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TONGUES & TOTEMS:

In 1948 my colorful Aunt Wendy Jones went to Alaska and homesteaded.

Winters in Anchorage made it cheaper to book passage on a cargo ship rather than stay home and pay for food and heat. So Wendy travelled, collecting art at ports of call, eventually 5 buildings full. 

At the airport in the 50’s, international flights all stopped to refuel. Wendy offered passengers a ride to her homestead for tea, art, and stories. In 1966 she invited me to come help her make her museum non profit. Guests loved Wendy’s conjured comparisons of art cultures around the Pacific Basin. To verify her conjectures, I wrote Tongues and Totems. In it you see the museum’s Chilcat totem pole of a thunderbird protector, similar to a Peruvian resurrection Quetzal, and to a Russian shaman’s bird protector. Motifs and myths are compared from around the Pacific Basin.

 Resemblances of motifs: human and animal forms, splayed figure, bird/reptile, double headed serpent, protruding tongue, bird/man, totem pole. Similar design elements are compared: symmetry, bilateral split, space fillers, exaggeration and x-ray vision. Mythological elements of rebirth, transformation and dualism are shared in common.