An artist with ties to Nuu-chah-nulth and Coast Salish culture has created a stunning tribute to her late father and grandmother.
Although best known as a Hollywood costume and graphic designer, Carmen Thompson, daughter of the late Ditidaht artist Arthur Thompson, recently shifted her creative gears to design and execute a massive mural in copper for the new Vancity Credit Union branch in the Mt. Tolmie district of Victoria.
“It’s about seven by 12 feet, and it’s right behind the customer service desk,” Thompson said.
For Thompson, it was a tangible fulfillment of her Nuu-chah-nulth name, Tll'aakwa Huupalth, (Copper Moon), which was given to her by her uncle, artist Chuuchkamalthnii Ron Hamilton, at a potlatch held shortly before her father’s death in 2003.
Thompson received the commission following a selection process that included a design proposal and abstract. While the main figures of the piece derive from the works of Arthur Thompson, the top border reflects Coast Salish imagery.
“I designed the border in honour of the fact that the bank is in Coast Salish territory, and also in honour of my later grandmother, Ida Thompson (Modeste), who was Coast Salish. She loved swans, so I took the Coast Salish shape and mirrored it, and it created a heart shape, which I wasn’t anticipating.”
The main design derives from a piece of Arthur’s work that was used by the Indian Residential School Survivor’s Society, Thompson explained.
“I had been hired through them (IRSSS) to do some of their media; I created a few brochures for their youth conference and some hoodies with my dad’s artwork on them. I’d been working with that logo for a few months. I took a small piece of it, using an eagle face and a human face, and enlarged that.”
All of these elements, Thompson reduced and graphically rendered through the magic of Adobe Illustrator, to create patterns that could be set onto copper sheeting, cut into individual two-dimensional forms, then hand finished and arranged on a single sweeping canvas.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the tribute to family in copper is that, but for a string of chance encounters, Thompson’s relationship with her father’s family almost never happened at all.
Thompson was born in Vancouver in 1974, and the family moved to Victoria shortly afterward. Her late mother, Cathy Leo, was the daughter of Adolf and Lucy Leo, both of Kyuquot-Checklesaht. For many years, her mother’s side was the only family she knew, and her brother Eugene, who is six years older, the only sibling.
“My mother and father separated after I was a year old. My mother never spoke of him, and I never talked about him – never brought him up.”
When Thompson was six, her mother moved the family back to the Lower Mainland. She was 12 when her grandmother, who served on a medical board, overheard a fellow board member mention a family friend named Cathy. Something clicked.
“She said, ‘Do you mean Cathy Leo?’”
That chance comment set in motion a memorable first meeting in the Cloud 9 Restaurant in the Sears Tower high above downtown Vancouver.
“It was really awesome, being a 12-year-old girl, meeting my grandmother for the first time. My maternal grandmother passed away when I was very young. I think I was three or four, so I never had a grandmother.
“So that’s when I found out about my whole Thompson family. It’s a huge family; I have seven sisters and four brothers!”
The meeting with her father also came about by surprise a few months later.
“It happened at my grandfather’s (Adolf Leo) funeral. Me and my mother and my cousin Don were waiting in the limousine to go to the cemetery, and this man knocks on the window: Knock Knock Knock.
“I didn’t know who it was; I looked away. And my mother said, ‘That’s your dad.’”
Thompson climbed out of the car and said hello. It was the beginning of a kinship strengthened by a mutual love of art and traditional culture. Arthur Thompson reinforced her belief that she had an inner talent that could take her far in life.
Her dad later helped her find her first job, with Gordon Hanson. That was followed by a stint at the Roy Henry Vickers Gallery. But it was at the First People’s Cultural Foundation in Saanich that she discovered computer graphics.
“It was in 1996. My boss had purchased an e-mail program and said, ‘Please do something with this.’”
Within a short time, Thompson was writing HTML code, and “it is like a second language.”
But it was when she first encountered Adobe Photoshop that she saw the potential to create a new, distinct yet traditional form of art.
“I picked [Photoshop] up easily. It’s just like an extension of me.”
Using elements of her father’s artwork, she created a lamp and a set of glassware, and realized there was a market for this sort of product.
“I did that as a business. I took a lot of his designs and transferred them to what I do.”
Then, out of the blue, she was struck by a car and injured, and unable to work for more than a month.
“It was an awakening moment. That’s when I decided to go to fashion design school in Los Angeles. I applied and I got a scholarship.”
She left for the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising at the end of 2003, a year that had seen the death of her father, her grandmother and a Thompson cousin. She had barely settled in for her first term when fate intervened yet again.
“My roommate got a job as a production assistant in a movie. It was a great experience for him, and it was really cool, but on the first day of filming he said, ‘Hey – I think I just got you a job.’”
The film was titled Rolling, by director Billy Samoa Saleeby. They had no costume designer and Saleeby was in a panic. Fortunately, Thompson said, the quasi-documentary only covered a 24-hour span and two costume changes per character. She was able to put together a wardrobe plan with an existing pool of clothing supplied by the actors themselves.
Over the next six years, Thompson worked in many capacities on a number of films and TV shows (you can check out her resume at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1977419/?ref_=rvi_n). While the budgets were often much higher than Rolling’s, that sense of controlled panic was often a companion.
When Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, organizers of the Black Entertainment Television Awards called on Thompson to recreate a set of Jackson’s landmark costumes – Billy Jean socks, the red zipper jacket and the Remember the Time costume– for host Jamie Foxx to wear in a tribute sequence. All in four days.
Foxx was so impressed, he had her design the leather jacket he wore in the opening of his Blame It Tour, and invited her to join the tour.
Later that year, however, Thompson went home for a short visit and ended up staying four years, working on a number of projects, culminating in the Vancity mural. On Sept. 17, she drove in the last copper nail, and on Oct. 16, flanked by members of her family, the project was unveiled to the public. Uncle Ron Hamilton gave the blessing.
Now back in Hollywood, Thompson has shifted her energy to another long-term tribute to her father, this one much larger and more ambitious. She is writing a script based on her father’s residential school experience, which began at the notorious TB hospital in Nanaimo in the early 1950s, then shifted to the equally infamous Alberni Indian Residential School.
The TB treatment of the day made children especially vulnerable to predators, Thompson explained.
“He was kept in a body cast. That’s where the abuse began.”
After shifting the point of view from her father to the four key abusers, Thompson has created a script that has already drawn the interest of industry professionals.
“I believe the residential school story is huge, and deserves the respect of HBO and the big screen companies,” she said. “Looking back, I’m very happy to have had my dad. And my grandmother started it all.”
