Curve!

WINNER OF THE 2025 BILL DUTHIE BOOKSELLERS' CHOICE AWARD – BRITISH COLUMBIA & YUKON BOOK PRIZES

An eighty-year overview of wood and argillite carving by Indigenous women artists on the Northwest Coast.

Though women of the Northwest Coast have long carved poles, canoes, panels, and masks, many of these artists have not become as well known outside their communities as their male counterparts. These artists are cherished within their communities for helping to keep traditional carving practices alive, and for maintaining the dances, songs, and ceremonies that are intertwined with visual art production. This book, and an associated exhibition at the Audain Art Museum, gathers a range of sculptural formats by Indigenous women in order to expand the discourse of carving in the region.

Both the exhibition and publication are co-curated by Dana Claxton, artist, filmmaker and head of the University of British Columbia’s Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory; and Dr. Curtis Collins, the AAM’s Director & Chief Curator. Commentaries by Skeena Reece, Claxton, and Marika Swan, and interviews with artists Dale Campbell and Mary Anne Barkhouse are presented alongside more than one hundred artworks from public and private collections across North America, including several newly commissioned pieces.

Featured artists include:

• Ellen Neel (Kwakwaka'wakw, 1916–1966)
• Freda Diesing (Haida, 1925–2002)
• Doreen Jensen (Gitxsan, 1933–2009)
• Susan Point (Musqueam, b. 1952)
• Dale Campbell (Tahltan, b. 1954)
• Marianne Nicolson (Kwakwaka’wakw, b. 1969)
• Arlene Ness (Gitxsan, b. 1970s)
• Melanie Russ (Haida, b. 1977)
• Marika Swan (Nuu-chah-nulth, b. 1982)
• Morgan Asoyuf (Ts’msyen, b. 1984)
• Cori Savard (Haida, b. 1985)
• Cherish Alexander (Gitwangak, b. 1987)
• Stephanie Anderson (Wetsuwet’en, b. 1991)
• Veronica Waechter (Gitxsan, b. 1995)

Dana Claxton is a critically acclaimed, award winning artist and filmmaker. Her practice investigates indigeneity, beauty, the body, the socio-political, and the spiritual. Claxton’s work has been shown internationally and is held in major public and private collections throughout Canada and the United States. In 2013, her film He Who Dreams won the Best Experimental Award at the imagineNATIVE Festival in Toronto. Claxton is a Professor and Head of the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She is member of the Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation in Saskatchewan. “I am grateful to the sun and my sundance teachings – mni ki wakan - water is sacred. Mni wichoni = water is life.”

Curtis Collins is the Director and Chief Curator of the Audain Art Museum (AAM) in Whistler, BC. Collins received his PhD from the Department of Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University in Montreal. He has served as a director and curator for a variety of institutions across Canada, including the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Algoma, and Dunlop Art Gallery. Dr. Collins has also been active as an educator at MacEwan University, the Yukon School of Visual Arts, and First Nations University of Canada. His curatorial projects at the AAM include Reservoir by Rebecca Belmore, the national touring exhibition Wolves: The Art of Dempsey Bob and Karin Bubaš: Garden of Shadows.

Skeena Reece is an interdisciplinary artist of Tsimshian/Gitxsan and Cree/Metis decent. Reece is based on Vancouver Island, BC. In her artistic practice she aims to challenge, educate and inform audiences through her writing, performance art, video, photography and the characters she creates. Reece was awarded the Reveal Indigenous Art Award, the Viva Award and a BC Achievement Award for excellence in the Arts. Some notable works include ‘The Sacred Clown,’ a collaboration with artist Jesse Scott created for the Medicine Project based on a Hopi tradition where the character often says or does uncouth things to teach lessons. Reece has largely attributed her humour as a direct result of growing up listening to stories of the Northwest Coast Trickster.

Marika Echachis Swan is of Tla-o-qui-aht / Nuu-chah-nulth, Irish, and Scottish descent. As a printmaker and community archivist, Swan has spent the last ten years studying the extensive body of Nuu-chah-nulth ancestral belongings currently held in museums and archives around the world. Her research focuses on directly supporting the reinstatement of cultural belongings back into local living cultural structures through repatriation, re-creation, and local knowledge sharing. In Swan’s carving work she emphasizes creating items that are meant to be used as an invitation to bring everyday action back into alignment with Nuu-chah-nulth worldviews and lifeways.