Major fun news

Rocking Raven comics (aka Haida Manga) is selected as part of the Canada National Design Team exhibit at the prestigious Tokyo Design Week Oct 9-23.

The Tokyo Design Week is the worldest fourth largest and fastest growing international design fair. 36 countries and 650,000 visitors will mark this years’ first ever Canadian presence.

I have created a special piece for Tokyo consisting of 14 panels on large paper sheets. As well Rocking Raven goes Fishing will be available as a comic book at the exhibit venue, the Canadian Embassy gallery Oct 12-23.

Influenced by the argillite pipe carving tradition I again present a telling of an old Haida narrative. Yes it is strange, even twisted and as the British museum said the work “is slightly disturbing” I think Sophia Books in Vancouver accurately called Rocking Raven a “peu grotesque”.

Email me if you would like an jpg sample.

micahel nicoll yahgulanaas

Not yet on the site but my current Haida Manga in production really hybridizes ancient iconography and sequential graphic narratives . Think totem pole peoples as a faint notion of what is really happening in those apparently highly abstract flat designs that we still produce. While I am only scratching at the surface here is something as vast as pre columbian written language used from the Columbia River to Northern Alaska. That “art” form which isn’t experimental probably appears alien to most contemporary non indigenous peoples and even in our own communities where much of the poetics are known and produced. However generations of concerted Indigneous language attack by both Canada and the US have seriously eroded the spoken linkages to the physical icons.

All,

The Museum of Anthropology is hosting a special exhibition this summer. Located on the University of BC campus in Vancouver they are showing all the original paintings and sketches for “The Last Voyage of the Black Ship”

If you’re in Vancouver and maybe attending the COMICON august 24th at the Heritage Hall 3102 Main Street Vancouver make a point of going out to the Museum of Anthropology.

It will encourage them to continue their new found interest in comic books.

michael nicoll yahgulanaas