JOSEPH FLOYD

Floyd Joseph, also known as name "Ty-ee," is a Coast Salish artist and member of the Squamish Nation. Born in 1953 at Homultcison (Capilano) on the north shore of the Burrard Inlet, Floyd is an internationally recognized artist. Floyd Joseph is an elder and Hereditary Chief of the Squamish Band on the West Coast of British Columbia, and goes by the name “Tyee”, an ancestral name carried down through his family for generations that was given to him at a Potlatch in 1975. The Coast Salish people are reviving their original culture and artists such as Floyd Joseph are helping to preserve and expand this heritage.
Floyd began learning to carve at age nine from Ed Billy, Larry Joseph, Bobby Cole, and Buffalo Mathias. His father, the late Chief Larry Joseph, passed on his own legacy as a carver to his son. He studied art in public school and majored in sculpture, pottery, drawing and design at Capilano College in British Columbia. During this period, he visited Paris, Amsterdam, and London to study the museums, the art and the culture.
The artist is justly proud of his heritage and determined to record it in his own unique way:
"For my own knowledge I'm studying northern designs, but what I really wish is to develop my art as an individual, interpreting our people's legends in my own style."
The carving of full-scale house posts, welcoming figures, poles, masks, bowls, and rattles in traditional Coast Salish style reflects the artist’s heritage. The sculptured wood carvings of Floyd Joseph are amazingly lifelike and beautiful. His carved eagles, loons, ravens, bears, whales, and other creatures relevant to Coast Salish legends are delicate, sometimes to the point of extreme fragility. The painted designs that so compliment and adorn them are finely balanced and reminiscent of the classic form lines associated with the northern art styles of the Tsimshian people, whose exquisite human face masks and carved animal forms contain a tender sensitivity rarely equaled in Northwest Coast art.
In addition to his work in wood, Floyd has worked in gold and silver. He has produced several limited-edition silkscreen prints: “Power” is part of the permanent collection of the Royal British Columbia Museum Collection.