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March Monthly Challenge

Haida Totems, 1912
By Emily Carr
Watercolor on Paper
76mm x 55mm
BC Archives, Canada

About the Art

In 1912, with some fanfare in the Vancouver press, Emily set off alone on a momentous six-week trip, going through Alert Bay, to the Tsimshian villages of the coast of northern mainland British Columbia, to the Gitxsan villages in the interior, and ultimately to the even more remote settlements of the Haida people on an archipelago then called the Queen Charlotte Islands, now known as Haida Gwaii.

“There were many fine totem poles in Cha-atl — Haida poles, tragic and fierce. The wood of them was bleached out, but looked green from the mosses which grew in the chinks, and the tufts of grass on the heads of the figures stuck up like coarse hair. The human faces carved on the totem poles were stern and grim, the animal faces fierce and strong; supernatural things were pictured on the poles too. Everything about Cha-atl was so vast and deep you shrivelled up.”


The art chronicles of her journey were made using pencil and watercolor. Her art took on bright hues and bold brushstrokes of the Fauvist paintings she saw in Paris in 1910.

About the Artist
Emily Carr was born December 13, 1871 in Victoria, British Columbia. She moved to San Francisco in 1890 to study art after the death of her parents. In 1899 she travelled to England to deepen her studies, where she spent time at the Westminster School of Art in London and at various studio schools in Cornwall, Bushey, Hertfordshire, and elsewhere. In 1910, she spent a year studying art at the Académie Colarossi in Paris and elsewhere in France before moving back to British Columbia permanently the following year.
She lived in France in 1910 where the work of the Fauves influenced the colourism of her work and she came into contact with Frances Hodgkins. Discouraged by her lack of artistic success, she returned to Victoria where she came close to giving up art altogether.
Carr was most heavily influenced by the landscape and First Nations cultures of British Columbia, and Alaska. Having visited a mission school beside the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Ucluelet in 1898, in 1908 she was inspired by a visit to Skagway and began to paint the totem poles of the coastal Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit and other communities, in an attempt to record and learn from as many as possible. In 1913 she was obliged by financial considerations to return permanently to Victoria after a few years in Vancouver, both of which towns were, at that time, conservative artistically. Influenced by styles such as post impressionism and Fauvism, her work was alien to those around her and remained unknown to and unrecognized by the greater art world for many years. For more than a decade she worked as a potter, dog breeder and boarding house landlady, having given up on her artistic career.
However, her contact with the Group of Seven in 1930 resurrected her interest in art. A unique Canadian genre and cadre of artists entirely unknown to her, notably the Group of Seven. She met Arthur Lismer, A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris. Harris was to have a profound influence and their friendship endured for the rest of her life.
Throughout the 1930s she specialized in scenes from the lives and rituals of Native Americans. She also showed her awareness of Canadian native culture through a number of works representing the British Columbian rainforest. She lived among the native Americans to research her subjects. Many of her Expressionistic paintings represent totem poles and other artefacts of Indian culture.

She died March 2, 1945 and is interred in the Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria.

Our Sponsors
Our Sponsors this month are Studio Marcy, Hollowlogy and Areto.
Please visit us tomorrow to see the prizes!
How to enter the Monthly Challenge:
1. You need to have a Pinterest account. Go get one ASAP if you don’t have one already. It’s easy, fun and inspiring.
2. Email us at [email protected] to get added to the monthly challenge board.
Subject: Monthly Challenge Board Request
You will be emailed an invite to the board within 48 hours. Accept the invite and you are ready to pin your entries.
3. Two ways to pin your entry to the board.
Pin your photo from the internet (on your blog, Etsy shop, etc.)
Add your photo directly from your computer

Create something using an art bead that fits within our monthly theme. We post the art to be used as your inspiration to create. This challenge is open to jewelry-makers, fiber artists, collage artist, etc. The art bead can be created by you or someone else. The challenge is to inspire those who use art beads and to see all the different ways art beads can be incorporated into your handiwork.

An Art Bead must be used in your piece to qualify for the monthly challenge.

***Beads strung on a chain, by themselves and beads simply added to wire or cord will not be accepted.***

Please add the tag or title MAR ABS to your photos. Include a short description, who created the art beads and a link to your blog, if you have one.

Deadline is March 31st. 
You may upload 2 entries per month.


ENTRIES for ART BEAD ARTISTS!!
• Beads Makers Pinterest Board-Art beads must be created by you and fit the Art Bead Scene’s monthly challenge theme. They can be made for the challenge or ones you have made before. 2 entries per month are allowed. 
One entry will be picked by the editors on the 28th of each month for a free month of advertising on the Art Bead Scene. Bead entries have to be pinned by the 27th of the month.
Beads only – do not post jewelry on this board. If a post doesn’t fit the challenge it will be deleted.

Monthly Challenge Recap

• Please post at least one single shot of your creation on the Pinterest Board. This will be used to make a collage for the Monthly Challenge Gallery. Every creation will be added to the collage, regardless of a blog post. So everyone gets included!

Your entry must be on Pinterest 2 days BEFORE the recap to be included.

• Be sure to share with us the name of the art bead artist in the description of your photo so that if you are selected for the weekly Perfect Pairings on Wednesdays, both you as the designer and the art bead artist can get the credit you both deserve!

• An InLinkz button will be added to the bottom of the Monthly Challenge Recap post. Here you will be able to link up your blog post if you have one. It is no longer necessary to add your blog post URL to the description unless you want to. Be sure to hop around and see all the great inspiration and leave some comment love!

• The Monthly Challenge Recap with Blog Tour will be posted on January 30th.

Monthly Challenge Winners

• One prize winner will be selected at random from all pictures posted on the Pinterest board.

• One prize winner will be selected at random from all blog posts added to the hop for the Monthly Challenge Recap post. So if you want to be in the pool for the second prize, be sure to use the InLinkz code at the bottom of the post to share your process and inspirations!

• Winners will be randomly chosen from all the qualifying entries on February 1st.

Perfect Pairings :: Designer + Art Bead Artist

• Formerly the Featured Designer of the Week, our new Perfect Pairings will focus on both the jewelry designer and the art bead artist. 

• Be sure to point out all the art bead artists in your work in the description of the photo on the Pinterest Board. Links to their website or shop are appreciated. That way we can all find new art beads to love!

• From all the entries during the month, an editor will pick their favorite design to be featured every Wednesday here on ABS, so get those entries in soon.

What is an Art Bead?

An art bead is a bead, charm, button or finding made by an independent artist. Art beads are the vision and handiwork of an individual artist. You can read more about art beads here.

***A bead that is handmade is not necessarily an art bead. Hill Tribe Silver, Kazuri ceramic beads or lampwork beads made in factories are examples of handmade beads that are not considered art beads.

Beaded beads, stamped metal pendants or wire-wrapped components are not considered art beads for our challenge.***

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1 Comment

  1. freshbakeddesigns
    March 4, 2015 at 12:00 am

    I am so glad that a piece by Emily Carr was selected this month…I was introduced to this amazing woman's work only a few years ago on a visit to Victoria, BC. She is also an author and I highly recommend The House of All Sorts, about the many years she was a landlady…very direct, yet poignant…a time when she had all but given up on her art.

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