At his small art studio on a recent weekday afternoon, 33-year-old Haines artist James Hart was hard at work perfecting a curve on a single pencil line on a piece of tracing paper. Nobody else was in view in Dalton City, where he just rented a studio space. He had only his dog and Bluetooth speaker for company.
Hart was working on his latest piece, an intricate formline design packed with a dazzling puzzle of ovoids filled with stylized mouths and eyes painted on a canvas several feet wide.
It’s based on the facade of a masterful bentwood box carved 20 miles up the highway in Klukwan more than 100 years ago, but Hart had to travel thousands of miles to Seattle to study it as part of a grant project he recently undertook at the Burke Museum.
“If you look at it and you look at a lot of other boxes, this one stands out,” said Hart. “It’s really, really well put together.”
Hart spent three days fine tuning the design in front of museum visitors, observing the box itself, and tracing the design. He cut out perfectly-shaped ovoids to match the design on the front of the bentwood box. After completing the right half of the design, he folded the paper over to retrace the other half to make a symmetrical pattern. In his studio in Haines, he was finishing up his pencil lines, and filling in the lines with black and red paint over an ochre background meant to imitate the color of cedar.
Looking at a photo of the original box, he marveled at the symmetry of the artists, who worked without the benefits of an artist’s desk marked with even gridlines.
“Looking at my desk, I have a big platform ruler and different things to cut things out to make them symmetrical, and there’s still gonna be a little bit of human error. For our ancestors to be able to create this type of mastery without the modern tools that we have – it just blows my mind.”
He said Tlingit people traditionally used cedar or birch bark as templates instead of the cardboard cutouts, circular stencils and tracing paper he uses.
“You look at a lot of older boxes and you can tell the person was really good, but they didn’t take their time. You look at this one and you know this person put in hours and hours and hours and was at a stage in their artistry that was masterful.”
Hart heard about the grant to visit the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Native Art at the Burke Museum several years ago, and finally felt organized enough to apply for it last year and spend a few days in early August at the museum.
Hart sees himself as part of a Tlingit art revitalization, and is always looking to expand his skills in carving or painting. He recently acquired a steam box that he can use to heat up wood planks that can be bent into boxes.
Despite a handful of artists around Haines doing weaving, carving or formline drawing, there’s still a concern about the art going dormant.
“We have Wayne Price who is our last master carver, who can carve a totem pole from start to finish on his own. There’s one person left in our community that’s still capable of going out and doing it,” said Hart. “It’s kind of a state of alarm, in all honesty.”
He’s far from being there, but Hart said he hopes some day to continue the Kootéeya – or totem pole – tradition in Haines. He said just finding mentors is one of the biggest challenges. Hart began working on carving with a dugout canoe project in Hoonah, and said Price has become a mentor to him. But Price teaches classes at the University of Alaska Southeast, and has many other obligations.
“I look over his shoulder and encourage him wherever I’m at,” Price said in a phone call from Juneau. “But I don’t always keep track.”
To improve, Hart has had to rely a lot on trial and error, since he doesn’t have any formal artistic training. He’s already taught classes around Southeast on formline drawing, which he hopes will help the next generation of talent have an easier time keeping Tlingit art vibrant.
“I’m hoping I can continue to learn what I can, and hopefully be that mentor to others,” he said.