Originally published February 19, 2009
Bruce Alfred from Alert Bay is a creator of a unique art form that has origins that span millenia. What made him pursue the art form to the level of master artist? He said, "I was raised by my grandmother and grandfather on my father's side. My grandfather was the chief here in Alert Bay and my grandmother was from Village Island. I was born Aug. 24, 1950. I went to school here and spent most of my life here in Alert Bay."
It was in 1974 "before the (www.umista.org) museum was in place, they had put together and ran an apprenticeship carving course and Chief Doug Cranmer was the mentor. My apprenticeship involved everything in design, painting, carving poles, masks, and techniques in canoe making," and then there was bentwood boxes. "It was when we were taking the apprenticeship that I asked Doug 'When would we do boxes?'"
The course was an all-inclusive primer on the multiple facets and complexities of Pacific Coast art, and it taught how to recreate images that evolved out of ancient mythologies. It was the oral histories that contributed to the social structure in complex societies. Bruce said the bentwood box instruction "was about timing. 'When could we do bentwood boxes?' I asked him, and the next day we were doing bentwood boxes. Today the only ones left doing bentwood boxes are Richard Dick Sumner and myself."
"I specialize in it and this is common knowledge in some circles," The designs that adorn the geometrically unique boxes (the sides of which are composed of a single piece of cedar steamed and bent at three corners), "come from all sources of coastal culture and I try to keep them very traditional."
Bruce won the Creative Achievement Award in the middle of 2008 from the BC Achievement Foundation. In 2009 he has been commissioned to fulfull the honour of placing a bentwood box in Government House. The commission came from the First Peoples Heritage, Language & Culture Council.
"I won the honour to present a piece to Lt. Governor Steven Point at Government House in Victoria. So that is coming for me this spring, but I have already delivered the requisition." The First Nation Lt. Governor of B.C. will do the unveiling in Victoria at Government House.
Bentwood box making is an art form today but origins of the craft are profoundly ancient, "The oldest fragments are 4500 years ago," and the knowledge and know-how is in need of preservation. "Some of the old people were geniuses. I've been looking for 15 years to pass the torch."
The boxes contain designs and involve artistic inlays in traditional art forms and shallow reliefs are sometimes carved and the wood is painted. "Everything I know at the top I learned from the bottom. I have been offered to go out and teach the making of the bentwood box." Design in the key in the unique methods in the coastal art form of bentwood box making with cedar.
"Design is everything. If I can see farther than other people regarding this art form or my culture it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants," and he named a few, including Beau Dick, Wayne Alfred, Doug Cranmer, Henry Hunt, Richard Hunt, Mungo Martin, and Tony Hunt.
Before anybody undertakes to build a career in the cedar manufacture of the Coastal art, "You will have to ask yourself why you are doing it. As for our ancestors, they didn't have tupperware, and they utilized the whole cedar tree." The bentwood box takes an odd shape for it is made to conform to the shape the North West Pacific cedar dugout canoe. Lids were tied with cedar and served as storage, or flotation, or emergency and survival kit.
"The lid was used as a float. The tree provided an array of worldly essentials. They called it the tree of life and they wouldn't do that for nothing." Bruce informed that family crests might be beaver or frog, eagle, raven, sea monster (sisuitl). There is always that debate about what is contemporary and what is traditional," he concluded.
