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 an off-white bookmark. The front-side of the bookmark is a vertically oriented, hand-drawn image of a killer whale and a lightning serpent(?). The killer whale's body is in the bottom half of the bookmark; an exaggerated dorsal fin extends from the back of the whale to the top left corner of the bookmark. Swirling dashes are drawn rising out of the whale's blowhole. The whale's body is coloured dark grey; an unshaded band filled with small circles extends from the whale's head to it's tail flukes. A small human skull is drawn on the underbelly of the whale. The serpent is drawn in the top right corner. The artist's signature, a "M" with a line drawn through it and two dots, is in the bottom right corner of the bookmark. The reverse-side of the bookmark is machine-printed in black ink. There is an image of a man and a female child looking into a bookshop window. Listed below is the commercial information including the bookstore name "Bestsellers Bookstore".