Ascending Master Carver: JOHN MARSTON
The art world has always been rife with individuals whose potential indicates something truly special—a preternatural talent that might develop into a generational phenom. The Northwest Coast peoples are no different. Inevitably, something happens along the way and that promise fades into what might have been status. But in those rare instances, when the potential comes to fruition, the resulting artworks can be shimmering, transcendent, sometimes hauntingly majestic. Those adjectives describe the works of Coastal Salish artist John Marston.
ehhwe’p syuth, meaning To Share History, is a 6-foot, 6-inch doubled sided, wood panel that prominently greets every visitor as they walk into the seminal Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Carved on each side are elaborately stylized sun and moon faces, subtly surrounded by a multitude of smaller images. Never before in the long history of Northwest Coast art has there been a work like it.
Luscious and flawless, To Share History represents Marston’s cultural exchange trip to Papua New Guinea in 2006. The work’s images portray and merge the Peoples of the Pacific Rim, the two groups traditional understandings, the connection these Peoples have come to feel, and the two sides of the Earth itself. For all that to culminate in a single work is a soaring achievement.
Marston (Qap’u’luq) was born in 1978 and grew up in a traditional Coastal Salish family. His parents, Jane and David Marston, were carvers and they were his first teachers.
“There was lots of excitement as I was beginning to learn,” Masten says. “So we just grew up in that atmosphere. Those are some of my earliest childhood memories. We watched for a long time how others carved. Spent a lot of time, years, just watching and learned that way. And then eventually, we were allowed to pick up our knives. That is a traditional way of learning things in First Nations culture.”
Marston spent five years at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria in his early 20s, working with artists from across the province at Thunderbird Park. In his fifth and final year, he became an artist in residence.
Early on, Marston reproduced the designs of older Coast Salish pieces and artifacts. Because his tools now replicate those of his ancestors; his artistic process stays similar to theirs. Marston’s completed carvings are worked to a knife finish. A perfectly smooth surface is achieved only with traditional carving knives. It’s a skill he continues to refine.
Marston started carving his own designs by 2005. Working from his imagination, he began to take traditional aesthetics to intensely personal, emotional or spiritual expressions, while still encompassing an inherent connection with Coast Salish culture and legend. The process now is not about recreating but re-examining older works.
“Some of the artwork I do is still based on legend and historical teaching, but not all of it,” He says. “Some is modern concepts or emotional expression—but the process stays traditional.”