110-beau-dick-380x300
One of the best films shown at the 2017 Vancouver Film Festival was Meet Beau Dick: Maker of Monsters, a fascinating documentary on the life and work of Kwakwaka’wakw sculptor and activist Beau Dick, directed by Natalie Boll and LaTiesha Ti’si’tla Fazakas. Though Beau Dick worked in a variety of media, he is best known for his carved cedar masks, which depict supernatural figures drawn from the mythologies of the Kwakwaka’wakw and other coastal peoples, figures such as Hok Hok (a bird monster), Bukwus (the Wild Man of the Woods), Atlakin (forest spirits), and Dzunukwa (the Wild Woman of the Woods), a haunting figure that Dick depicted many times over the years, each time with subtle variations. In the spring of 2018, about a year after Dick’s death at age 61, the Audain Gallery in Whistler mounted a retrospective exhibit of his work; Beau Dick: Revolutionary Spirit by Darrin Martens (Figure.1) is the catalogue for that exhibition. The front cover shows an amazing Dzunukwa mask from 2007, with coarse, dark hair (Dick used horsehair) veiling the features, and full, red-tinged lips shown pursed (so that the Wild Woman can issue her haunting cry); the back cover shows a ghostly Bukwus mask (whose list of materials includes red cedar, feathers, felted wool and nails). Revolutionary Spirit also includes several essays and tributes—it’s an excellent introduction to Dick’s work—but I encourage you to track down the documentary film as well, to get a more complete sense of Beau Dick’s life: his struggles with addiction in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and his Indigenous activism, which helped draw attention to issues affecting First Nations communities. The power of Dick’s carved figures is unmistakable, even without explanatory essays. The Audain Gallery has several of Dick’s masks in its permanent collection; it’s worth the journey.
