Christian White has titled this work Sǥaan (Supernatural Being), not after a single story, but in recognition of the many in which the natural and supernatural worlds intersect. The Haida, master ocean navigators, travelled vast distances through treacherous waters for trade, ceremony, and war. The sea, in turn, had its own laws. Haida histories tell of beings that controlled tides, summoned storms, and transformed humans into creatures of the deep. One of the most enduring is the story of Nanasimigat, a woman lured into the undersea world by a lovesick killer whale, her fate hanging in the balance until Kugann Jaad (Mouse Woman) intervenes. In Sǥaan, White seeks to capture this precise moment of tension: the woman clings to the whale’s dorsal fin as it arches, poised to pull her into the depths.

Though it is rather sizeable, Sǥaan is meant to be experienced in the hand: its curves fit the palm, its edges practically demand to be traced, as if touch might reveal something unseen. Inlays of catlinite glint from the surface. A human face peers from the whale’s blowhole, as reminder of the boundary between worlds. Like the stories themselves, White’s work resists a single interpretation, offering instead something more immersive: the feeling of being caught between the known and the unknown or the natural and supernatural.

Gary Wyatt with First Arts