A large wooden sculpture featuring two stylized figures sitting on a stylized animal. The figures have exaggerated facial features, with oversized eyes, wide mouths, and distinctive head adornments. They hold small objects resembling frogs. The sculpture is displayed against a textured concrete wall and is in a bright, modern space with large windows.

Jim Hart, Frog Constellation, c.1988-2005, red cedar, paint, wire. SFU Bill Reid Collection. 

Dale Northey
A large wooden sculpture featuring two stylized figures sitting on a stylized animal. The figures have exaggerated facial features, with oversized eyes, wide mouths, and distinctive head adornments. They hold small objects resembling frogs. The sculpture is displayed against a textured concrete wall and is in a bright, modern space with large windows.

Title

Frog Constellation

Artist

Jim Hart

Year

1988-2005

Medium

Red cedar, paint, wire

Collection

SFU Bill Reid Collection

Outside the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography in Saywell Hall (SFU Burnaby campus) is Frog Constellation, a large cedar carving by Jim Hart depicting a man and a woman on the back of a giant frog. As a creature that moves between worlds, the frog is a powerful symbol for the Haida and a family crest of the Eagle clan. The work was inspired by a smaller shamanic object, carved by an unknown Haida artist in the 1870s, that the artist saw in a photograph. In 2007 Frog Constellation was acquired by the Bill Reid Foundation and the Bill Reid Centre for Northwest Coast Art Studies at SFU.  

Artists

Jim Hart (1952–) was born in Massett and currently lives and works in Vancouver and Haida Gwaii. He began carving in the late 1970s, apprenticing first with Robert Davidson and then with Bill Reid in the early 1980s. An established Haida artist, Hart has produced a number of significant commissions and his work can be found in public collections around the world.