Post by Okwes on Jan 31, 2007 10:34:50 GMT -5
An Unfinished Work In shimmering glass and sculpted forms, Marvin Oliver
journeys into unknown worlds
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[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452208.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Marvin Oliver says his glass mask can be regarded as the sun or the moon
depending on your perspective. While his work is rooted in Native
tradition, it has evolved into an amalgam of undefined tribal images and
his own imagination.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003451964.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Marvin Oliver concentrates on exact placement of colors as he
silk-screens in his studio.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452008.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Wearing one of his flapping Hawaiian shirts, Oliver draws classic shapes
and forms in his "Northwest Coast Art, Two-Dimensional Design" class at
the University of Washington.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452015.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] MARVIN OLIVER
Oliver has created a series of glass interpretations of the spirit canoe
board. The telephone wires in the base represent moving forward and
trying to communicate. The raven is a guide to the unknown.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452016.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver pours out thick acrylic silk-screen ink as he prepares another
color for printing "Mystical Journey," featuring a killer whale. The
bright colors Oliver uses are more evocative of Southwest art than of
Northwest Native work.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452022.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] MARVIN OLIVER
A model of Oliver's bronze orca fin that will be installed in Perugia,
Italy next year. Seattle and Perugia are sister cities.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452023.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver's 26-by-18-foot sculpture of an orca and its calf dominates the
Whale Wing of Children's Hospital and Medical Center. The work, formed
from 90 pieces of steel and 36 pieces of glass, weighs six tons.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452034.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
One of Oliver's team members prepares to put a nearly finished glass
basket in a special chamber for slow cooling.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452035.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
A football of glass evolves into a basket as Oliver's team works the
piece under his direction. It's his modern interpretation of the
classical American Indian basket.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452039.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver signs "Mystical Journey," a silk-screen print that incorporates
10 colors and embossing. An educator himself, he plans to give the
print, framed, to the graduating class of Indian Heritage High School.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003451993.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Owen Oliver, 7, leads the parade to John Stanford School carrying the
crosswalk flag as dad walks alongside and mom pushes the 1-year-old
twins, Izzy and Sampson, in the stroller. Rain or shine, they make this
walk every morning during the school year.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003451994.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver's design class at the University of Washington is informal but
rigorous. Here, he critiques the most recent assignment with a student.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452001.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver loves antique curiosities, including this politically incorrect
figure called "Nutty Indian," made in the early 1960s by Marx toy
company and powered by batteries.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452007.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
A clear-glass casting of a moon face rests in the window of the Olivers'
dining room. It changes with the course of natural light around and
through it. IN THE NATIVE AMERICAN spirit board canoe ceremony, a shaman
would gather wood panels into the shape of the watercraft and "navigate"
into the land of the dead to retrieve the lost soul of an ill or
troubled tribal member. In Marvin Oliver's world, the tradition becomes
a metaphor made of glass � thick and muscular, polished and vibrant.
His is splashed with colors, mainly a deep blue at the bottom before
transforming into patches of green and red toward the top of its curled
tip. It stands upright on a clear-glass cube of a pedestal, which holds
a grainy black-and-white photograph of telephone poles and wires. They
signify reaching out, transporting ideas and learning. It ties the past
to the present and hints about the path ahead, a central theme in his
art. Images of ravens, green, red, yellow, black, are fused into the
glass, as if frozen in flight on the four-foot sculpture, one of
Oliver's "Transporter" series. In one version, a bronze raven stands
nearby with a salmonberry twig in its mouth. The creatures are
ubiquitous in Native American lore and in his work. They're guides into
the unknown. "My voyage is one of the unknown," he says with the same
matter-of-fact tone he uses to describe the step-by-step mechanics of
cutting and fusing glass. "Every time you do something, it is taking you
somewhere. My vehicle is art. It takes me to the dark side, which is not
the bad side. It's just the unknown. I don't know what's out there yet,
but I'll find out." For Oliver, of Quinault and Isleta-Pueblo heritage,
everything is a journey, and the journey is everything. Almost lost in
the images of the glass spirit canoe is a faint figure. That's his power
spirit, also along for the ride. We all have one. It's what enables us
to accept and learn from the unknown, he says. At 60, Oliver's journey
has led him to this: renowned nationally, an influential figure in
contemporary Native American art and a trailblazer in both techniques
and applications in glass � compelling pieces that merge audacious
interpretation with homage to tradition. In fact, he has gotten bolder
as he's aged, experimenting with material, ideas and scale while
producing a healthy body of public art. His work has evolved from
line-drawing and painting to silk-screening to wood-carving to totems,
masks and helmets, and now to pieces of bronze and glass imagery. It
gets as small as greeting cards and as monumental as the 30-foot bronze
orca fin being cast for Seattle's Italian sister city, Perugia � the
first time a non-Italian has been commissioned for public art there. On
top of his art resume, he is a longtime University of Washington
instructor of Northwest Native American art and carving, an associate
curator at the university's Burke Museum, and a gallery owner in
Ketchikan. "Marvin is energy personified; his brain works 24/7, and he
has incredible curiosity," says Rebecca Blanchard, co-owner of Seattle's
Stonington Gallery, which celebrated contemporary Coast Salish artists a
few years ago in an expansive show. "So many people are hesitant to
change. He loves it." That in-transit place, between the then and now,
roots and modern life, the gravity of tradition and the emotion of
contemporary art best defines who he is and what he is trying to say. He
can't keep doing the same thing, he says, because he's too curious. And
he is too ambitious to be kept in a category. "Tradition is
my foundation. I will never lose that," he explains. "But I don't see
this as Native art. It is art that happens to have been made by a
Native." AS HE SET OUT on his journey, he got bearings from his parents,
Emmett and Georgia Oliver. Married some 60 years before Georgia's death,
both were professional educators. But each taught their son different
lessons. Inside Oliver's Seattle home, amid his art and the debris of
toys left strewn by his 1-year-old twins, is an enclosed case holding
clay pots. They belonged to his mother, handed down from the pueblos of
New Mexico. He pulls out a bean pot and rubs his hands across the fine
grit of its surface. He smiles, feeling the blend of art, function and
tradition. Georgia liked to take him and his brother and sister to watch
those potters in their family. Emmett, who lives along Hood Canal now,
was a dynamo who dedicated much of his life to helping Native Americans
get equal access and the tools to succeed within the larger culture.
After a stint as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, he turned to
teaching and then education administration, eventually becoming this
state's first Supervisor of Indian Education. He did it all without
turning his back on his Quinault roots. When he created "Paddle to
Seattle" in 1989 as part of the state's centennial celebration, he
rekindled annual tribal canoe ceremonies that have taken place each year
since. The family moved from Shelton to the Bay Area when Marvin was in
the third grade. He gravitated toward art and drafting early in high
school, impressed more by hands-on lessons than theory, and eventually
set his sights on becoming an architect. That dream ended in a way
strange enough to reflect the late '60s: While protecting a doughnut
shop as a National Guardsman during the Berkeley, Calif., riots. He had
joined the guard to avoid the Vietnam War draft and was hoping to get
into architecture school at the University of California. But as he
chatted with students in front of the shop, one told him architecture
school demanded years of theory work before they let you build anything.
So Oliver enrolled in San Francisco State as an art major and studied
painting, drawing and lithography under renowned realists. He painted
replicas of weathering billboards. In 1969, a year before graduation,
his journey took the biggest detour of all. Emmett helped lead a Native
American takeover of Alcatraz and the abandoned federal prison there to
protest broken promises and demand equal opportunity. The group hunkered
down on the island for 19 months. Marvin didn't stay long, but it was
long enough to get a feel for no electricity or running water. "They
asked me what I'm going to do for the cause. How about sweeping up?" he
recalls. "I was caught off-guard. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't
do anything. I said I'm out of here. I'm not going to sweep. They looked
at me like I wasn't interested. I told them, I want to go out there and
do something more." But what could he do? For starters, reproducing
frayed Bay Area billboards wasn't holding his attention. He decided he
wanted to keep Native American art alive by teaching it. His father
arranged for him to meet an old friend, Bill Holm, an expert on
Northwest Coast Native art who was teaching at the UW. Georgia said of
Holm at the time, "He's a white guy, but he's more Indian than most
Indians." With Holm's help, Oliver designed his own master's program,
learning about Native American art from Holm and fine art from the
acclaimed African-American artist Jacob Lawrence. Through seminars and
ceremonies at Camp Nor'wester on Lopez Island, Holm opened Oliver's
eyes. "I kind of resented that comment about him being 'more Indian' and
told myself no white guy was going to teach me about Native art �
until I met him," Oliver recalls. "It was his undying sensitivity to
Northwest Coast art and his respectful approach. I wanted to teach
Northwest Native art like him because there were way too few people
doing it." By 1973, Oliver had his master's of fine art in Northwest
Coast art and art history. The next year, he was teaching at the UW and
community colleges around the area. He thought he should be an artist,
like Holm, if he wanted to be a great teacher, too. So he promptly
became an artist. Holm, a traditionalist known for his totem carvings,
says Oliver started with the better-understood classic Northwest art
style, but moved closer to his roots by honing in on the Coast Salish
style. Today, Oliver's art has evolved into an amalgam of undefined
tribal images and his own imagination for a feel that is Native but not
exclusively so. In fact, his bright colors are more evocative of
Southwest art. There are some who feel Native Americans should stay
traditional or at least more faithful to it, but Oliver says innovation
is the tradition of his people and of their art. That's seconded by
Seattle architect Johnpaul Jones, also a Native American, who met Oliver
in the '70s. "The Indian people have had to adapt," says Jones, "and he
takes that approach to his art." IF OLIVER WERE a sculpture you might
consider him unfinished. His wiry black and gray-fringed hair swoops
from his hairline back to his shoulders. His shirttails dangle. His
style is comfort, not presentation. He can strike you as a bit
distracted, because he often is. He laughs easily and squints �
cringes, actually � when he makes fun of himself or confesses a
youthful transgression. It's a fa�ade that masks a confident,
ambitious man who admits there is so much he doesn't know, but not much
he can't figure out eventually. Next time you go into the Whale Wing at
Children's Hospital and Medical Center, take a moment to regard the
glass-and-steel orca suspended between the fourth and sixth floors. It
melds six tons of glass and steel into a 26-foot-long, 18-foot-tall
package of mother and child. It's an impressive achievement that caused
minor lore shortly after it was hung this year when a mute, autistic boy
looked at it and uttered, "Whale." But it also was a hard project for
engineers, builders and administrators charged with the details of
managing a schedule and a budget, and ensuring that the hanging piece
withstands an earthquake. Some who have worked with Oliver complain he
can be so ambitious and consumed with possibilities that deadlines and
limits can get obscured. Oliver replies that he, too, was hostage to
schedules and details, and that the tension between artist and
production is inevitable. Collaboration eventually won. "I never
consider anything a failure, and I never use that word around my kids or
students," he says. "You learn from the things that don't go just right.
It's the present, soon to be past, that helps your future. 'Comfort' is
worse than 'failure.' " Inside a display case at the Burke Museum, there
is a photograph of a young, short-haired Oliver working on designs at a
computer terminal. He is believed to be the first Northwest Native
American artist to incorporate computer graphics into his art. He also
was among the first of the contemporary Coast Salish artists to embrace
glass. The contemporary Coast Salish art-glass scene thrives with
artists using non-traditional materials to interpret their visions.
Seattle's Preston Singletary is one of the more accomplished. He sought
out Oliver when he was beginning to research traditional forms and
design techniques and sat in on some of his UW carving classes. "Marvin
has incredible energy," Singletary says. "He's prolific, and he's always
pushing the limits of scale. He's very cutting-edge in terms of concept
and use of materials." Oliver's big ideas can be time-consuming, costly
and, like the whale project, stressful. He employs top gaffers like
Richard Royal and Eric Wahl and their crew to blow glass. He is the
designer, but they are the artisans. Glass, especially the way Oliver
does it, is a group process. "I don't know the limit yet, because they
always say they can do it," he says. "I once told Richard, 'I got this
idea, but you guys can't do that,' and he said, 'I will tell you when we
can't do something.' " He recently had the men make thick, cylindrical
pieces about three feet long. They were the cores for his "Cores of the
Earth" series. Each contained sandblasted petroglyph images and an
industrial frame he had manufactured to hold each illuminated piece. A
raven, always with the answers, stood atop one. He imagined it as
something pulled from the Columbia River and revealing stories from a
different time. It spoke to one of his recurring themes: merging the
past, present and future � that journey � but he didn't think
anyone else would get it. Whether they did or not, it won "Best of
Sculpture" during the annual Indian Market in Santa Fe this past summer.
The Blue Mountain Fine Arts foundry in Eastern Oregon, meanwhile, is
casting the Perugia-bound orca fin. The fin is scheduled to be unveiled
at a June festival in the central Italian city. Oliver says the mayor
told him the fin is the first non-Italian sculpture commission in the
city's history, and that Perugians consider themselves true native
Italians. In that vein, Oliver hopes to bring other Native American
artists with him and join in a salmon bake with Perugians. Each
monumental project contains surprises and headaches, and he expects the
Perugia project to be no different. Still, he is ecstatic to know that
one of his pieces, one that celebrates his people, will stand at the
entrance to a city of classic architecture and history. In fact, he
practically shouts, "You should see the spot they gave me!" THERE IS ART
to unpack from a trailer outside, and toys cluttering the front-porch
steps. Oliver has to meet with a representative of the Seattle-Perugia
Sister City Association as well as with an architect coming over to
discuss a hotel he wants to build in Alaska. But he sips the last of his
coffee and regards his spirit canoe sculpture, sitting on the edge of
the dining-room table and dwarfing mom's old bean pot. It's the power
figure, fused in glass, he's focused on. Everyone has a spirit guide.
Some call it the self, and it accompanies you on the journey, which some
call life. The power figure helps you take on challenges the future
springs. Each piece he makes is as personal as it is experimental, and
it's hard to imagine he could do it without his wife, Brigette. She not
only takes the lead in caring for the twins and their precocious
7-year-old, Owen. She also manages his business, paying and collecting
bills, writing grants, shopping his work. He marches to his own drummer,
but she keeps the beat. She took his UW carving class in 1987 and asked
to wholesale his prints in Ketchikan, her hometown. He said yes and she
said yes when he asked her to marry him soon after. They spend their
summers there now to operate the gallery. She believes in him and his
art to such a degree that she invariably gets teary when she tries to
talk about it. Each spring, the couple spends weeks preparing original
framed prints for the June "Raven's Feast" at Daybreak Star Cultural
Center in Seattle's Discovery Park. A bit of a potlatch � sharing
good fortune with the community, giving those who worked hard a chance
to shine, and thanking those who helped them � it's a tradition he
started about 20 years ago to honor Native American graduates of the UW.
After his family, he considers it the most important thing in his life.
The first year, he produced a two-tone print for about 13 students. Now,
he does 15 colors and the celebration draws about 500, including family
and friends. "It continues my journey," he says, moving his right hand
not on a line but in a slow circle on the table before him. "It reflects
on my parents, my values, Alcatraz and all that I've learned and
experienced in my life. "When I got off Alcatraz I went back to school
and graduated. There weren't many of us Natives doing that at the time.
Many were sacrificing their time on the rock. When I started teaching at
the university we had a small number of Native American students, and I
thought we needed to honor them. We need to find a way to honor those
who stayed on the rock, too, but this is a way to celebrate the ones who
picked up the broom."
journeys into unknown worlds
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw12032006/2003453526_pacif\
icpmarvin03.html?syndication=rss
<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw12032006/2003453526_paci\
ficpmarvin03.html?syndication=rss> PREV | 1 of 14 | NEXT
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452208.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Marvin Oliver says his glass mask can be regarded as the sun or the moon
depending on your perspective. While his work is rooted in Native
tradition, it has evolved into an amalgam of undefined tribal images and
his own imagination.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003451964.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Marvin Oliver concentrates on exact placement of colors as he
silk-screens in his studio.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452008.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Wearing one of his flapping Hawaiian shirts, Oliver draws classic shapes
and forms in his "Northwest Coast Art, Two-Dimensional Design" class at
the University of Washington.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452015.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] MARVIN OLIVER
Oliver has created a series of glass interpretations of the spirit canoe
board. The telephone wires in the base represent moving forward and
trying to communicate. The raven is a guide to the unknown.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452016.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver pours out thick acrylic silk-screen ink as he prepares another
color for printing "Mystical Journey," featuring a killer whale. The
bright colors Oliver uses are more evocative of Southwest art than of
Northwest Native work.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452022.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] MARVIN OLIVER
A model of Oliver's bronze orca fin that will be installed in Perugia,
Italy next year. Seattle and Perugia are sister cities.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452023.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver's 26-by-18-foot sculpture of an orca and its calf dominates the
Whale Wing of Children's Hospital and Medical Center. The work, formed
from 90 pieces of steel and 36 pieces of glass, weighs six tons.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452034.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
One of Oliver's team members prepares to put a nearly finished glass
basket in a special chamber for slow cooling.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452035.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
A football of glass evolves into a basket as Oliver's team works the
piece under his direction. It's his modern interpretation of the
classical American Indian basket.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452039.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver signs "Mystical Journey," a silk-screen print that incorporates
10 colors and embossing. An educator himself, he plans to give the
print, framed, to the graduating class of Indian Heritage High School.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003451993.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Owen Oliver, 7, leads the parade to John Stanford School carrying the
crosswalk flag as dad walks alongside and mom pushes the 1-year-old
twins, Izzy and Sampson, in the stroller. Rain or shine, they make this
walk every morning during the school year.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003451994.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver's design class at the University of Washington is informal but
rigorous. Here, he critiques the most recent assignment with a student.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452001.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Oliver loves antique curiosities, including this politically incorrect
figure called "Nutty Indian," made in the early 1960s by Marx toy
company and powered by batteries.
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2006/11/28/2003452007.jpg]
[Enlarge this photo] ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
A clear-glass casting of a moon face rests in the window of the Olivers'
dining room. It changes with the course of natural light around and
through it. IN THE NATIVE AMERICAN spirit board canoe ceremony, a shaman
would gather wood panels into the shape of the watercraft and "navigate"
into the land of the dead to retrieve the lost soul of an ill or
troubled tribal member. In Marvin Oliver's world, the tradition becomes
a metaphor made of glass � thick and muscular, polished and vibrant.
His is splashed with colors, mainly a deep blue at the bottom before
transforming into patches of green and red toward the top of its curled
tip. It stands upright on a clear-glass cube of a pedestal, which holds
a grainy black-and-white photograph of telephone poles and wires. They
signify reaching out, transporting ideas and learning. It ties the past
to the present and hints about the path ahead, a central theme in his
art. Images of ravens, green, red, yellow, black, are fused into the
glass, as if frozen in flight on the four-foot sculpture, one of
Oliver's "Transporter" series. In one version, a bronze raven stands
nearby with a salmonberry twig in its mouth. The creatures are
ubiquitous in Native American lore and in his work. They're guides into
the unknown. "My voyage is one of the unknown," he says with the same
matter-of-fact tone he uses to describe the step-by-step mechanics of
cutting and fusing glass. "Every time you do something, it is taking you
somewhere. My vehicle is art. It takes me to the dark side, which is not
the bad side. It's just the unknown. I don't know what's out there yet,
but I'll find out." For Oliver, of Quinault and Isleta-Pueblo heritage,
everything is a journey, and the journey is everything. Almost lost in
the images of the glass spirit canoe is a faint figure. That's his power
spirit, also along for the ride. We all have one. It's what enables us
to accept and learn from the unknown, he says. At 60, Oliver's journey
has led him to this: renowned nationally, an influential figure in
contemporary Native American art and a trailblazer in both techniques
and applications in glass � compelling pieces that merge audacious
interpretation with homage to tradition. In fact, he has gotten bolder
as he's aged, experimenting with material, ideas and scale while
producing a healthy body of public art. His work has evolved from
line-drawing and painting to silk-screening to wood-carving to totems,
masks and helmets, and now to pieces of bronze and glass imagery. It
gets as small as greeting cards and as monumental as the 30-foot bronze
orca fin being cast for Seattle's Italian sister city, Perugia � the
first time a non-Italian has been commissioned for public art there. On
top of his art resume, he is a longtime University of Washington
instructor of Northwest Native American art and carving, an associate
curator at the university's Burke Museum, and a gallery owner in
Ketchikan. "Marvin is energy personified; his brain works 24/7, and he
has incredible curiosity," says Rebecca Blanchard, co-owner of Seattle's
Stonington Gallery, which celebrated contemporary Coast Salish artists a
few years ago in an expansive show. "So many people are hesitant to
change. He loves it." That in-transit place, between the then and now,
roots and modern life, the gravity of tradition and the emotion of
contemporary art best defines who he is and what he is trying to say. He
can't keep doing the same thing, he says, because he's too curious. And
he is too ambitious to be kept in a category. "Tradition is
my foundation. I will never lose that," he explains. "But I don't see
this as Native art. It is art that happens to have been made by a
Native." AS HE SET OUT on his journey, he got bearings from his parents,
Emmett and Georgia Oliver. Married some 60 years before Georgia's death,
both were professional educators. But each taught their son different
lessons. Inside Oliver's Seattle home, amid his art and the debris of
toys left strewn by his 1-year-old twins, is an enclosed case holding
clay pots. They belonged to his mother, handed down from the pueblos of
New Mexico. He pulls out a bean pot and rubs his hands across the fine
grit of its surface. He smiles, feeling the blend of art, function and
tradition. Georgia liked to take him and his brother and sister to watch
those potters in their family. Emmett, who lives along Hood Canal now,
was a dynamo who dedicated much of his life to helping Native Americans
get equal access and the tools to succeed within the larger culture.
After a stint as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, he turned to
teaching and then education administration, eventually becoming this
state's first Supervisor of Indian Education. He did it all without
turning his back on his Quinault roots. When he created "Paddle to
Seattle" in 1989 as part of the state's centennial celebration, he
rekindled annual tribal canoe ceremonies that have taken place each year
since. The family moved from Shelton to the Bay Area when Marvin was in
the third grade. He gravitated toward art and drafting early in high
school, impressed more by hands-on lessons than theory, and eventually
set his sights on becoming an architect. That dream ended in a way
strange enough to reflect the late '60s: While protecting a doughnut
shop as a National Guardsman during the Berkeley, Calif., riots. He had
joined the guard to avoid the Vietnam War draft and was hoping to get
into architecture school at the University of California. But as he
chatted with students in front of the shop, one told him architecture
school demanded years of theory work before they let you build anything.
So Oliver enrolled in San Francisco State as an art major and studied
painting, drawing and lithography under renowned realists. He painted
replicas of weathering billboards. In 1969, a year before graduation,
his journey took the biggest detour of all. Emmett helped lead a Native
American takeover of Alcatraz and the abandoned federal prison there to
protest broken promises and demand equal opportunity. The group hunkered
down on the island for 19 months. Marvin didn't stay long, but it was
long enough to get a feel for no electricity or running water. "They
asked me what I'm going to do for the cause. How about sweeping up?" he
recalls. "I was caught off-guard. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't
do anything. I said I'm out of here. I'm not going to sweep. They looked
at me like I wasn't interested. I told them, I want to go out there and
do something more." But what could he do? For starters, reproducing
frayed Bay Area billboards wasn't holding his attention. He decided he
wanted to keep Native American art alive by teaching it. His father
arranged for him to meet an old friend, Bill Holm, an expert on
Northwest Coast Native art who was teaching at the UW. Georgia said of
Holm at the time, "He's a white guy, but he's more Indian than most
Indians." With Holm's help, Oliver designed his own master's program,
learning about Native American art from Holm and fine art from the
acclaimed African-American artist Jacob Lawrence. Through seminars and
ceremonies at Camp Nor'wester on Lopez Island, Holm opened Oliver's
eyes. "I kind of resented that comment about him being 'more Indian' and
told myself no white guy was going to teach me about Native art �
until I met him," Oliver recalls. "It was his undying sensitivity to
Northwest Coast art and his respectful approach. I wanted to teach
Northwest Native art like him because there were way too few people
doing it." By 1973, Oliver had his master's of fine art in Northwest
Coast art and art history. The next year, he was teaching at the UW and
community colleges around the area. He thought he should be an artist,
like Holm, if he wanted to be a great teacher, too. So he promptly
became an artist. Holm, a traditionalist known for his totem carvings,
says Oliver started with the better-understood classic Northwest art
style, but moved closer to his roots by honing in on the Coast Salish
style. Today, Oliver's art has evolved into an amalgam of undefined
tribal images and his own imagination for a feel that is Native but not
exclusively so. In fact, his bright colors are more evocative of
Southwest art. There are some who feel Native Americans should stay
traditional or at least more faithful to it, but Oliver says innovation
is the tradition of his people and of their art. That's seconded by
Seattle architect Johnpaul Jones, also a Native American, who met Oliver
in the '70s. "The Indian people have had to adapt," says Jones, "and he
takes that approach to his art." IF OLIVER WERE a sculpture you might
consider him unfinished. His wiry black and gray-fringed hair swoops
from his hairline back to his shoulders. His shirttails dangle. His
style is comfort, not presentation. He can strike you as a bit
distracted, because he often is. He laughs easily and squints �
cringes, actually � when he makes fun of himself or confesses a
youthful transgression. It's a fa�ade that masks a confident,
ambitious man who admits there is so much he doesn't know, but not much
he can't figure out eventually. Next time you go into the Whale Wing at
Children's Hospital and Medical Center, take a moment to regard the
glass-and-steel orca suspended between the fourth and sixth floors. It
melds six tons of glass and steel into a 26-foot-long, 18-foot-tall
package of mother and child. It's an impressive achievement that caused
minor lore shortly after it was hung this year when a mute, autistic boy
looked at it and uttered, "Whale." But it also was a hard project for
engineers, builders and administrators charged with the details of
managing a schedule and a budget, and ensuring that the hanging piece
withstands an earthquake. Some who have worked with Oliver complain he
can be so ambitious and consumed with possibilities that deadlines and
limits can get obscured. Oliver replies that he, too, was hostage to
schedules and details, and that the tension between artist and
production is inevitable. Collaboration eventually won. "I never
consider anything a failure, and I never use that word around my kids or
students," he says. "You learn from the things that don't go just right.
It's the present, soon to be past, that helps your future. 'Comfort' is
worse than 'failure.' " Inside a display case at the Burke Museum, there
is a photograph of a young, short-haired Oliver working on designs at a
computer terminal. He is believed to be the first Northwest Native
American artist to incorporate computer graphics into his art. He also
was among the first of the contemporary Coast Salish artists to embrace
glass. The contemporary Coast Salish art-glass scene thrives with
artists using non-traditional materials to interpret their visions.
Seattle's Preston Singletary is one of the more accomplished. He sought
out Oliver when he was beginning to research traditional forms and
design techniques and sat in on some of his UW carving classes. "Marvin
has incredible energy," Singletary says. "He's prolific, and he's always
pushing the limits of scale. He's very cutting-edge in terms of concept
and use of materials." Oliver's big ideas can be time-consuming, costly
and, like the whale project, stressful. He employs top gaffers like
Richard Royal and Eric Wahl and their crew to blow glass. He is the
designer, but they are the artisans. Glass, especially the way Oliver
does it, is a group process. "I don't know the limit yet, because they
always say they can do it," he says. "I once told Richard, 'I got this
idea, but you guys can't do that,' and he said, 'I will tell you when we
can't do something.' " He recently had the men make thick, cylindrical
pieces about three feet long. They were the cores for his "Cores of the
Earth" series. Each contained sandblasted petroglyph images and an
industrial frame he had manufactured to hold each illuminated piece. A
raven, always with the answers, stood atop one. He imagined it as
something pulled from the Columbia River and revealing stories from a
different time. It spoke to one of his recurring themes: merging the
past, present and future � that journey � but he didn't think
anyone else would get it. Whether they did or not, it won "Best of
Sculpture" during the annual Indian Market in Santa Fe this past summer.
The Blue Mountain Fine Arts foundry in Eastern Oregon, meanwhile, is
casting the Perugia-bound orca fin. The fin is scheduled to be unveiled
at a June festival in the central Italian city. Oliver says the mayor
told him the fin is the first non-Italian sculpture commission in the
city's history, and that Perugians consider themselves true native
Italians. In that vein, Oliver hopes to bring other Native American
artists with him and join in a salmon bake with Perugians. Each
monumental project contains surprises and headaches, and he expects the
Perugia project to be no different. Still, he is ecstatic to know that
one of his pieces, one that celebrates his people, will stand at the
entrance to a city of classic architecture and history. In fact, he
practically shouts, "You should see the spot they gave me!" THERE IS ART
to unpack from a trailer outside, and toys cluttering the front-porch
steps. Oliver has to meet with a representative of the Seattle-Perugia
Sister City Association as well as with an architect coming over to
discuss a hotel he wants to build in Alaska. But he sips the last of his
coffee and regards his spirit canoe sculpture, sitting on the edge of
the dining-room table and dwarfing mom's old bean pot. It's the power
figure, fused in glass, he's focused on. Everyone has a spirit guide.
Some call it the self, and it accompanies you on the journey, which some
call life. The power figure helps you take on challenges the future
springs. Each piece he makes is as personal as it is experimental, and
it's hard to imagine he could do it without his wife, Brigette. She not
only takes the lead in caring for the twins and their precocious
7-year-old, Owen. She also manages his business, paying and collecting
bills, writing grants, shopping his work. He marches to his own drummer,
but she keeps the beat. She took his UW carving class in 1987 and asked
to wholesale his prints in Ketchikan, her hometown. He said yes and she
said yes when he asked her to marry him soon after. They spend their
summers there now to operate the gallery. She believes in him and his
art to such a degree that she invariably gets teary when she tries to
talk about it. Each spring, the couple spends weeks preparing original
framed prints for the June "Raven's Feast" at Daybreak Star Cultural
Center in Seattle's Discovery Park. A bit of a potlatch � sharing
good fortune with the community, giving those who worked hard a chance
to shine, and thanking those who helped them � it's a tradition he
started about 20 years ago to honor Native American graduates of the UW.
After his family, he considers it the most important thing in his life.
The first year, he produced a two-tone print for about 13 students. Now,
he does 15 colors and the celebration draws about 500, including family
and friends. "It continues my journey," he says, moving his right hand
not on a line but in a slow circle on the table before him. "It reflects
on my parents, my values, Alcatraz and all that I've learned and
experienced in my life. "When I got off Alcatraz I went back to school
and graduated. There weren't many of us Natives doing that at the time.
Many were sacrificing their time on the rock. When I started teaching at
the university we had a small number of Native American students, and I
thought we needed to honor them. We need to find a way to honor those
who stayed on the rock, too, but this is a way to celebrate the ones who
picked up the broom."