• Age: 14
• Grade: 9

Fully illustrated and engagingly written, K'esu' is the first book to honour this Kwakwaka'wakw artist's ground-breaking work Northwest Coast.

 

Kwakwaka'wakw art is renowned for its flamboyant, energetic and colourful carving and painting. Among the leading practitioners was Doug Cranmer, whose style was understated, elegant and fresh and whose work quickly found an international following in the 1960s. He was an early player in the global commercial art market and one of the first Native artists in British Columbia to own his own gallery.

 

A long-time teacher, he inspired generations of young Native artists in Alert Bay, British Columbia, and across the province. To date, however, his considerable contributions have gone largely unrecognized. This beautifully illustrated book is a record of the art, life and influence of a man who embodied "indigenous modern" before the term had been coined but preferred the descriptor "whittler" or "doodler" to "Kwakwaka'wakw artist."

 

Skillfully weaving excerpts from his friends and family, facts about his life and examples of his stunning artwork, K'esu' captures the artist's personality and his paradoxes in this wide-ranging celebration of Cranmer, his oeuvre and his profound influence on generations of Kwakwaka'wakw artists.

 

 

 

Exhibition Dates

 

March to September 2012

 

Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver

Jennifer Kramer holds a joint position as assistant professor in the department of anthropology and as curator of the Pacific Northwest at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She has worked with the Nuxalk Nation of Bella Coola, BC, since 1994 on cultural renewal, Nuxalk-controlled education, art production, representation, and repatriation, and the art market. Kramer has worked with the Kwakwaka'wakw since 2004 to collaborate on the care and curation of their cultural heritage in collections at the Museum of Anthropology. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Jennifer Kramer's profile page

K̕esu’: The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer

Using an attractive large format art book to tell and show the life and work of Kwakwaka’wakw artist Doug Cranmer, a warm and detailed story is revealed. In this well-researched account, Cranmer’s family, friends, students and patrons portray him as an iconoclast, yet one who was widely admired and emulated throughout the art community. A rich selection of colour photographs of his work show the wide array of formats he employed from 40-foot totem poles to small utensils, and from prints to headdresses. He borrows widely from other Northwest Coast First Nations’ art traditions but remains true to his Kwakwaka’wakw heritage. His prolific output can be found around the world in museums and private collections and the magnitude of his work is well represented in this book.