Contemporary Northwest Coast Arts In The Artists Words
In 1997, I interviewed over 50 Northwest Coast artists in Southeast Alaska as part of a thesis project to gain an understanding of the issues that contemporary Northwest Coast artists face. I will present some of the critical issues that artists negotiate in terms of production, consumption, and circulation of their art works in the form of a dialogue to gain a sense of where they sit a decade later with the latest generation of contemporary Northwest coast artists. I am particularly interested in discussing how the latest technologies and contemporary materials factor into debates surrounding tradition and innovation. I plan to use this conversation as a starting point to revisit artists who I would like to include in a monograph exploring contemporary Northwest Coast art movements in the artists’ words.
