Coastal Salish Groundbreaking Master Artist: SUSAN POINT
The list of acclaimed Northwest Coast women artists often focuses on the great weavers of the elaborate and intricate Chilkat and Ravenstail blankets, Jennie Thlunaut and Clarissa Rizal, both Tlingit. Freda Diesing (Haida) and Susan Point (Coastal Salish) broke through the Northwest Coast’s traditionally maledominated woodcarving and printmaking art forms, however, to become recognized as two of their peoples’ greatest artists.
Point was born in 1952 at Alert Bay off Vancouver Island as her parents, Edna Grant and Anthony Point, were busy with salmon fishing. She grew up on the Musqueam Indian Reserve, located within the city of Vancouver, British Columbia. Point began making limited edition prints, which the Northwest Coast peoples much prefer over paintings as a twodimensional medium, on her kitchen table in 1981.
Shortly thereafter, Point joined Stan Greene, Rod Modeste and Floyd Joseph as artists interested in reviving the traditions of Coast Salish art and design. She taught herself the Salish traditions due to a lack of information about it, in part because little research had been done on Salish art during the Canadian Government’s 65-year ban on the Potlatch ceremony and suppression of Northwest Coast cultures via their assimilation policy.
Point studied the collections of Coast Salish art contained at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology and the Royal British Columbia Museum. As a result of this research, her works have been critical to the current trends within contemporary Coast Salish art.
Point was instrumental in broadening the market for Coastal Salish art, which had been biased toward Northwest Coast formline design principles. Her scholarly study of historical works provided the foundation for her contemporary productions— prints being renderings of historical spindle whorls in museum collections, which later expanded to original forms in new mediums—glass, concrete and bronze.
Point’s work significantly helped to revive Coast Salish design, bringing contemporary scholarly attention to the Coastal Salish culture. She’s produced 360 prints, more than any other Northwest Coast artist. The diversity of mediums Point works in is rare, and she’s credited as the first Northwest Coast artist to work in glass.
The Canadian government commissioned and then presented Point’s red cedar carved work The Beaver and the Mink as a gift to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian upon its opening in 2004. Other public works include Salish Footprint in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and Musqueam house posts at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1995, Flight was installed at the Vancouver International Airport, becoming the largest spindle whorl in the world at 16 feet in diameter.
Her awards include four honorary doctorates in fine arts—university of British Columbia (2000), University of Victoria (2000), Simon Fraser University (2008) and Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2008). In 2004, she received an appointment to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2004 and the National Aboriginal Achievement Award.