Dreamwork of the Whales - Part 1
Transcript
My name is Julian Bowron. I was one of the carvers on artwork, the pole that’s standing in Bathurst Quay Park. The name of the work is “The Dreamwork of the Whales”. It was designed by a west-coast artist named Georganna Malloff. And the images on it are at least seven if not ten creation myths from around the world as interpreted by Georganna Malloff and based on a series of dreams which she believed were inspired or were really transmitted to her mind from the killer whales that passed back and forth in front of her home on an island near Alert Bay on the northern tip of Vancouver Island. And I should point out that one of the reasons that we thought this artwork was particularly appropriate for Toronto was precisely because of the ethnic mix that is the richness of Toronto, the greatness of Toronto.
And so looking up at the artworks on the pole what you’re seeing a cylindrical tableau. There were five carvers and each carver worked on their own area. We sought to the extent possible to blend our work together but you can clearly see different styles. The work of Earl Tomlinson is towards the bottom of the pole and is much more realistic. The bear, the grizzly holding the man is an example of his work. Lynn Daly did some of the work in that area and a little bit further up. The two figures in the clamshell are the work of Lynn. In the middle of the height of the pole there’s a tremendous flowing area that looks like some kind of cosmic stream. That is intended to represent DNA the essence of life somehow moving from one planet to another.
You’ll see scenes of aquatic life with kelp and seaweed, porpoises and dolphins and whales. The whales are definitely intended to evoke the Haida, you know, the Native Peoples of the West Coast. There are three dancing figures, the Apsaras, which is evocative of Indian religious tradition, Hinduism. There’s, at the top of the pole you’ll see a pyramidal structure, which is the Tower of Babel, and it has a winding stair around it. And the idea is that it’s the perfect city in the sky, you know Christian idea would be Jerusalem. And it’s crowned by the way by a moon on the one side and a rainbow on the other. The rainbow, you know, there isn’t a society on earth I think that doesn’t find rainbows remarkable. And they feature in a lot of creation mythologies. 2:48