Pioneering female carver Kakaso’las, Ellen Neel (1916-1966) is best known for her crest poles, but Neel also regularly created a variety of wooden works for commercial sale, including masks, human and animal figures, and puppets. This figurine is a rare example of a work by Neel that delves into Kwakwaka'wakw shamanistic forms and beliefs. Its stable square stance recalls larger scale Welcome Figures, and the wide mouth, thick brows, and black, red, and blue-green pigment give its face a mask-like character. Yet the smoothly polished figurine's prominently erect genitalia suggest a role related to love medicine, or sexual healing. Indeed, as recounted by Pam Creasy, the artist's daughter, this figure is a one-of-a-kind piece that Neel carved for a family doctor's patient who was facing infertility challenges. According to Neel's family, the figure worked and the patient happily welcomed a baby boy. [1]

Ritualistic shaman figurines recur most frequently on the northern coast, typically with long attached hair to represent shamans or their spirit helpers and associated power. When left with a patient, such figures are said to channel the shaman's power to effect healing. This present work, however, signed and carved for sale, straddles spiritual potency and saleability. Neel's mentors, her grandfather Yakuglas, Charlie James (c.1867-1938) and uncle Mungo Martin, Chief Nakapankam (1881-1962), both occasionally carved wooden figures and model poles representing shamans, so the subject and object type would have been well known to Neel and fits in a longer legacy of twentieth century Northwest Coast carving.

1. Pam Creasy, personal communication provided by the current owner, December 12, 2007.

Christopher T. Green

Christopher T. Green, Ph.D. is a New York-area based writer and scholar whose research, teaching, and curating focus has included modern and contemporary Native North American art and material culture, and the global representation and display of Indigenous art and culture. His current research focuses on contemporary Tlingit art and the interrelation of 20th century Northwest Coast Native art and Euro-American modernism. He currently serves as visiting assistant professor of Art History and Environmental Studies at Swarthmore College.