Sun Dogs and Eagle Down: The Indian Paintings of Bill Holm

I took the Northwest Coast Art History classes from Professor Bill Holm at the University of Washington. He not only was one of the finest art history teachers, he spoke with direct knowledge. During his adult life, he lived with some of the tribes and learned directly from their elders. He has the deepest respect for the Northwest Coast natives as they have for him. His book is a way of documenting what he has learned in order to pass on the knowledge before the dominant culture erases it forever.

Bill Holm is a hand's-on expert and the furthest thing from someone who would illegitimately profit from the commercialization of native art. As the more helpful reviews above note, he has personally carved, woven, quilled, steamed and "bent" boxes, silversmithed, and otherwise recreated and revivified native arts and crafts of the Plains, Intermountain, and Northwest Coast regions. Holm has done this not to "colonize" native culture nor to flood the market with "fakes," but to better understand the artwork from the artist's perspective. Indeed, all of Holm's innumerable contributions to the understanding and revival of native culture have been based on the establishment and nurtuting of sensitive personal relationships with native elders--carvers, dancers, native language speakers, and other culture bearers--as well as upon intensive and ongoing studies in libraries and museum collections all over the world. When Holm writes or paints on a given subject, he does so with impeccable authority based not only upon his mastery of technique and scholarly literature, but upon his unique grasp of native oral traditions, his personal standing with the artists and cultures in question, and in many cases his personal participation in native dance, song, and ritual. With the exceptions of artwork exchanged with cutting-edge native artists or donated to charitable or cultural institutions, NONE of his own creations or re-creations of native art have been made available for sale or profit. His groundbreaking analysis of the northern graphic design system developed over centuries by the master artisans of the Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit, and Northern Kwakiutl helped elevate northwest coast art from the status of tourist curio and anthropological artifact to world-class fine art. Thus, despite his non-native status, Holm has become one of the principal links between the great native artists of the past and the native artists of the present who are in the process of elaborating and extending the art and culture into the future. This book--released only after Holm's retirement from active teaching, instruction, and research--is best approached as an exercise in time travel. Each painting is an excruciatingly knowledgeable and fanatically well-researched "you-are-there" glimpse into native life, art, ritual, and history. Far from "ripping off" native culture, these paintings provide an excellent introduction and appreciation of the underpinnings of a dynamic and living artistic tradition. The commentary is by Steve Brown, one of several Holm students (see also Robin K. Wright), who have gone on to contribute their own deepening insights into the artwork (Brown, for example, has lived and worked among the Tlingit and Makah, and has accepted commissions from native organizations to recreate and salvage deteriorating cultural masterpieces). Holm, Brown, and Wright have helped pinpoint the personal styles of--and thus rescue from anonymity--num