Commission Work
Mission Arts Council Oyama House Post
George Hemeon has been commissioned by the Mission Arts Council to carve the 20’ log for the City of Oyama Japan. Carving started in late November 2008 and was completed by June 2009. The post was on site at the Canada Day celebrations at Fraser River Heritage Park, Mission, for a last goodbye before it was shipped to Oyama, Japan July 20th. The remainder of the carving will be done on site at the Oyama Cultural Center in October 2009.
The Oyama Post will be raised at the Oyama Cultural Festival October 18th, 2009 with an estimated attendance of over 12,000 people. Corporate businesses, local independent business owners, Dignitaries, Oyama and surrounding District Council and regional citizens will be in attendance.
BC Hydro 2010 Olympics Salish Welcome Figures
From The Mission Record:
Carved from Vancouver Island red cedar, the two large wooden figures representing a mother and father raise their arms to welcome everyone to the B.C. PowerSmart Village in downtown Vancouver.
The work of Mission artist George Hemeon, the pair took nine months to complete and were carved to honour the artistic and cultural traditions of the Coast Salish people.
“I consulted with Squamish elders,” said Hemeon, who is from the Squamish Nation. “And they advised me how the arms should be raised.”
Hemeon, who has only been carving for five years, worked with Sean Hinton, another experienced carver from the Chehalis Nation, to bring his idea to fruition. Hemeon works for B.C. Hydro as a senior procurement advisor. He has been carving in the pavilion throughout the Olympics and had more riding on these figures than his reputation as an artist.
“I wanted to do well, primarily because I didn’t want to walk by them every day and know that we didn’t give our best effort,” Hemeon said lightly.
He takes his work as an artist and role model seriously.
“I want to inspire [Aboriginal youths]... I’m one of a few who have their master’s degree and are in a professional role... that’s something I never [saw] as a kid.”
Hemeon will return to the PowerSmart Village through the Paralympic games, where he will complete a whorl spindle, six foot in diameter. Traditionally the size of a discus, spindles were used to spin wool from mountain goats and wooly dogs. The yarn was then used to weave blankets.
“It was a big honour to receive a blanket,” said Hemeon. “I want to do this to honour the Salish textile tradition, and the recent resurgence in Salish weaving.”
Hemeon’s career really began to take off when his submission to work on the Oyama house post was accepted by the Mission Arts Council. Hemeon admits it was a bit of a surprise.
“I was supposed to work with a master carver, but he had to leave early in the project, so it was a lot of learn by doing.”
The post, which took nearly a year to complete, was revealed in Oyama to some 12,000 people, during the Oyama Cultural Festival in October 2009. Hemeon said the best part of the experience was not only to share his traditions with the people of Japan, but also to share them with his son, who carved with him for about a week during the festival.
Carving has always been a passion for Hemeon, but he came late to the art form because he had to grow into it.
“I tried carving when I was a kid, but I didn’t have the tools or the patience for it,” he said. After finishing his bachelor of criminal justice at the University College of the Fraser Valley, Hemeon spent some time mentoring aboriginal youth in the Abbotsford school system, and began carving with them.
While his art career was interrupted by his master’s degree and career with the Federal government, Hemeon still spent time painting and carving smaller pieces. It was only when he moved back to Mission, where cedar is plentiful, that he was able to begin carving larger pieces, including his current piece, a 14-foot cedar sturgeon, commissioned for the soon-to-be Spirit Park.
During his time at the Olympics, Hemeon was able to share his traditions with journalists and bloggers from around the world, but he says it’s more important to show aboriginal youth that you can balance a professional career with your traditions.
“Many artists are artists, and policy analysts are analysts,” he said. “It’s a really neat and positive thing to show people that you can balance success with your traditions, something that’s been really hard to do in the past.”