HOLM, Oscar William 1925-

(Bill Holm)

PERSONAL: Born March 24, 1925, in Roundup, MT; married; wife's name Marty; children: Carla, Karen. Education: University of Washington, B.A. and M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—1027 Northwest 190th St., Shoreline, WA 98177. Offıce—Burke Museum, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195.

CAREER: Seattle Public Schools, teacher of art, c. 1952-1967; University of Washington, Seattle, professor of art history and curator of Northwest Coast Indian Art at the Thomas Burke Memorial Museum, 1968-85. Consultant on Northwest Coast art for museums. Military service: U. S. Army, during World War II.

WRITINGS:

UNDER NAME BILL HOLM

Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form, Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1965.
Indian Art of the Northwest Coast: A Dialogue onCraftsmanship and Aesthetics, Institute for the Arts, Rice University (Houston, TX), 1976.

Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes: APioneer Cinematographer in the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 1980.

Smoky-Top: The Art and Times of Willie Seaweed, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 1983.

The Box of Daylight: Northwest Coast Indian Art, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 1983.

(Author of annotations) Soft Gold: The Fur Trade andCultural Exchange on the Northwest Coast of America, 1983, 2nd edition, University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

Spirit and Ancestor: A Century of Northwest CoastIndian Art at the Burke Museum, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 1988.

(Illustrator) Gary Snyder, North Pacific Lands andWaters: A Further Six Sections, Brooding Heron Press (Waldron Island, WA), 1993.

Sun Dogs and Eagle Down: The Indian Paintings ofBill Holm, compiled by Steven C. Brown and Lloyd J. Averill, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: Oscar William Holm has written prolifically to increase the general reader's understanding of and appreciation for Northwest Indian art and culture. He worked for seventeen years as the curator of Northwest Coast Indian Art at the University of Washington's Thomas Burke Memorial Museum. In a biography posted at the Canadian Museum of Civilization Web site, Holm is stated to have taught himself how to make many Indian artifacts, "from full size plank houses, canoes, and totem poles to bead-and-porcupine-quill-decorated clothing of the Plains and Plateau." An artist as well as writer, Holm has also illustrated a collection by noted poet Gary Snyder and published a collection of his own paintings depicting American Indian subjects. Among his books are Soft Gold: The Fur Trade and Cultural Exchange on the Northwest Coast of America, Spirit and Ancestor: A Century of Northwest Coast Indian Art at the Burke Museum, and Sun Dogs and Eagle Down: The Indian Paintings of Bill Holm.

Soft Gold is a history of the fur trade in the American Northwest and includes hundreds of illustrations of Native art and handicrafts for which Holm provides the annotations. According to Robert Coutts in the American Indian Quarterly, "Soft Gold is a handsome catalogue of ethnographic materials from the north Pacific Coast."

To celebrate its one hundredth anniversary, the Thomas Burke Memorial Museum gathered photographs of one hundred of its Northwest Indian artifacts and published them as Spirit and Ancestor. The objects depicted range over a wide spectrum of Indian daily life, from fishing and hunting items to religious artifacts. Holm wrote the text accompanying the photographs. As Phoebe-Lou Adams wrote in the Atlantic, Holm's text "adroitly extended the pedigrees of the individual pieces to encompass history, ethnography, and the principles underlying Indian design."

After retiring from his position as a museum curator, Holm devoted himself to a long-standing interest in art. The book Sun Dogs and Eagle Down is a collection of nearly fifty of his paintings, as well as drawings and water colors, depicting Native American peoples. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Indian folkways and traditional artifacts, Holm presents not only accurate scenes of daily life, but mythological scenes as well. As the University of Washington Press Web site explained it, "In addition to being visually compelling, the pictures provide a wealth of ethnographic detail, from the eagle down scattered by the Kwakiutl to welcome important guests, to the sun dogs—bright spots near the horizon that mimic the sun—featured in myths from many northern tribes." Patricia Monaghan in Booklist noted that Holm has created "meticulously detailed, historically precise paintings of American Indian life" and called Sun Dogs and Eagle Down "a fascinating look at the life and work of an unusual and gifted artist."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Americana, September-October, 1984, review of Smoky-Top: The Art and Times of Willie Seaweed, p. 108.

American Indian Quarterly, spring, 1990, Aldona Jonaitis, review of Spirit and Ancestor: A Century of Northwest Coast Indian Art at the Burke Museum, p. 224; winter, 1993, Robert Coutts, review of Soft Gold: The Fur Trade and Cultural Exchange on the Northwest Coast of America, p. 125.

American West, May-June, 1983, review of Soft Gold, p. 60; March-April, 1984, review of Smoky-Top, p. 67.

Atlantic, July, 1988, Phoebe-Lou Adams, review of Spirit and Ancestor, p. 88.

Booklist, October 15, 2000, Patricia Monaghan, review of Sun Dog and Eagle Down: The Indian Paintings of Bill Holm, p. 403.

Library Journal, October 15, 1980, Marshall Deutelbaum, review of Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes: A Pioneer Cinematographer in the Pacific Northwest, p. 2225; May 1, 1988, David Byrant, review of Spirit and Ancestor, p. 72.

Popular Photography, August, 1981, Natalie Canavor, review of Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes, p. 34.

Publishers Weekly, August 29, 1980, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes, p. 360; March 11, 1988, Penny Kaganoff, review of Spirit and Ancestor, p. 98.

Scientific American, December, 1980, review of Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes, p. 56.

ONLINE

Canadian Museum of Civilization Web site,http://www.civilization.ca/ (November 15, 2002), "Biography: Bill Holm."
University of Washington Press Web site,http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/ (November 15, 2002), description of Sun Dogs and Eagle Down.