Dwelling Inside a Work of Art: An Open Letter to James Hart
This letter was written to Master Carver James Hart and delivered to him in person in Haida Gwaii on April 25, 2026. I am sharing it here as an open letter of gratitude — not as a statement on his behalf, but as a reflection on what his work has taught me, and how it has transformed the way I speak about art with visitors at the Audain Art Museum.
Prior to me putting this letter in his hands, he and his wife Rose expressed gratitude. He said that it pleases him to know that his timeless piece, The Dance Screen, is "doing its job."
Dear James Hart,
I met you for the second time at Audain’s 10th anniversary celebration. I realize now that I have been composing this letter in my head for months. One always hesitates to say too much to someone they deeply admire, and selfishly that night, I would have loved to talk with you, asking more questions about your process, what is in your mind when you carve, what you imagine and continue to imagine, and why your journey as an artist has taken you 10,000 years.
At the book launch last November, you offered us many bits of wisdom. As a volunteer docent at the Audain Museum, I have been sharing your wisdom with visitors on my tours. Since my first meeting with you, my tours of the permanent collection have dramatically changed.
Half of the one-hour tour is often spent in that first gallery, where ancestral works stand alongside your remarkable dance screen. I share what you have taught us through your work — and your teaching that the Haida speak in images.
I have studied many languages, including Musqueam and Ojibwe, and I have found myself reflecting on what this might mean. I believe language is deeply embedded in us, and that we project how we speak in different ways.
Is language not only something spoken, but also something shaped? This is an observation that has grown from spending time with your work, and to me now, it almost feels like calligraphy. I have been thinking about formline design in new ways — the repetition of those ovoids, the S-forms, the U-forms, and split-U forms, and the harmony in which they are created and repeated endlessly. It is carved by the artist, or woven into textiles. And within that calligraphy, there is a story — and it is that story which reveals the meaning, the power, the symbolism.
On my tours, we look at that beautiful Chilkat blanket from the 1800s, and then I invite visitors to let their eyes drift toward your dance screen — a modern work, yet one that still holds those same powerful, endless forms.
And so by the time visitors arrive at your dance screen, they are already seeing a story and imagining a world that I slowly reveal as I speak about your work.
And that is when, I think, the emotional force of the tour begins, because I tell them that your work cannot be spoken about without speaking of the salmon. You once said that the Haida would never have survived for thousands of years without them, and so I begin there. I tell the story of the salmon’s extraordinary migration and life cycle — how they are born in small creeks, as small as the Fitzsimmons Creek that runs beside the museum, and how they begin their journey downstream into river systems and eventually into the vast Pacific Ocean, where some may live for years before returning home.
And then I tell them about how their bodies are able to adjust in the most miraculous way. Their kidneys support that transition from fresh water to salt water, and then back from salt water to fresh water, as they swim upstream with all the resilience and power to make it back to their natal stream.
And it is here where I pause and tell them that over two decades ago, I stood on the side of a river in Bella Coola, fishing for pink salmon as they were making their way back.
And even despite that last leg of their journey, after living such an extraordinary life, they were still fighting — fighting on the end of my fishing line, resisting the pull as I tried to bring them in, because they knew they needed to get back home, to start the next generation.
But as I tell them, when the males and females make it back and release their eggs and sperm, they die shortly after.
It is here when I look at the people on my tour, and many of them are in tears. I say this because I have witnessed people cry almost every week. They are looking at your work, James Hart, and they are hearing the story of the salmon, and they understand even before I tell them what is embedded in your work.
It is like they know.
And when I talk about the death, I start to tell them what that death means: that the forest, the red cedar that your work is made out of, would never have survived without the salmon, because the forest benefits from that massive migration of salmon returning home and eventually dying. Their bodies, returning from the ocean, carry nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium — that re-enter the forest and feed the cedar, the animals, the soil, and the entire ecosystem represented in your work.
And then I start pointing out the big mother bear, who is going to take that salmon into the forest, eat the fatty bits, and leave the rest for the others, the scavengers, for the earth.
And then I show them the eagle that swoops down to eat that salmon. And of course, all of the other creatures.
And then I tell them about the salmon people, and why we can see they are so closely tied with those fish, and how your male and female salmon swim around the perimeter of the screen, moving in different directions. And all of this becomes the story where the language takes shape.
It is then when I point to the expressions, the screams, and why the shaman is signalling something, why he is holding that rattle, why the cubs are calling out, and why that beaver resembles Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
It is here that every visitor begins to understand the meaning behind your work. I only have to ask one question.
I ask them, what is this really about?
And they always say the same thing.
They know that it is about protecting everything that we have: the interdependence, the symbiosis, the beauty of how everything works together.
I tell them that your work helps us understand our world. It is softer, it is gentler, and we can, for a small moment in time, inhabit your world as the artist.
We can dwell inside a work of art, the way one might dwell inside a dream.
I also tell them about the dance screen and its functionality. Sometimes this comes at the beginning or at the end. I invite visitors to imagine dancers emerging from that screen through that little door, and eagle down being blown through those holes, even through the blowholes of the whales.
I say to them: can you hear the drums? Can you see the colours of the beautiful dancers? Can you see the feathers?
And again, when I look at their faces, they seem to be in a kind of trance.
I can’t tell you how silent it is when I talk about your dance screen. It is the one work in the entire museum that has this effect.
The visitors are captivated. Their eyes never leave your work, and it is deeply moving to witness. I always stand facing them because I want to capture what they see and how they react. And as a writer, to see those emotions, especially those tears, is so beautiful to witness.
It is an extraordinary privilege for me to share this experience with visitors who may be encountering your dance screen for the first time. I am deeply grateful for that privilege, and grateful for the wisdom, imagination, and storytelling you have given to all of us through your work.
With gratitude,
Farha
A final reflection
When you signed your book for me, I said that, to me, you are a Rodin. I did not mean this as a comparison, but as a way of saying that your work, at least in my mind, belongs in that same world of masterful sculpture.
As I travel back and forth to Italy, where I keep a second home, and remembering that your son spent time there recently, I have come to feel very strongly that artists of the Northwest Coast are every bit as masterful as the great artistic traditions of continental Europe. Your use of bronze, copper, and other materials — materials long used by European masters — feels, to me, a powerful testament to the grandeur and strength of your work.
As much as your screen echoes the existential cry we see in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, I also speak about how, in certain ways, it reminds me of Rodin’s Gates of Hell, his homage to Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, from the Divine Comedy. And just as Rodin’s The Thinker emerged as a cast bronze from the fragile medium of plaster, your cast bronze shaman stands as a separate presence from the red cedar dance screen — each figure emerging from and standing in dialogue with its larger structure.
When I think about Rodin’s Gates of Hell, I often think about how Dante’s mythical story lives within the structure itself, set against a wall and filled with narrative. It is this sense of story held inside a structure that I am reminded of when I stand before your dance screen.
FG