Susan Point's Vision

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Susan Point, "Ravens and Moon," 2001

etched glass, maple and granite, Salish Weave Collection of George and Christiane Smyth, Photo by Janet Dwyer

Musqueam artist Susan Point, whose work is on view in a major solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery until May 28, is often credited with starting the current renaissance in Coast Salish art. But Point grew up with little awareness of her people’s traditional designs. Like many of her peers in Coast Salish territory in southern B.C., she started out using techniques based on formline, the flowing curvilinear element that gives power to Haida and other indigenous art from the province’s northwest coast. Then, in 1981, Point realized: “We had our own art culture.”

Susan Point, "Swanisit Brings Salmon," 1981

Susan Point, "Qulqulil," 1986

Susan Point, "Four Ravens," 1994

The revelation came while she was taking a jewelry-making course at Vancouver Community College. Out walking with her husband, Jeff Cannell, she spotted two canvases in a Vancouver gallery by Chilliwack-based Coast Salish artist Stan Greene. They were inspired by traditional spindle whorls, a tool used for spinning wool from the hair of mountain goats and a unique type of dog, now extinct, that the Musqueam used to breed. Intrigued, Point wondered aloud about the unusual imagery. “My husband mentioned that we had our own art system prior to this,” she recalls. “I told him I didn’t know anything about it.”

Point started researching early Coast Salish art, and talked to Michael Kew, an anthropologist at UBC. “Mike is married to my aunt and is a professor specializing in Coast Salish art and culture,” says Point. “I met him at the museum and he gave me all the photos and slides he had.” The pictures were mostly of tools and house posts. The latter are modest carved poles that typically depict ancestors or other beings. Unlike the larger northwest totem poles carved specifically for the outdoors, the Musqueam posts were usually inside the home.

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Susan Point, "Salish Vision," 2002

red cedar, copper and acrylic, Courtesy of the UBC Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, Salish Weave Collection, Photo by Janet Dwyer

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Susan Point, "Halibut (State I of II)," 2007

screenprint on paper, Courtesy of the artist, Photo by Kenji Nagai, Courtesy of Spirit Wrestler Gallery

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Susan Point, "Northern Lights," 2008

screenprint on paper, Courtesy of the artist, Photo by Kenji Nagai, Courtesy of Spirit Wrestler Gallery

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Susan Point, "Salmon Gathering," c. 2010

silica sand, teak and red cedar, Private Collection, Photo by Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery

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Susan Point "Bounty II," 2014

red cedar, paint fused etched,glass, Collection of Summer Cannell, Photo by Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery

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Coast Salish art is known for its elegant minimalism, a contrast to the bolder art of the Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka’wakw and Tsimshian nations. Unlike northern traditions, which use strong perimeters to contain images in positive space, Coast Salish art uses negative space to create designs that flow and swirl like water. The circle is a prominent design element, as are crescent shapes and a form of curved triangle called a trigon.

Soon, Point was making her own prints. “That’s when I got the silkscreen. A few months later, I started doing canvases. That’s how it started for me.” She did her first print, Four Salmon on her kitchen table in 1981. It’s one of more than 100 pieces in the Vancouver Art Gallery show, Spindle Whorl, which also includes carvings, sculptures and digital imagery from the last 35 years. According to Ian Thom, the show’s co-curator: “This is a pretty amazing print for an artist’s first work.”

Early on, Point pushed boundaries. She began carving, a medium traditionally dominated by men. She also worked with non-traditional materials like glass, metal and acrylic, building on traditional practices to express herself in new ways. She calls herself a contemporary artist.

It was a challenge at first, as galleries weren’t always receptive to her glass work, telling her it wasn’t “native art.” She had one steadfast supporter in the late gallery owner Bud Mintz, who not only purchased her glass pieces and contemporary prints and paintings, but also encouraged her to carve.

Thom praises Point’s willingness to experiment. “She is keen to have a variety of materials and approaches,” he says. “And she never lets new media challenge her.” This can be seen in a 2016 work, Reflections, a panel of 120 digitally manipulated images of spindle whorls. The process has allowed Point to add new dimensions to her original sketches, some of which go back decades. She compares it to “highlighting images that were shadows in my mind.”

Point was born in 1952 in Alert Bay, B.C., while her parents were salmon fishing. She attended a residential school in Sechelt for five years, a time she describes as heart breaking, and then lived on the Musqueam First Nation reserve, near the mouth of the Fraser River. Her mother was a weaver and knitter, and Point would watch her design animal imagery for sweaters.

Point, who originally trained as a legal secretary, has produced countless works, including major public art installations for Stanley Park, the Vancouver International Airport and even the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. She has had 12 solo shows and participated in more than 60 group shows. Her public art includes inventive pieces, like manhole covers in Vancouver and tree grates in Seattle. (At the Vancouver Art Gallery, a carved wooden cauldron, Qulqulil’s Basket, sits atop a replica of the Seattle tree grate.)

The show’s other curator, Grant Arnold, notes the tremendous reach of Point’s work. “It takes place in galleries, private homes and in public spaces,” he says. “She is participating in the revival of her culture.” Thom says Point’s influence on younger Coast Salish artists is immeasurable. “She led the way.”