UNews - Grant Spotted Bull

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library’s Native American art installation to reflect Blackfoot heritage in surroundings

trevor.kenney — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 17:40:50 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Library is embracing the ‘library as place’ concept, recognizing that library users should see themselves mirrored in their surroundings. To that end, the library is celebrating the installation of three pieces of Native American art and the redevelopment of the Blackfoot Digital Library website.

Grant Spotted Bull's Medicine Wheel series is one of three new pieces of Native American Art to be installed in the U of L Library.

“Our university is located on traditional Blackfoot land and it is important that we respect and honour this heritage,” says Wendy Merkley, associate ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ librarian. “Our students should feel comfortable and welcomed when they come into the library, and that their culture is valued as an integral part of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ community.”

The pieces of art installed in the library include Medicine Wheel, Ten Grandmothers Quilt and Medicine Bundle.

Medicine Wheel – Artist Grant Spotted Bull

Spotted Bull, of Blackfoot heritage and born and raised on the nearby Blood Reserve, is a fourth-year bachelor of fine arts student at the U of L. His piece is a four-painting series that tells the story of colonialism and its effects on First Nations people.

Ten Grandmothers Quilt

The quilt is a collection of 10 key messages from 10 ceremonial women from southern Alberta and Montana. Their messages are about how to live and raise your children in a positive way. The words they share are not their own, but the words of women from many generations before. Collectively, they say to listen and to care for one another through mistakes, through growth and through change. Just as importantly, they advise to always be self-sufficient and to help one another by sharing.

Medicine Bundle – Artist Gordon Monroe

Monroe is a member of the Blackfeet Tribe in northern Montana. He was born in 1946 in Browning, MT on the Blackfeet Reservation. He started work as a sculptor in 1965, and started teaching art at the Blackfeet Community School in 1972. His works centre on themes of dancers, ceremonies and traditional scenes, creating Medicine Bundle in 1979. It was purchased in 1980 by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, through efforts led by professor Alfred Youngman of the Faculty of Fine Arts.

The library is also marking the redevelopment of the Blackfoot Digital Library website. Since 2006, the U of L library has been involved with the Blackfoot Digital Library, helping to gather and digitize artifacts, documents, audiovisual and archival materials. In addition, the library has been a leader in preserving oral histories by digitizing existing interviews and collecting new videos of Elders sharing their knowledge and stories.

“The Blackfoot Digital Library wouldn’t exist without the U of L Library stepping in to give it a permanent home,” says Adrienne Heavy Head, Blackfoot Digital Library liaison. “The digital library is unique in that it is the only indigenous library that focuses on one group of indigenous people and is also created by those people.”

Dream Catcher

david.kirby — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 23:28:13 +0000

Grant Spotted Bull talks in a quiet and reflective tone. From the moment he begins to speak, you get the sense that each of his words is carefully measured. He’s purposeful in what he says, almost as though he’s creating a picture with the use of language – which stands to reason, because Spotted Bull is in fact an artist who draws from himself internally in order to express himself to the world.

Fourth-year student in the Bachelor of Fine Arts - Native American Art Program, Grant Spotted Bull, draws from within himself in order to express himself to the world.

Spotted Bull is a fourth-year student in the Bachelor of Fine Arts – Native American Art program at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge. The U of L library recently acquired four of Spotted Bull’s paintings. Entitled Medicine Wheel Series, the four oil paintings, now adorning the walls of the library’s tenth floor, are the culmination of an idea that had been germinating in Spotted Bull’s mind for more than 20 years.

“The idea for the series came to me in a dream when I was about 19 or 20 years old,” says Spotted Bull. “It was a very vivid image and it stuck with me. I always wanted to create it in painting, but I didn’t have the skills to do it until now.”

Artistic ability comes naturally to Spotted Bull. Although he didn’t have any formal training before his twenties, as a child Spotted Bull says he was constantly doodling – at home, in school, wherever he may be. Both of his parents were artistically inclined, and his maternal grandmother was somewhat of a prodigy.

“My mother told me stories about my grandmother, Mary Eva, and how the nuns thought she should go to school for art back East. Her parents wanted her to marry instead so she put her dreams aside,” he says. “My grandmother has been an inspiration for me. In a way, I feel I am fulfilling my grandmother’s potential.”

Prior to enrolling at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, Spotted Bull had a diverse professional past, working in areas ranging from retail to the automotive industry. He knew he loved art and began feeling compelled to express himself that way in his early twenties, but wasn’t sure about attending university until he discovered the Bachelor of Fine Arts – Native American Art (Art Studio) program at U of L, which was launched last fall.

“The program allows me to express my art in a manner, spirit and meaning that’s deeply understood by other Native American and First Nations artists. It gives me a platform upon which to explore issues that matter to me, and fully invest my time thinking about ways to represent them visually,” says Spotted Bull.

Spotted Bull’s Medicine Wheel Series is an expansion on the medicine wheel he envisioned in his dreams more than two decades ago. He painted four incarnations of the wheel, each measuring approximately six feet square. Titled in order they are: Creation, The Medicine Wheel, Fractured and Post. Each piece is symbolic of a period in First Nations history.

“For me a medicine wheel is about healing, and the series is a way to express the need for that healing,” says Spotted Bull. “Creation is symbolic of the time before the earth was made – a sort of preexistence. The Medicine Wheel represents North America before colonialism, Fractured represents the impact of residential schools and our disconnection from each other and from nature at that time. And the final painting, Post, is reflective of my generation and where things stand today.”

Spotted Bull estimates he spent more than 1,000 hours creating the series. Fractured and Post each took less than two weeks to complete, but The Medicine Wheel took him almost an entire semester to finish. Often he’d be in the studio for up 40 hours at a time with no sleep, working in a kind of trancelike state to get the vision he’d carried for so long out on canvas.

“When I paint it’s very relaxing – it’s almost a meditation,” says Spotted Bull. “When I get in that place, I’m really just a vessel. The work just flows through me.”

As far as the future goes, Spotted Bull’s philosophy is in keeping with his culture and artistic free spirit. He plans to graduate in spring 2015 and isn’t too concerned with where he might go from there.

“In my culture we tend to not look too far into the future. We can prepare for the future, but we don’t know what it will hold. I came to the U of L to gain skills and knowledge. I’ve done that, and I have faith that what I’ve learned will take me where I’m supposed to be.”

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library the perfect home for student art installation

trevor.kenney — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 20:45:15 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Library is embracing the ‘library as place’ concept, recognizing that library users should see themselves mirrored in their surroundings. As part of a ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ situated on traditional Blackfoot land, it was only fitting then that the library found a home for Grant Spotted Bull’s Medicine Wheel Series art installation.

Grant Spotted Bull is a third-year bachelor of fine arts student at the U of L.

Spotted Bull, of Blackfoot heritage and born and raised on the nearby Blood Reserve, is a third-year bachelor of fine arts student at the U of L. His work speaks to the ideal of library as place.

“Grant’s paintings reflect where we are situated – in the heart of Blackfoot territory,” says Andrea Glover, Native American Studies librarian. “The work enriches the library space, reflects the diversity of our users, stimulates discussions about cultural memory and preserves a unique legacy.”

Married (Suzanne Williams Spotted Bull) and a father to four children (Christopher, Colten, Jessica and Tyler), Spotted Bull draws his talent and inspiration from his ancestors, namely his maternal grandmother Mary Eva Spotted Bull.

“My mother told me stories about Mary Eva and how the nuns thought she should go to school for art back east. Her parents wanted her to marry instead so she put her dreams aside,” says Spotted Bull. “Many of her children and grandchildren possess the same artistic talents. I feel blessed to be fulfilling my dreams by attending the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.”

The four-painting series, located on Level 10 of the library, tells the story of colonialism and its effects on First Nations people.

He explains the four-painting series, located on Level 10 of the library, as telling the story of colonialism and its effects on First Nations people.

“I had a dream a few years before I became a student,” he says. “In the dream I recall seeing an image, which I interpreted as a medicine wheel. I captured the image on watercolour paper using pencil crayons as my medium. It has an ethereal feel to it, with wisps of colours undulating like a flame of smoke.”

He then re-created the work as a much larger oil painting. It would eventually spawn a series.

“With no intentions of creating further interpretations, the foundation for the series began as one painting,” he says. “The painting I have called Pre is a reference to pre-colonial contact between Europeans and those of the Americas. The Fractured paintings symbolize the residential school era and the effects it had on the family as a whole. The Post paintings represent my generation, or those of us who did not experience residential school for ourselves. Lack of identity, alcoholism, physical, mental and sexual abuse are some of the issues many have experienced as a result of their parents, grandparents and great grandparents being forced to attend residential school.”

Jon Oxley, administrative manager of the U of L Art Gallery, says the series is both poignant and personal.

“These artworks are powerful, and have an incredible presence. His artwork speaks to some very timely social and political issues in Canada.”

Provoking discussion and reflecting the heritage of the Blackfoot people, the series is an ideal reflection of the library as place concept.

“We are proud to have this representation of indigenous knowledge in the Library,” says ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Librarian, Dr. Chris Nicol.

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