HeALING BY CARVING:


The Rick Bartow Cedar Poles


BY ANYA MONT I E L R


ick E. Bartow, the Mad River Band Wiyot art- ist and sculptor, never saw combat when he served in Vietnam, but his experiences were still harrowing. Drafted after college and assigned to a signal unit, he spent his after- hours as a rock musician. His group played


at firebases, for frontline units with morale problems and at hospitals for the severely wounded. The U.S. Army awarded Bartow a Bronze Star for his mu-


sical service to injured soldiers, but it couldn’t help his own wounds. When the medal arrived back home in Oregon, he threw it out. (His mother retrieved it.) Badly in need of heal- ing, he turned to art. For the next four decades, themes of recuperation and survival kept recurring in his prolific out- pouring of drawings and in his monumental carvings. Bartow’s most recent work, two large carved poles entitled


We Were Always Here, will be raised at the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall this September 21, the eighth anniversary of the Museum’s opening. The dedication will be the first time they will be upright. The two red cedar poles are topped with animal figures,


and they add layers of meaning to the work’s title. Bartow says at one level his work refers to the animals, such as the ones in the carvings, who still live in the region and in the


14 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2012


PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FROELICK GALLERY


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