people That's what makes it traditional Also When you talk about Traditional And contemporary now If you really understand art True innovation Has to come from tradition It has to come from the traditional art forms It's like this Like if you think about Picasso and those boys Their ancestors were the Greeks and Romans Their tradition was the European art history and theory So That was their tradition They knew that tradition They could draw you or me perfect But they chose to do this And they could make it work Because they knew their tradition They came from that tradition And they were great artists To be able to do it In a new form In a new idea New way And that's what they did And that's what my people did too If you understand our art now The great old art pieces They're in New York They're in Moscow They're all over the place They're in St. Petersburg and Russia But that is some of the greatest sculpture ever done If you understand it It's like they were more contemporary than us And if you understand now what's happening today We're actually the primitive ones Because we got the tools But we don't have the knowledge We don't have that knowledge That they had And that's the difference That's the difference And what we've been trying to do Is just try to get back to that level To the level of our ancestors But I don't think we'll ever get there I mean, wow Maybe somebody will get close Maybe, I think But I think like My idea now is I'm thinking about where would the art have gone If our people didn't stop If they didn't stop for all those years Where would it have gone And I want to go there When you think about it There's nowhere else to go And what I meant about You have to go your own way That's where your truth is That's where your style is But you got to earn it And it's by your study And it's by your hard work It's by your experiences It's by your learning It's by your pushing Because art, great art Comes down to the individual It comes down to the individual The knowledge, the talent The hard work You got to be willing to do the hard work And you have to earn it Because if you don't truly earn something in learning It's not yours And you don't understand it anyways You can't give it to somebody They have to understand it in their own way And that's what true learning is And that's what we're trying to give people But they have to accept it And they have to learn it And I was lucky I was a teacher And then I studied it myself too Like I always said I went to art school at the Prince Rupert library That's where I went to art school And I just studied people I liked If I didn't like them And if I thought they weren't truthful I didn't read them I didn't study them But I studied sculpture And I studied our history too And our stories And I was lucky that I met certain people in my life And I listened And I had this I was born into this family And of artists And I was lucky too that My mother told me stories And my family supported me And all the things that I did My brothers and my sisters And I was lucky that Frida came along when she did Because after that She changed my life She changed my old What I was going to do And I was lucky that She was a great teacher Because teaching there's It's an art form too People know stuff But they can't teach it Great teachers have a certain gift It's a gift But art's a gift too But it's a curse too Because you got to live it And when you're shopping on Saturday I got to go carving You got to do it That's the difference A true artist you have to do it There's no other way And that's what I mean And you got to live it too And I was lucky This is a story I tell My students That there was a lady She was outside a Penn Station And she was asking this policeman How do you get to Carnegie Hall And that's when you got to do an art too And this other one too This guy You know how people are always waiting For their boat to come in And said well If your boat doesn't come in Swim out to it And that's your knowledge That's your learning That's all the things you got to do For yourself Or you're never going to get there And that's some of the things I think art is We call it the magnificent struggle Because that's what it is It's frustrating It's hard You don't know why you're doing it sometimes And you don't know why you have to do it But I have to do it And that's part of my gift And I think about myself now Like I want to I want to do what I really know And in life you only do You only use about 10% of what you know I'm trying to use what I know now I've been busy learning all these things Over these years Just learning all these things And I actually learned by teaching Like from my students Giving my students projects Like I teach a spoon class And I make them do 20 different spoons So by the time we leave I know how to do 20 different spoons Plus I learned from those spoons How to do another 20 different spoons Because I figured it all out in my mind I figured it all out And that's what I do That's what I do when I draw I'm figuring out I draw like a sculptor I'm figuring out designs How things fit How things work How the lines go Scale The movements Forms I've been to a lot of different museums All over the world Because I love art I just love sculpture And I love to learn And I love to That's why you should look To really look Because there's so much there There's so much So much to learn, so much to share I did about Like I've been to Europe About eight times And I've been to Japan About three times And I've been to New Zealand nine times And I'm trying to quit now It's too far Though it's time, eh Like it's a time It takes a lot of time to get there And then I want to be working I think about my time Is valuable Because You only get so much time And I've been lucky like And I got to do my work My work calls me so And what I was talking about The land where you ever live Affects the way you are Who you are The way you see The way you think The land is spiritual to us That's why We live there That's why we teach there It's our home too Those things inspire me And you've got to find things that inspire you That really inspire you And things that work for you Like myself, the teaching Gets me going too Gets my mind going And also the The drawing I draw all the time It's It's an exercise for me now Like if I get an idea I'll sketch it down Really fast I'll try to get the essence of it And then I could always develop it I always think I could make it better I could always get it better And when I do these things too I forget them I try to forget the pieces that I've done I forget them Because what happens is They'll come back and I don't show my pieces in my house Because they'll come out Those images will come out In my new things Somehow And it affects me It affects me Those things affect me So I just I don't show them And then What I do now is I I hide them Or I'll put them somewhere else Anyways Things affect you And you have to find the right things So What I did was I I know what I like And I know what I'm looking for And then I'll go there I'll go there and I'll search I One of the best times of my life Was teaching in Alaska in the 80s Because people just wanted to learn And we shared so many good things So many things And that's how I actually Done my homework By teaching And that's why Frida was smart She was smart because She made me do it And She knew I had to do it And I'd have to do my homework And I did Because You know To really mature as an artist You have to do your homework And you have to know your You have to know a lot of things You have to know more than A university professor of art At our school Like our school At Frida Deasing School It's a really unique school Because We're real artists I mean we're really Practicing working artists And we've carved All these things We're talking about We've carved them We've made them We've taught So that's why Our school is so unique And it's a really I think about it now It was Frida's dream And we're living it And we're doing it And I just want to ask you If you've got any more You want to ask any questions I'll try to answer them Because I think I talked enough I got a whole bunch of other stuff To tell you But I don't have much time I don't think Yeah Is there any questions You got any questions? The way the natives The way the people Started to carve Essentially You mean the old one changed? Yes Yes, your form line Because in your mask You had eyes Done in a very Traditional ancient Flat form line style And you have developed Your own hooded eyes That is more sculptural And not flat And I'm wondering where Where you think that the Ancient form line style Which is shown now in In two dimension On your Houses And elsewhere But where form line originated Big question I just wanted to know Your opinion of Where the line Sculptural And lines came from that style That's so unique to the west coast Nowhere See nowhere else in Africa Or anywhere Yeah Aside from the Marys Yeah, that form line style It's really unique It's I think What I've studied It comes I think from the If you go way, way back And you know the petroglyphs The petroglyphs had some Beginnings of that The forms The really old forms And those are really, really, really old And then the painting style came But I think it came from those Stone petroglyphs forms And then there were some shapes In nature too Like see, like some shapes To us They're spiritual too But we don't really talk about them You know, but that form It's a spiritual shape to us too We use them for certain Like for the eyes And for the joints And they were like Energy in them too And spiritual power And those forms too It all comes from nature, yeah Yeah But I think it developed through the carving The form line had to develop Through the carving Yeah Yeah, that's pretty tricky too Because like, you know Like when you talk about it Like the abstraction There was all great art forms Actually they move into abstraction And Northwest Coast was already there You know, like in the bent boxes In the designs In those traditional flat designs That was all abstract And some of the forms that we don't know We don't know what they are Because they're so old That all the people are gone You know, from that time You know what I mean So a lot of those things Like those shapes We don't know where they originated Or where they came from But they came, you know Our style is from the north You know, the northern style Is the Tlingit Haida in the Simpsons That's considered the northern style And our style comes You know, originally They painted on They painted on hides That's how the robe started And then when they got the blankets From the paintings They cut the applique And they got the cloth And then the buttons They used them But you know The Avaloni shells on the buttons Those were spiritual to us too It was a symbol of wealth too And so when they got the trade buttons You know, they went to town too Because they could make so much more They could do so much more But they were always adapting the art forms They were always adapting and changing Because when you think about it Like innovation At that time was survival Like say in the canoe technology If you don't make it proper You're gonna die That's it And a lot of those things Depended on it And you gotta know your trees You gotta know the trees You gotta know how strong that tree is You gotta know so many different things Any more questions? Here, Dancy Over here? Yeah I'm wondering At what point Does the mask Become alive And an entity onto itself? What, for me or for her? That's what I've been trying to do all my life I think it's in the finishing It's gotta be finished proper You gotta push it so far You know, and you gotta have You have to know how to draw first And it's like this What I think about art is like this You gotta have it in here If you don't have it in here You can't put it in there It's like trying to give a child Something you don't have You have to have that knowledge And that feeling in here Because art is like, it's a belief If you don't believe it If you don't believe in your work You don't believe yourself Nobody's gonna believe you Nobody's gonna look at you And that's a tricky one too Because I'm always pushing it But I think it's at the end It's at the end You know, when he starts to look back at me That's what I know he's done I just finish him Just leave him Because who am I I think about it like who am I To judge him, you know Who am I Because if you look at the old great Mask, they had life And that's what the modern art Is seen in our stuff Is the life in those little carvings Those little ravens, little eagles Little masks and animals Had great life in it We've been trying to do as artists To put the life into them Because art has to have life It's not only has to have life It has to have power too It's got to have its own power And like how do you do that? Like when I was in Copenhagen I liked the blues I just loved the blues You know, it got sold Blues got sold Anyways, these guys took me To this Mojo blues bar And so I went there And there was these Danish guys The blonde guys playing really good Technically good But there was no feeling You know, I thought What, you know, and they thought Something's wrong here, you know That I realized there's no feeling And that's what I mean about the blues You gotta know how to play You gotta live it Otherwise you can't play the blues That's how artists do You can play You can do it That thing is like finding yourself You gotta find yourself And your own truth and your own style And your own art And you gotta make it real And that's the challenge of an artist That's the challenge Like it sounds simple but it's hard It takes a whole lifetime And that's what the drawing does That's what the... Myself I think it's in the finishing You gotta finish it proper It's gotta be the best Our traditional way is like this Like I'm from the Wolf Clan When we show our traditional things It's gotta be the best That's what we say My grandmother said If we're gonna show our face It's gotta be the best And cause that's who we are That's who we are Art was such high standards Very high standards Because that's our face That's our family face And that's our clan face And that's how I pushed it Artists try all their lives To get the life into And power into it That's what I've been trying to do all my life But I find at the end You know like myself I've done a lot of work I realize it's like this If you're a painter You gotta paint Or you're not a painter And if you're a sculptor You gotta sculpt or you're not a sculptor That's it And you gotta do it And you gotta do it hard And learn and do your best Always do your best Because Art comes down to the quality The integrity The belief The knowledge The spiritual The Habits The lifestyle of the individual That's what comes down Because That's what you got to give That's what you got to give You gotta find it in here And that's what I've been trying to do all my life Just through the art And doing it And what I realize myself I didn't carve all those things I'm never gonna get there I'm gonna get somewhere But I'm never gonna get there So I got it carved all those things Just to get a chance And what I feel now is at least I feel like I'm in the ballpark Or close to the ballpark anyways But I'm still way out of left field yet though So I was lucky though Just to get that far Any more questions? And that's gonna be it I got a couple of pieces I brought a couple of pieces You could take a look after Thank you Dempsey Just a reminder that in room 123 at 4 o'clock There's gonna be a guided Mindful meditation That's for anybody who wants to finish the day in a quiet way Thank you