Drawing

These 62 small works (3223/1-62) comprise a collection of drawings in pencil, ink, pencil crayon, and felt pen made by the artist between the years 1968 and 2015. During that period the artist has identified himself by the following names: Ron Hamilton; Hupquatchew; Ki-ke-in; Kwayatsapalth; Chuuchkamalthnii; and Haa’yuups. The drawings are, for the most part, applied to the backs of bookmarks acquired from a range of bookshops; some are applied to other pieces of paper or cutouts from his earlier silkscreen prints. Many of the images represent killer whales, often in conjunction with accoutrements and symbols of Nuu-chah-nulth whaling. The juxtaposition of bookmark and representation of Nuu-chah-nulth himwits’a, or narrative, is a deliberate and meaningful placement of two distinct knowledge systems in relationship with one another. Ephemeral drawings like these were not created for the market; the artist has long made them for himself and sometimes as gifts for relatives and friends; they are a way of sharing his knowledge and experience about Nuu-chah-nulth ways of knowing, thinking about, and being in this world; they are expressive of what he calls kiitskiitsa: marks made with intention.

A pencil drawing on a whitish grey coloured bookmark. The front-side of the bookmark is a horizontally oriented, hand-drawn image of a whale in profile. The whale is drawn in three level segments: the head, body, and tail. The head of the whale is rectangular in shape; the eye patch is a rectangular-shape drawn above the whale's open mouth. Where the head and body join, is a dip in the pencil outline along the back of the whale; extending outwards from the dip is the whale's dorsal fin embellished with one flattened crescent-shape. Extending from the eye patch is a line with a U-shaped dip that continues to the tail of the whale. The pectoral fin is square-shaped near the joint and rounded near the tail; a single vertical crescent-shape decorates the fin. The body narrows towards the base of the tail; the tail flukes are symmetrical and are both decorated with a single crescent-shape. The reverse-side of the bookmark is machine-printed in dark red ink. Along the top edge is the address and business hours of the bookstore, "Self Connection." A phone number is hand-written in black pen ink along the left edge of the bookmark near the bookstore's address. The slogan, "Helping People Help Themselves," is printed in italicized red font along the bottom edge.