9 minute read
ARTIST FEATURE
COLE SPECK
Kwakwaka'wakw | Alert Bay SPECK-TACULAR TALENT
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It took me a little while to connect with Cole
Speck, but eventually we found a hole in the schedule that allowed both of us some time to talk about his creative background, his hometown and what’s changed over the past few years. It was a great chat, especially learning about some of his favourite and most important memories.
Speck was born in 1991 and raised in Alert Bay, Cormorant Island on Namgis First Nation Territory, off the northeast side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. In his thirties now, he reflects on his youth in the Bay, and recalls some of his first interests in cultural art.
“I remember being at school with my friend, Aubrey, and instead of going out to play, we went to the library to look at our cultural art. We brought out art photos of a Kwakwaka'wakw rattle; we practiced drawing the rattle over and over again until we could draw it without looking at the picture,” says Speck. "At the time, my mom worked above the carving shed in Alert Bay. I was allowed to hang out a bit in the shed. I remember being allowed to use Doug Cramner’s tools and banged them up so Doug took them away." Speck laughs as he shares this memory.
“I didn’t finish school and took on the apprenticeship to follow my heart and passion as an Artist. I was never even able to get into an Art Class in High School”, he recalls, "because they didn’t have any room for my registration and it was all I was interested in. I felt left behind by the system—I just focused on my own art through my cultural ties.”
Speck apprenticed under the late Master Carver, Beau Dick, who is known well for his Cultural Position and body of work. One of Speck’s most important moments was helping Dick bring his Undersea Kingdom Story project to light in 2017—a very big moment in his life. He assisted Dick on several projects— additional highlights include outfitting an entire set of carved masks for a potlatch, on behalf of the Dick family.
He travelled to Holland with Rande Cook to do a Northwest Coast totem exhibition that year as well, and participated in the exhibition in Kassel, Germany as Beau Dick’s apprentice. Cole’s work has also been exhibited at NADA Art Fair in New York and at Santander Cultural in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2018. Speck also apprenticed under Wayne Alfred.
Once home after Brazil, Speck was rear-ended in a car accident. There were serious impacts to everything related to his health. Physically, he is at 65% along with his mobility and strength, compared to before. "I’m lucky to be getting an eight hour day in at this time,” he shares. He’s learned to put three hours into his art in the morning, and three hours in the late afternoon. He’s starting to get used to it now but the pain doesn’t stop him, he tries to keep focused as much as possible in short stints. The rear ending In the Summer of 2018 changed his life—he's also coping with a head injury which resulted in glasses and vision therapy. "It’s tough to be struggling with all of these impairments, plus being a Dad and an Artist."
The one lucky part of his physical downtime is he gets lots of time with his kids. He still enjoys working, producing art, and he continues to be invited to participate in art shows all over the world. Creating is definitely still his big passion—currently working on a 8x3’ panel of Sisiutl (two headed sea serpent) and Thunderbird, Speck is focusing on some bigger projects, along with tracking down materials. Projecting into 2022, large masks and totems are on his to-do list over the winter.
Speck truly has a life-long commitment to art, and hopes to reach the upper end of the Art Market. “When that happens, we’re moving back to Alert Bay,” he says in anticipation.
When asked about his latest work, Speck discusses one of his biggest commissions to date – a four foot mask he refers to as ‘Rich Woman’ Mask. It took him the better part of five months to complete. He would come back to complete the piece in phases, allowing the wood to cure; as the movement in the wood takes place, it can crack or shift. “Working with natural materials is a different process and can be finicky; you have to finesse it sometimes!” he says.
He is currently working with youth at Carihi in Campbell River, embarking on a copper embossing project and teachings paddle. Speck is preparing the students through drawing their designs first. "Some of this work feels like part of reconciliation, finding common ground with the youth creates a new relationship with First Nations’ first hand,” says Speck. “It’s an honour to share the knowledge and teach for a better understanding.”
Speck currently resides and carves in Campbell River, surrounded by family and friends.
Cole Speck
Box End Rendition Panel, 2021 fazakasgallery.com/artists/cole-speck
BEING HUMAN JAMES L. ANDERSON
LIFE
(anonymous)
In the detached and confident world of Biology and Science the quintessence that we call "Life" is a many structured and defined thing. Like itinerant craftsmen through the ages, legions of relentless scientists have brick upon brick, fact upon fact crafted a sanctuary of meaning and identity meticulously circumscribing the essence of life in a secure web of cells, tissues and organisms. In a careful colossus of covalent bonds, ATP, organelles, metabolism, DNA, genomes and a myriad, interwoven sanctum of functions, terminology and definition they have courageously secured a bastion of law and order that all of us stand upon to navigate through the dark chaos of unknown. And for the most part, seen in the proper and reverent light, that logical sanctuary is airtight, valid and impregnable. It works. It comforts us and keeps us all safe and sheltered from the storm. But when the life within us falters and fails. When we are forced to helplessly sit and watch it slip away from those desperately dear and priceless to us... that magnificent and colossal sanctuary becomes useless and cannot save us from the desolate emptiness that will not be comforted with any fact, law or logic. The shadows fall away and we see that magnificent, brilliant palace of science and genius for what it is...at last. It is the best we can do. It is the accumulated excellence of the finest, the very finest the human mind can create. But it is not enough. When face to face with the stark eternity of death and the mystery of life itself...it all becomes a charade. An illusion that cannot capture and hold the secret majesty of the quintessence of life. And all those facts, laws and precise scientific universal truths become like lifeless garments, abandoned trinkets and forlorn things left behind. Empty. Deserted. No longer raging. No longer wild. No longer alive. And we wonder in lost confusion, unable to digest the dark mystery of what we once knew, felt and touched and finally lost... never ever truly understanding what it really was. What is life? We truly do not know. We live its intense, all consuming and overwhelming majesty. We try desperately to tie it down, structure and capture it. But it will not stand and stay. Always it flows and rages. Always it runs away. "Too strong to hold, too sweet to lose." Through the ages in the saga of science and intellect, in the stray ideas of thinkers like Heraclitus, or Soviet
dialecticians you hear mentioned the idea of life as being a "river." That our bodies flow "like rivulets" with the material within us constantly renewed "like water in a stream." That organisms are simply forms and structures holding a flowing "organic" fulmination temporarily within. That everything is part of an "organic unity of reality", an indissociable "unity of opposites" that cannot ever be fully explained in "physicochemical terms." When we lose someone precious and irreplaceable, it is the shattering revelation that we truly do not know what life really is that derails and destroys us. That our loved ones are forever lost because we never truly understood what that precious essence of life really is. That not only have they eternally disappeared into the unknown, we never knew what the precious life within them really meant. We just do not know. In spite of all the convoluted structure and law, there is only one thing we only truly know about life. Everything else is conjecture, illusion and mystery. It flows and consumes us in an intense, raging riotous torrent. But we have yet to truly understand what it means. And we are left with only the singular, primitive knowledge that it begins and ends. This we know. This we have learned, in devastating pain, anguish and sorrow. It ends. It is temporary. In our human world and primitive reality, life is somehow bounded by solitary, isolated dimension and separate, impenetrable discreteness. That discreteness composes the saga, story and definition of our reality and our existence. We see everything through that primary window of aching and isolated discreteness. It is a primitive state. And it hurts. It is why we live in such pain, agony and unbearable grief when those we love slip away and die. And there is nothing we can do for that aching, inconsolable loss. Not yet. When we finally find out what life and universe really mean...those precious loved ones will no longer disappear into that bleak, barren shattering empty darkness. We will no longer have to find a way to suffer through in ignorant silence without them. We will no longer have to say goodbye forever.
© James L. Anderson, 2010 www.james-l-anderson.com We’re nearing our $7 million goal and need your help to raise the final $1.8 million! Together we can ensure Qʷalayu House, our home away from home in Campbell River, is here for north Island families for years to come.
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