Three bronze house posts will take their place in front of the Walter Soboleff Building in downtown Juneau this Sunday.
Each post is made by a different emerging Alaska Native artist — Tlingit Stephen Jackson, Haida TJ Young and Tsimshian David R. Boxley — and the Sealaska Heritage Institute is holding a public ceremony to unveil them at 1:30 p.m. Sunday. The ceremony is open to anybody, and will be streamed live on SHI’s Facebook page. The posts will be at the former of Front and Seward streets.
A house post is similar to a totem pole, but is usually a little bit smaller. Each post tells a different story that is specific to Tlingit, Haida or Tsimshian culture, and the explanation of each one can be found on www.sealaskaheritage.org.
The project is part of SHI’s goal to make Juneau the capital of the Northwest Coast art world, and SHI President Rosita Worl said efforts like this are vital to the survival of Native artwork.
“It’s exciting to see these posts carved in a traditional way in wood and then cast in a contemporary material,” Worl said in a press release. “These pieces demonstrate that our cultures and our art are alive, thriving and evolving through our younger generations.”
