Jack Hudson comes from the “Gitnachangeek” tribe of the Coastal Tsimshian Indians, from British Columbia, Canada, and is a member of the wolf clan. Hudson was born in Metlakatla, Alaska in 1936; a direct descendant of John and Mary Hudson, who were among the earliest pioneers of Metlakatla. In 1887 a large group of Tsimshian Indians left British Columbia and settled at “New Metlakatla” in Southeast Alaska. Hudson has been artistic and creative since grade school, but was not really exposed to Northwest Coast Indian art until 1965. At that time his artistic career began in earnest. Hudson has spent a lot of time researching the art and culture of the Tsimshian, in an effort to revive much of a lost artistic legacy. Since then, Hudson has become an accomplished wood carver, silver engraver, and master of the Coastal Tsimshian art form. With the same intensity that Hudson works in the traditional mediums, he is working with prints to depict Coastal Tsimshian art and its legends. Hudson has been working diligently to forward the art and knowledge of Tsimshian culture for the last 40 years. The influence of his work is reflected by its presence in numerous public and private collection both in the states and internationally.


Artist Statement and Resume

I started wood carving in the Northern Northwest Coast style in 1965. Mr. Harvey Kyllonen, a former resident of Ketchikan Alaska first introduced me to the art. From Mr. Kyllonen I learned carving technique and how to make Indian carving tools. Shortly after that I met Mr. Bill Holm, the foremost authority on Northwest Coast Indian Art. Mr. Holm was kind enough to let me audit his Northwest Coast Indian Art class at the University of Washington. I also received technical help on Northern Northwest Coast Indian Art from Mr. Holm. At that time he was the curator of ethnology at the Thomas Burke Museum and he let me study the Indian art in their collection.

In 1967 I met Mr. Dwayne Pasco, one of the top artists in Northern Northwest Coast Indian Art. I worked with Mr. Pasco for a time and received some valuable advice and training from him. I conducted research on Northern Northwest Coast Indian art, particularly Tsimshian, at the Provincial Museum in Victoria, BC. and the museum at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC.

1973 the city of Seattle commissioned me to restore the 50-foot Tlingit totem pole in Pioneer Square.

1974 the Champion International Corp. commissioned me to carve a 20-foot totem pole for the Building for Billions exposition in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1975 Diamaru Corporation of Japan commissioned me to carve a totem pole and demonstrate carving at their American Exposition in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe. I was in Japan for six weeks.

1974 I started teaching Northern Northwest Coast Indian Art full time at Metlakatla High School and have taught there continuously to the present. I have a contract for the 1992 - 1993 school year. The students learn two dimensional or flat design and carving, painting, totem pole, bowls, spoons, rattles, bent-box and panel carving. Each student is also taught to make his own carving tools.

1976 I went to Hazelton B.C. and worked with Earl Muldoe, Walter Harris, Art Sterritt and Vernon Stephens. I learned the technique of bent-box making and silver engraving from them.

1980 I went to Ottawa, Canada and studied the Northern Northwest Coast collection at the Museum of Man and the rest of their collection at Bells Corners.

I have taught a number of classes in beginning and advanced Northern Northwest Coast Indian Art and carving tool making at the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan.

I have taught a number of apprenticeships through the Alaska State Council on the Arts, in bent-box making, mask making and flat design.

The Anchorage Museum and the Fairbanks museum have my work in their collections.

The Anchorage Airport has one of my masks in their collection.

I am presently working on a painted drum for Mr. David Rockeffeller, President of the Chase Manhattan Bank.


Jack Hudson
Article from the Seattle Time, March 16, 1986

Alaska’s visitors can see Hudson’s work in fine arts museums. Some of his handmade carving tools are on display in Ketchikan’s Totem Heritage Center.

Hudson lives and works in Metlakatla, a Tsimshian community on Annette Island, 15 air miles south of Ketchikan. He teaches Northwest Coast Indian art at the high school in Metlakatla and carves in his spare time.

His art is on exhibit around the world - in museums in Copenhagen, Tokyo and London, and in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. - Indian masks, wooden ceremonial hats, ornamental spoons and canoe paddles, bentwood boxes and more. Private collectors and museums hurry to buy just about everything he produces.

As a youngster, Hudson left Alaska for parts of most years to attend schools in Seattle, Anacortes and Oregon. He graduated from Seattle’s Ballard High School in 1955, then went into commercial fishing and longshoring in the Seattle area.

In 1973, with an urge to learn more about his heritage, Hudson moved back to Metlakatla, his birthplace.

“For a long time, I didn’t even know the Tsimshians were carvers,” he said. “I’d only heard about other Indians, the Tlingits and Haidas, as carvers. Then, in Metlakatla, I came to realize that there had been some great Tsimshian carvers a long time ago, perhaps the greatest of them all.”

Hudson said that because early day missionaries discouraged traditional Indian arts in Southeastern Alaska, the ancient techniques all but faded.

Some missionaries viewed the Indian carvings as pagan pieces. Others, like Metlakatla’s founding father, William Duncan, a lay missionary, wanted their flocks to develop more profitable careers. Whatever happened, the damage was done. Woodcarving and the other arts of the Indian peoples remained only embers until Alaska statehood in 1959 and a spurt in native-heritage programs a few years ago gave the arts new life throughout Alaska.

But, ironically, he said, he owes much of his success to “my white friends.” First to encourage him was the late Harvey Kyllonen, a former Ketchikan resident he met in Tacoma.

“That old white man was a good carver himself,” Hudson said. “I went to Ketchikan with him on a towboat hauling a scow in the 1960’s, He got me going on the mechanics of carving, and he knew how to make the right tools, too.”

Hudson felt some unfamiliar stirrings. He enjoyed drawing as a child, but knew nothing about the traditional art forms of his people. Back in Seattle, he called Bill Holm, an authority on Northwest Coast Indian art, at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum. “I was so intensely interested by then that I couldn’t think of anything else,” Hudson recalled. “It was from Holm that I learned the correct traditional forms. He is so good that once I told him: 'I don’t know what my ancestors did without your book to go by.’”

In 1972, the Seattle mayor’s office called Hudson and asked him to restore the 50-foot totem in Pioneer Square.

“I had to cut off the bottom because there were so many termites in it,” he said. “Then I steamed the pole and found what looked like black paint on its back. That was pollution. The colors were all wrong, too. I replaced them and everything turned out OK.”

There was a reason for the colors being all wrong. The pole was a recycled version of a valuable totem that a party of Seattle civic leaders chopped down and stole from a village near Ketchikan in 1899. Seattle historians still chuckle over that escapade.

Several members of the group, which included a clergyman and a chamber of commerce official, were indicted for the theft. But the charges were dropped and the Indians settled for $4,000 in damages. The purloined pole stood in Pioneer Square until an arsonist set it afire in 1938. Funds were raised for a (not-altogether-authentic) replacement, and that’s the one Hudson fixed a few years ago.

These days, when he has time, Hudson turns out masks and bentwood boxes that sell for $2000 or more. He also carves potlatch bowls for $1000 and spoons that sell for about $500. But it’s not the money that inspires him. Working with cedar is a joyful experience, he says. “I love the feel of the wood; sometimes it seems to be almost alive.”