Coast Salish Formline, also often referred to as Southern Formline, is an art style practiced by various groups of Indigenous people along the West Coast of Turtle Island (North America), specifically in the territory spanning “vertically from the K’omoks First Nation in the middle of Vancouver Island’s east coast, down to the Columbia River in Washington State in the U.S., and over to the mainland of BC, including inlets of Puget Sound and the Gulf of Georgia” (Spirits of the West Coast Art Gallery). This area includes the Kwantlen Nation, where TH’OWXIYA’s playwright, Joseph Dandurand, is from! Because Kwantlen artists often work in this traditional style, the design team here at the University of Waterloo has been inspired by it, and been encouraged by Joseph to use it while developing their designs for the play. The following information about Coast Salish Formline has been collected from oral teachings and written research.
Art by Charles Elliot (Canadian, Coast Salish) | Seals | 1982 | serigraph | Art Gallery of Greater Victoria | Gift of George & Lola Kidd (2008.003.056).
Photo from Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
It is often harder to find art from and resources about this style of formline as opposed to the more Northern styles of Pacific Northwest Coast Formline practiced by the Haida and other nations, who employ ovoids (a kind of squared off oval) as one of their main design elements. This is partly because of the history of Southern Formline - Coast Salish society is not clan-based, so displaying clan crests was not historically necessary, and this meant that historically the Coast Salish people produced art minimally and usually for very specific personal or ceremonial use (Spirits of the West Coast Art Gallery). The relative scarcity of both art in this style and resources on it is part of why this resource compilation is important to those of us involved in TH’OWXIYA at UWaterloo.
The Coast Salish Formline Style is characterized by a few main design elements: the trigon, the crescent, and the circle. This fantastic video by Coast Salish artist Shaun Peterson (@Qwalsius on YouTube) gives an overview of not just the elements, but much of the content of this article, and more.
The design team for TH’OWXIYA has learnt through oral teachings that these main design elements (trigons, crescents, and circles) resemble the ripples created in calm water when a pebble is dropped into them. The pebble is dropped and creates waves which radiate out from the center in tight circles, loosening out to crescents and eventually trigons.
There is additional variety in the style: sometimes there are ovoids, extended crescents, and more, but primarily the above three elements are combined to create “cut out” or negative space designs within a positive form. “The use of positive and negative spaces, instead of outlines, is a distinctive part of Coast Salish art” (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria).
This is in contrast to Northern Formline, where the shapes themselves create the outline of the piece. In Coast Salish Formline, the shapes are entirely separate to the outline. In this style, patterns of design elements are often symmetrical or balanced in nature. For example, if a bird’s wing on one side displays a trigon-crescent-circle pattern at the tip, the other will likely mimic it symmetrically if the wing’s shape and size are the same.
Works Cited
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. “10 Things to Know About the Northwest Aesthetic & Symbology - AGGV Magazine.” AGGV Magazine, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1 March 2020, http://emagazine.aggv.ca/10-things-to-know-about-the-northwest-aesthetic-symbology/. Accessed 25 October 2024.
Spirits of the West Coast Art Gallery. “Coast Salish Art.” Spirits of the West Coast Art Gallery, Spirits of the West Coast Art Gallery, https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/coast-salish-art?srsltid=AfmBOop6mTc_t_L1FybXUPNz2xFUkGIK4DNwzQ5M7S1iHV9EwSOZib9I. Accessed 25 October 2024.
This is all just the tip of the iceberg - you can find information on and examples of contemporary Coast Salish Formline artwork at Salish Weave, Spirits of The West Coast Art Gallery, and University of Victoria Legacy Art Galleries.
Also check out Kwantlen artists Miməwqθelət - Elinor Atkins (who illustrates many of Joseph’s books!), q̓ʷɑt̓ic̓ɑ - Phyllis Atkins, kwelexwelsten - Brandon Gabriel, and Nash’mene’ta’naht - Atheana Picha.