EVOLUTION OF TRADITIONAL NUXALK PAINTED SCREENS

EVOLUTION OF TRADITIONAL NUXALK PAINTED SCREENS: June, 2026; by Lyle Wilson.

~ Fig. 1: model Nuxalk house-front screens: acrylic paint on red cedar @ 23 x 18 & 1/2 inches.

In 1873 at the village of Komotes, some traditional Nuxalk bighouses with painted house-front screens were photographed (see Fig. 3). It constituted the beginning of a set of circumstances that came together to literally reach back into time to allow us to experience the aesthetic of Nuxalk painted house screens that disappeared long ago and shows there is a definite style-progression of painted Nuxalk house screens.

In the 1980’s the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology (MOA) started a project called the Image Recovery Project (IRP) which aimed to photographically record, and then reconstruct Pacific Northwest Coast painted images; the IRP was under the direction of curator Bill McLennan. The special infra-red film used allowed penetration beneath the buildup of patina and grime that covered, and obscured, many details of quite a few of the painted objects.

The IRP amassed a great number of photographs of painted images and eventually coalesced into a exhibition and book co-authored by Bill McLennan and Karen Duffek called “The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations” (TI).

Bill’s background in photography also played a crucial role in an unexpected “off-shoot” of the IRP — specifically in the monumental painted house-front screens of the Pacific Northwest Coast (PNC). Such monumental screens basically disappeared from traditional usage fairly soon after European contact.

MOA had a number of old, original painted house-planks collected from the Ts’msyen community of Lax Kw’alaams (formally Port Simpson) and the Haida artist Bill Reid described them as:

My role was tracing and then re-creating various painted images from old PNC bentwood boxes and then writing a few thoughts about the experience. Later I examined the actual large-scale planks that remained of the Ts’msyen painted house-front screen(s), then studying 8 x 10 inch photos, making tracings from the photos and figuring out the missing parts that had been decimated by rot and erosion. Afterwards tracing the remaining images on the full size planks and using the small pencil line-drawing to fill-in-the-blanks of these monumental planks.

Finally re-tracing and painting the re-constructed image onto new red cedar boards that were specially-cut to the original sizes of the original Ts’msyen house-planks and the finished paintings became part of an exhibit and the TI book.

It was quite the long, tedious, specific process but had further applications on my later work with the Nuxalk house-screens (see Fig. 2 for re-constructing methodology).

McLennan’s experience in photography was part of an unexpected miracle that should be added to Reid’s statement, in that he knew of an old, 8 by 10 inch glass plate negative at the Royal British Columbia Museum that featured Komkotes.

A re-printed photograph showed, in the background, a series of 6 traditional Nuxalk bighouses, of which 5 had painted, house-front screens — size-wise, the background images were very tiny; perhaps the size of a fingernail. Most people wouldn’t have known that the old glass plate negatives were vastly superior to modern film regarding the amount of detail it recorded. Bill isolated and blew up the tiny images and the resulting photographs contained enough detail for me to re-construct line-drawings of the closer house fronts. Computer technology then allowed my line-drawing to be recalibrated as if seen in a full frontal position.

For the purposes of the book the drawings were initially enough, but I felt that all the monumental house screens were the epitome of the PNC painted arts and so lobbied for further work on them — unsuccessfully.

So I decided to paint the models on my own: the “Tsimshian Cosmos”, “Kitasoo Memory”, “Bella Cola Trio” and “Bella Cola Memory” (the two Nuxalk models). Later on it was decided that to the betterment of the TI book to include all the re-constructed, painted models.

I also did pencil line-drawings of 2 more of the jumbled-up Nuxalk house screens but they never made it into the first edition of TI. As years past there seemed to be little interest in the remaining, jumbled-up Nuxalk house-front screens and a series of events passed that led to me to decide to recreate one last Nuxalk model house screen. For the original exhibit MOA had me specially-cut quite a few red cedar planks from a huge red cedar log from a tree that was approximately 800 years old. Some pieces were left over and when MOA renovated their building the left-over planks were a bit of an inconvenience to store so Bill gave me a beautiful plank and told me, “Do something nice with it please”.

The plank sat around for years and when the second edition of the “Transforming Image” book was printed, I decided to re-create what I think is the early format of the Nuxalk painted house-front style of these photographed Nuxalk bighouses.

~ Fig. 3.

Ideas and concepts usually progress from simple to complex — it’s a concept I applied to the Nuxalk house-front screens.

In these Nuxalk bighouses the earlier versions featured the front planks on a horizontal plane; later houses displayed a combination of horizontal and vertically placed planks; as shown in the unpainted, and probably the most modern bighouse, all the planks are placed vertically.

Logically the house-front painting images developed from simple-to-complex: the most completely assembled examples of the Nuxalk screens display complex & beautifully painted house screens (see Fig.’s 2 & 8).

In two of the bighouses the planks are not only placed horizontally, but the painted images are apparently placed haphazardly — no-one knows exactly why they were put up this way.

I kept thinking about these 2 Nuxalk bighouses and used my free time to make small line-drawings of the planks and then re-arranging them in order to make a pencil drawing of what I thought the painted house front looked like (see Fig. 4).

Which then I filled in and added details I thought were consistent with the style (see Fig. 5; of the opposite side).

~ Fig. 4.

~ Fig. 5.

The completed Nuxalk house front screen models were compared to the pencil drawing and I concluded that a logical, simple-to-complex sequence of a monumental house-front screen painting developed in the early Nuxalk settlement of Komkotes.

Being an artist who has some post-secondary art history education, I not only think about the possible developmental sequence, but tend to put my thoughts down in writing in the more interesting examples. I believe one image was painted across the entire house front — since the two flanking side display outstretched bird-wings it seems logical that the missing vertical section was painted with the bird’s head (possibly the body as well). The “missing” mid-section may have been similar to the cropped section from Fig. 8 that’s shown inserted between the 2 painted horizontal painted wings. (Fig. 6).

~ Fig. 6.

It’s also possible that separate images developed since there were 3 complete images on the 3 sections of the previous re-constructed screens — the final images are quite complete in-of-themselves (see Fig.’s 2 & 8).

Which brings up the last set of re-created, and unpublished, Nuxalk set of pencil drawings (see Fig.’s 9 & 10) of the other jumbled-up painted house screen. It’s formline painted bird-wings are simpler, and have a more massive look than the others. So applying the simple-to-complex progression, it’s likely the earliest version of the Nuxalk painted house-front screens.

In the future, hopefully it will be re-created by a Nuxalk artist interested in painted house-front screens from Komkotes.

So the story has been fascinating and I believe that some curated exhibit in the future will show the unique set of circumstances that literally reached back into the forgotten past — via the early photograph taken from a fragile glass negative — and allowed us to see the full range of the Nuxalk painted house-front screens that disappeared long ago.

Hopefully the beautiful plank Bill gave me to “do something nice with it…” has fulfilled his wish with the latest re-constructed Nuxalk model painted house-front screen.

~ Fig. 2.

~ Fig. 8.

~ Fig. 9.

~ Fig. 10.