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Totem Pole by James Bender at Pike Place Market (#72: 15046 bytes)

Honoring the Salmon People (Medium Version)

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© 1996 Robert Hewson
by Robert Hewson
Paper: Stonehenge Natural
Paper Size: 15" x 20" horizontal
3 colors
175 in edition

Artist's explanation

This design is a representation of the First Salmon ceremony. Among many of the Northwest tribes, the first salmon caught during their return upriver to spawn was the object of the ceremony. After thanking the salmon for providing food for the humans, the salmon was cooked and eaten. The uneaten scraps, the bones and skin, were returned to the water to be reborn and return in the following years.  Here I show a woman placing the bones in the water. The salmon returns to the salmon spirit house, which is painted with salmon designs. In the design on the salmon spirit house, human faces blow eggs into the belly of the salmon, a symbol of the continued survival of the salmon people. The smoke curling from the smoke holes of the salmon house represents ravens as guardian spirits to the salmon, for it was Raven who first brought salmon to the Northwest Coast.

Certificate of Authenticity: Printer’s Remarks

This print is a limited edition original serigraph. Working from Robert’s original drawings and from a related painting, I cut rubylith stencils for the three colors ( black, red, and blue-green) and hand-printed the three inks on archival paper 20 inches wide and 15 inches tall. The image size is 15 inches wide by 11 inches tall. This print is one of an edition of 175 made on Stonehenge Natural paper. We also printed 20 artist’s proofs and four printer’s proofs on the Stonehenge paper. I printed this edition in 1996 with the assistance of the artist, Robert Hewson.
 -Paul Nicholson, Bellevue, WA
Price: $80
Plus $10 shipping in the U.S.A.
Item #: 403
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© 2009 Chief Seattle Arts
Last modified: November 09, 2014