By Rick Stanton
In the first quarter of my junior year at the UW, I signed up for a class in Northwest Indian Art, taught by Bill Holm.
I always have been curious and interested in the visual elements of our coastal tribes. They’re typically very graphic, somewhat simple (or so it seems) and overwhelmingly steeped in lore. And most art forms tend be symbolic, be it via religions or other aspects of cultural storytelling. But the class I was about to take was exceptionally luring.
Bill Holm, who recently passed away at age 95, was a living legend in all things concerning Native-American culture.
The class was an 8:30 in the basement of the art building in the Quad. Now, if you’ve ever been a college student, 8:30 in the morning might as well be 4 in the morning. Hangovers aren’t on a timer.
So, I drug my sorry ass to the dungeon that was the basement and, mercifully, also the home of Parnassus Coffee. Everyone in the class had that empty stare that said, “What am I doing here?”
By 8:45, there was considerable mumbling about where in the hell is the instructor. Suddenly, the lights went off, a spotlight lit up the lectern and the drumming and chanting began.
Then on came a dancer, dressed in ceremonial regalia. He wore a huge mask that opened and closed, while the dancer spun, twirled, dipped, stomped and swept across the stage.
The only word to describe the scene was jaw-dropping.
After 10 minutes or so, the drumming and chanting stopped, the dancer removed his mask and he said, “I’m Bill Holm, and I will be your instructor for this class. You just witnessed the Kwakiutl dance of the Hamatsa Ritual.”
NO ONE ever missed a class.
I took several classes from Professor Holm over the next two years and became one of his favorites, due in no small part to my curious nature and the effect that Northwest Indian art was having on my design values.
To say that Bill Holm was a national treasure is an understatement of epic proportions.
He was a wonderful human being, and until his death he practiced his own art and continued to learn and grow, as if he was the ultimate student of those things he knew so much better than anyone else.
The last bit of his work I viewed was at the Stonington Gallery in Pioneer Square. It was part of an exhibit of various artists’ takes on skateboard design. Go figure.
But that was Bill Holm. Bless his heart and soul.
https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/culture/bill-holm-center/bill-holm