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| Dempsey Bob at the opening. Photo © Lena Ghio, 2023 |
The first thing I noticed about British Columbia woodcarver Dempsey Bob was his warm personality and sense of humour. He spoke of his clan that descends from the matrilineal kinship of his mother. He traced his ancestry all the way back to Tahltan and Tlingit peoples of the Canadian Northwest.
Dempsey Bob is at once an internationally known artist who has received the highest honours in Canada (Officer of the Order of Canada, 2013, Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, 2021), a teacher and founder of the Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, he is a best selling author for his book In His Own Voice that he wrote in collaboration with Sarah Milroy, and, personally, he remains a dancer in the rituals of his Wolf Clan.
But the jewel in his crown is his own refined and excellent woodcarving abilities. To demonstrate those to you, I chose the first mask in a row of exquisite masks: Old Woman Mask, 1974. It is an hommage to Freda Diesing, his teacher who was recognized for her Old Women masks. I was mesmerized as I walked through the exhibition because I delight in recognizing the results of talented human hands. I observed the delicate wrinkles on this polished wood sculpture of a matriarch and the blend of natural materials used to compose her: alder, moose antlers, copper, abalone shell, human hair and moose hide. The labret in her lower lip designates her as a high ranking woman within her clan.
The exhibition moves on to works of complex compositions that express both the Spirit world and the natural world that aboriginal people experienced as the one thing that is life.
I have shared a wonderful Artist Talk between exhibition curator Sarah Milroy and Dempsey Bob HERE.
Follow this link for more information.
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