A 20-foot welcome

When Puyallup artist Shaun Peterson (Qwalsius) agreed to carve a piece of public art way back in 2000, he had no idea it would take up the next 10 years of his life.

Over those years, Peterson’s project has grown from an 8-foot-high business district statue into a 20-foot-high traditional welcome figure, an open-armed female form carved in Coast Salish style that will be installed Sept. 12 in Tollefson Plaza as a public art collaboration between the City of Tacoma, Tacoma Art Museum and the Puyallup tribe.

It’s been a long labor for Peterson, who has handled most of the carving himself and had to design an unusual structural support. But as a symbol of heritage on a historically important site, it’s well worth the wait.

A MONUMENTAL PROJECT

“I’m up to the last 2 feet of adzing,” Peterson says smiling. Sweaty, wearing black overalls and sporting bandaged fingers and elbows, the 35-year-old artist is standing in the sun under a former shipping hangar in Fife. In front of him is a woman – she’s 16 feet long, 4 feet wide and missing arms and legs. It’s the welcome figure, almost ready to take its place as a symbol of Puyallup identity, land and welcome.

As Peterson chips away with his handmade adze, the surface of the gleaming red cedar takes on a wavy texture. The figure is monumental, even while unfinished: The eyes gaze straight ahead, the face is calm, the wrists and ankles delicate. At one week before installation, Peterson is nearly done carving, a brutal job that’s taken up his days from 9 a.m. to after midnight over the last few weeks. All that’s left is a stain to harden the kiln-dried wood, then painting: a white dress with red-and-black thunderbird design on the skirt, a yellow-and-black banded hat and facial features. Then the whole thing will be assembled on Tollefson Plaza on Sept. 12 – and that’s where the really unusual part comes in.

“Most welcome figures have huge metal beams at the back sunk into concrete,” explains Greg Colfax, a respected Makah carver who made 12-foot welcome figures for the Makah Museum in Neah Bay and who mentored Peterson for the first few years of the Tacoma project. “This one hides its support structure inside. People will look at it and wonder how on earth it stands up.”

Peterson’s design was driven by the fact that, unlike traditional welcome figures set outside longhouses and other important sites, this one will be seen from all sides. He wanted to hide the support to increase the aesthetic beauty. So he designed a structure where the log is split in two lengthwise to allow insertion of a steel pole and plate which are bolted to a concrete base. The two sides of the carved log are then bolted back together and reinforced with some marine-grade adhesive, and the arms are attached the same way.

To hide the bolt holes in the wooden base cover, the feet are split and reglued after installation.

It’s a complicated solution that’s had artists admiring Peterson and city engineers scratching their heads over safety issues.

The engineers even came back to Peterson two months ago with a request for several extra feet of steel plating, designed by structural engineers, to allow it to be picked up by a Tacoma Public Utilities crane.

EPIC PROPORTIONS

Not that Peterson isn’t used to problems and delays. The whole project started out in 2000 as a public art commission from the Portland Avenue Business District, funded by a City of Tacoma grant. More groups got involved, including the Tacoma Art Museum, which invited Peterson for a carving residency in 2003 and raised the $50,000 for the carving fee. The museum proposed placing the figure – originally a male, then transformed into a female – in nearby Tollefson Plaza, and the city agreed to pay the installation and structural support cost, now estimated at $50,000.

Meanwhile, Peterson was dreaming of a 20-foot-high carving – the only problem being that a high-quality log with that much wood was impossible to obtain in Washington state.

“For that height, you need a 40-foot log,” says Colfax, “and only Canada has that much old-growth cedar. At the time, the logs were too hard to bring across the border.”

Finally, in 2006, a log was found on the Quinault reservation – only Peterson, who has studied Northwest Native art in a variety of media since high school, had never carved anything that big before. Colfax agreed to mentor him, and took a few years to rough-carve the log from Peterson’s design.

Then last September, the Fife storage hangar owned by the Puyallup tribe became available, and Peterson was able to start his work, using specialized industrial foam to support the carving and getting friends to help him lift and turn it, as well as climb up to see how it would look when vertical. Finally, just last week, the installation date was delayed from today until next month to allow the Puyallup tribe time to organize a ceremony. It’s now scheduled for Sept. 18. “This project has had some astronomical challenges,” says Peterson ruefully. “I’m one man, this is 20 feet of log. It just hasn’t been done before.”

A HISTORIC MARKER

Is it worth the wait and the trouble?

Definitely, says Colfax. “Shaun is one of the finest finishing carvers on the coast,” he says. “I admire his work. His design is excellent.”

Stephanie Stebich, director of the Tacoma Art Museum, is also impressed by Shaun’s work. “Shaun pushes the edge of traditional Native work. ... It’s been a delight to watch him develop. This project has given him some challenges. And it’s an important project: It helps tell the story of Tacoma and the Puyallup people (who) were here first.”

For the Puyallup tribe, this welcome figure represents a healing of history. One of the reasons Peterson liked the original proposal for Tollefson Plaza is that he found out it also was the site of an important Puyallup village.

“Speaking as an artist and tribal member, (the figure is) historically symbolic that we’re still a people here,” says the artist. “Growing up, I was really influenced by public art. I thought that we were a totem-pole-carving people – I was misled by pop art, by the Gold Rush Alaskan history. So it’s important that there’s something sculptural that’s from here. People get swept up in stereotypes of what Indians should be – this (carving) gives us a sense of pride in who we are, both for tribal members and non-Native people. That really helped me get through the difficult bits, made me see how important it was.”

“The plaza was also the site of a medicine house,” says tribal historian Judy Wright. “Shaun wanted to bring honor and respect to the elders that lived there.” As well, she adds, “the Puyallup are known throughout the country as a welcoming stop for anyone who entered their lands. So it’s significant that the figure is holding out its hands in welcome.”

Peterson also chose the thunderbird for his design, a tribal symbol. The artist used red, a healing color for the Puyallups.

MAKING A PAIR

The City of Tacoma is also happy about it. “It’s kind of a full circle,” says city arts administrator Amy McBride, who has been behind the project almost from the beginning. “(Tollefson) was an important gathering place once, and now it is again. It’s really important to let people understand the importance the tribe has to this area. This figure is a real touchstone, a bridge between past and future. It’s phenomenal; a treasure that we get to have.”

If all goes well with Peterson’s unusual structure, it could pave the way for another figure. Meanwhile, he’s got a tribal commission coming up for ancestor house posts on the Puyallup Elders building – but not before he takes a well-deserved vacation. “I’m taking my son to San Diego to see the zoo,” he says, smiling and rubbing an elbow strapped up from adzing tendonitis. “It’ll be great.”

Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568 rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com