• Happy Halloween! 🎃🎂

Canoe Art: Paintings, Sketches, Sculpture, Architecture

"Trade Route" 38x56 inches, hand sewn beadwork
I finished this piece in 2021. Instead of beading the water as water, I filled it with reports, charts and data about the Yakima River (Eastern Washington).
The title refers to the trading of salmon spawning grounds for irrigation. The Yakima is heavily drawn on for irrigation. It once had a annual salmon run of 3/4 million fish. Nowadays the state does cartwheels if they get 30,000.
The detail shows some of the text work. The letters are a little over 1/4 inch tall (5 beads)...they're small
Trade_Route-email.jpgIMG_9478C.JPG
 
Voyageur shooting the rapids by Frances Anne Hopkins, a favorite, since I am a voyageur canoe racer
View attachment 129492

Fog on Superior, another Frances Anne Hopkins
View attachment 129493

Me, in a Rapidfire at the foggy beginning of an Adirondack 90 miler:
View attachment 129495

A few of the 90 miler plaques on my wall:
View attachment 129496

Not canoeing, but a favorite that shows how i feel diuring some portages I have done;
"Barge Haulers on the Volga by Ilya Yefimovich RepinView attachment 129497


Faces on the Yukon.... Something many paddlers experience and hallucinate during 24+ hours of continuous Yuikon River race paddling, defects in basalt rock walls develop human cartoonish faces in your mind. They all watch you. Painting by Nathalie Parenteau
View attachment 129498


Another Parenteau interpretation of "Faces of the Yukon"
View attachment 129499


A woodcut on my wall:
View attachment 129500


A tin print on my wall:

View attachment 129501


Another tin print:
View attachment 129502

Another tin print:
View attachment 129503


Marlin tin print:
View attachment 129506


Rough weather, reminds me of paddling Lake Laberge:
View attachment 129505
Yknpdlr, I have the same one. My daughter picked it up for me in Syracuse NY a few years ago. I’ll check it out again when I’m home.
 
Top one looks like scouts in lean to winter camping with what looks like a square back canoe

Middle one was given to me, up in Syracuse NY. Seems like others have it also that I saw on this thread.

Bottom one, given to me by my 4 th grade student about 6-7 years ago BEFORE I had my green Chestnut. Go figure, she knew my future.
Leslie was her name.
 
Not exactly related to this thread but last night I was flicking on the tv and saw a 1972 old fashioned horror movie called “Frogs”. Sam Elliott and Joan Van Arc were trying to escape and were paddling a wood canvas red canoe around 17’ I thought about what movies that had canoes in them then thought about this thread. It was only a 2 minute scene when Sam was paddling then fighting a giant snake while Joan and kids were in the canoe. 50 years old that movie. Think next week it’s Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein! Best to all
 
In Buffalo NY, across the street from the Albright Knox Gallery iirc. Photo was at Thanksgiving time in 2017. Google Streetview doesn't.seem to show it - so either I'm wrong or it's gone or it wasn't there at that time.
It's still there, I drove past it on Saturday 09/10/22
 
The world's largest canoe paddle is under construction in Killarney, Ontario.

unnamed.jpg

"He calls it the Big Dipper.

“'I was aiming for 100 feet, and then I threw on an extra 10 or so,' Ranta says of the 110-foot-long, 15-foot-tall paddle he’s building in the tiny town of Killarney, Ontario. Originally from Atikokan, Ontario, expedition paddler Ranta spent hundreds of hours building in 2019—except for a six-week hiatus in the summer to paddle from Fort McMurray, Alberta, to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

"To create the paddle, Ranta sawed and fastened 350 boards and beams to build sections of the paddle that were later fastened together. He estimates he used more than 1,000 bolts and five gallons of Titebond glue. Once complete, he expects the Big Dipper will weigh more than three tons. The paddle is now partially assembled, with shaft and blade together."

 
The world's largest canoe paddle is under construction in Killarney, Ontario.


I just realized that this Paddling Mag article must have been written before 2020, and recycled, because it anticipates that the Big Dipper would be finished in that year. Sure enough, the Big Dipper is now complete and it is a bent shaft paddle.

Big Dipper paddle.jpg


It probably shouldn't be surprising that Mike Ranta would memorialize a bent shaft paddle in his sculpture because the many pictures and videos of his three cross-Canada canoe trips show him using bent shafts. For example:

Mike-Ranta-with-bent-shaft-paddle.jpg
 
The front page notice block today honored the birthday of Fredric Remington (1861-1909). He was probably best known for his paintings and sketches of cowboys and the Old West of the U.S. However, he also produced a lot of canoe art and was himself a canoer of birchbark and Rushton canoes. Here is some of Remington's canoe art I've collected from the internet:

The Howl of the Weather
The-Howl-of-the-Weather.jpeg

The Missionary
the-missionary-.jpg

Canoe Hunting Expedition
Canoe Hunting Expedition.jpg

Canoe Stream Moose
Canoe Stream Moose.jpg

Evening on a Canadian Lake
Evening on a Canadian Lake.jpg

Fly Fishing Canoe
Fly Fishing Canoe.jpg

Hauling the Gill Net
Hauling-the-Gill-Net.jpg

Indians Hauling Nets on Lake Nepigon
Indians Hauling Nets on Lake Nepigon.jpg

Moose Hunters
Moose Hunters.jpg

Paddling the Wounded British Officer
Paddling the Wounded British Officer.jpg

Pitched It Sheer Into the River Where It Still Is Seen In the Summer
Pitched_It_Sheer_into_the_River_.Where_It_Still_Is_Seen_in_the_Summer.jpg

Radisson and Groseilliers
radisson-and-groseilliers.jpg

Spring Fishing in Canada
Spring Fishing in Canada.jpg

Lewis and Clark at the Mouth of the Columbia River
lewis-and-clark-at-the-mouth-of-the-columbia-river.jpg

On the Northwest Coast
On the Northwest Coast.jpg
 
Interesting...the lake Nipigon canoe looks like a,west coast design. I've never seen a Anishnabe canoe in that form, but perhaps they had a separate style of big water canoes I haven't seen yet.
 
Back
Top