Celebrating a lifetime of cultural art
Richard Hunt is one of five artists who will be “artists in residence” at the five featured homes on this year’s Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Associates House Tour. The tour takes place on Sunday, Sept. 24, and tickets are available for $35 at the gallery, at Ivy’s and Munro’s bookstores, and online at associates.aggv.ca, or call 250-384-4171.
With the house tour as a pretext, I dropped in for a visit at Richard Hunt’s Victoria home and studio. He motioned to me to join him at the family dining table for a cup of coffee. The last time we sat down and talked was 17 years ago, at the time of his major retrospective at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. I recall that it was an exhibition of incomparable prestige.
In the catalogue for that show, Hunt wrote: “Now it is time to recognize our works as cultural art. I don’t understand why our rights to our culture only go as far as the front doors of our Bighouse. Once we get outside, it seems we lose our rights.” And this week, that issue is still on is mind.
“Giclées are the big thing now,” Hunt told me, referring to the large photo reproductions on canvas which have become the new standard for art prints. “People are taking photos of my work and making giclées.” And, of course, they sell them.
So he hired a lawyer to find out what his rights were regarding pictures of his creations. Hunt has created more than 30 poles, and they stand proudly in public places in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Ottawa, Montreal, Osaka, Paris, Vancouver, Los Angeles and, of course, Victoria and Duncan. He learned that these poles are in the “public domain” and anybody can photograph, print and sell reproductions of them. “We have to bring up laws to stop it. Let people know this is happening.”
Hunt recently displayed his work at Vancouver’s Spirit Wrestler Gallery, “and I have to ask the photographer if I can use the image of my work,” he said. “He said yes — but I have to make sure I add his name in there as the photographer.”
Not that he lacks photographs of his work. In her careful archiving of his life’s work, his wife Sandra has indexed over 700 rolls of film, many of them showing his works in progress. On Facebook, he has been making a daily post of his progress on the pole he is working on in his backyard carving shed. It’s out there right now, silently calling him to get to work on it.
“That pole is going to be my last one,” the 66-year old artist said. “All the work is done with the adze.” Hunt paused, and then looked directly at me: “Do you get trigger finger?” he asked. I confessed I didn’t have that problem. “My hands fall asleep a lot,” he explained, holding out his sturdy and powerful hands. “Even when I’m painting. I have to shake them to get them moving. This one I wrecked playing football,” he said, showing me a bent knuckle on the other hand, a souvenir from a lifetime of team sports. “Trigger finger,” he repeated. “It cramps up and I can’t work because it hurts too much. I try to look over the hurt.”
Since he was 13 years old, that index finger — “the pusher,” he called it — has been the driving force in his carving and engraving. “I don’t use electric tools,” he went on. “Someone’s coming to pick up a gold bracelet on Thursday. When he called, I said: ‘It’ll be fine,’ but I hadn’t even started it. Anyway. …” Back to work with that finger.
There is another way. “Anybody can be a jeweller now, if you know how to draw,” he smiled. “People just send their designs to a factory and, the next thing you know, you’re a jeweller. Only thing you have to know is how to clip [the earring] onto the hook. … I don’t do any of that,” he said.
Hunt confessed to using an electric saw at times, and a chainsaw has its place in the early stages of preparation of a log for a totem pole. But there is a limit. In Port Hardy, he saw a 12-metre pole that had been roughed out in a week with a chainsaw.
“Awesome,” he called it. “Those chainsaw carvers are pretty good,” he went on, acknowledging the sophistication of the people who carve realistic bears and eagle. But he does it all with an adze and a curved knife. Power tools result in a mechanical finish, he believes, and anyway, he doesn’t like the noise.
Mostly, he keeps away from the “labour-saving devices,” and he also doesn’t have assistants or apprentices. “I spent my whole life perfecting my skills and abilities,” Hunt said. “I guarantee that, if it’s got my name on it, I did it. And I don’t care how long it takes.”
Not that he’s against apprenticeship. In fact, Hunt was instrumental in teaching many of today’s best artists how to carve.
From the age of 13, he worked with his father, Henry Hunt, in the carving shed at Thunderbird Park, taking over from him as chief carver in 1974. And there he spent the following 13 years: “Tim Paul, Ron Hamilton, Doug Wilson — I worked with a lot of people there.” After a moment’s thought, he went on: “I kinda, like, want to be on my own now.”
Hunt was keen to return to the subject of appropriation of Northwest Coast cultural property. “This has to stop. A whole pile of people are pissed off, their work is being copied and the government doesn’t know.” He spoke of galleries in Banff, Jasper and Ottawa that are selling “west coast” masks that he says come from Indonesia. “They look like they’re done by a machine. Sixfoot totem poles for $800. This has to stop. The last thing we have is our culture, and these people are taking it away from us.”
Hunt put it in the simplest terms for me: “I own what I do. It belongs to me. It comes from my culture, and it’s my property. It’s my cultural property. How hard is that to understand?”
This is the first half of a two-part feature on Richard Hunt. The second instalment will appear in Islander next Sunday.