William Ronald Reid Jr. was a Haida artist whose works include jewelry, sculpture, screen-printing, and paintings. Producing over one thousand original works during his fifty-year career, Reid is regarded as one of the most significant Northwest Coast artists of the late twentieth century.
Totem poles are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia.
The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada displays world arts and cultures, in particular works by First Nations of the Pacific Northwest. As well as being a major tourist destination, MOA is a research and teaching museum, where UBC courses in art, anthropology, archaeology, conservation, and museum studies are given. MOA houses close to 50,000 ethnographic objects, as well as 535,000 archaeological objects in its building alone.
Emily Carr was a Canadian artist who was inspired by the monumental art and villages of the First Nations and the landscapes of British Columbia. She also was a vivid writer and chronicler of life in her surroundings, praised for her "complete candour" and "strong prose". Klee Wyck, her first book, published in 1941, won the Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction and this book and others written by her or compiled from her writings later are still much in demand today.
Robert Charles Davidson LL. D. D.F.A., is a Canadian artist of Haida heritage. Davidson's Haida name is G̲uud San Glans, which means "Eagle of the Dawn". He is a leading figure in the renaissance of Haida art and culture. He lives in White Rock, British Columbia.
Freda Diesing was a Haida woman of the Sadsugohilanes Clan, one of very few female carvers of Northwest Coast totem poles and a member of the Council of the Haida Nation of British Columbia, Canada. Her Haida name is Skil Kew Wat, meaning "magical little woman."
Florence Edenshaw Davidson (1896–1993) was a Canadian First Nations artist from Haida Gwaii. She created basketry and button-blankets and was a respected elder in her village of Masset, Haida Gwaii, British Columbia.
Charles Edenshaw was a Haida artist from Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. He is known for his woodcarving, argillite carving, jewellery, and painting. His style was known for its originality and innovative narrative forms, created while adhering to the principles of formline art characteristic of Haida art. In 1902, the ethnographer and collector Charles F. Newcombe called Edenshaw “the best carver in wood and stone now living.”
Walter Harris, also known as Simogyet Geel, was a Canadian artist and hereditary chief from the Gitxsan (Gitksan) First Nation in northwestern British Columbia.
Northwest Coast art is the term commonly applied to a style of art created primarily by artists from Tlingit, Haida, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and other First Nations and Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast of North America, from pre-European-contact times up to the present.
Chief Mungo Martin or Nakapenkem, Datsa, was an important figure in Northwest Coast style art, specifically that of the Kwakwaka'wakw Aboriginal people who live in the area of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. He was a major contributor to Kwakwaka'wakw art, especially in the realm of wood sculpture and painting. He was also known as a singer and songwriter.
Coast Salish art is an art unique to the Pacific Northwest Coast among the Coast Salish peoples. Coast Salish are peoples from the Pacific Northwest Coast made up of many different languages and cultural characteristics. Coast Salish territory covers the coast of British Columbia and Washington state. Within traditional Coast Salish art there are two major forms; the flat design and carving, and basketry and weaving. In historical times these were delineated among male and female roles in the community with men made "figurative pieces, such as sculptures and paintings that depicts crest, shamanic beings, and spirits, whereas women produced baskets and textiles, most often decorated with abstract designs."
Ellen Neel (1916–1966) was a Kwakwakaʼwakw artist woodcarver and is the first woman known to have professionally carved totem poles. She came from Alert Bay, British Columbia, and her work is in public collections throughout the world.
The Salish peoples are indigenous peoples of the American and Canadian Pacific Northwest, identified by their use of the Salish languages which diversified out of Proto-Salish between 3,000 and 6,000 years ago.
Primrose Adams was a Canadian First Nations artist and member of the Raven Clan from the Haida nation. She wove hats and baskets in the Haida method and is most notable for her spruce root basketry, which involves working in the traditional manner of collecting and dyeing her own spruce root. Adams died in January 2020.
Doug Cranmer (1927–2006), also known as Pal'nakwala Wakas and Kesu', was a Kwakwaka'wakw carver and artist as well as a 'Namgis chief. Cranmer was a significant figure in the Northwest Coast art movement, both in its traditional form and in a modern contemporary form that he created and developed.
Beau Dick was a Kwakwaka'wakw Northwest Coast artist and Chief who lived and worked in Alert Bay, British Columbia, Canada. He was a contemporary artist, activist and hereditary Chief from the Namgis First Nation. Dick was an artist with an extensive national and international exhibition history.
James Hart is a Canadian and Haida artist and a chief of the Haida Nation.
Phil Gray is a Canadian artist who specializes in wood carvings from the Tsimshian and Mikisew Cree communities. His work uses traditional technique and features imagery from legends. In 2014, Gray was awarded a British Columbia Creative Achievement Award in Aboriginal Art from the Government of British Columbia.
Don Yeomans is a Haida artist from Prince Rupert, British Columbia best known for his silkscreen art. His art is in the collection of Museum of Anthropology at UBC and on permanent display at the Canadian Museum of History.
