Engraver sells art, not culture

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Corrine Hunt, a Kwakiutl jewelry maker and engraver, brought a live, breathing model to the opening of the Evolving Traditions: Women of the Northwest Coast Native art show at the University of British Columbia - her mother.

The proud Mrs. Hunt wore a gold watch band, earrings and necklace, delicately engraved with the patterns of ravens, eagles and salmon.

"I won't wear anybody else's," she said with an exaggerated air.

"She lies," her daughter said in a playful aside.

The 33-year-old artist herself wore small gold hoop earrings and a pendant about as long, slender and green as a string bean, a gift from a Maori friend in New Zealand that's made from greenstone, a type of jade.

A tattoo almost circled her wrist. The permanent etching depicting Northwest Indian and Maori symbols was another souvenir she took home from a trip to New Zealand.

"It's the only bracelet I own," said Hunt.

Her creations, wearable carved art crafted from silver or gold and sometimes both, were on display with carved masks, button blankets, beadwork, limited edition prints and hand-woven baskets for the first annual sale at the university's Museum of Anthropology. Four artists, including Hunt, also gave demonstrations.

Hunt, a tall woman with a quiet humor, started engraving previous metals for a living about five-and-a-half years ago. But growing up in a gamily "filled with artists" on both parents' sides, she always sketched and drew. She learned to engrave from an uncle.

When she decided to make a business of it, she remembers she felt lost.

"I had no idea how to sell things," she said. "I actually hired a person to go to the galleries because I was too shy to do it myself."

Hunt engraves a lot of pieces for clients in the area of her home town of Alert Bay on a small island near the northern tip of Vancouver Island. She also does a brisk trade with people from England, Japan and Germany who commission her for custom-designed pieces.

It keeps her busy enough that she has a full-time employee assisting her and hires others during the busy seasons, such as Christmas.

"I can work 24 hours a day if I want, but I don't want to," she said.

A small gold band takes several hours to engrave. It's detailed work that takes a lot of concentration and squinting and has left Hunt with the kind of finger lumps you get from using a pencil for too long.

"A lot of people try engraving, but it's very difficult work." Hunt takes three months off every year to travel - to South America, Australia, New Zealand - but designing jewelry is never far from her mind.

"It's not always so frantic, you're out lying on the beach, but it's always in your head. It's a huge market and in order to stay competitive in the market, you have to keep changing.

"I often get caught staring at women's earrings," she added with a laugh.

When she started out, Hunt was one of two women engraving jewelry, an art still dominated by men.

But she had an advantage, because men were creating pieces that were too heavy or large to wear comfortably.

"As a woman, I know what women want."

Hunt works out of a studio in her garage at her home in Burnaby, (moving out her "showpiece" '62 Studebaker she bought with a friend and drives in summer).

The artist, who sometimes incorporates colored stones or gems such as garnets or abalone into her creations, creates silver earrings for abut $50. Her most expensive piece, a neckpiece depicting a sisiutl, or two-headed serpent, costs $4,400.

"I do a lot of wedding bands," she said, which sell for about $300-$400.

The artistic style of Northwest Coast Indians is distinctive for its use of patterns and animal crests that all artists use in different ways, depending on the region or tribe to which they belong.

The style is similar to the untrained eye, but Hunt can determine the artist from just looking at the piece,.

"It's the pattern of shapes, so you have to learn how to put those shapes together," she said. For instance, the ifferent groups of all may use the ovoid, a squarish oval, but how it fits into the design makes the piece distinctive.

Hunt is sensitive to the issue of peddling Native symbols and images to outsiders.

"I have this conversation often with (non-Native) clients. They ask me, Am I an Eagle? or Am I a raven? No, you're not anything. You can't take anything from the culture itself."

For instance, her family is the only one in her community that has the right to wear the sisiutl, but beyond the area that symbol has no significance.

"They're buying the art, they're not buying the culture."