 Hello everyone and good evening. My name is Terin Urquhart and I am the Arts and Special Events Programmer here at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. On behalf of the library and the West Vancouver Art Museum, I would like to welcome you to tonight's art talk. While I recognize that we are all in different places this evening, I would like to acknowledge that the West Vancouver Library and Art Museum reside within the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Squamish Nation, Musqueam Nation, and Slate Watooth Nation. We recognize and respect them as nations in this territory as well as their historic connection to the lands and waters around us since time immemorial. I am personally grateful to call the Pacific Northwest my home and I'm thankful to the Coast Salish communities that continue to predict the natural beauty and animal diversity that surround me every day. Tomorrow, we will observe a national holiday across Canada and I will be using this time to reflect on how I can advance reconciliation and commit to understanding the truth of our shared history. My hope is to learn from the past and in so doing help to create a better and more inclusive community. It has been my great pleasure to work with Hilary Letwin over the past week with her guest to bring tonight's event to your screens. And now I would like to pass things over to Hilary who is waiting over at the museum. Thank you for joining us this evening for our artist talk with Gigame Kukwitz, our exhibiting artist here at the West Vancouver Art Museum in the exhibition The Traveling Line. Gigame, thank you for joining me this evening and for being willing to speak about your work which is absolutely extraordinary. The exhibition has been open now for a number of weeks and it's been so well received by visitors. People love the color in your paintings and the stories behind your work. I'd really like to hear a little bit to start about your early education in the arts. Can you tell me when did you start being an artist? Oh, I think probably in grade two. As we talked about earlier, my family is one of the first families that went into public school. I had a difficult time in public school from the early years for English and that sort of. But I always excelled in art. For some reason I always got an A or A plus in art even though I'd be failing the other like English especially. And as I went on through into junior high school and high school, of course, it's my major was art. I always got an A or A plus. That's mostly the public school. When I was seven or eight years old, there were elders around that were always making things. For instance, where we lived, there was Matthias Joe Capilano and I watched him drag logs up from the beach and put it in his big work shed and make his images and I guess he was selling them. And as boys, of course, we all watched and we'd all hang around in his big woodshed bar workshop and we'd start making things. As young boys, we first started making boats, towed them around. But there were teenage boys there that would always making like miniature totem poles or miniature mass. Some of them became quite famous and I was just reminded last week speaking to an elder and he says, do you remember so-and-so? And I said, oh yeah, he used to carve in Uncle Chief's shed. And of course that was my uncle Doug Cramer who became quite famous and his work and other people of influence would come and visit our house. My mother's sister was married to Henry Hunt who became a carver and worker at the Victoria Museum along with his son Tony Hunt who became quite well known. And of course we would visit and watch what they're doing. I watched the old man, Mungu, do work on his big projects. It was kind of amazing that I think he's 70 years old and he's still chopping away and I'm 70 years old. I could barely pull the weeds out of the garden. That's about it mostly as a youth. How much farther do you want to go? Well, it was very much a balance between what you were doing at home and what you were learning at public school. It seems as if you were sort of doing art whenever you could as a child. Yeah, I moved from boats and I started making little masks. We would always try to draw stuff first. After high school I was kind of undecided what I wanted to do most of the time. I was just a fisherman and some part-time logger and any other things I wanted to do I just couldn't seem to get into it. So my major was art so I thought I'd go to art school. Before then I had done a lot of sketching because you had to have a portfolio to get you into art school. I had quite a portfolio of sketchings and drawings and some paintings and I was accepted but I had to wait two years I think. I went fishing that year and I made lots of money. I had lots of money for a bachelor then a young guy. I came around and came around and all what am I going to do? I got to wait for art school and I decided well I think I'll just go to Europe and go and look at all the museums and the art galleries there so I get an idea of what I want to look at because up to then I always had books as pictures. It doesn't really tell you to show you. It's not the same thing as looking at it in a person. And because I had a failed romance I was brokenhearted so I went to Europe and I spent 10 months over there and I went to most of the big galleries and museums. And you started in London I think or was it Paris? Yeah London. Well I started in Liverpool that's where the ship landed. I went by ship which was the novelty that was the end of the era of culture and liners. 1966 or so. Yeah 65, 66. And of course I made what would you call it? I went to see the cavern with the Beatles. Oh were the Beatles recorded? Yeah the cavern in Liverpool I went to the cavern and it was all boarded up I don't know why. And anyway from there I went to London and went to the big galleries, the Tate and the big museum. I can't remember what it's called. The British Museum. And the Victoria. The Victoria and Albert Museum. Yeah you could spend days just looking at things. And they're really a lot. They're a real big section on our northwest coast. Yeah and I mean from previous conversations you've said that it was initially when you were traveling that you started to appreciate the sort of outsider's perspective and appreciation of Indigenous art. Yeah. So that I think it sounded like that was a revelation for you. And of course Turner, is that his thing? Yes yeah yeah yeah. Huge paintings. Yeah. Just amazing. And then from there I went to Amsterdam and went to the. The Rijks Museum. Yeah yeah and there was another one I think a little bit out of town I can't remember the name of the place. Took a train for an hour or so and went to another museum. Of course I wanted to look at the Rembrandts and the Van Goghs and Franz Halls. People like that. And it was an eye-opener to see everything up front. God must touch it. Yeah. I said watch. That's a yank of the day. I said look out of the photo in the book it's kind of mysteriously. Yeah. You know how how was that done. But when you look at it closely oh yeah it's just. It's by hand. Yeah. So and in Amsterdam you were in Amsterdam I think for a number of months and you said you were painting yourself there and selling your work a little bit. Oh no no when I got to Europe I discovered that the real advantage is to have a youth hostel passport because it's like 10 cents a day or something really and you couldn't get one except in your own country or in Sweden where they originate. So that's why I guess I'm going to go Sweden get a youth hostel passport because you know it's real handy to have. Yeah. And I have to sit in the YMCA's and youth hostels and sketch to some painting watercolors and do out like a real artist and do landscapes and out on the countryside stuff like that. And I met a person who was from Malaysia who grew older than me but he was a refugee from the 50s when Malaysia had all their turmoil and he was doing the same thing as me he was painting and sketching and he said oh you know you know I go out every night I do about 20 sketches I go out every night and go to all the high rises and knock on doors I go to sign saying that I'm a student traveling etc etc and I saw him for like you know a couple of dollars at our money yeah I think 20 Kroners or something he said I said oh okay so him and I got into this and that's how I started I got stuck in Scandinavia for three months doing that going on I think I could make lots of money and save it so I wanted to head to Italy or something like that and but I was there for several months at Sweden with cell pictures and Norway with cell pictures Denmark with cell pictures and I thought I could do that all the way through my trip but when I got into Germany nobody wanted to buy anything they didn't even want to talk to me right now I could understand that I mean you know there's a lot went on just 20 years ago and people still hadn't really got over it yeah when I was there it was still West Germany and East Germany and there was still threats in Berlin when I was there there was still threatening to yeah start it all over again anyhow I went down the Rhine River and went to Munich and Munich was quite a nice place they still had museums and galleries and after that I was going to go on my own and money started to run out so I tried to hitchhike to Paris I was there for three days never got a ride so I had to use my last resorts and book a train ticket to Paris and when I was in Paris of course I went to all the all the museums and galleries and that was lots of fun and then you sailed home after Paris? I sailed home from Southampton to Halepax and I thought it would be easy to hitchhike to Montreal not realizing this 2,000 miles and it's still winter there in April I thought it'd be nice balmy spring and I'd be no problem there's still blizzards and still freezing at night fortunately somebody picked me up a fellow from the army base and he was going to Montreal and he took me all the way there so quite the quite the grand tour quite the trip actually yeah yeah I really enjoyed Europe I really enjoyed it let's um let's talk a little bit about your time at the Vancouver School of Art so you were there from 1967 to 1969 yeah I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the people that you worked with and and what you did with your work when you were there it was kind of disappointing the first two years you were you were just treated as novice or something in the fourth year you became a senior and you got all the privileges and it's the first year I wasn't too excited second year it was a little more interesting I got into some metal work I wanted to learn how to make my own knives and adzes and because I saw that a mongo had a whole array of tools and I thought that oh and see I need six of these five of those and et cetera et cetera I said I think I'll go see my uncle Doug Grammer who's living in Deep Grove I'm gonna go ask him because he's a master carver I'm gonna go ask him what tools I should get I want to see him and his fame as he right up figured it well I think you need a chainsaw one axe and one knife oh not quite the laundry list you were but I didn't learn how to make knives and adzes and I made a bunch but my main subject that I was there for what I wanted to learn is to paint yeah painter and my first and second year in my painting instructor was Peter Aspo who I understand was a quite a quite a good painter but he really didn't show me what I wanted to learn he just looked at things and go on and walk away hmm I think the main influence of there was a history of arts professor named Leonard Woods and I think he was the one that really ever really enjoyed the most they talked about many things like Stonehenge um uh Glastonbury the big zodiac and Glastonbury and and he'd get into many subjects and one day he was talking about abstract art and he said that um um Pablo Picasso and Jack Shadbolt he said they copied Northwest Coast art at their beginning to learn to get to understanding of whatever they were trying to do and I was sitting in there and well what am I doing sitting here right my uncles and you know they know all about that you know that kind of changed my thoughts um I started on some work the second year I started making a totem pole and because I didn't have enough wood I made the bottom half out of it with the frame and fiberglassed it so it looked like a blanket and I put a made a copper on it from my metal wood classes I had a copper and I pounded out a design on it and put that in it and but I never got marked on it because I didn't finish it the second year and I'm ready to go over the third year and I went to uh it was Indian Affairs that was sponsoring me at the time and the the person there said well your marks from art school looks like you failed I said well because of these marks we can't sponsor you anymore so I said oh okay that was the end of my art school experience and at that time I was at uh just above victory square where it was VVI too as an adjoinant of Vancouver Vocational Institution Institute but it was still good I uh I did learn uh some things there and you certainly didn't stop making art at that point you you kept working you it sounds like you went up to alert bay after that and spent some time there oh yeah um that 1969 the summer when I was going to go back in the fall that I got rejected um I went up through uh uh kinkam inlet because we we had been my mother and I would have been talking about how to uh have a ceremony because at that time they were almost um not extinct but uh hardly anybody was doing it anymore and oh which leads me to uh when I was a young man young boy nine or so uh monger martin had a polish and victoria in the uh in the peak house they made there and we went as a young young boy my family went because mother is uh sister to uh henry hunt our henry hunt's wife and uh we went and um that was a memorable uh influence uh when I was in kinkam inlet in 1969 uh I had a house because my uh grand uncle uh had a house there and he said I want to give you this house because my children are never going to return to kinkam you know they moved to victoria and and I am all working that sort of thing I said oh great uh uh him and my grandmother were together my grandmother that helped build that little house and unfortunately uh that year he passed away so that's why when I went to kinkam I had a house uh to stay in by myself uh which I did uh some of the things I did there was uh uh I wanted to look at herbology and look at all the plants in the in the environment and look in the book and see what they were good for this and that this and that and the other thing I did some some uh sculptures and the main thing was that I uh got to talk to my grand uncle uh sam cedar sort of took me under his wing and uh started to mentor me and uh we talked about many things um um I wrote down about uh 10 pages of uh words in our language maybe more 15 pages well I did say then and I voted all down he'd tell me what to pronounce it but some of the stories he told me that were just uh uh uh um hard to believe maybe then uh uh uh what okay um but he did tell me uh the origin story of uh of our people um I did say uh sorry son because you don't know our language you'll never fully understand the story but he said the basic his basis of it was that uh there was a giant flood and it wiped everybody out there were a few survivors and um now the two brothers survived and when the flood proceeded everything was really tough and hard and um so they were adopted by the wolves and they became wolves for uh uh until the world became soft so the humans could live again and they took off their coats and became men again that was the main story he he spoke about and he said that they they came from another world and that uh this was their crest and that's the basis of it the one over there the serpent yeah yeah with the college school yeah and um um you see that's the crest they brought from the other world to this world and because they were uh uh uh wolves that was wolves became our main main uh yeah and one of them yeah uh for instance when one of our uh uh members passed away and uh at the moment we're luring the coffin will all howl like wolves so i'd i'd like to talk a little bit about um about how you paint because a lot of the works in our exhibition which are from more or less the last 20 years or so they range in style some of them are very precisely painted and some of them are very loosely painted uh and it it um you do a lot of over painting of your work can you talk us through your process uh and how you approach your work when i first uh started painting of course uh watercolors and then uh oil paints i first did a lot of early work was all oil paints but i began to think it was making me sick making me ill um so i changed to acrylics i had a difficult time with acrylics because it's a different approach than oil painting but i still try to do my oil painting style and uh some of it didn't work out eventually i got to learn how to use acrylics the way i wanted to took a while took a while uh several years uh like the last one here that i did and uh i'm quite happy with the acrylic use on that yes yeah and that's the that's the whale crest yeah the thunderbird and whale crest painting yeah which is your most recent painting yeah exhibition yeah um i use uh subjects like from some of it's from our uh our uh origin stories and some of it's just freely done um um it's um i mean you you find a way of blending uh your your sort of heritage and your origin stories with um with other cultural elements as well so i'm thinking specifically about the influence that mayan art has had on your art and i'd love to hear about when you started to look at mayan art for example as um a sort of correlation to your own work yeah it was almost 40 years ago that i saw a program on on uh on television and it was they were talking about the the mayan maybe it was mayan maybe it was it was somewhere down there anyhow and they were showing that their writing is uh to me they look like flowery little decide you know i call them flowery glyphs and i was watching it and they were going on talking about the language and the language then they showed a page that uh that uh a dozen or more flowery glyphs on this side and then over here they had the everyday writing and i went oh those are ovoids used in s's and it's the same as the same as our uh style yeah ovoids used in s's uh then blinked went off and i went and i never saw it again i tried to research it in research and i never saw it again um i had a real good friend uh who was a literary and writer and he used to come visit me all the time and uh he's owned many bookstores and traveled the whole world and he's chinese chinese guy uh he came and had all these books and he was talking about the origin of civilization is on the yellow river in china and i said no i beg your pardon i disagree with you i said the central america is way older than central america you could say 25 000 years you could even say 60 000 years he went away came back a month later and said oh yeah you're right you know and then they had all these books on the maya and we started looking at him on and it was a lot of it was on uh on their writing and uh what kind of really tweaked my interest was they said that the mayan writing is three three colors one is black one is white or clear and the other is red and they said they didn't neglect the black represents uh uh physics represents physics represents coming life coming out of the universe what we are here now and they always will do olivoid and say that that's the uh in black that's the uh uh the glyph that's telling you that it came out of the universe uh in in form of physics and then they said that the white or the clear was where the black came from which is must be way out there somewhere in the universe and then they wrote down and said that the red is time and all the only people that keep track of time is us humans right and you look so i i took that and well if our uh paintings are all black our designs are oval z's and s's are black and then the uh um background is either clear or white and in spaces and everything's red so i took that as uh well that it's got to be a form of writing right it's got to be a form of keeping track of their origin stories and so now that's why i use the black oval ways and i'm saying well this is uh this is the energy that's come out of the universe i like to think of all my paintings as energy formed creatures or not even even beyond creatures just existence uh like a landscape of the existence of many things and you describe a lot of your paintings in in our exhibition as landscapes uh do you want to talk a little bit about that yeah um um i use it as a as a ship a boat yeah it's a landscape but it's it's uh really not a visual it's like a uh a thought landscape it's like a um and in it i mean what i'm saying is that uh like i said it's a energy form of of life coming out of the universe and uh i'm going back at some point so i say it's a landscape and it's a vision um when you first asked me about uh my art and i said well it's what i see what i see was my eyes and uh a lot of how i feel and oddly enough uh that same bookstore guy gave me a book on uh Leonardo da Vinci you know i know this guy really lots of you know from the old days well let's see what he has to say to be a painter you've got to use your eyes and you've got to paint what you see you see copy in me or i copy of him who had the same thought and then i go on further in the book and he says it's best to have a small studio and workshop if you got a great big one then your head gets too big check check so i got a small little place where i work and then he says um um to be a painter to be a painter artist you almost got to use your eyes and whatever you look at you uh like sketch it in your mind and he says it goes even farther when you look at like a like a water stained wall when you start seeing human figures you start seeing ships so you just start going right and uh same as when i look into uh uh trees and bushes i'll start to see images and that uh uh checked out three Leonardo da Vinci him and i agree on three things three really good good things to agree on i think this is probably a good place to conclude today um thank you so much for coming in and speaking about your work and for sharing your work with us this exhibition is on until october 8th we did of course produce a publication for the exhibition which includes an excellent essay by Karen Dufek who is a curator of contemporary indigenous art at the museum of anthropology we would invite you to come in and see the exhibition before it closes and thank you once again giga me for for meeting with us today