After a long and painful battle with illness, 77-year-old Brian D. Tripp, born in Eureka and raised in Klamath, died May 13. A nationally renowned artist whose work echoed traditional forms in painting and sculpture, Tripp was the 2018 recipient of the California Living Heritage Award from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. His mural “The […]
Brian Tripp
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NCJ Preview: Celebrating Brian Tripp, Reopening and Westhaven Arts
This week, we’re looking at the ceremony held at Sumeg Village honoring artist, Karuk elder and singer. It was a chance for friends, community members and family to express their gratitude for their friend and teacher, and an opportunity to look back on Tripp’s cultural, artistic and personal contributions. We’re also running down what the […]
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‘Given These Songs’
Brian Tripp, the storied Karuk poet, artist and ceremonial singer, is in hospice, receiving care provided for people who doctors think are in last months of life with an incurable disease. In many cases, hospice care is cause for abject sadness from the patient and their family. For Brian, it was reason to invite some […]
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A Peaceful Protest and Paddle Out
On a clear-skied Sunday morning, more than 150 people gathered in the tranquil, sandy cove south of the Samoa Peninsula’s Coast Guard station for the Paddle Out for Peace. Although many masked surfers, kayakers and standup paddle boarders arrived with signs to support racial justice, this was more than a protest. (See the slideshow below […]
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Three Native Artists Carry the Weight
What They Bring, What They Carry brings together artworks by Brian Tripp, Brittany Britton and Robert Benson — artists of Karuk, Hupa and Tsnungwe descent, respectively, who grew up in and around reservations in the Hoopa and Two Rivers regions. Tripp and Benson, who have exhibited regionally and nationally for decades, use process to articulate […]
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Contemporary Traditions
In the angled October light of his Orleans home, Brian Tripp slips a simple hitch knot over the leg of his latest woodpecker sculpture and raises it to just above eye level. Like many of Tripp’s sculptures, the bird is a deceptively simple assembly of branches, shaved redwood fragments, matte-black acrylic paint and carefully selected […]