Framed Art Card - Serenity (Moon)
Since time immemorial, my people have lived in villages nestled along the eastern shore of Vancouver Island. From these villages, they could make their living—fishing, hunting and gathering and developing an intensely complex social structure. At the heart of this social structure lies the potlatch or winter ceremonial. Many times, whether in the past or in the present, potlatches last throughout the night. “Serenity” represents one such long night at a small feast. The sun is coming up and the fires still burn strong as the business of the potlatch is performed.
The style of the bighouses in this print is modeled after those that one would find in Comox during the middle of the 19th Century. The second house from the left is structured specifically after a “Chief’s house” which was photographed in Comox in the 1860s by Frederick Dally.
The goal of this print is not only to represent a village at the peak of the potlatch era or a village in the throes of a winter ceremonial, its goal is really to create a feeling. It is my hope that “Serenity” evokes the self-same mood that its title purports to embody.
(9" x 12")