S’Klallam carvers demonstrate their art

Port Gamble S’Klallam tribal artists Joe Ives and Jimmy Price present a carving demonstration from 1:30-4 p.m. Friday, May 27, in the Pirate Union Building at Peninsula College, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd., Port Angeles.

 

Community residents are invited to meet the artists and to ask questions as they work.

 

Ives has been creating Northwest-style and Coast Salish art for 35 years. Among the honors he has received for his work was a commission by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian to create a carved and painted mural called “Telling Stories and Sharing a Meal.” It was done in collaboration with the S’Klallam Tribes Youth Project and is dedicated to tribal elders.

 

Ives is carving a 20-foot honor pole as a memorial to his mother, the late Port Gamble S’Klallam tribal elder Geneva Ives, whom he credits for his talent.

 

“She’s the one I get all my talent from,” he says. “I’ve perfected my tribal art through her, through her precision.”

 

Price is the featured artist in the Peninsula College Longhouse Art Gallery for the spring quarter. Price credits Ives with being his mentor. He says he hadn’t really thought about being an artist until Ives invited him over one day and the two sat down and began to carve together.

 

“We’d work side-by-side and he showed me how. He taught me designs, the tools to buy and about art in general,” Price said.