EveGriffinArtWork

Fight for the Light

Western redcedar

48 x 17 x 4 inches

2008
 

How Raven brought light to the world is one of the most prominent stories of the Northwest Coast. Although told in many variations, one Haida version goes something like this:

 

At the beginning of time, the world was completely dark because all the light of the universe was coveted by a chief who kept it hidden away in a box in the house he shared with his daughter.

 

Raven was tired of groping around in the dark and bumping into things, and so devised a plan to steal the light from the chief. He turned himself into a hemlock needle and floated on the surface of a stream. When the chief’s daughter came to the water to get a drink, she accidentally swallowed the needle, which made her pregnant. This resulted in her giving birth to Raven in the form of a human child. The chief was delighted by his new grandchild and indulged his every desire. Soon, Raven began begging and crying to play with the wooden box which contained the light. Finally, the chief relented, so long as Raven promised not to open it. Of course, as soon as Raven got hold of the box, he did open it. He immediately snatched the light in his beak and escaped through the smoke hole in the roof of the house and up into the open sky (which turned him forever black).

 

Eagle saw Raven from afar and, dazzled by the new light, caught up with him and attempted to take it. They fought over the prize in midair which eventually caused Raven to drop the light. It fell to the ground far below and shattered. The largest piece became the sun. A smaller one became the moon, and the infinite number of tiny shards became the stars.

 

This carving shows Raven and Eagle scuffling in midair. The chief’s house, far below with smoke coming from the smoke hole, is at top right; the moon is the disk just below it. The sun is the small disk in Raven’s beak. In most stories, such figures regularly transform between their human and animal forms or display features of each simultaneously. Both Raven and Eagle are shown here with attributes that are somewhat human, such as Raven’s five-fingered wing and his foot, in the form of a hand, grasping Eagle’s wing. 

 

The wood for this sculpture came from an ancient western redcedar log, over six feet in diameter, found drifting in Taiyasanka Harbor near Haines. Lingít Master Carver Wayne Price kindly slabbed it for me with his portable Alaska Chainsaw Mill™. When the slab was freshly cut, it was so heavy that I could barely lift it. Now that it is dry, the carving is extremely light, almost like balsa.

 Students of Northwest Coast art will recognize that this carving is reminiscent of the contemporary Haida style of Bill Reid (1920-1998). I was inspired by his 1967 masterpiece, Farewell Screen, which is in the Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria.