Tag Archives: carving

The “Salford” Totem Pole

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By Matthew Willis

On March 28th, singer-songwriter Pete Martin emailed MOA with a song he wrote called, “I am the Salford Totem Pole”. The song is about a totem pole carved by Doug Cranmer in 1969 for a commission given to him by the (no longer existing) Manchester Liners. The pole was an emblem created with the aim of representing and celebrating the history of trade between Canada and the United Kingdom. The pole was brought back to the United Kingdom and stood in Salford until it was taken down due to weather damage in 2005. Somehow, the totem ended up in a warehouse in Salford Quays until it was found by  Councillor Steve Coen who requested it be displayed again in Salford proper and restored.

This link connects to an interview done on the day the totem pole was removed from the warehouse it was housed in and moved to its restoration location in December 2009:

http://www.salfordonline.com/totempole_page/16958-video:_salford_totem_pole_finally_moves_home_(part_8).html

Kevin Cranmer, Doug Cranmer’s nephew, and his cousin Edgar Cranmer worked with Bruce Alfred in the summer of 2010 to restore the pole. Originally carved from British Columbian Pine (most totem poles are carved from red cedar), the three carvers used planks of cedar  to restore the damaged fragments of Doug Cranmer’s original pole. On July 1st, 2010, the fully restored pole was displayed in Trafalgar Square in London in collaboration with the Canadian Embassy on Canada Day.

This link connects to an interview the three carvers did just before they started the restoration in 2010:

http://www.salfordonline.com/totempole_page/21236-video:_kevin_cranmer_and_friends_arrive_back_in_salford_to_start_restoration_work_on_totem_pole.html

With the restoration complete, the pole was brought back to Stanford in early 2011. There was some deliberation over where it would be raised. There is an outlet mall that is a popular gathering place for the public and the decision was made to raise it there.

Here is a link showing Kevin Cranmer re-awakening the pole to be raised: http://www.dreamscope.tv/additional/salford-totem-pole

This last clip shows the people of Salford voicing their thoughts as to where the pole should be raised. Currently, it is on show in the Museum Of Museums at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, UK, just beside Salford, but will be returning to its adoptive home in the coming months where it will be given a permanent location.

http://www.salfordonline.com/totempole_page/26736-video:_salford_streettalk_on_salford’s_totem_pole.html

It is fascinating for us at MOA to see Doug Cranmer’s work celebrated so enthusiastically in a place so far away from where Cranmer’s first “exhibition” is being held. This is a quote from Richard Sumner that, I feel

, best encompasses the majesty and tone of the Salford Totem Pole, Pete Martin’s song and Doug Cranmer himself. The discovery of something so international contrasted to Cranmer’s humble nature make this even more extraordinary.

“I think he just liked to fly below the radar. He was happy if he had a glass, his car, a pack of smokes and a bottle of scotch. He’d leave all the glory to everybody else. He wasn’t really one to toot his own horn. It’s up to us to do it.” –Richard Sumner.

Photo by Vickie Jensen

Doug the Mentor: Don’t lose the centre line.

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By Alison Dexter

Courtesy of U'mista Cultural Society and the Audrey and Harry Hawthorn Library and Archive, MOA A002261C, Photo by Vickie Jensen

To those he mentored, Doug Cranmer’s teaching style was reflective of his individual personality. Many of his students remember his strict emphasis on technique, detail, achieving equilibrium while not over-doing the design, and his mantra to ‘never lose the centre line.’ Despite these firm guidelines, Doug encouraged his students to experiment with their carvings, trying to get them to really see what they were looking at. Many of his students helped him with major projects such as the new Alert Bay Big House, the U’mista Cultural Centre, and the Wa’kas Pole in Stanley Park. Cranmer’s advice extended beyond carving techniques, serving as a metaphor for his attitude towards life. He wanted his

students to love doing their art and encouraged taking breaks when it became a source of stress or panic, reminding them ‘it’s just wood.’ Doug Cranmer never lost his centre line and this inspired and remains alive in the work of his students.

Courtesy of U'mista Cultural Society and the Audrey and Harry Hawthorn Library and Archive, MOA A001990C, Photo by Vickie Jensen

‘If I could teach people to see what they are looking at, I would have the whole of Alert Bay carving like crazy’ -Doug Cranmer.

Doug Cranmer: The Man Who Taught Bill Reid Everything He Knew

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By Alyssa Gallant

Doug and Bill Reid carving Wasco (Haida sea wolf) at Totem Park, ubc, as part of the Haida House Project, 1961. moa 2784/3 (printed in 2009); photo by Takao Tanabe.[1]

 In 1958, Doug Cranmer received a phone call from Bill Reid inviting him to help on a carving project that had been commissioned by the Museum of Anthropology (MOA).  Until earlier that summer, Doug had spent most of his life fishing and working in the lumber industry, occasionally studying carving with his step- grandfather, Mungo Martin.  However, that summer the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had imposed its first ten day ban on fishing and in response Doug claimed that he would never fish again.[2]  That year would also be his last logging.  He moved to Vancouver to work with Bill Reid and, as Doug later stated, “That was the beginning of my carving career.”[3]

In the nearly three years the two men worked together, they experimented with various carving techniques and ways of copying images from other, older Haida poles.  In truth, the two men were at the time, quite inexperienced

in carving.  It has since been rumoured that Reid taught Doug how to use the carving tools, such as the adze and chainsaw, and how to carve in general.  However, Reid had this to say: “Nobody, I’m sure, including me, could have influenced Doug one iota in any direction…if he learned anything in that period it was just improving his technique.  He retained his own style, which he still does.”[4]  Doug worked on the project with Reid until 1961, when he accidentally adzed his Achilles tendon and had to spend five weeks in the hospital.  However, the two would work together again in 1962 and 1963 restoring the Wa’kas, Nhe-is-bik and Sis-kaulas poles in Stanley Park.[5]

After his time working with Bill Reid, Doug began carving full-time, and opened one of the first Native-run art galleries in Canada. His work gained international respect and he experimented with a variety of styles and influences – Kwakwaka’wakw and Haida being only two of many.  Doug’s work was very much his own, and it is being brought together in the first ever solo exhibit of his work in MOA’s Kesu’.

Though Bill Reid’s influence on the work of Doug Cranmer is questionable, Doug, when asked if he had ever worked with Bill Reid would respond, in fun, with, “Yes, I taught him everything he knew.”

[1] Jennifer Kramer, Kesu’: The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer (Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre Publishers Inc.), pp. 31

[2] Kramer, Kesu’, pp. 31

[3] Doug Cranmer, “‘Other-Side’ Man,” Bill Reid and Beyond, pp.175.

[4] Cranmer, Other Side Man,” pp.175.

[5] Kramer, Kesu’, pp. 32.

‘No man is an island’ – Who influenced Doug Cranmer along with way?

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By Abigail Ettelman

‘No man is an island’ – Who influenced Doug Cranmer along with way?

If you haven’t heard of Doug Cranmer, yet, you will. In fact, if you have seen the sights in Vancouver, whether as a local or a tourist, you likely have seen his work without even knowing it! Not only did Doug restore the totem poles in Stanley Park, but the poles in the replica Haida village outside the Museum of Anthropology are the result of a collaboration between Doug Cranmer and Bill Reid, another famous indigenous carver from British Columbia.

           Courtesy of Vivien Cranmer. Photographer unknown,

 

"Courtesy of the Audrey and Harry Hawthorn Library and Archives." MOA 2005.002.125N. Photo by Leslie Kopas

Knowing just the basics of his life, it might be easy to think of Doug in stereotypical terms. Born in 1927, he was a hereditary ‘Namgis chief who encountered the residential school system and learned to carve through observation of skilled relatives like his step-grandfather Mungo Martin. Yet Kesu’: The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer shows how Doug resisted the typical to create a singularly dynamic body of work as unique as the man himself.

The exhibit is arranged in five modules, each named to reflect an aspect of Doug’s personality: Doug the contrarian, pragmatist, individualist, iconoclast, and mentor. However, no man is an island, and Doug Cranmer’s work was not created out of thin air. Who influenced him along the way?

Doug’s artistic experience did not end with his step-grandfather, Mungo Martin, or his work with Bill Reid. In the 1960s, Doug was involved in the contemporary Vancouver art scene through his art gallery, the Talking Stick, on Granville Island, and he also had a long-term relationship with Vancouver-trained textile artist Judy Tweedie. Tweedie worked hard to generate publicity for Doug’s work, and supported Doug’s incursion into areas such as silkscreen work and abstract imagery. Doug’s style became even more diverse in the early 1970s, when he began to borrow form elements and imagery from other northern Northwest Coast groups, such as the Tsimshian. This was fueled both by his own imagination and the desire to find a unique commercial niche. His success in this meant that his pieces carried a famous name as well as a unique personal style.

His fiscal security was strengthened by his longstanding relationship with the staff at MOA. Doug had proven himself talented and reliable doing both restoration and original work, which MOA was glad to support through commissions, educational contracts, demonstrations, and a residency. His success was not bound to MOA, of course, as Doug contributed to other museums and played a large role in Expo ‘86.

Within his own work, it is easy to see aspects of Doug’s own character, such as his humor, his attention to quality, and his individuality. Though his influences can be traced to many varied communities, he was very independent-minded and experimental, often doing “something different just to be different” (98). The point is that these experiments would not have been possible without Doug’s personal history and later relationships with various people and communities. Doug would be the first to call his work a job over a vocation, although his actions and emphasis on understanding the meaning behind quality work speaks volumes. He understood well the practicalities of his position. His skills, learned from others but honed by himself, as well as his innovation, historical understanding, and down-to-earth way

of seeing his work combine to show us the portrait of a remarkable man who was able to create a niche that only he would be able to inhabit. He was a man of settled paradoxes, who valued understanding the stories behind pieces, but also created affective art objects using the forms of his ancestors with a style all his own.

"Courtesy of Royal British Columbia Museum" RBCM 16635. Canoe painting by Doug Cranmer.

 

MOA Shop Showcase: Tony Bruce

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By Meghan Price 

In recognition of MOA’s founding collections from the South Pacific, the Shop is currently featuring palm nut carvings by Tony Bruce.

Born in 1979 in Santo, Vanuatu, Tony Bruce was taught traditional wood carving by his cousins, and with promising talent, he began creating elaborate miniature carvings out of palm nut before his twentieth birthday.  Palm nut, also referred to as corozo, tagua, or vegetable ivory, can be carved like elephant ivory when dried out.  The kernels are typically harvested after the ripe fruit has detached from the tree and fallen to the ground.  Carving palm nuts is a tradition found in numerous cultures around the globe, all the way from Panama to Japan. For an interesting comparison for the objects in the MOA Shop and objects in the collection, compare Bruce’s work to a Japanese palm nut carving (Ed5.3188) found in Case 79, Drawer 1 in the Multiversity Galleries.

Using small chisels and a coping saw, Bruce creates highly detailed miniature carvings.  When embarking on a new carving, Bruce says, “I don’t draw; the picture comes to me like a revelation.  The image is in my mind, and when I start carving

, it develops more and more.”  His vision is to combine traditional stories and traditional ways of living with contemporary ideas. Bruce has a particular interest in marine life and focuses on sea creatures, diving, and the ocean’s movement.

Since branching out into palm nut, Bruce’s work has been purchased by collectors from around the world.  He currently lives in Port Vila, Vanuatu with his wife, Asnet, and their two children, Andrew and Cathleen.

Tony Bruce’s carvings can be seen exclusively in the MOA Shop.