Silas Coon

Country/Region: Northwest Coast (view other artists)

Tribe: Kwakwaka'wakw

Silas Coon (b. 1963)was born in Alert Bay, BC, just off the Northeast Coast of Vancouver Island in the ancestral land of the Kwakwaka'wakw. At age eleven, he moved to Gilford Island where Jim King, a chief who presided at the potlatch, carved in a dilapidated schoolhouse. When Silas saw the old man’s work, he wanted to become a carver. George Hunt Jr. taught him carving skills in a class at S.J. Willis Junior High School in Victoria. Silas also worked closely with his cousin Beau Dick from 1985 to 1998, during which time he learned to carve mask, poles, and canoes.

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