Fort William artist Ryan Pooman shares his comments during the panel discussion at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery’s Summer Celebration Opening Party for the Woodland Pop! exhibition on June 24.
By Rick Garrick
THUNDER BAY – A group of Indigenous artists discussed new expressions of Woodland Style during the Thunder Bay Art Gallery’s Summer Celebration Opening Party for the Woodland Pop! exhibition on June 24.
“I definitely think it’s having a moment, especially with all the young artists making their own versions of the Woodland Style and bringing their own experiences and their own stories,” says Fort William artist Ryan Pooman. “It is amazing and it inspired me — the artists have their own stories and their own way of expressing that and you can definitely tell with all the different styles, from the 3D art to sculpture.”
Pooman says he created two rabbit art pieces for the Woodland Pop! exhibition, one light and one dark to represent the fall and spring.
“I’ve been doing art for the past 10 years — I’m a tattoo artist but just recently started doing the Woodland art,” Pooman says. “I do all my work digitally and I just wanted a good contrast piece, so light and dark.”
Shelby Gagnon, an artist from Aroland, says her mural painting, Matriarchal Flow, which she painted in the front foyer for the Woodland Pop! exhibition, is about how Anishinaabekwe connect to water, to healing, and to the moon and the cycles of life.
“I just wanted to honour the water, especially being here in Thunder Bay surrounded by water all the time and the crazy spring we had with so much water and such strong flow,” Gagnon says. “It kind of represented the busy and fast-paced motion that we are all living right now.”
Gagnon says her Red Healing painting is a take on the Redbird matches she uses in ceremony and in her art.
“I actually use the match sticks I had previously used for smudging to create effects of smoke, and actually glued the match sticks on [the painting),” Gagnon says. “So kind of looking at a holistic way of how we take care of ourselves, each other in community.”
Quinn Hopkins, whose grandmother was from Batchewana First Nation, says he began creating art on the computer after losing his space for painting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m inspired by the land,” Hopkins says. “I spend as much time as I can outdoors but my practice is mostly indoors these days.”
Hopkins collaborated with Blake Angeconeb, an artist from Lac Seul, on a digital animation/NFT art piece, Bakwene Makwa, Anishinabemowin for A Smokey Bear.
“I think what is kind of fuelling the revitalizing of Woodland art is the internet,” Hopkins says. “For me, sharing and connecting is what art is for and I found a new community of Woodland artists through the internet that is really driving the style into more pop culture. We’re sharing the pop culture references that we relate to and it’s also showing how we see the world.”
The Woodland Pop! exhibition, which runs from June 24-Sept. 25, also features seven other Indigenous artists: Christian Chapman, Michel Dumont, Sharon Goodison, Bree Island, Fallon Simard, Rihkee Strapp, and Jonathan Thunder.
“The exhibition is inspired by artists who are Indigenizing pop culture,” says Cynthia Nault, community engagement coordinator at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and Red Rock Indian Band citizen. “The show features a wide range of mediums including acrylic paintings, digital paintings, there’s some NFTs, there’s some tattoo art. It’s a really great show for people to explore if they wanted to learn more about the Woodland Style because the show is so accessible being that it is so colourful and full of pop culture.”
The Summer Celebration Opening Party also featured free tacos in a bag by the Bannock Lady, which is owned by Jeanette Posine, a Pays Plat citizen.
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.
