Artist Arthur Vickers recently created a suite of two chairs and a box for use in the convocation ceremonies at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, a project commissioned by Coast Capital Savings. Last month, the suite was officially presented, with Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon in attendance. At the same time, Vickers was made an honorary doctor of letters. The artist recently spoke with Robert Amos at his gallery in Cowichan Bay.
Arthur Vickers was pleased to be asked to create the ceremonial convocation suite for Vancouver Island University because education is close to his heart.
His mother moved from Vancouver to Kitkatla where she became the school teacher, and after moving to Victoria in 1962, Vickers was among the first First Nations children to attend Oak Bay Junior High School. Now, at this time of truth and reconciliation, he believes education still presents the best way forward.
The artist embellished the three pieces of furniture — two chairs and a box — with imagery in gold leaf, but first he needed a smooth finish. For the varnishing, Vickers constructed a positive-pressure room.
“You only need about a pound and a half of pressure, so there’s no dust,” he explained. Then, with a brush, he applied simple, regular lines of sizing to the wood, and laid on 23-carat gold leaf. Quiet and understated at first, these designs suddenly become dramatic when the light hits.
“Whoever sits on the chancellor’s bench, behind them will be the design of the Keeper of Wisdom and Knowledge,” Vickers said. “The design is very, very simple. At the top is the eagle’s beak; his face looking at us.
“The body, shaped like a copper, represents the doors of the university. The wings and feathers are poles holding up the front of the building. It is the university.”
On the bentwood box that is the chair’s base, he has drawn young men and women. Though each figure has the same general shape, not one part of the design is repeated.
“Not the hands, not the blankets, not the eyes, the lips, the noses, the eyebrows — nothing,” Vickers said. “Those are the students of the university.”
The vice-chancellor’s chair carries the design of a woman, a teacher. For Vickers, this recalls his mother.
“After she arrived up the coast, Mom taught in Kitkatla for the first few years. Then we moved to Hazelton, where she continued. And we moved to Victoria in ’62. She received her BA there, and continued teaching in Victoria,” he said. “Here she was, a woman in her early 40s, with six children and she moved us all to Victoria to complete her education and receive a degree.
“Her commitment to teaching was absolute. Her responsibility as a teacher was entirely to her students, to give them the best possible education and to keep the students in her heart at all times.”
Vancouver Island University’s diplomas will be presented from a large bentwood box, which has a lid shaped like a woven cedar-bark hat typical of the northwest coast.
“I’ve left the inside of the lid unvarnished,” Vickers noted, “so when they go up to get their diplomas, and they touch it, the oil from their fingers leaves their DNA. And over the years these oils will mix with the oils of the cedar and the box will finish itself.”
As he considered the hundreds of years of wood grain stacked in these chairs, Vickers considered the lessons he has learned.
“We are moving so quickly into the future, with the devices to record and connect us throughout the world. We need to remember our amazing past, that has been there since Mother Earth was born. Ancient wisdom and knowledge have been passed down from generation to generation since the beginning of time. The Keeper of Wisdom and Knowledge holds all the information of everything that exists on earth.” He invites us to look more carefully into the wood, and the natural world.
“There is that preciousness that exists in every cycle on the Earth — everything that’s living. The trees gather wisdom and pass it on. Realize that preciousness, which has been here for far longer than we have existed.
“It all comes from one place and that is Mother Earth. And we need to take special care. We need to start looking at our use of the things of the Earth as a privilege and not just as a resource.”
Vickers handed me a bit of cedar, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. He had counted 175 years of growth rings encoded in its 10 centimetres.
“It’s the recorded history of the coast of B.C.: climate changes and earthquakes and a lot of other things. Those trees were living entities, and they have been lying there, waiting for someone to find them. We’re looking at a history that we can’t even imagine.”
In the layers of vertical grain that make up this massive and beautiful convocation furniture, Vickers sees not just the past but hope for the future.
“When young, precious minds start looking back at these ancient wisdoms, and the knowledge that still exists, they may ask: “How do we unlock that preciousness, before it’s too late?’ ” Vickers believes that the knowledge is in the wood, and in the indigenous cultures and in the lessons of the past.
“We need to find a balance between the past and the future,” Vickers concluded. “More so today than ever before.”
The ceremonial convocation suite is on display in the Welcome Centre at Vancouver Island University, 900 Fifth St., Nanaimo.
