Susan A. Point

2018 Audain Prize for the Visual Arts

Susan Point is a treasured Canadian artist. Highly involved in the movement to revive traditional Coast Salish art and design, she is credited for bringing academic attention to her culture. Susan Point frequently pushes the boundaries of traditional Coast Salish art, experimenting with a variety of materials – including glass, cast iron, stainless steel, bronze and concrete polymers. Her work is widely credited for establishing a reputation for Coast Salish art during a time when there was a heavy bias towards Indigenous art produced in the northern region of the Northwest Coast.

Susan Point was born in Alert Bay, British Columbia and grew up on the Musqueam Reserve near the mouth of the Fraser River. While on maternity leave from her job as a legal secretary, she took a First Nations jewellery-making course offered by the Vancouver Community College. Noticing the lack of Coast Salish imagery and motifs in Indigenous art, she embarked in a self-study of her culture’s traditional art practices, eventually learning wood carving from friend and mentor, Bud Mintz, and master carver John Livingston.

In the early 1980s, Susan Point joined a group of indigenous artists dedicated to revitalizing traditional Coast Salish art. One of her earliest work Salmon, 1981, depicts four black-and-white salmon positioned around a small circle, reminiscent of Coast Salish spindle whorls. Critical reception of her early work was negative at first, as many art curators and critics were unfamiliar with Coast Salish traditional art.

Susan Point has received a number of notable commissions. In 1993, her installation Land, Sea and Sky, was set up at the Vancouver International Airport. Also at the Vancouver International Airport is Flight (Spindle Whorl), a 4.8 meter red cedar spindle whorl engraved with Coast Salish symbols, that serves as a centrepiece for the airport’s international terminal. She has also created sculptures for the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, Victoria Convention Centre and Langara College in Vancouver.

Susan Point has been honoured with an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia (2000), the University of Victoria (2000), Simon Fraser University (2008), and Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2008). She was also appointed to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2004 and as an officer of the Order of Canada in 2006. In 2010 she was named one of British Columbia’s 100 most influential women. Susan Point was also awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012) and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts (2018). Her art can be viewed at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology and Vancouver Art Gallery as part of their permanent collections.