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Mauger’s restraint is admirable, enabling him as both artist and
scientist. It also gives credence to his answer to my question,
“Has your definition of art changed?”
“Boy, that one caught me by surprise. Yeah… it’s certainly
because of Ozette that the way I look at art now is really
different. I suppose that means my definition has changed.
With the Ozette stuff, and any art from indigenous people, there’s
that old axiom, that only English and a few other languages
separate art out as a distinct thing, make art for art’s
sake.
“Art always has a function. I look at the Ozette stuff and more
and more I realize its inseparably bound to the artifact and its
use in the culture and what it meant in the culture and what it
indicated in the social system and the kinship system.
“So in some ways art is an expression of a whole cultural
system, that when we see the object, we’re just looking at the
surface…it’s probably how an anthropologist would look at art
anyhow, so maybe I’m just a late bloomer.
think I knew that academically, but when it becomes part of your
gut, it’s no longer an academic definition. This is real stuff and
real people we’re talking about
“That really comes home to you as an artist. When you’re
struggling with a design, making that paradigm shift, another way
of looking at the universe, when a killer whale’s fin doesn’t have
to be vertical on its back, where can you put it and still make a
logic, though not the logic of your particular world view?
“One of the most satisfying experiences is when the whole world
is reduced to a design.”
Consider, for example, the canoe.
The Makah Cultural and Research Center houses two canoes, a canoe
for hunting sea lions and seals and a larger whaling canoe.
Traditionally, the canoes were carved from a single cedar trunk. In
a sense, the canoe typifies a culture where art and function are
indistinguishable. On the one hand, it signifies pure
function. One senses merely from its presence and look that it is a
match for the sea.
“They’re the only real oceangoing canoe ever designed,” says
Mauger.
On the other hand, it is a craft of pure beauty.
Mauger immersed himself in the Makah canoe for a while, aiming
to develop a prototype of a fiberglass model. He made seven
canoes.
“With the seventh, I felt I was really starting to understand
what the lines were about. They’re simply amazing. There’s nothing
accidental. Every angle, every flair, has a reason. I don’t pretend
to understand what they’re all about. But I was starting to
understand the flair of the bow, the vertical stern.
“Which is odd,” he adds. “They’re lousy in following
seas.”
But the reason for the strange chopped-off stern was their
function. “These were work boats. That kind of stern worked
well for working out of it.”
That functional trait also reflects a deeper practicality. If a
crew were caught in a following sea, they’d simply turn the canoe
around and go backwards.
This point in turn explains old photos of canoes pulled up on
the beach, bows seaward.
“More glassy-eyed folks say they’re ready to go. Jump in the
canoe and go hunting whales.
“No, that’s the way they came in through the surf, reversed.
They came in stern first. But they achieved a practical double
benefit in that they were ready to go.”
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