Curve: Women Carvers of the Northwest Coast

Review By Carolyn Butler Palmer

January 16, 2025

The Audain Museum’s landmark exhibition Curve: Women Carvers of the Northwest Coast, opened on November 23, 2024, is the first large-scale group exhibition dedicated to women carvers. Curated by Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations) and Settler Collin Curtis, this long overdue exhibition includes work by women artists from different territories and generations. As one of the earliest women carvers whose name continues to be known, Ellen May Neel, Ka’kasolas (Kwakwaka‘wakw, 1916-1966) is the most senior women artist whose work is exhibited in Curve. Other historic women carvers featured are Freda Diesing, Skil kew Wat (Haida), and Doreen Jensen, Ha’hl Yee (Gitsxan, 1933-2009). In a curator’s talk, Curtis provided that the historical impetus for the exhibit came from working with Dempsey Bob on the 2022 Audain exhibition Wolves: The Art of Demsey Bob. Also, one of the exhibition curator’s (Dana Claxton) extensive personal collection provided motivation to map a history of women carvers over six decades and four generations.

The accompanying exhibition catalogue expands upon text within the exhibition. The catalogue begins with short essays that provide crucial background information about the exhibition. For example, carver Markia Echachis Swan, in her essay, describes a carver’s quest as one focused on harmonizing negative and positive space to create “the perfect curve”–hence the title of the exhibition. Skeena Reece’s subsequent essay “We Carve” calls critical attention to the very real and often obscured history of women carvers in the Pacific Northwest and her journey to understanding her place in that history. Reece, for example, recounts how Freda Diesing mentored her father on how to smooth a mask. Yet, Reece felt out of place as a girl in her father’s studio, where she “couldn’t touch the tools.” By calling out the paradox between impact of legendary women carvers on subsequent generations and a common attitude that women do not carve, Reece gives testimony as to the historical significance of the Curve curatorial project. 

The following three beautifully illustrated curatorial essays delve more deeply into the biographies of and artwork by carvers represented in the exhibition. Claxton’s essay, “She Picked Up the Knife and the Adze,” provides an in-depth overview of the artists and artwork included in the exhibition. In addition, Claxton carefully distinguishes between regional styles and materials used across the Pacific Northwest, challenging any perception that Pacific Northwest carving is a monolithic culture.

Following up on Claxton’s text, Curtis includes two interview-based essays about luminary women carvers Ellen Neel and Freda Diesing. These two essays foreground the voices, insights, and authority of contemporary women artists Mary Anne Barkhouse and Dale Marie Campbell on the legendary carvers Ellen Neel and Freda Diesing, respectfully. As niece and mentee, Barkhouse and Campbell share personal and previously unknown stories-based on the time each of them spent with Neel and Diesing, respectively. Although they are a few similarities between the lives of Neel and Diesing, the pairing of these two essays reveals differences between their experience, as Barkhouse characterizes Neel as a deft businesswoman while Campbell is left wondering why Diesing sold her work for much less than her male counterparts. Despite the richness of these two essays, the absence of an essay devoted to Doreen Jensen, Ha’hl Yee, leaves the reader wondering about the reason for this omission.

The Curve exhibition catalogue is an important text about women carvers that could be used as a resource in undergraduate and graduate courses and enjoyed by members of the museum going public. The Curve project looks forward to future research into historic women carvers, including  Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw carvers Mildred Hunt Child (1936-2023) and Abaya Sarah Martin (1912-1963), the latter of whom was primarily as a weaver but is known to have carved a model-sized canoe, as well as Sophie Purser King (1880-1975), a carver of Cowichan and English parentage.