The Pacific Northwest is a region known for its dreams. It’s famous for its long winters (witness the band of the same name), and for the visionary craftiness that those nights cultivate. The patterns of nature. The patience of beadwork, or metalwork, or leatherwork, or all kinds of creative work. The geometry of a story told in shape and color. It’s all part of the living culture here.
Louie Gong
2006: How it started…
Like a lot of skateboard kids, Louie Gong liked to draw on his canvas shoes with Sharpie markers. Unlike most of them, Gong was raised by Chinese and Native grandparents in the Nooksack tribal community in northwest Washington, and the images he drew came from their tradition. That look caught attention, and in 2006, he started Eighth Generation as a way for Native American artists to bring their work to a commercial audience.
2026: …How it’s going
In 2019, Gong sold his company to the Snoqualmie Tribe and retired as CEO in 2022. In addition to products like running shoes, totes, and jewelry, he’s designed public murals and art installations, guided the Seattle Sounders soccer team in using Coast Salish art, and exhibited in galleries like Harvard’s Peabody Essex Museum and the Smithsonian collections.
- Eighth Generation was the first Native-owned company to produce wool blankets.
- Gong turned custom sneaker art into an online sensation, and then a creative business.
- Fine-art prints are signed with Gong’s signature and his “chop” — the traditional Chinese stamped seal.
- The Decolonizing Partnerships program saw genuine Native artists designing home goods for Starbucks.
- Colorful Vans and Converses were Gong’s first canvases, leading to workshops and art-making toys.
- The Lightning and Thunder pet bowl uses Pueblo of Laguna artist Pat Pruitt’s design on sustainable ceramic to evoke life-giving rain.
Steve Smith (Dla’kwagila)
Vancouver Visions
In 1987, this sculptor and painter took his father’s lessons in making art according to Oweekeno and Kwakwaka’wakw principles and started adapting them to his own style. If you’ve flown into Vancouver International Airport, you’ve probably seen what that looks like; he’s had two monumental works commissioned there. His other….
By Porthole Cruise and Travel
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