My Impressions of the Bill Reid Gallery

Last Friday, I got a chance to visit Bill Reid Gallery in the city of Vancouver. It was the first time I ever visit an art gallery. Through out my one hour visit of the gallery, I was very impressed with the masterpieces from the hand of the acclaimed Haida artist Bill Reid (1920 – 1998).

The gallery is located in the beautiful center of downtown Vancouver. It’s the home of the priceless Simon Fraser University Bill Reid Collection. At the gallery, I was shown the work of the talented artist not only in clothing, but jewelry, sculptures influenced by his Haida Gwaii culture.

Bill Reid, or William Ronald “Bill” Reid Jr. was born on 12 January 1920 in Victoria, British Columbia. He passed away on 13 March 1998 at the age of 78. He was a Canadian artist, his works is comprised of painting, jewelry, sculpture and screen-printing. His love for the Haida First Nation is developed in the time he worked as a radio reporter in Toronto.

The artwork that I am most impressed at the gallery is the Milky Way Necklace. This priceless necklace is the result of two years of work from Bill Reid. It come with a detachable brooch, and made from the combination of 22 karat, 18 karat and white gold, with 118 diamonds.

This necklace under the careful hand of Bill Reid will reveal underlying culture of the Haida Gwaii First Nation in it’s beauty if you look closely at it. The smoke hole of every Haida longhouses is represented as the repeating pyramid on the necklace. In the culture of the Haida Gwaii, this is where the soul of a person come and leave when he of she is birthed or passes away. The Raven, a very powerful cultural hero in the Haida culture, escaped through a smoke hole to bring the moon and stars to the humans. Also, by putting the diamonds onto the tops of each pyramids, he represents the beautiful Milky Way full of stars, and thus, connects the two thing seemed to not related to each other.