Meet Indigenous Artist Camas Logue, a PTSW Intensives Graduate
Indigenous artist and professional musician Camas Logue has completed the Foundations of Woodworking and Traditions of Furniture intensives. He plans to return for Art of Furniture, or Built Environment, or both. His career in multidisciplinary art has focused primarily on oil painting, weaving, carving, and printmaking. We asked Camas about life before PTSW, his experiences here, and how he plans on applying his new skills. First, an introduction:
Waq lis ?i gew ?a seesas Camas Logue. I belong to the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin tribes. I grew up in Portland Oregon and have lived and traveled in many different places throughout my life. Currently I am living in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in northwest Washington, with my wife and family.
Did you have any woodworking experience before attending PTSW?
During high school I worked on a few construction projects on the Orther family farm. I started working with a mentor, Mark Lakeman, and his organization City Repair. We built a temporary wooden and cob amphitheater/time sculpture called Babyhenge in Couch Park in Portland Oregon. We also did some frame building and cob structures. When I was 19 I moved to Santa Fe, where I began refinishing furniture at a friend’s shop. It was a cool experience, but that work involves a lot of chemical exposure, so I decided it was time to give my body a break.
My ancestors are Klamath, Modoc & Northern Paiute. My wife is Swinomish and Iñupiaq. In 2020 we moved to my wife’s reservation in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and I began apprenticing with my father-in-law, Kevin Paul, a Swinomish master carver. We work on story poles, wall carvings, commissioned pieces like the entrance to the Swinomish Ancestral Village, for which I carved six migrating salmon. We made a 19’ pole for the Swinomish-LaConner library. We are currently refinishing a pole for the Swinomish Casino, and we just refinished one for the high school.
How was the classroom environment at PTSW?
I enjoyed all the instructors. I had Philip the majority of the time; he’s really awesome. I learned a lot of really cool tricks and techniques. I got plenty of attention and support from instructors as well as time to develop and make mistakes and learn from them. I found that learning how to fix a mistake is a huge part of woodworking. If I hadn’t made them, I would be less capable.
PTSW’s Tlingit carving instructor James Johnson is someone I am hoping to take some classes from this summer. It's nice to see Indigenous teachers here at the school. I feel like fine woodworking has a reputation of being more of an older wealthy white guy thing …like fly-fishing. I’m a fellow in a group called Brown Folks Fishing they are a community-based organization that is by and for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color anglers who work to cultivate community for BIPOC in fishing and its industry. I was the only native person in my classes at PTSW, and having more grants and opportunities available like what Brown Folks Fishing works to accomplish could help create more spots for BIPOC students.
Port Townsend is pretty nice. Compared to where I live it’s like going to the big city, with all of its restaurants and events. My band played at THING festival in 2019 and that was my first time visiting Fort Worden, but I hid out in our van because I was pretty burnt out from being on the road and didn’t even realize how beautiful this place was. Now I go on hikes, go to the beach…I cold-water swim with a few other guys. It’s great.
What do you plan to do with the skills you’ve learned at PTSW?
My goal is to build a woodshop and studio space on my family’s land on the Swinomish reservation. Our current shop is thatched together from old fireworks stands and it functions for what we need, but I’ve been writing grants and working really hard at pitching ideas to try and get funding for a better shop. I’m talking with PTSW about the idea of collaborating with the school to build something on the reservation.
We’d like to build a studio space that I can work out of, and a shop that my father-in-law, Kevin, could work out of, where we could do carving and hold classes and events for the community. People could come and learn how to fix items and do repairs on their own homes, or learn how to carve… that’s my big-picture goal. Attending PTSW was the stepping stone; I needed more knowledge and experience beyond the carving and the construction work I had done. I needed to learn how to use the hand tools and the machines to facilitate my own practice and to be able to help other people.
Congratulations to Camas for completing six months of intensive fine woodworking education, and for recently receiving an unrestricted cash award of $10,000 from the 2022 Artist Trust Fellowship Award
More About Camas Logue:
https://artisttrust.org/artists/camas-logue/
https://wildpigmentproject.org/camas-logue
https://www.nativeartsandcultures.org/camas-logue
http://www.brokenboxespodcast.com/podcast/2021/7/11/black-belt-eagle-scout
https://indianyouth.org/meet-the-dreamstarter-creatives/