Artworks

As envisioned by the artist, when playing the drums using the palm of a bare hand, one will feel the natural texture of the wood, hear and feel the reverberations and in what can be a personal or shared experience, create a song or rhythm. Playing the drums also generates reverberations below human hearing that resonate into the ground, making music for the earth.

The artist encourages people of all ages to interact with the artwork while asking us to change our relationship with the land from one of ownership and property to one of stewardship and responsibility, addressing reconciliation and the environment through Indigenous perspectives.

Carey Newman (Hayalthkin’geme) is a multi-disciplinary artist, master carver, filmmaker, author and public speaker of Kwakwaka’wakw, Coast Salish and settler heritage.

Highlights from the artist’s career include the Cowichan 2008 Spirit Pole, an installation for the 2010 Olympic Games entitled Dancing Wind and writing and co-directing the documentary Picking up the Pieces that premiered at the 2018 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Perhaps his most influential work, The Witness Blanket, deals with the subject of residential schools and was commissioned by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is now part of the collection at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Carey was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal in 2017, was named to the Order of British Columbia in 2018 and is the 6th Audain Professor at the University of Victoria.

Carved and painted cedar