The Evil I Have Seen


Book Description

The Evil I Have Seen is a collection of true crime short stories from the memoirs of veteran homicide investigator, Detective Lt. Robert (Robbo) Davidson. Six accounts are woven together with his memories, case files, witness statements, and trial transcripts.




Robert Davidson


Book Description

Robert Davidson has been a pivotal figure in the Northwest Coast Native art renaissance since he erected the first totem pole in nearly a century in his ancestral Masset village in 1969. For over forty years he has absorbed the bedrock art traditions of Haida art and craft, working in the ancient forms of his grandfather, the influential Haida artist Charles Edensaw. Davidson has taken new directions within the highly disciplined structure of the old Northwest Coast models--in wood sculpture, ceremonial arts, jewelry, and prints. Less known are his recent forays into abstraction, explored in boldly minimalist easel paintings, graphic work, and sculpture. Pared to essential lines, elemental shapes, and bold colors, these startlingly modern works insinuate themselves into a lifetime's body of work which has usually been labeled as "traditional." Robert Davidson features paintings, sculptures, and prints created since 2005, as well as key images from earlier in his career, that show Davidson's impulse toward an elemental language of form. These essays investigate the complex fusion of sources Davidson draws upon, placing the work in the larger context of contemporary art, and examines the ways in which the work mediates the dualities of tradition and innovation, the spheres of the community and the gallery, and the personal and the collective.




Eagle Transforming


Book Description

Ulli Steltzer, a distinguished photographer, takes the reader into the carving shed and studio to see Robert Davidson as he creates both monumental poles and intricately detailed powerful masks. More than 100 of her black-and-white photographs, reproduced in duotone, record both the evolution of Davidson and his art, from the early days up to the present, a span of 25 years. In the accompanying text and captions, Robert Davidson writes movingly about growing up Haida and his development as an artist, describes the creative and practical process of carving poles and masks, and discusses the place of art in Haida culture. An introduction by Aldona Jonaitis assesses Robert Davidson's place in the world of art. Robert Davidson has produced an internationally acclaimed body of art, in particular a number of large totem poles and masks in collections in Canada and the United States, including the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.




Robert Davidson, Haida Printmaker


Book Description

Examines Robert Davidson's first ten years as an artist and printmaker.




The Hotel


Book Description

The Hotel: Occupied Space explores the hotel as both symbol and space through the concept of “occupancy.” By examining the various ways in which the hotel is manifested in art, photography, and film, this book offers a timely critique of a crucial modern space. As a site of occupancy, the hotel has provided continued creative inspiration for artists from Monet and Hopper, to genre filmmakers like Hitchcock and Sofia Coppola. While the rich symbolic importance of the hotel means that the visual arts and cinema are especially fruitful, the hotel’s varied structural purposes, as well as its historical and political uses, also provide ample ground for new and timely discussion. In addition to inspiring painters, photographers, and filmmakers, the hotel has played an important role during wartime, and more recently as a site of accommodation for displaced people, whether they be detainees or refugees seeking sanctuary. Shedding light on the diverse ways that the hotel functions as a structure, Robert A. Davidson argues that the hotel is both a fundamental modern space and a constantly adaptable structure, dependent on the circumstances in which it appears and plays a part.




Fighting Back


Book Description

The shocking true story of a woman pushed to homicidal rage by the hands of her violent husband . . . Long before there were abuse hot lines and shelters for battered women, June Briand fired four bullets into her husband's head and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival--and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded, and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him. What kind of woman would slay her own husband? What kind of man would drive her to do it? Why didn't she just leave him? Based on extensive interviews with June Briand, FIGHTING BACK explores these difficult questions while exposing the twisted sadomasochistic dynamics of a relationship that enslaves a woman--and drives her to kill. At once terrifying and maddening, heartrending and ultimately exhilarating-- including an unforgettable glimpse at life inside a maximum security prison--FIGHTING BACK is a book you will never forget.




Expanding the Circle


Book Description

This is the catalogue for a 1998 exhibition held at Reed College, Portland Oregon. The artist's name guud san glans, Robert Davidson combines his Haida and his English names. Twenty-four color plates display his totem poles, which draw from Northwest coast Indian tradition but extend that vocabulary




Potlatch as Pedagogy


Book Description

In 1884, the Canadian government enacted a ban on the potlatch, the foundational ceremony of the Haida people. The tradition, which determined social structure, transmitted cultural knowledge, and redistributed wealth, was seen as a cultural impediment to the government’s aim of assimilation. The tradition did not die, however; the knowledge of the ceremony was kept alive by the Elders through other events until the ban was lifted. In 1969, a potlatch was held. The occasion: the raising of a totem pole carved by Robert Davidson, the first the community had seen in close to 80 years. From then on, the community publicly reclaimed, from the Elders who remained to share it, the knowledge that has almost been lost. Sara Florence Davidson, Robert’s daughter, would become an educator. Over the course of her own education, she came to see how the traditions of the Haida practiced by her father—holistic, built on relationships, practical, and continuous—could be integrated into contemporary educational practices. From this realization came the roots for this book.




Genesis 1-11


Book Description

Text and commentary alternate with each other in the style of the series.




Bobby's Book


Book Description

In 1998, at the very moment that a publisher had approached Bruce Davidson about a book of his 1959 Brooklyn Gang photographs, former gang leader Bobby Powers unexpectedly telephoned the Davidsons. Over the next decade, Emily Davidson maintained an ongoing conversation with Powers in order to bring to light his struggle to overcome his drug-ridden and violent past and to inspire others with his example. Through the words and reflections of the former drug addict and petty criminal, this book relates the long, agonizing journey from youthful urban violence and despair to the life of a committed and generous professional. Beginning in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood in the mid 1950s where alcohol abuse and poverty were rampant, Bobby Powers went from being an illiterate gang leader and notorious drug dealer to a destroyed individual who had lost everything, including family members, close friends, and himself, all presented in his own words and in grim detail in this book. At a critical turning point in his life, recognizing the threat of his behaviors to survival, he entered detox and embarked on the arduous path to recovery and self-understanding. This process involved not only acknowledging and coming to terms with the injuries he had inflicted on his children and others, but also asking for their forgiveness. Having achieved a new way of life as a responsible and caring adult, Bobby Powers is today, at 69, a nationally respected drug addiction counselor who has aided a wide spectrum of people, including former gang members. His story represents a brutal and inspiring lesson in human frailty, degradation, and transformation.