This project was generously funded by the First People Cultural Council
In the Winter of 2025, Andrea, inspired by her peoples ingenious way of navigating, created a set of nine silkscreen prints depicting place names found in her people’s Coast Salish territory.
The Coast Salish peoples have navigated the waters of the Salish sea for thousands of years. In our massive, skillfully crafted wooden canoes, we would paddle between different resource locations, our home village and other friendly villages in our territory. To navigate the complex waters of the Salish sea and all of its islands and narrow water ways, we would create place names for navigation markers. We would also create place names for the resource locations that our people would use and maintain. Finally, and most importantly, we would create stories around important locations to help us remember but also to help teach our children. Our stories are always fantastical, engaging and routed in lived experiences. They are meant to teach the intangible experiences that our young people may one day face to help them prepare for life. Experiences like asking for help, or which waters are dangerous to navigate, or which people are our friends and family. With all this in mind you can better understand the names and art that I created for the nine place names in my new silkscreen series.
Lyackson Creation – Tl’uqtinus (Long beach/chest) – Q’apthut Ts’its’uwatul'(Gathering people together to support each other) – Punelexutth'(Burried on the beach) – Hwaaqw’um(Place of cow parsnip) – Sqw’uxw(Cliffs, on Lyackson island) – T’wwt’qe(Place of salal) – Hwmet’utsum i’kw’ Sheshuq’um(Bent over place and wide open mouth)
Most of these place names are in Hul’q’umi’num’, the language of my people. They name a place based on the look of the location so it is easy to use as a navigation point while paddling. Two of the locations are based on old stories told by our people as a form of teaching and entertainment. What follows is a detailed description of each silkscreen piece. Each piece is a limited edition, hand created, silkscreen print, and area available for purchase on my website.
Andrea was lucky enough to show her work in the Eve Smart Gallery. Named for the female founder of the Gallery. Read about her here.
In the creation of these prints, Andrea learned more about her favourite art form, silkscreen printing from the lovely people at Watchiay Studio. Through Andrea’s grant funding from the First People’s Cultural council, Andrea was able to participate in a three day one-on-one immersive course at their well equipped Courney printing studio. During this course, Andrea learned to use Adobe Illustrator to set up her print file for printing on transparencies for the transfer to the actual silkscreens on with which she would print. The piece she worked on at the Watchiay studio was her Lyackson Creation. This print included five colours, each on their own screen and printed separately. The colours were alined and pulled by hand to create this limited edition of 50 prints.
Andrea then spent month creating eight more detailed pieces of artwork. Her work started with sketches on paper that she then transferred to illustrator on her computer. She used her graphic art skills to refine her work and set it up for printing on transparencies. The transparencies are then ‘burned’ onto silkscreen frames using UV light to create a stencil. Each colour is lined-up and printed separately to create the final designs.
Andrea’s work was on display for a month at the friendly and beautifully unique GPAG, Gibson’s Public Art Gallery. for the month of December, 2025.
