BEAU DICK

Born 1955 in Alert Bay, Canada. Lives and works in Alert Bay.

Beau Dick, Raven Transformation Mask, 2007, red cedar, red cedar bark, abalone shell and acrylic paint, 90.2 x 66 x 68.6 cm (closed); 141 x 137.2 x 66 cm (open). Courtesy Douglas Reynolds Gallery, Vancouver. Photograph: John Calhou

Born in Alert Bay, Beau Dick grew up in the Kwakwaka’wakw village of Kingcome Inlet, located off the north-east coast of Vancouver Island. He attended school in Vancouver and began carving in wood from a young age, taught by his grandfather Jimmy Dick and father Ben Dick, and then by a line of mentors including his uncle Henry Hunt, and master carvers Doug Cranmer, Bill Reid and Robert Davidson. A charismatic spiritual leader, known for his dramatic carved ceremonial masks, Beau Dick has also made paintings, drawings, prints, bowls, rattles and drums, and is an active teacher and proponent of Kwakwaka’wakw culture.

Whether worn in ceremonial dances or exhibited in contemporary art contexts, Dick’s masks reflect the artist’s study of traditional forms of Northwest Coast carving, as well as influences from the art of other cultures. The masks’ stylised features are based on human and mythological figures, and their appearance is animated, arresting and at times uncanny. Favouring an expressive roughness over the fine finishes and careful painted surfaces common to contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw carving, Dick uses wood, horse hair, leather and other materials to create his fierce and imposing visages. One of the subjects of his masks is the raven – a traditional trickster figure appearing in North American cultures.

Another recurring subject is the Bak’wa-s, otherwise known as the Bookwus, or ‘wild man of the woods’ – a supernatural being dwelling on the fringes of forests and streams, who claims human souls by offerings of ‘ghost food’ and whose eyes can hypnotise – signified in Dick’s masks by the use of glass or copper for eyes. He has also represented among other things ghosts, water spirits and otter-men and -women, the latter meant to invoke the land otter – a powerful guardian spirit believed to have once been human and so possessing the qualities of both species.

In his work and life, Dick seeks to express Kwakwaka’wakw identity and preserve its culture. He is currently involved in building a community facility on the island Yukusem to reveal the way people used to live in the area, incorporating lodges for carving, canoe-making, weaving, harvesting bark and secret society meetings. His other activities include apprenticing young carvers, singing and dancing. Dick notably performed at the opening ceremony of Vancouver Expo 86 (1986), for which occasion he also created a large transformation mask – a mask designed to be worn by costumed dancers who open and close carved exterior leaves to reveal or conceal a human or animal face, representing the concept of changing from one state of being into another.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2009 ‘Challenging Traditions’, The McMichael Museum, Ontario, Canada
2008 ‘Box of Treasures’, Douglas Reynolds Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
2007 ‘Trade Secrets’, Douglas Reynolds Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
2006 ‘Transcending Traditions’, Douglas Reynolds Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
2004 ‘Supernatural: Neil Campbell and Beau Dick’, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada

Selected Bibliography

Roy Arden, Supernatural: Neil Campbell and Beau Dick, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, 2004, pp. 1–31
Larry Garfinkle, A Gathering of Spirits: Contemporary Northwest Coast Native Art, Garfinkle Publications, Vancouver, 2001
Judith Ostrowitz, Privileging the Past: Reconstructing History in Northwest Coast Art, UBC Press, Vancouver, 1999, pp. 105–6, 108
Ian Thom, Challenging Traditions, exhibition catalogue, Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver and Toronto, 2009, pp. 32–36