ISLAND OWL ARTIST FEATURE

Phil Vaillancourt

All My Relations

With paternal relations to the Mik’maq Nation and

hailing from Maniwaki, Quebec, Phil Vaillancourt started creating images at four years old; he loved to draw and it showed. As his passion grew for Art, he struggled in structured classes and decided to focus on it through his own eyes, on his own time. As a Tattoo Artist, Vaillancourt embraced and studied Polynesian styles and art forms. Art and culture from Hawaii to New Zealand heavily influenced his own personal style and are great examples of Polynesian styles. 2015 emerged and Vaillancourt decided to spend a month in Hawaii to truly study and understand their culture and tattooing. At this time, he was selling his drawings for tattoos and decided to learn how and entered into an apprenticeship in 2016. He poured years of drawing and studying Polynesian styles and finally got a green light from Polynesian tattoo experts. As fate would have it, his first tattoo client

was a Hawaiian woman. Vaillancourt takes pride that he can professionally do multiple cultural styles.

As Vaillancourt developed his style and became known for this unique Indigenous art form in tattoo circles, requests started coming in for traditional First Nations tattoo artwork. From Haidaberg Alaska down to Vancouver Island Kwakawaka, Vaillancourt started going to the museum weekly, reading as much as he could and watching documentaries on West Coast First Nations Art. So he added focus on two art forms – form line and Coast Salish art. He instantly started practicing these styles and found a mentor to work with, who could lead and train his growing interest.

He was inspired at a Potlatch in Bella Bella a couple years ago and understood that learning the root of the art form would be to learn to carve. Vaillancourt was honoured at this potlatch for representing his nation. “It’s an inspiring time to be transitioning and learning a new medium,” Vaillancourt smiles as he glances back down at the yellow cedar panel he’s working on. For the past 13 months Vaillancourt has been studying under Tom Lafortune, Coast Salish Carver from the Tsawout First Nation, as well as other mentors from other nations.

Shortly after, another unique opportunity arrived to Vaillancourt. A friend from Prince Rupert, Lyle Campbell, Haida Nation, asked for Vaillancourt’s assistance on a memorial totem pole for Campbell’s mother. There was a big push to finish the project so he flew up to assist, alongside other artists; he felt very thankful for the opportunity.

“As a Native Artist, carving and working with cedar, drawing or designing in general is an ancient and at times hypnotic, powerful process. I’m a conduit for my ancestors’ voices, as well as healing energy to be infused into whatever piece I’m working on. Sometimes you feel it go right through you” he adds to explain his lived experiences.

A year later, Vaillancourt has begun producing masks and is still learning through each piece. He is focused on learning how to shape and create 3-dimensional images such as Bukwus and Dznunukwa (Wild Man and Wild Woman of the Woods). He continues to be open to learning and staying on this journey “I like to go with my gut,” Vaillancourt says.

Focusing on his roots, Phil connected himself to the land for grounding and guidance. “My work is definitely channelled by and through love and I cherish and value this relationship," he says. Vaillancourt has completed a powerful image of a juvenile Sasquatch, as protector of the land. “This planet has a beautiful voice and we need to live in harmony with it” Vaillancourt shares. This image is now available on hoodies and can be ordered directly through Vaillancourt’s Facebook or Instagram accounts.

His tattoo work is done out of Urge Studios in Victoria, which he currently calls home.

philvdesign.ca

PHIL VAILLANCOURT

work in progress

Cedar Panel

Phil Vaillancourt philvdesign.ca

BEING HUMAN

JAMES L. ANDERSON

OUTRAGEOUS IDEAS TO RESTART OUR WORLD

All of us have to restart our lives, and our world

today. We have to discard all the terror and hate, and rise above the fear that threatens to overpower our lives. Somehow, find the way to come together to build a civilization around humanity, community, love and hope; dreaming our way through to a better world as a united life force hand in hand… again. Against all odds. We are living in an age of catastrophic threat to our collective Human consciousness where living our lives “Being Human” may cease to exist on earth. Only a Giant Leap and a colossal, evolutionary transformation in the way we think and how we make “sense” of everything will allow us to change beyond imagination to survive. This metamorphosis of our Human mindscape will have to involve outrageous new and staggeringly profound ideas that have never before reached critical mass in our world. One such outrageous idea I have stumbled upon is an extraordinary, obscure idea that is now totally beyond our elemental systemic foundation of Human, Symbolic, Rational, logical, cognitive and “critical” thought, and the platform of Mass, Space, Time and Energy which now defines the truth and meaning of everything for us all. This new alternative concept is a conceptualization — beyond what we now perceive and consider to be Reality and Universe — that contests that there is actually an all-pervasive, sublime, Cosmic Consciousness that is presently beyond the domain of “Being Human”. It asserts that it is this imperceptibly hidden source (the Cosmic Consciousness) which expresses/vitiates/originates all the matter and physical reality we are living through in our peripheral, sublime and childlike ignorance. Such an outrageous idea simply does not fit anywhere in our present symbolic, logical mindscape, and could only be accommodated in a different way to think in another web of conscious awareness that is foreign and presently beyond imagination for us today. And finally there is another outrageous concept I have spent a lifetime trying to put into words. For perhaps ten to a hundred thousand years our Human life force, and our species after discovering a primitive ”awareness” that allowed us to survive, leaving all other primates behind us… were then finally liberated to develop the primitive, metamorphic insight into the Symbolic, Rational, Logical, Cognitive and ”Critical” thought that ages and ages later has given us the secure platform to stand upon, allowing us to Create the astoundingly complex intercommunicative modern technological, scientific, space-age, computerized wonder civilization we live today. But perhaps, in the last couple hundred years ago or so, strategic cracks have appeared in our “old school” previously safe and stable modeled platform of symbolic, logical consciousness, and our modern world has had to be reworked, patched and reprogrammed with coefficients and “fudge factors” to continue to give us protection and once again be the safe sanctuary against the raw chaos and terror of the monstrous unknown, as it has been for thousands and thousands of years, until now. And with our present seemingly disintegrating world of rage, war, hatred and mindless, ruthless and savage inhumanity haunting us today it is now becoming reasonable to suspect that something preciously critical must be missing. That we are not yet fully evolved. In studying carefully the process and essence of what we call Symbolic, Rational, Logical, Cognitive and “Critical” thought to perhaps discover what might be missing, I have discovered something outrageous.

We break everything into totally isolated and discrete, disconnected Parts to find TRUTH in all Universe and Reality. Logically we define the Whole as being equal to the sum of its Parts. And our Symbolic, Logical consciousness that is rooted on perfectly delineating and differentiating the parts beneath everything to establish Truth culminates in the modern rage to isolate the primary elementary particle (or,“God” particle) that must lie beneath, centering all Creation for everything to make sense. (Leagues of physicists and huge Colliders now validate and maintain the part proven to exist to center all Creation.) And so, continuing on further, the more perfectly and totally we can absolutely center, define, and rigorously, invariantly quantify and delineate identities, events and phenomena in universe into isolated, separate, particulate (parts) that cannot be further broken down in mathematically proven nano-quantum solitary definition, the more truth there is. We isolate singular centers, nuclei, attractors and foci that direct and control phenomena. Nothing can go in two different directions at once. Nothing can exist in two different places and dimensions at once… and everything must have a unique symbolic, discrete name. The totally isolated part must be configured at the base and center of everything otherwise nothing can be true and make everything to be real and make SENSE. Does all this remind you of something? Does it not perfectly and precisely depict the separate, private and totally disconnected “Solitary one” lives every one of us lives on this Earth today. Is our Symbolic, Rational, Logical, Cognitive and “Critical” matrix of Human Consciousness that is built upon the perfectly, disconnected, eternally Discrete PART… not a reflected representation of the Self, “I”, ME particulate, eternally, totally Discrete existence we know as our lives themselves that center all that matters to us and there is no meaning or existence except in the “Solitary One” self that we live? In other words, does our magnificent web of Symbolic, Rational, Logical, Cognitive and “Critical” Consciousness simply MIRROR our own private Human isolated, disconnected lives? When we look out and see Symbols, Laws, Facts, Formulas, Numbers, Words and Names out in our world art large and throughout all Universe… ARE WE REALLY SEEING OURSELVES? Instead of speaking in the “language that the world was written in” (mathematics) or approaching the “Mind of God”, are we simply witnessing only our private lives themselves, symbolized and mirrored everywhere in a web that is entrained only to our own systemic, visceral “solitary one” existences? This is truly an OUTRAGEOUS idea that changes our world. And if it is true (it would appear it is) then nothing can now remain the same and we are opening the door to what must become A New Way to be Human on Earth. There are therefore now questions that must be asked. What now do we truly Know that is not an illusion? Can we any longer believe that Human Conscious thought elevates us to the supreme pulpit of exceptional, almost divine omnipotence in universe? Can we really expect to obtain any truth and answers for future Human survival on earth from science and technology now, understanding that both are chained to a logical, rational order that is now fatally flawed? How do you and I now carry the Human Dream ahead into the future. Can we set sail and together believe in ourselves and each other enough to create a new higher consciousness where we can come together in peace and hand in hand to CREATE A New Human World where we truly care for one another….for the first time on Earth? Perhaps the time has come to look to each other, to find the way through to survive. We now have a New Human species to become, and a New impossible Human Future to Create… and the Human Dream to finally make come true. We are challenged to do the impossible to survive, once again. Somewhere within us all we must find the way home to a better world for us all. Hand in Hand. Guess it doesn’t get any better than that.

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© James L. Anderson,Campbell River, BC, Canada, Earth. www.james-l-anderson.com

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