Coast Salish Art Analysis

There’s also a break from gender roles in carving and sculpting, as it’s traditional for men to do these activities. However, that does not stop her due to her background of experiencing deculturization in the residential schools. As Point states, “Medium or means has never been an issue for me, nor do I see woodcarving as a male versus female accomplishment. I love to try new mediums, so I just do what I feel like doing, and wood is a medium I love to work with.” This is what makes Susan Point’s work rather unique because she likes to work and collage with new materials. She enjoys learning from these techniques and like many artists, wants to go through processing and learning each stage of medium. The art path for her was rather challenging

One of the popular assumptions is that Coast Salish art was part of Northwest Coast development; therefore, it was often considered undeveloped and often forgotten in the art world. Coast Salish art was often compared to Northwest Coast art possibly due to Western perspectives of art. Consider how art is often critiqued. Western art often considers the style, the color, and the composition; basically what’s aesthetically pleasing about it. Coast Salish art is often seen as simple compared to Northwest Coast where Northwest Coast style focuses on the likeness of their clan to identify themselves “but also disclose a more specific, subjective and momentary content.” While Coast Salish is seen as part of the development of Northwest Coast, Paul S. Wingert sees that these two art forms are clearly differentiated through their differences of their nature in their

Functional pieces have little or even no decoration and show vague imagery compared to Northwest Coast. Most of their forms of art come from their ritual arts, which come from their music, dance, and storytelling. These arts are rarely recorded or sold, as there is an aspect in Coast Salish culture that there are certain visions and dreams that remain with the individual. These visions make up the individual that give “the means of personal fulfillment, focusing and giving strength to individual lives.” Visual imagery can also be dangerous as realism can show the connection to their visions and powers. Musqueam use their dreams or visions as their way of power “that are fundamental to a full life and capable of imparting extraordinary benefits, yet always dangerous.” This could be the reason why imagery could be more abstract to Northwest Coast as formline shows their crest imagery. As said previously, Salish people are often conservative and self-contained so this is why visual images are more abstract because “To discuss images openly, to treat them casually, to reveal too freely what is known of their origin, is to court danger.” When trying to convey some of their ancestral heritage and individual visions while also not revealing any secrecy of the individual,