artist: Alexander Clifton Ridley

Alexander Clifton Ridley is a Ts’msyen (Tshimshian) artist born in the Pacific coastal village Gitga’ata (Hartley Bay), eighty-five miles south of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. This is the land of Salmon and the white Spirit Bear. He was born to the Eagle Clan and was given the Ts’msyen name Yu’nis. He has family connections in Lax Klan. (Kitkatla), Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), and Metlakatla, Alaska. He has been a fisherman all his life, and his love of the sea is reflected both in his art and his rural lifestyle.

Clifton has been carving since the 1970’s. He worked on his own, until Earl Muldoe, a master carver, came to teach in Hartley Bay in the early 1980’s. One summer, Cliff learned about basic design, tool making and woodcarving from Earl. He later went to K’san, in Hazelton, for two winters of Northwest coast native art courses which included print making, as well as work in the more familiar mediums of wood and metal. Clifton studied with Vern Stevens, Ken Mowatt, and Walter Harris. He learned basic gold and silver engraving from Phil Janze.

Cliff was a seine boat captain and still owns a gillnetter and commercial fishes salmon in the summer around Prince Rupert. The Skeena River is only a two hour boat ride away, from his current home in Dodge Cove. The river has always played an important part in the native traditions of Canada’s Northwest. The Skeena had been a trade and travel route inland for native people for thousands of year. Families from all the villages moved to the canneries in the summer to catch and process salmon. Cliff’s parents lived and worked at Sunnyside Cannery on the Skeena River for many seasons until it was demolished and burnt down, immortalized in the film Trapper Jack.

When not fishing Clifton has lived in Hartley Bay most of his life, in the house that he was born in. He has traveled across the country a number of times. He is fluent in the Ts’msyen language, learned from his parents and grandparents. He recently moved to DodgeCove, on Digby Island. It is a smallcommunity with no cars, across the harbour from Prince Rupert. The historic Norwegian boat building community is on the site of Kanagatsiyot, a Ts'msyen native village of the Gispaxloats people, that is thousands of years old. Cliff currently works in a house and a carving shed which both have a view of the harbour, snow covered glacial mountains and the port of Prince Rupert. He sells his art to people in his community, but much has been sold across Canada, and internationally.