Tag Archives: students

Aboriginal Gathering Place Creates Material Practice Wellness Kits for Indigenous Students

Bringing together an extraordinary diversity of materials, the kits will help sustain cultural connection and creativity during the pandemic and beyond.

With pandemic restrictions only gradually beginning to lift in B.C., the Aboriginal Gathering Place at Emily Carr University has been assembling Material Practice Wellness kits to send to Indigenous community members.

Led by Brenda Crabtree, Director of the AGP and Special Advisor to the President on Indigenous Initiatives, and AGP Associate Director Connie Watts, the project is a way to engage remotely with community members, and sustain connection during the first phase of provincial reopening.

“We are targeting the kits for the Aboriginal students first, and depending on how many are left we will be including Aboriginal staff and faculty,” says Connie.

“The kits are a cultural connection to the materials and to the land.”

Material Practice Wellness Kit1

 

Materials on hand at the AGP include a selection of beads, natural and dyed caribou hair for tufting, hide rattle kits (cut rattle shaped hide, sinew for the seam and wooden dowel for the handle), interfacing and felt for beading, porcupine quills, leather and beading needles, scissors, tanned fish skins, tanned beaver tails, smoke tanned moose hide, seal skin, tanned hide, earring and necklace clasps, key ring, larger glass beads, horse hair, feathers, shimmering abalone buttons and thread.

Full article by Perrin Grauer : https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2020/aboriginal-gathering-place-creates-material-practice-wellness-kits-for-indigenous-students

Photo by Perrin Grauer / Emily Carr University of Art + Design

Scháyilhen Visual Arts Exhibition

Salmon Going Up River (Scháyilhen) immediately invokes a sense of urgency, of struggle, of passion. Questions arise: is it about the journey, the destination, the mission, or is the motive of greatest significance? Is failure an option?

Twelve Indigenous artists have been gathered to address the notion of Salmon Going Up River. From Danielle Bobier’s inorganic grid-lines and circular pools evocative of the built environment in Catchment Area (2017) routed from salvaged mahogany plywood; to Shain Jackson’s twenty-foot natural and painted red cedar with abalone inlay Legacy salmon sculpture; and collections of found objects as in Jay Haven’s Bargain Hunter made from bags gathered from retail stores on reserves throughout British Columbia—themes and stories begin to unravel.
Within a climate of reconciliation, the metaphor of Salmon Going Up River speaks about remembering, of going home—it’s about the future and of survival. It is directional, of going forward by way of the past. Yet, the past at best serves as a guidepost. The journey is arduous and painful, fraught with seemingly impossible barriers demanding multiple attempts to overcome—bruises and battle scars added at each rung. Fight we must, but with each other? Is the river and its many obstacles not battle enough?
There are resting pools along the way—so easy to linger; to set up residence. Complacency threatens. And so the conversation begins.

Richard Heikkilä-Sawan exhibition curator, Talking Stick Festival 2018

Artists:

Danielle Bobier | Destanie Clayton | Brenda Crabtree | Jay Havens | Shain Jackson |  Maynard Johnny | Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ | Corey Moraes | Kajola Morewood |
Lou-ann Neel | Levi Nelson | Michelle Sound

Dates & Time:
Opening & Reception: February 14, 2018 @ 7pm
Exhibition: February 14-24, 2018, 10am – 10pm
Location:
Roundhouse Performance Centre (181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2W3)

TalkingStickFestival2018-3

Pushing Boundaries Exhibition

This biennial exhibition showcases and celebrates contemporary local, national and international First Nations artists. Through carvings, portraiture drawings, digital images, textile work, video and more, themes of family, reconciliation, indigenous life, gender, race, politics and nature are explored.

Artists:

Arlene Bowman, Allison Burns, Krystle Coughlin, Alanna Edwards, Dan Friday, Geronimo, Whess Harman, Adele Maskwa-iskwew Arseneau, Shelley McDonald, Ryan McKenna, Levi Nelson, Jacqueline Primeau, Michelle Sound

North Vancouver Community Arts Council

Located at
CityScape Community Art Space
335 Lonsdale Avenue
North Vancouver, BC
PB