Camas Logue

Camas Logue is a multidisciplinary artist and enrolled Klamath tribal member from the ewksiknii, modokish, and numu people. Logue’s practice includes painting, printmaking, weaving, carving, installation, and public art.

Logue lives with his family in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in northwest Washington. Logue’s home studio sits in the Tallawhalt village between Similk bay and the Swinomish Channel. His family’s carving shed is close by where Logue carves with his father-in-law, Swinomish elder and master carver Kevin Paul. Together they create large pole carvings, community installations and show pieces.

Logue’s paintings and prints utilize layering and washes of pigment using various tools he creates and different mediums to erode and dissolve the layers. He understands that because pigments in paint are made up of minerals and earth, paint is governed by the same geological processes as the land. Logue is interested in representing the dynamic events that occur at the earth’s surface, using materials and actions to mimic natural forces—seismic shaking, wind, moving water, freezing, and thawing. Logue’s practice includes spending time in nature, on the land, observing and absorbing and then transferring that information through gestural movements and applied process. Logue encourages the painting’s surface to experience deformation, translocation, and chemical reaction. Logue believes we can see the connections between all creation by learning to read the patterns in the land.

Over the last decade, Logue has studied traditional basketry with tribal elders and master weavers from Klamath, Coos, Grande Ronde, Chinook, and Umatilla communities. Logue believes in the work of weaving baskets as well as carving. As an Indigenous person, being able to pass on and teach traditional art and lifeways is incredibly important for our communities’ health and for future generations.

Alongside his traditional and studio art practices, Logue is also a professional musician, playing drums and guitar in the band Black Belt Eagle Scout, which is led by his wife, Katherine Paul. Logue tours in the band internationally, playing live and in studio performances.