True
In a blizzard you see nothing because it is so full of something. On a blank page it is a vocabularic void, an abyss between ideas and execution. Clink, clink, clink, clink…up we go. Even a screaming roller-coaster needs a lift at the beginning.
So many great images at the start of a nerve-wracking picture; the guy throwing up in the first scene of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ or the irony of the Classical calm of a Kubrick. What will be my sweaty-palm moment to set this thing rolling? Weeks of block on this subject have produced not the complicated, prolific epiphany I assumed, but instead one clear thought I found while selecting an opening design for my first online store.
In the back of my stack of screens for printing is a semi-retired Pacific Northwest style thunderbird. I immediately disregarded using it as my opener because it is such a specific type of art. I thought I should offer something more generic.
More time went by and I still didn’t have an opening Blog or an opening design in mind. I looked down and took a breath. There it was on my shirt. I reminisced about the first time I saw this graphic, symbolistic design work. I remembered what my guide told me about the thunderbird. Thunderbird is the bringer of storms; catalyst of change and talisman of transition.
In the early 90’s, South Dakota was a hip place post-’Dances With Wolves’. A friend’s son asked me to travel to western South Dakota to support him on a two-day vigil he was doing for his mother’s upcoming surgery. She was my best friend and co-worker at the time and I needed an adventure, so I said yes.
Spending time with those Lakota and their friends was more than an adventure. I could fill a book with that story. All I’ll say for now is that it was a life altering experience in many aspects.
One of these aspects changed my artistic perspective. A group of us went in to Pine Ridge, the ‘res’, to get groceries. Someone suggested we visit an art show at a church. I couldn’t tell you who the artists were, but the graphic imagery and the solving of space with one color captivated me. I couldn’t even interpret what animals were depicted, but the red and black solutions played over and over in my imagination.
When I finally stopped travelling and landed in Boone, NC, I went to the library and checked out a book about Pacific Northwest art. I learned that the tribal art I gravitated toward the most was the art of the Haida Gwaii. Maybe their designs were so unique because they lived on the *Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia and were isolated.
All I know is I began drawing in this style. Before long, it was hard not to find curves and lines that didn’t echo the rules of their aesthetic. I gave many a Sharpie tattoo.
Pacific Northwest design has always been something I do on the side. The art I sold in paintings, photographs, drawings, and T-shirts was rarely in this style. Creating this website is a new adventure, so why not go back to my past and begin with the art of my passion. I want to start true. Welcome to Boonebarndog.
*The islands were renamed Haida Gwaii in 2015.