Shawn Decaire (centre) leads a smudging ceremony with Cory Cliffe (left) and Avis O’Brien over a new art installation for the Distant Relatives exhibition at the Campbell River Art Gallery. Ronan O’Doherty photo/ Campbell River Mirror
Some heart felt words were spoken by Avis O’Brien about what went into creating the cedar weaving art piece unveiled for the Distant Relatives exhibit at the Campbell River Art Gallery on Saturday, May 7 . Ronan O’Doherty/ Campbell River Mirror
Sonny Assu, Charles Jules and Paul Vincent John collaborated on a pair of large scale murals at the entrances of the Centennial Building. Ronan O’Doherty photo/ Campbell River Mirror
The new murals gracing the doors of the Campbell River Art Gallery were inspired a recently deceased woman who spent lots of time around the gallery. Sonny Assu completed the work under the guidance of Charles Jules (partner to the deceased), and Paul John, a relative. Ronan O’Doherty photo/ Campbell River Mirror
A packed house bore witness to a powerful pair of ceremonies at the Campbell River Art Gallery on Saturday, May 7.
Guests squeezed themselves into every available nook and cranny in the gallery’s lobby and awaited the 2 p.m. start.
Reserved murmuring went silent when Shawn Decaire’s booming voice filled the small space.
He joined with Cory Cliffe and Avis O’Brien in a smudging/unveiling ceremony, setting the tone for what would be a moving afternoon for all present.
In the centre of the room was a blanketed artwork, which was revealed to be a small child’s school desk, covered with elaborate cedar weaving.
The installation is part of the Distant Relatives exhibition, which will be running at the gallery until November. It is meant to represent the desks sat in by residential school attendees, and the medicinal cedar covering is an attempt to heal the wounds still held by survivors of the institutions.
It was conceived of by Haida/ Kwakwakw’wakw artist, Avis O’Brien, and brought to fruition with the help of Liǧwiłdax̌w youth and elders from Cape Mudge on Quadra Island.
The art gallery’s executive director, Sara Lopez Assu, said the gallery received funding from the BC Arts Council to run workshops in remote indigenous communities, and this was one example of its success.
“The goal was not for the Campbell River Art Gallery to determine what those workshops were going to be,” she said. “It was really community lead, and community informed.
“Avis was our artist facilitator for Cape Mudge, and she felt in speaking with elders, and youth, and residential school survivors that they needed to process some of the feelings coming out of the discovery of the 215 in Kamloops, and Avis works in cedar ,and she knows the powerful medicine in cedar, so that’s what they decided to do there.”
Following that, the two new murals which grace the front and rear entrances to the gallery were unveiled.
The identical pieces were inspired by a recently deceased lady who was a member of the city’s unhoused population.
Her name is currently being withheld, as she is a member of the Nuu-chah-nulth community, where tradition dictates that the deceased name not be spoken or printed until a year has come and gone since their passing.
“She was well known,’ Assu said. “She would spend most of her nights on our doorsteps, and most of her days were spent at Spirit Square.
“She always had the biggest, brightest smile.”
The idea for the murals came from the mind of her partner, Charles Jules of the Ka:’yu:’k’t’h’/Che:k:tles7et’h’ First Nation. He had some difficulty creating the artwork itself, so recruited his uncle Paul John of the Ehattesaht-Chinehkints First Nation to help with the design.
Once he put those on paper, local Liǧwiłdax̌w Kwakwaka’wakw artist, Sonny Assu, took the drawings and digitized them to come up with the final product.
Assu, John, and Jules embraced, and many tears were shed at the unveiling.
A blanketing ceremony was also performed for Jules, who was joined by his brother visiting from Courtenay, as well as his community’s hereditary chief, and her daughter.
The event was filled with people from all walks of life, which Assu was very pleased by.
“It was amazing to have people here physically,” she said, noting there were politicians sitting next to unhoused people.
“Everyone was welcome, and had a reason to be here and come together.
“It was the beautiful mix of people that I found impactful, more so than the actual number of people who came.
“People were drawn and wanted to witness and raise their hands to these incredible artists and the work that they’re doing within the community.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
