Camas Logue

ABOUT

Camas Logue lives in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in northwest Washington state, where he is apprenticing with his father-in-law, Swinomish elder and master carver Kevin Paul. Together they are working on community carving projects including pole carvings and show pieces. He has learned from elders in different tribal communities and traveled up and down the West Coast, studying different harvesting and weaving traditions. He has found that working with earth pigments and plant dyes affords him a closer relationship with his painting and allows him to interpret the landscape in new ways.

Logue’s multi-disciplinary work includes traditional weaving and carving, alongside his visual arts practice of oil painting, illustration, and printmaking. All of his work, whether oil, copperplate, woodblock, or illustration, is a reflection of his connection to place and his relationships with his ancestors. His labor-intensive techniques conjure the processes of geological time, eroding and revealing hidden layers within the work. Alongside his other practices, Logue also plays drums and guitar in the Indigenous queer band, Black Belt Eagle Scout, led by Katherine Paul, his wife.

PROJECT

For his LIFT project, Logue will create a series of paintings made with materials collected from his tribal homelands in southern Oregon. He will also create a display of pigments and dyes on archival paper, documenting their sources and their names in the Klamath language, addressing land loss and the dispossession of Klamath/Modoc people. The project will culminate with an exhibition of this new series of paintings at the Klamath administration building on his reservation.

When something is created with materials from a particular place, that creation reflects the place those materials come from.

—Camas Logue (Klamath Modoc Yahooskin)