Northwest Coast art

Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian have traditionally produced Chilkat woven regalia, from wool and yellow cedar bark, that is important for civic and ceremonial events, including potlatches.

Although highly conventionalized decorative design occurs all along the coast, to the south and north of this center the representational motive becomes progressively stronger.

Krickeberg (1925: 144) characterizes this as a fresh naturalism to the south among the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Salish and a certain relationship to Eskimo engraving and painting among the Tlingit to the north.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Northwest Coast artists began producing work for commercial sale, such as small argillite carvings.

The end of the 19th century also saw large-scale export of totem poles, masks and other traditional art objects from the region to museums and private collectors around the world.

A tenuous link to older traditions remained in artists such as Charles Gladstone, Henry Speck, Ellen Neel, Stanley George, and Mungo Martin.

[5] One corollary of this fact is that — contrary to popular belief — other than some of the peoples of the Olympic Peninsula, no Native American nations of Washington and Oregon states produced totem poles and other characteristic, formline, Northwest Coast-style art objects before European contact.

[1] In some nations, such as the Haida, adoptions are seen by some only as gestures, and production of work in their trademark style by outsiders may, in some contexts, be viewed as economic and cultural appropriation.

Other notable Northwest Coast artists of the 20th and 21st centuries include Charlie James, Henry Speck, Doug Cranmer, Stanley George, James Schoppert, Bill Reid, Mungo Martin, Ellen Neel, Robert Davidson, Beau Dick, Willie Seaweed, Roy Henry Vickers, Don Yeomans, Jay Simeon, Amos Wallace, Lyle Wilson, Sam (Sammy) Robinson, Ron Hamilton, Art Thompson, Joe David, Reginald Peterson,[9] Freda Diesing, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Tony Hunt and Nathan Jackson (artist) Notable academics and publishers of northwest Northwest Coast include Hilary Stewart,[10] Bill Holm, Bill Reid, Bill McLennan, Martha Black, and George F. MacDonald.