Art Articles & Reviews

} Eugene Hunt 'A lot of you know what an awesome salesman Eugene was; he could sell prints to anyone. Discovering a newly opened medical building, he walked into the first doctor's office and asked the receptionist if the doc was in. 'Do you have an appointment?', she asked. 'No, but I have some native art to show him.' Eugene then turned to waiting patients and soon the waiting room floor was completely covered with prints and he made four sales. The doctor heard the commotion and came to see what was happening. Euie sold him two prints. Eugene then spent three hours in the building, going door to door. 'John,' he told me, 'it was a gold mine!' from John Livingstone¹s eulogy for Eugene Hunt. Eugene Hunt (1946-2002) is gone, but his legacy lives on. To honour his memory, an exhibit of his paintings, prints and carvings has opened at: Pacific Editions 942 Fort Street, Victoria BC 388-5233, www.pacificeditions.ca until March 27. The show will be at the U¹mista Cultural Centre at Alert Bay throughout the summer. _______________________________________________________ Curator of the show, Peter Macnair, told me that few artists of this calibre are so modestly priced. Yet the designs are full of integrity, classic examples of Kwakwakw'waka design. Eugene Hunt's strength and imagination are evident in every one. For well over a century, the Hunt family of Fort Rupert has embodied the Kwakwaka'wakw culture. George Hunt (1879-1924) was the original intermediary between native and white culture, working for ethnologist Franz Boas. It was George Hunt who collected the artifacts, gathered and translated the stories which became the cornerstone for the study of his people. Eugene's older sister Gloria Roze continued the story. 'The Hunt family is one of the lucky families,' she explained to me. 'We never lost that identity. In Fort Rupert they used to hide the children in the village, so they wouldn't be sent to residential school. My father moved our family to Alert Bay so the children could go to school on a daytime basis and still live at home with their family', Gloria recalls. 'Dad said school made us lazy'. A drum painted by Eugene Hunt, on show at Pacific Editions in Victoria.