Lasting Images - Daphne Odjig

trevor.kenney — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:04:46 +0000

As an Art History/Museum studies major, I have studied numerous types of art and artists. Over the last three years, some of the most influential courses I have taken are from the Native American Studies (NAS) Department.

It was in a NAS course that I was able to view significant First Nations Métis Inuit (FNMI) works from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Gallery Collection. With the rest of my class, I was able to view works by Alex Janvier, Norval Morriseau and Daphne Odjig. All of these artists were members of the Professional National Indian Artists Inc., a group that the media famously labelled, "the Indian Group of Seven." Out of these three artists, the one who stood out the most, in my opinion, was Odjig, because of her graphic style and organic forms. As I further researched her and her work, I became aware of Odjig's positive impact on the arts in Canada.

Born in Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island, this self-taught, half Pottawatomi, half English artist is known for painting, drawing, collage and printmaking. Odjig's images depict stories and beliefs from her culture. In addition to creating art, Odjig has been branded as the unofficial Ambassador of First Nations Culture within Canada because of her constant promotion of FNMI art and artists throughout the country. Odjig owned and operated Odjig Prints of Canada and the Warehouse Gallery, and was a co-founder and recruiter of the Professional Indian Artists Incorporation. Morgan Wood has noted that Odjig's goal in life has been "to keep the stories and beliefs alive and circulating for people to come and to inspire other artists to exhibit their culture-based works." It is because of her commitment to support artists and successfully exhibit her own work that Odjig's prints are some of my favourite works in the Gallery's collection.

Emily McCormick,
Museum Studies Intern, Department of Art

Featured artist: Carl Beam (1943-2005)

trevor.kenney — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:22:11 +0000

Carl Beam was an internationally acclaimed contemporary Canadian artist of Ojibway descent, whose work will survive as a milestone in the development of the Canadian Aboriginal voice on the international art scene.

Beam was born in 1943 at M'Chigeeng (West Bay) on Manitoulin Island. As a child he was sent to the Garnier Residential School in Spanish, an awful experience that would influence some of the powerful imagery used in his later work.

Beam studied at the Kootenay School of Art, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Victoria (where he earned a BFA in 1974) and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta. In 1986, the National Gallery of Canada was the first of the major Canadian galleries to recognize Beam's work with the purchase of The North American Iceberg. From 1983–1992 his work was included in all the landmark exhibitions that altered the segregation of aboriginal art in Canada.

Beam's works can be read as juxtapositions between long held perceptions and challenging alternatives. Early influences during his formal studies included Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. His well known, appropriated images (a pieta, an embryo, Abraham Lincoln, Sitting Bull, a crow, the Pinta and Maria, and Einstein, among others) were cross-cultural symbols that he utilized to convey a universal message about the environment and the relationship between man, nature and the passage of time.

With a linear pattern or formal grid, he tried to visually create the fourth dimension in his work, a spiritual space inhabited by a quiet intellect. That he was an artist of native and white heritage added to the scope of the complex subjects he chose.

Beam's work, executed in diverse media such as drawing, watercolour, etching, non-silver photography, photo transfer, collage, installation and ceramics, has been exhibited throughout North America as well as in Italy, Denmark, Germany and China. It is found in major Canadian and international collections including
the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Gallery and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y.

In 2000, Beam was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, and in 2005 he received the Governor General's Award in Visual Art and Media. He died July 30, 2005, of complications arising from diabetes.

UNews - Manitoulin Island

Lasting Images - Daphne Odjig

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Featured artist: Carl Beam (1943-2005)

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