Rick Bartow
Bear Coming, 2009
drypoint on handmade mitsumata paper
image 4 x 4 in
paper 10 x 11 in
paper 10 x 11 in
Edition of 16 plus 2 artist's proofs
BAR2235
Copyright R.E. Bartow Trusts
$ 500.00
Published at Moon & Dog Press, Tokyo / South Beach. Bartow titled his 2009 print 'Bear Coming' after his 1999 drawing of the same title. The large 1999 drawing is...
Published at Moon & Dog Press, Tokyo / South Beach. Bartow titled his 2009 print "Bear Coming" after his 1999 drawing of the same title. The large 1999 drawing is in the collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at University of Oregon, Eugene. Rick discusses the bear in a 2015 video titled "A Moment With Rick Bartow: Bear Coming" found on the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art's YouTube chanel.
In 2002, Bartow made this comment on bears:
"Some people think that bears are our ancestors. Usually they are beneficial—like in medicine—helpful, healing. Beyond the sort of mythic and native realm just the kind of pan-native view of bears is that they're around where we cut wood for the sweathouse. They're up there."
In 2005, Bartow made these comments about bears and coyotes:
"Bears and coyotes are both inhabitants of this place that my family and I call home. It’s a logged over back country, berry rich and criss-crossed with beaver dams, and wetlands. Coyotes are heard if seldom seen and when they are observed they are as the myth describes them "always going”, travelers like my Wiyot grandfather who came north from California and my white grandfather who came west from Idaho. The bear is a shy ghost in the brush who has been around us a number of times as we were cutting fire wood for our sweat house ceremonies. The berry bucket used in the piece "Bear with Humor" was my grandmother’s and appears to have been used to mix plaster later in its life prior to my utilizing it as a sculptural element. The bear piece was inspired by a blind southern folk artist’s scarecrow and Tlingit armor."
In 2007, Bartow said this about bears:
"The bear relates directly to my elder and friend Walter Klamath, a Siletz tribal elder and water pourer in our ceremony at the sweathouse, "Sang Song Salmon". Walter tells one bear story about a child who sees a flying bear. Also we sometimes watch" the bear come over the mountain", as the old song goes as Ursa Major rises in the night sky after our ceremony. The wings were cut by a friend for me from a dead Port Orford tree that my aunt had planted as a young girl. None of the wood came from living trees as I prefer to use wood that others would pass over, so much comes from "slash" piles and drift. When living wood is used we have a prescribed method of prayer and offering before anything is done. The piece is created from red wood and cedar. I can make up many stories but it would be after the fact and the truth is I simply create and love the feeling of blade to wood. My daughter lily claims that it is she who sits atop the head of the bear, so be it! There are books and books about the bear and its place in symbology, mythology and the natural world and I do not pretend to be ignorant but I have friends who would be offended if I said it was all myth or symbol as they see relatives in the bear so to close I’d say that the piece has manifold beginnings and endings and leave the final story of what this piece is to you the beholder."
In 2002, Bartow made this comment on bears:
"Some people think that bears are our ancestors. Usually they are beneficial—like in medicine—helpful, healing. Beyond the sort of mythic and native realm just the kind of pan-native view of bears is that they're around where we cut wood for the sweathouse. They're up there."
In 2005, Bartow made these comments about bears and coyotes:
"Bears and coyotes are both inhabitants of this place that my family and I call home. It’s a logged over back country, berry rich and criss-crossed with beaver dams, and wetlands. Coyotes are heard if seldom seen and when they are observed they are as the myth describes them "always going”, travelers like my Wiyot grandfather who came north from California and my white grandfather who came west from Idaho. The bear is a shy ghost in the brush who has been around us a number of times as we were cutting fire wood for our sweat house ceremonies. The berry bucket used in the piece "Bear with Humor" was my grandmother’s and appears to have been used to mix plaster later in its life prior to my utilizing it as a sculptural element. The bear piece was inspired by a blind southern folk artist’s scarecrow and Tlingit armor."
In 2007, Bartow said this about bears:
"The bear relates directly to my elder and friend Walter Klamath, a Siletz tribal elder and water pourer in our ceremony at the sweathouse, "Sang Song Salmon". Walter tells one bear story about a child who sees a flying bear. Also we sometimes watch" the bear come over the mountain", as the old song goes as Ursa Major rises in the night sky after our ceremony. The wings were cut by a friend for me from a dead Port Orford tree that my aunt had planted as a young girl. None of the wood came from living trees as I prefer to use wood that others would pass over, so much comes from "slash" piles and drift. When living wood is used we have a prescribed method of prayer and offering before anything is done. The piece is created from red wood and cedar. I can make up many stories but it would be after the fact and the truth is I simply create and love the feeling of blade to wood. My daughter lily claims that it is she who sits atop the head of the bear, so be it! There are books and books about the bear and its place in symbology, mythology and the natural world and I do not pretend to be ignorant but I have friends who would be offended if I said it was all myth or symbol as they see relatives in the bear so to close I’d say that the piece has manifold beginnings and endings and leave the final story of what this piece is to you the beholder."