Art
Art exhibit showcases blue rope and the creative ways northerners use it – CBC.ca
Artist Mike Mitchell said blue rope likely came to the North through commercial fishing, but it has grown to be an important tool to those who call the N.W.T. home.
“This originally commercial fishing rope has been planted like a giant beanstalk and it’s grown to epic proportions with uses that far outweigh or outstrip the commercial fishing industry,” Mitchell told CBC’s the Trailbreaker host Loren McGinnis.
“Just walk around the street and once you notice, blue rope is everywhere.”
It’s a tool still used for fishing, as intended, but it’s also used on the land for camping or hunting, he said. He taught his child to tie their shoes using blue rope, and people have even used it to fix snowmobiles.
These are the types of stories being showcased at the Snowking’s Winter Festival for a temporary exhibit Mitchell is running called “Blurope.”
“What I’ve done in this exhibit is just try and give some examples of how it’s used all over the place,” he said.
“It’s used on the land, it’s used in our homes and it’s used in the snow castle,” he said. “It’s connective tissue, it’s a book binding that binds our stories.”
Mitchell said blue rope, like moose hide or birch bark, reflects the creativity of the craftspeople behind it.
“To appreciate blue rope is to appreciate the people who are using it,” he said.
Mitchell said blue rope can be seen all around the territory, even places you wouldn’t expect.
“I was noticing on the N.W.T. flag yesterday, there’s actually like an undulating blue rope across the top of the flag,” he said, adding many would consider it to be the Arctic Ocean — but to him it’s blue rope.
Anthony Foliot, widely known as the Snowking, gave the exhibit a shout out in a video on Facebook. He also made sure to jokingly call out the spelling.
“You got to come check it out, it’s called Blurope, it’s a little bit short on grammar because he forgot the vowels, but it’s a wonderful thing,” he said.
Looking for more stories
Sarah Swan is the curator for the exhibit, which was run in partnership with the Yellowknife Artist Run Community Centre (YK ARCC).
“It’s such a unique way to bring people together over this common substance that everybody seems to have a relationship with,” she said of the Blurope exhibit.
Swan said this was the first exhibit the YK ARCC has run off-site from the mobile Art Gallery of the N.W.T.
“We chose to do it in the castle because a lot of the images that Mike used were castle examples,” she said.
“Like how blue rope was used in so many times in the actual construction of the castle itself.”
The Blurope exhibit will be on display in the chapel of the snow castle until March 20.
However, Swan said she hopes this will be the first of several showings of this exhibit across the territory.
“We know that there’s blue rope stories out there in the communities of the Northwest Territories beyond just Yellowknife,” she said.
“So we would love to take the Blurope exhibit and travel it either with the mobile gallery or in partnerships with community centers and small museums elsewhere in the territory.”
She said her organization is looking for more blue rope stories from residents across the N.W.T. Those can be sent to the YK ARCC Facebook and Instagram pages.
A trio plays a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy as a dozen people settle in for an intimate open mic night inside Derrick McCandless and Dawn Mills’s cozy spot off highways 6 and 68 in Manitoba’s Interlake.
Strings of antique-style light bulbs cast a soft glow over the mandolin, banjo and dobro guitar that hang on a wall behind the band. An array of pottery shaped in-house by Mills dots the shelves behind the audience.
The Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop is full of tchotchkes — like an Elvis Presley Boulevard street sign and vintage Orange Crush ad — that create the rustic country-living vibe the couple dreamt up before buying and transforming the vacant space over the past three years.
“I have met so many people in this community through them that I probably wouldn’t have … because of this hub,” says Mills’s cousin Dana-Jo Burdett.
Mills and McCandless are bringing people together in their rural community in more ways than one — though a return to Mills’s hometown wasn’t always in the cards.
The couple met in Winnipeg in 2011 while McCandless was playing a party at Mills’s cousin’s place. They had plans to settle in the Okanagan in McCandless’s home province of B.C. until he suffered a health scare. After that, they decided to head back to the Prairies.
WATCH | McCandless and Mills channel creative spirit into Eriksdale community:
Dawn Mills and Derrick McCandless host the RogerKimLee Music Festival in the Manitoba Interlake community of Eriksdale. They also turned a long-vacant space in town into a live music venue, instrument repair and sales store, and pottery and framing services shop.
It was the height of the pandemic in fall 2020 when the pair relocated to Eriksdale, about 130 km northwest of Winnipeg. They bought the old Big Al’s shop, once a local sharpening business that was sitting vacant.
“He was an icon in the community. He was a school teacher. He did a drama program here,” said Mills. “He brought a lot to the town.”
The building has become their own personal playground and live-in studio.
“It keeps evolving and we keep changing it and every room has to serve multi-function,” says Mills. “It’s a meeting place.”
While they love the quiet life of their community, they’re also a busy couple.
McCandless is a multi-instrumentalist with a former career in the Armed Forces that took him all over. Now, he’s a shop teacher in Ashern who sells and fixes instruments out of the music shop.
WATCH | McCandless plays an original song:
Derrick McCandless plays one of his original songs on acoustic guitar at the Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop in March 2024.
Mills helped found Stoneware Gallery in 1978 — the longest running pottery collective in Canada. She offers professional framing services and sells pottery creations that she throws in-studio.
They put on open mic nights and host a summer concert series on a stage next door they built together themselves. They’re trying to start up a musicians memorial park in Eriksdale too.
One of their bigger labours of love is in honour of McCandless’s good friends Roger Leonard Young, David Kim Russell and Tony “Leon” — or Lee — Oreniuk. All died within months of each other in 2020-2021.
“That was a heart-wrenching year,” McCandless says.
They channeled their grief into something good for the community and started the RogerKimLee Music Festival.
Friends from Winnipeg and the Interlake helped them put on a weekend of “lovely music, lovely food, lovely companionship” as a sort of heart-felt send off, said Mills.
That weekend it poured rain. Festival-goers ended up in soggy dog piles on the floor of the music shop to dry out while Mills and McCandless cooked them sausages and eggs to warm up.
“It was just a great weekend,” says McCandless. “At the end of that, that Sunday, we just said that’s it, we got to do this.”
Mills says the homey community spirit on display during that inaugural year is what the couple has been trying to “encourage in people getting together” ever since.
The festival has grown to include a makers’ market, car show, kids activities, workshops, camping, beer gardens, good food and live music.
This summer, Manitoba acts The Solutions, Sweet Alibi and The JD Edwards Band are on the lineup Aug. 16-18.
Burdett has been a part of the growth, helping with branding, social media and marketing. McCandless and Mills’s habit of bringing people together has also rubbed off on Burdett.
“There’s more of my people out here than I thought, and I am very grateful for that,” says Burdett.
Their efforts to breathe new artistic life into Eriksdale caught the attention of their local MLA.
“The response from family and friend and community has been outstanding,” Derek Johnston (Interlake-Gimli) said during question period at the Manitoba Legislature in March.
“The RogerKimLee Music Festival believes music to be a powerful force for positive social change.”
Dolly Lindell, who has lived in Eriksdale for about three decades, said the couple is adding something valuable that wasn’t quite there before.
“There’s a lot of people that we didn’t even know had musical talent and aspirations and this has definitely helped bring it out,” Lindell says from the audience as McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie wrap their rendition of Take it Easy.
McCandless, 61, said there was a time in his youth where he dreamed of a becoming a folk music star. Now his musical ambitions have changed. He’s focused on using that part of himself to bring people together.
“I think it’s that gift that I was given that that needs to be shared,” he says. “I don’t think I could live without sharing it.”
WATCH | Trio plays song at Eriksdale music shop:
Derrick McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie play a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy at McCandless and Dawn Mills’s music shop in Eriksdale in March 2024.
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Joel Jamensky’s sunny disposition explains why the artist with Down syndrome uses the name ‘J-positive’ for his online art business, started with the help of his parents two years ago. “There’s a lot more going on in [Joel’s] art than may be at first glance – just like him,” said his dad, Mark.
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