Mythic Beings « O' Canada

Although several volumes produced by the Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre have sat upon my shelves for quite awhile, I had not focused on this independent publishing powerhouse until I recently posted some thoughts about art in the Pacific Northwest and pondered the coincidence that two art books (Shore, Forest and Beyond and Mythic Beings) mentioned then were from D&M. I also count Inuksuit (noted in O’Canada Blog on January 31, 2011) and Arctic Eden among my books from D&M that contain beautiful images of special aspects of the Canadian physical and cultural landscape.

Exploring their catalog of titles, what strikes me are the diverse range and high quality — there are many award wimmers here — of Douglas & McIntyre’s art-themed volumes and its literary fiction and non-fiction. Its affiliated imprint, Greystone Books, is also quite good. I’ve added several to my wish list. Some of the titles that stood out from my browsing include those below.

: Fred Herzog, Photographs

: Jennifer Kramer, Kesu’

: Ross King, Defiant Spirits

: David Blackwood, Black Ice

: Joan Murray, A Treasury of Tom Thomson

: Zsuzsi Gartner (ed.), Darwin’s Bastards

: T. Earle & F. Mueller, Yukon

: B. Grenville & S. Steedman (eds.), Visions of British Columbia

: Harry Thurston, The Atlantic Coast

During a trip to Vancouver last December with my two sons, we visited the Vancouver Art Gallery’s outstanding exhibition “Shore, Forest and Beyond: Art from the Audain Collection”. What a spectacular display of traditional and contemporary artworks related to British Columbia! The Vancouver Art Gallery and Douglas & McIntyre Publishers (more on them in a later post) collaborated on a book, Shore, Forest and Beyond, showcasing the exhibition that is well worth obtaining. On that visit, I also brought back a copy of Gary Wyatt’s beautiful book, Mythic Beings: Spirit Art of the Northwest Coast (also published by Douglas & McIntyre). While there’s much that can be said about the show and several of the commercial art galleries in that region that focus on such artists, for now it prompts me to share some contemporary art with traditional motifs from the first nations tribes of the Pacific Northwest and a few of the galleries where such works can be found.