Native-carved poles will adorn Tulalip Tribes' new hotel

Between rough-hewn log and finished pole, the mystery happens. The vision of the artist, the daily shaping with chisel and adz, the power of legend and myth, unite to form a powerful work that draws on tradition yet creates art that's wholly new.

Two very different Native American poles have emerged from halves of a massive, 990-year-old cedar trunk in the art studios of the Tulalip Tribes.

The studio opened earlier this year in a former marine-repair shop near Marysville to support native craftspeople and provide art for the Tribes' $130 million hotel set to open in June.

One pole, by Joe Gobin, is a gambling pole with Man and Bear throwing bones, one marked and one unmarked. Native drummers, three on each side of the pole, provide music for the night of games and dancing.

Gobin, who helped carve the Tribes' first canoe of modern times in 1988, said the native black paint didn't dry and rubbed off on paddlers.

He has finished the gambling pole in the traditional colors, but used the more practical acrylic paint. Traditionally, the dark red paint on Northwest tribal poles was made from rendered dogfish liver and the black from burned devil's club.

The second pole is a story pole-house post that portrays transformations between the natural and spirit worlds. The center of the pole features a fierce sea wolf, a mythical creature so large it devoured orca whales.

On its dorsal fin, penciled in but still waiting to be carved, is a native paddler, symbolizing the Tribes' reliance on the spirit world for protection, creator James Madison said.

By the end of January, the carvers and their apprentices must complete a third welcome pole for the hotel lobby, a 6-foot-tall-by-19-foot-wide glass-mosaic panel whose 1,000-plus pieces are still being cut, eight 6-foot-high tribal combs made of carved wood panels and stainless steel, and four 8-foot-tall carved wooden spindle wheels.

"Some days it's overwhelming," said Gobin of the work that remains. And when the art for the hotel is finished, he said, the Tribes have requested poles for a new administration building set to open in November 2008 and a museum scheduled for opening in January 2009.

Lynn Thompson: 425-745-7807 or lthompson@seattletimes.com