: Does anyone know a source for pictures of animal artwork from the northwest
: coast indians similar to the designs that were offered at Tamal Vista. I
: emailed them some time back as they offer a couple of decals but didn't
: get any replys. Somewhere in one of the books offered by them I read a
: reference to a source for more artwork but now I can't seem to find it. I
: included a link to a picture of the eagle decal they offer.

If you can get the image from a book onto the wood, there are three books
that have a lot of material to work with:

Hillary Stewart's _Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest_ has page
after page of designs, many of the monochrome and figurative like
your example.

Bill Holm's _Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form_ has
some cleaned up, stripped down examples that would work really well
on a boat, because they're simple and bold.

_Northwest Coast Indian Designs_ is kind of looked down upon by us
academics who study the stuff, but just about every working NWC Native
artist I know has a copy around; probably because it's got lots of
generic and meaningless designs that look really good. Artists will
work for years to earn the privilege of doing certain designs, so it's
good to stick to the more common material, IMHO.

I picked up a ready-made decal in the Smithsonian Museum in NYC last
year: a Raven design about 8" wide, part of a series. I've seen them
around here (Olympia), probably in a gift shop at a casino or tribal
museum. UW's Burke Museum might have some (great place anyway).

It'd be really cool to commission a Native artist to come out and paint
a design on your boat; there are plenty of printmakers who do series
of single-color designs for a living while their expensive stuff waits
for a buyer. I leafed through a bunch of nice prints at the Quinault
Museum the other day that were fairly cheap.

Good Luck!

Arlen