Born in Roundup, Montana in 1925, Bill Holm began his lifelong involvement with Native American art and culture playing on the sandstone bluffs in the Musselshell valley. After moving to Seattle as a teenager, his interests broadened to include the cultures of the Northwest Coast. Following Army service in the Second World War, he entered the University of Washington, earning a Bachelor's Degree and Master of Fine Arts Degree in painting. After teaching art in the Seattle Public Schools for fifteen years, the publication of his first book Northwest Coast Indian Art: an Analysis of Form (now in its thirteenth printing) led to appointments in the Burke Museum as Curator of Northwest Coast Indian Art and in the Art History Division of the School of Art at the University of Washington.

Bill retired in 1985 after 17 years as a curator and professor. For thirty-two years he had focused on teaching, research and field work among Northwest Coast people. Following his retirement he began a series of paintings, mostly in acrylic, of the Native people of the Plains, Plateau, and Northwest Coast, the areas of his professional expertise. He has always been interested in the materials and technology of Northwest Native cultures, making nearly every kind of object, form full size plank houses, canoes, and totem poles to bead and porcupine quill decorated clothing of the Plains and Plateau. He has published eight books and many articles on Native Northwest arts and cultures, and has lectured widely in North America and Europe. He has also served as a consultant on Northwest Coast art for many of the world's major museums.

From and acrylic painting by Bill Holm
Limited Edition, 950
Signed and Numbered
Image size 22 1/2" x 18"
$110

In "Hamsamala" Bill Holm has captured a powerful moment in the Hamatsa Winter Ceremonial ritual, offering the viewer a rare glimpse of this sacred Kwakwaka'wakw event. The Kwakwaka'wakw masked figures, representing the associates of the Man-Eater-Spirit, dance in the ceremony of taming the Hamatsa. The dancer, bath in warm glow of the firelight of the bighouse near the north end of Vancouver Island, dances the great Willie Seaweed Crooked Beak mask. These masks are considered among the most flamboyant in all of Northwest Coast art.

Limited Edition
950 Signed and Numbered
100% cotton, archival, paper
Image size 18" x 27"
$110

A Nez Perce woman and man in their finest dress and horse gear ride in the sun and dust to a celebration at the turn of the century.