Bill Reid: Craftsman and Artist
By Melissa Montgomery

Wolf Pendant

Bill Reid is one of Canada’s best known artists. Born in 1920 to a German father a Haida Gwaii mother, Bill worked as a broadcaster and journalist for years before becoming a jeweler, sculptor, printmaker and painter. Bill’s maternal grandfather, Charles Gladstone had also been a jeweler and studied with the great Charles Edenshaw. He passed on what he had learned to Bill.

After working at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto, Bill Ried returned to the West Coast in 1951. In Vancouver, Bill worked as a restorer of Native artifacts. He examined artifacts from all over North America. Together with Wilson Duff and Bill Holm, he prepared a massive Native art exhibition in Vancouver at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1967. This exhibition showed for the first time that native artifacts were art, not merely archeological relics from the past. Bill helped to build an entire native village at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. He began to make jewelry and inspired by what he had seen in the artifacts he had helped to restore, he began to explore the symbolic language of the Haida Gwaii.

Bill’s first public piece was a carved decorated bentwood box : a copy of a piece he had seen on his travels at the American Museum of Natural History. At the Canadian Pavilion in expo 1967, Bill presented more carvings and a cedar screen. This led to a grant in 1968 for Bill to study goldsmithing at the Central School of Design in London, England.

Raven

After four years in London, Bill returned to Canada and lived in Montreal. This was when he made some of his best work. Raven discovering mankind in the clamshell (boxwood carving) and the bear-shaped Gold Dish are quintessential Reid. He embraced the curved and tapered lines and the ovoid shapes that were an integral part of Native art in the past. The raven in particular became the symbol Reid was famous for. The raven is a creature that brings great change through action. Bill revitalized native art, which had all but fallen off the map of the art world.

Bill used his fame to speak out about the extensive logging of Haida land. His experience as a broadcaster gave him the ability to speak for native rights, native land and the preservation of native culture. He published books, lectured and passed on what he knew to younger artists. He was awarded the Order of British Columbia as well as an Officer of France’s Order of Arts and Letters. He received honorary degrees from six Canadian universities.

The last twenty five years of Bill Reid’s life were spent working and battling Parkinson’s disease. He continued to make jewelry and smaller carvings but it became more and more difficult for him to hold his hands still. He had many workers who often put their own artistic pursuits aside to help Bill carve for a few hours.
Bill passed away in 1998. His ashes were put in a canoe that he had carved and there was a two day canoe trip up the coast of British Columbia to Tanu Island so that his ashes could be put in the Haida Gwaii village that had been his mother’s birthplace.
Today, Bill’s work is in upscale jewelry stores, museums, galleries and at the Vancouver International Airport. The face of the twenty dollar Canadian bill sports a picture of the carving Canadian Journey. Bill thought himself more of a craftsman, but the experts agree: his work combines the technique of a craftsman with the eye and heart of an artist who is true to his roots: bringing the past to present for all to enjoy.

Relevant links:
Bill Reid Foundation
Bill Reid Museum: Exhibitions and Gallery