Kawadelekala's House
August 1984
Francis Dick
First Nations, Kwakwaka'wakw, Dzwada'enuxw, born 1959
Silkscreen prints have often been made to honor the dead and as potlatch gifts at memorials. Dick began featuring Kawadelekala, the supernatural Wolf who was the first ancestor at Kingcome Village, to honor the spirit of her grandmother, who passed in 1985. Dick mixes more naturalistic elements in the background, but the main design shows the ancestral Wolf and the sisiyutɫ (two-headed serpent) within a rectangular format that represents a traditional cedar-plank house. Supernatural beings, like Kawadelekala, lived in such houses and enacted protocols and ceremonies just as their human descendants do.
Silkscreen on Stonehenge cover white rag paper
14 1/4 x 19 7/8 in. (36.2 x 50.5 cm)
Gift of R. Bruce and Mary-Louise Colwell
2018.29.36
Provenance: [Pacific Editions Limited, Victoria, British Columbia]; purchased by Bruce and Mary-Louise Colwell, Seattle, Washington, Mar. 11, 2002
