The first encounter with Jackson Robertson was completely by chance, a brief meeting outside an art store in the coastal city of Duncan, B.C., on Vancouver Island back in 1999. Duncan is known as the City of Totems and last year ('08) hosted the North American Indigenous Games.
Back in 1999 Jackson was delivering a beautifully crafted talking stick about 5 feet tall that was already sold to the art dealer at a shop downtown. I met Jackson carrying the talking stick into the store and I asked him if I might take his picture holding the spectacular art piece.
I did a short interview and sold a story somewhere along the way. The meeting was unforgettable because it was one of those memorable photos, a man and his art together, the image forever stuck at the fore of my mind and it never left.
So imagine the surprise when I came around the corner of the Nicol Street International Hostel a couple of days ago in Nanaimo, B.C., late January 2009, only to meet Jackson Robertson standing with one of the guests.
It was another of those wonderful, short reunions that occur often in the way that I do this job.
"Do I know you?"
"I did a story about you once."
"Don't remember."
"I'm the guy with a wooden leg. You said you would carve me a peg."
He grinned, "Still don't know you." I pulled out the photo that is comfortably ensconced on the old DELL, "Now do you know me?"
Jackson was born in the Nanaimo Indian Hospital on Nov. 15, 1956. "My great-grandfather was named Jackson Robertson." His family members descended out of Kingcome Inlet, a long, deep inlet on the B.C. central coast. It is Kwak'wala speaking territory.
Today he lives in Nanaimo (and has all along, in fact for his immediate family moved to Nanaimo when he was a youngster and it was Nanaimo where he grew up). The Kingcome Inlet roots are as thick as giant cedar however.
Jackson has a carving studio located downtown in the city at China Steps. It's a short walk to the Nanaimo harbour front (and the casino). His studio seats half-a-dozen carvers in the requisite work space.
Sammy Dawson, 32, is also a Kingcome descendent, and he was visiting Nanaimo at the end of January, 2009. Sammy lives in Burnaby, B.C., and carves in cedar and sells his work at the Eagle Spirit Gallery on Granville Island.
"I carved my first piece with my uncle David when I was 10 years old when we were visiting Alert Bay." While it's true that Sammy is also a descendent of Kingcome Inlet he too was raised in Nanaimo, "but we always went to Campbell River, Alert Bay, and Kingcome Inlet for potlatches."
Sammy explained, "Every time I come to Nanaimo I visit Jackson's carving studio, but I go up to Alert Bay at least five times a year and every time I go I meet another close relation."
All those family relations are meaningful to this day but he enjoys living in the Vancouver metropolis, and went there, "with my girlfriend because she was attending Kwantlen College upholstery school. She got a job at the Serta mattress factory so we stayed."
Well that job disappeared last year even before the major downtown in the economy. Now she's pregnant with their first child and he is step-dad to a young son. He carves in the Burnaby home and spends quite a bit of time outdoors, in a jump-suit, because carving is selling well at Eagle Spirit Gallery.
Sammy learned carving skills from Alfred Robertson, David Robertson, and Jackson Robertson. He learned mythologies behind the traditional art, and in time, he, like many coastal practitioners, made contemporary use of the imagery.
With regards to contemporary use of the coastal images, Jackson is a promoter of the unique art form on the coast. He hosts a two-day carving course in the city of Nanaimo, open to the public, a session which includes a pair of 5-hour sittings on consecutive Saturdays (11 A.M. to 4 P.M).
The studio is located at B-22, Victoria Crescent, Nanaimo, and the fee is $65. Jackson explained, "Cut-outs are distributed and the students 'shape it out," and an artist is born.
