Drawing

About this object

History of use

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.

Physical description

A drawing on a bookmark. Depicted on the front-side of the bookmark is a vertically oriented whale and human skull; the images, drawn in blue ink, are set against a white background. The whale is portrayed as swimming headlong into the water. The whale is decorated with criss-crossing assemblages of blue line patterns in varying lengths and thicknesses; a thick blue line extends from the whale's belly to the tail flukes. A stream of air, drawn as blue dots and dashes, exits the whale's blowhole. Between the whale's eye and the thick blue line is a human skull; the interior of the skull is uncoloured but the eye cavities are filled in with the same crisscrossing line pattern as on the whale's body. Braille indentations from the reverse-side of the bookmark are visible on the front-side near the whale's air stream. The reverse-side of the bookmark is machine-printed in blue ink. Along the right edge is braille writing. At the bottom of the bookmark, in white, is the Canadian National Institute for the Blind logo and a line of text.