Artwork copyright Robert Stauffer. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Robert Stauffer. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission.

Sea Eagle Drum, 1992

Robert Stauffer
American (born 1953)

Location: Larchmont Elementary, Tacoma

About the Artwork

Non-Native artist Rob Stauffer’s Sea Eagle Drum is hand-made and hand-painted. Many elements of the artwork are based on traditions from the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Stauffer notes, "According to some Northwest Coast stories, there lives in the sea every creature found above the sea. This drum depicts the eagle in a cycle of transformation from eagle of the sky to eagle of the sea, and back again."

The stylized birds are based on Indigenous Northwest Coast curved and ovoid formline designs. The subject matter is from Northwest Coast oral history. Stauffer made the drum by steam-bending a plank of cedar and wrapping it with stretched deer hide.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Tacoma Public Schools.

About the Artist

Robert Stauffer is a Northwest artist whose art focuses on the Native American artistic traditions of the Pacific Northwest Coast. He is a non-Native artist. Stauffer learned to carve after studying with Native American artists at Tillicum Village on Blake Island, in Puget Sound, Western Washington.