Anthropologist Carol Sheehan will discuss 'Struggle to Pierce' The Ethnographic Eye of Emily Carr, at the Courtenay Museum lecture series March 30 at 7 p.m.
Through her writing, we know that Emily Carr perceived, even envied, the strength of Northwest Coast artists and their art.
As early as 1907, she initiated a project to paint Northwest Coast totem poles and house fronts in situ. Her task, as she saw it was more than a painterly recording — it was an essential act of preservation.
In this illustrated lecture, Sheehan will sample a few of the paintings that Carr created — primarily those from her journeys to the Haida Gwaii and the Kwakwaka' wakw nations — and compare them with contemporaneous photographs of those sites.
Emily Carr’s struggle was “to pierce” the inner workings of what she loved and painted — to learn about, communicate, and honour the First Nations artists with as much authenticity as she could.
This lecture, in comparing Carr’s paintings with the ethnographic photographic record, poses the question, “So, how did she do — did Emily Carr accomplish her mission?”
Sheehan is a writer, book editor, university teacher and communication consultant as well as being an authority on the ethnography of B.C.’s Northwest Coast. Her publications include 2008’s Breathing Stone: Contemporary H