Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings of Bill Reid - Softcover

Reid, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155365448X ISBN 13: 9781553654483

Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd, 2009

Synopsis

A seminal collection of writing from one of Canada's most revered artists, spanning forty years of his life.

When Haida sculptor and Canadian icon Bill Reid died, in the spring of 1998, he was more widely and more fervently admired than any other Native artist in North America. Although Reid attained his greatest fame in the visual arts, words were his first professional medium. Until he received his first large carving commission, in 1958, he made his living as a radio announcer and script writer. This work earned him the Haida name Kihlguulins, the "One with the Beautiful Voice." In his later years, Parkinson's disease curtailed his public speaking, but it did not prevent him writing. His oratorical and literary gifts are rightly part of the Reid legend. Recordings of his voice can still be played in a number of major museums around the world.

Despite his gift for words, much of what he wrote was published only in newspapers, magazines and exhibition catalogues. Some was made public in audio form but never printed, and some has languished in manuscript for years. This book collects, for the first time, the most important of these widely scattered writings: seminal statements on the art on the Northwest Coast, the role of the Native artist in a multicultural world, and the quintessential role of the environment to the survival of human culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Bill Reid, one of the finest artists to work in the Native American tradition, has numerous books documenting and revering his visual art. He is also the author of Solitary Raven, Out of the Silence and, with Bill Holm, Indian Art of the Northwest Coast: A Dialogue on Craftsmanship and Aesthetics. Robert Bringhurst, one of Canada’s leading poets and book designers, worked and studied with Bill Reid throughout the 1980s. The fruits of this association include a much-loved book of stories, The Raven Steals the Light, as well as Bringhurst and Ulli Steltzer’s book The Black Canoe, a study of Reid’s masterly sculpture. He lives on Quadra Island, British Columbia. Robert Bringhurst, one of Canada’s leading poets and book designers, worked and studied with Bill Reid throughout the 1980s. The fruits of this association include a much-loved book of stories, The Raven Steals the Light, as well as Bringhurst and Ulli Steltzer’s book The Black Canoe, a study of Reid’s masterly sculpture. He lives on Quadra Island, British Columbia.

From Booklist:

Reid died in 1998 at the height of his fame as an artist who brought the traditional forms of his people, the Haida, into a contemporary context. He had been a journalist first, and this selection by his closest collaborator presents him during that period, when he had divorced himself from his tribal past and spoke of his people in the distancing third person: they. Becoming an artist--a midlife conversion for Reid--changed all that. Never an exploiter of the past, he pointed out in the poem-essay "The Art: An Appreciation" that the Northwest Coast artworks revered by museumgoers were nothing like traditional art, which, far from being gloomy and brooding, comprised "objects of bright pride." In a witty short-short essay, he admits the possible truth underlying the myth of the land bridge and, in a neat turn on the usual anthropological tract, shows how that myth reaffirms the truth of Raven's creation of the world. Reid's rich, thoughtful, passionate writings deserve preservation in this fine, beautifully illustrated volume. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 155365448X
• ISBN 13: 9781553654483
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 268
• Editor: Bringhurst Robert