Gallery: 2010/11 Nibi~Anishinabe Kwewag
"Naturalist LauraLee K. Harris is able to heighten human awareness and understanding of the First Peoples through wood, poetry and painting. She expresses her creativity through a combination of historical and contemporary knowledge as well as subconscious dream like imagery. Harris allows the grains of the panel wood she selects to speak to her guiding her process of creation. Working backward discovering and visualizing art forms as well as the interwoven stories within her surface material is a compelling method of creation. Many of Harris’s formulated ideas are richly intermingled with her knowledge of Ojibwa story telling, conveying the oral histories of the First peoples through the expressive medium of acrylic paint on wood panel. The wood itself presents the necessary hidden messages and symbolic imagery required for Harris to reach the final stages of her art creations. LauraLee K. Harris’s inherent theme of NIBI ANISHINABE KWEWAG ~ Water and Women of the First Peoples breaks from the traditional Western practice of producing an artwork with a preconceived notion and preliminary design. Spontaneity emulates Harris’s naturalist style her use of vibrant colours intensifies the preexisting bold grains of the natural wood. The emphasis of the wood grains is reminiscent of the Woodland School of Art an Ojibwa art style devised of several common practices such as the use of bold line connectors. This exhibit is a reminder of the traditional matriarchal practices of the First peoples and the importance of women as the givers of life, knowledge and protection. Harris’s natural style emulates the oral history of the First peoples. Her artworks share various regularities despite the inevitable distinct differences within each artwork. She has reverted to the natural “story lines” evident in each panel expressing her knowledge through visual and literary ideas inspired by hidden imagery. Harris has a strong affiliation to each wood surface she begins working on. She has a compelling ability to analyze and discover stories waiting to be told. "
ESSAY by: William Vancise, Honour Specialist in Visual Art and History, Secondary Visual Arts Teacher at Collingwood Collegiate Institute
Series Statement:
Nibi~Anishinabe Kwewag Water and the Women of The Original Peoples
Keepers of the Water ~ Heart of her Nation
Trees grow as a part of creation; part water and air ~ part soil and seed, I am drawn to images in the wood, but I don’t know where I’ll end up from the tree’s life span and mine, collaborating. Here inside the tree, I intuit imagery from the life of the standing people. Its fibers allow pigment to sink in to the depth of its ply, where spontaneous imagery emerge and continue to evolve from these grains to suggest a living memory. It lives on from my eye, mind, spirit, heart, as it flows and builds off each other, to each viewer into being, becoming knowledge, becoming a dream to remember.
“For the Cree, the phenomenon of mamatowan refers not just to the self but to the being in connection with happenings. It also recognizes that other life forms manifest the creative force in the context of the knower. It is an experience in context, a subjective experience that, for the knower, becomes knowledge in itself. The experience is knowledge.” Willie Ermine
From this intuitive and spontaneous process, a multilayered approach to knowledge emerges. Nibi anishinabe kwewag ~ Water and the First People’s Women is viewed through the trees’ life; of one who once stood and lived, who was felled and lives again, for the earth, through this work. As with Indigenous culture, a multiplicity of insights intertwine throughout this series in storied poems engaging the environmental landscape; ascertaining the difference between resource and life force, evolving into a political verse; a national anthem asks: who truly stands on guard for thee, when government, corporation and media prefer to protect each other, rather then water or the land of our grandchildren in Our Home and Native Land is not a Commodity and Our True North Strong and Free is Weeping. Dreaming into laws, which would protect the earth, I’m inspired by John Borrows book ‘Canada’s Indigenous Constitution’ laws which are derived from our Creation Stories, I find relevant ways to Transforming Indigenous Freedom in a story of bear and trickster and laws to protect our earth.
“Woman is the centre of the wheel of life. She is the heartbeat of the people.
She is not just in the home, but she is the community, she is the Nation.”…
“The woman is the foundation on which Nations are built. She is the heart of her Nation.
If that heart is weak, her people are weak.
If her heart is strong and her mind clear, then the nation is strong and knows its purpose.
The woman is the centre of everything…It is time for women to pick up their medicine and help heal a troubled world.”
Art Solomon (Ojibwe Elder) For the People Teachings on The Natural Way; of the sacred role of the women.
I notice there is a common respect missing for both women and the water. Stolen sisters are hunted, go missing, are murdered and a country is silent in Anishinabe Kwewag. It is from a storied culture the two; the women and the water are connected through the orb of water they give life to in Holding On. From the beginning of Creation; in a promise and responsibility our women made to the Creator to protect the water, we are tied together in Creation. From this multi-layered complex society I learn from, premised on the four parts to be whole, holistic relationships to the earth, I tell my stories through the Medicine Wheel teachings of the four ways of seeing and growing, in stories, prophecies, of heroines and family clan. And I find my voice through the life and beauty of the trees, in the clear water-like reflective spirit that drips over the edges mindful of the water spirit reflective and rippled, the connectivity that is indivisible, from the heart remembering the original dream, the teachings of the past that continue to teach into our present, and I endeavor to be ever remindful of a lasting future with respect to our water and the women; places of creation; our grandchildren. This work is about politics, laws, philosophy, envisioning new ways of seeing from a past that held answers in respecting the natural laws, but also seeing how things need to change if we are to survive. Also, I speak for no one but myself in this work; it is my intent to bring awareness to what is hidden and in that knowledge, comes a certain responsibility.
http://www.lauraleekharris.com/gallery2010.html
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