Alexander Swiftwater McCarty

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By Larry Laffrey

 

In December 2023, I made my way to Daybreak Star for the annual Native Art Show held just before Christmas.  Artists and vendors were set up on both levels of the soaring structure. Seeing that Alex’s table was characteristically mobbed, I decided to take a walk in the surrounding Discovery Park woods for a bit, planning to return before show’s end to check in with him.  After a while I reentered the building only to discover that Alex had packed up and left well before closing.

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Disappointed, I stopped by Peter Boome’s booth.  Peter is one of the other artists (four in all) whom we engaged in 2020 to send digital files of art (that would become ‘works on metal panels’) to the Nantes museum for a truly innovative (COVID-mandated given that personal travel and conventional museum-going was impossible) outdoor display.  In the years since that very strange time, I had managed to maintain contact with all four, including Joe Seymour and Micah McCarty.

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At the same Daybreak Star show in 2022, I was able to talk with Alex.  As well, I met his two-spirit child Ann, there with their father selling their own work (Ann’s sister Tierra also learned carving and painting from her dad); I have bought items produced by all members of the family.  One thing that Alex said to me that day, looking up from the chunk of cedar he was carving, has not left me: “You know, I really wanted to go to France ... I still want to go to France!”

Those wistful words haunt me.

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A few weeks ago I showed up on a Friday (‘volunteer day’) at the “yehaw Indigenous Arts Collective” in Seattle’s far south end.  I was thrilled to be entrusted to plant sweetgrass, amaranth, and other seedlings of significance in a new raised bed, just one aspect of a process of “rematriation” going on in this extraordinary space.  As I prepared to leave I was able to chat with Asia Tail, cofounder of the Collective, telling her we’d met briefly at an event at the Olympic Sculpture Park some years before.  I noted that I’d ‘recruited’ the artists for the Nantes “Nature Native” art project, and rattled off their names.

At that, Asia’s demeanor turned very serious.  “Oh Larry, I’m sorry, it seems you hadn’t heard ... Alex passed away a few months ago.”

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Alex died of cancer in an Olympia hospital in March.  He was just 48.

 

“However impressive his accumulated CV might have become, it was always overshadowed by his gigantic personality, big hugs, and kind heart that always had extra room for more friends.”

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I first met Alex McCarty in Neah Bay in 2010, the year the Makah hosted the Canoe Journey.  Among other things, I bought some greeting cards featuring drawings by his young daughter Tierra, and I would later present them (as thanks for being his guest in Brussels) to the Swiss ambassador to Belgium.  The ambassador was a renowned expert on Australian aboriginal art, and he was delighted with the gift.  I relayed this information to Alex next I saw him, and he got such a kick out of this that he reminded me of it for years afterward.

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In subsequent years I would run into Alex at shows in Tacoma or Seattle, and he enthusiastically agreed in 2019 (at the opening of the new Burke Museum—photo) to participate in our 2020 project, excited that he would get to be involved in various outreach activities in Nantes concurrent with the exhibition.  Of course, global lockdown forced us to pivot.

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I have thought a lot about Alex and his children in recent weeks.  He was so talented in so many dimensions of the art making process, and he savored his role as an exponent of his culture—Alex was an extraordinary cultural transmitter.  I am so glad we produced video interviews with Alex and his colleagues to complement the 2020 exhibition, and that we still have these posted to our website. 

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What I can’t stop thinking about?  Just a few days after I learned of his passing a federal ruling came down.  Alex won’t be standing with his people on the shores of Neah Bay in 2025, when the canoe of the Makah whalers (a scene that he depicted in his art) returns from the hunt.