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Kelowna Art Gallery exhibit connects visitors to Residential School survivors and their families – Global News

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Standing tall at the Kelowna Art Gallery is an intricately woven blanket representing Canada’s dark past. It’s a visual representation of residential schools and the atrocities afflicted on students, called the Witness Blanket.

Indigenous artist and master carver, Carey Newman, who also goes by his traditional name of Hayalthkin’geme, created the 40 foot-long blanket made from western red cedar and various objects as a way of sharing what happened to survivors and their families, and to bring awareness of it to the country and the world.

“I landed on making a blanket out of solid objects gathered from residential school sites and eventually, that idea expanded out to include objects from the churches, and the government buildings and finally from cultural buildings — from places where we see the resurgence of Indigenous culture. That is what makes up the 886 plus pieces that we gathered,” said Hayalthkin’geme.

The original blanket resides in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, MB, where it is being restored. However, the touring replica is at the Kelowna Art Gallery. Visitors can download a free app on their smartphones called ‘Witness Blanket’ to learn about each part of the installation.

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“With the app they get a lot more information about where [each object] came from because there were 77 communities across Canada that contributed to the blanket here,” said Nataley Nagy, Kelowna Art Gallery executive director.

The Witness Blanket features braids of hair, hockey skates, moccasins, a drum, a Métis sash and the door to the infirmary of St. Michael’s Residential School in Alert Bay.

Read more:

International Indigenous art exhibit to hit Winnipeg’s Qaumajuq next month

“The nature of those pieces being everyday objects that we all encounter. We all have doorknobs, we all have hair, so many of us have memories that are attached to hockey skates or piano keys or moccasins,” said Hayalthkin’geme.

“The objects that are on the blanket aren’t mysteries. They are things that we know and that we might have our own sentimental ideas about. And when those two things converge, when our feelings about time converge with the reality of some of the terrible stories and atrocities … attached to some of those objects on the witness blanket, that creates a connection.”

There is a documentary about the Witness Blanket available for free for anyone that wishes to learn more at www.humanrights.ca  Hayalthkin’geme is on social media.

The Witness Blanket: Touring Reproduction will be at the Kelowna Art Gallery from Jan. 15 to April 10.

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate – Cracked.com

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate  Cracked.com



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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 – CBC.ca

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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96  CBC.ca



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A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last

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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.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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