2022-23
James P. Johnson ONN-ISS-KWAH (Tlingit Ch’áak’ Dakl’aweidi Clan (Eagle Killerwhale), born 1978) Lib Tech, Mervin Manufacturing (American, founded 1988) Sequim, Washington
Gilbert
James Johnson, an artist and lifelong snowboarder, carved the wooden panel for this design with an image of Raven. In Tlingit belief, according to Johnson, Raven was light-colored in the beginning. But as the bird carried the sun in his beak through the sky, he flew across the smoke hole of a clan house and the soot turned him black, as this board depicts. Commercial products like this one allow Johnson to bring Tlingit art and culture to a global audience, and a portion of its sales were donated to building the new Sealaska Heritage Arts Campus in the artist’s hometown of Juneau, Alaska.
Color screen print on polymer and bamboo