Indigenous Feminism

 The day after I arrived in Winnipeg, I attended a fabulous workshop/lecture Indigenous Feminisms through Visual Art at MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art). Dr Suzanne McLeod led the group through an inspirational history of Indigenous feminism discussing both past and current work by Indigenous women artists. One of the contemporary artists discussed, KC Adams, who had a public sculpture at The Forks in Winnipeg and I took the opportunity to see it in person. 

Niimaamaa, the title of this collaborative piece, means “mother” in Cree, Ojibwe and Métis languages. It is an outline of a pregnant woman, apparently the first time this subject has been depicted in public sculpture in Canada. 

It is a mixed metal work representative of motherhood and Mother Earth. This sculpture is a collaboration between three Indigenous women: KC Adams, Jaimie Isaac and Val Vint.

Further along the pleasant walk at The Forks one comes across the sculpture Education is the New Bison by Val Vint. 

It is a mostly corten steel sculpture composed of “books”with laser-cut author names and titles that are important to Indigenous culture.

The bison is created from books written by Indigenous authors or allies.

Further along yet again, lies the inspirational corten steel piece by Jaimie Isaac The 8th and Final Fire. 

The tipi-shaped flame at the front continues as a series of echoes as one walks around the sculpture.

The plaque (in several languages, though I have only included the English words) gives a full explanation of the thinking behind the sculpture.

Inuit Sanauganit: Art Across Time

While I was in Winnipeg (Canada) recently, I went to The Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq to see the amazing exhibition Inuit Sanaugangit: Art Across Time. 

The huge exhibition included work by artists spanning from 200 BCE to now, so we decided to start in the smaller, top floor gallery and work our way down. There were a number of sculptures here and walking space around each, in order to view in three dimensions.

The mezzanine-like top floor gallery, allowed me to look down on the main gallery. This view shows only a portion, maybe a third, of what awaited!

The catalogue of work, names and years was far-ranging and included finely decorated weapons, such as this bolus

detailed drawings on horn bone

and utility items such as pipes. It also contained traditional textiles, such as clothing, and I enjoyed earwigging on a school tour to hear some stories and facts related to various works.

This is an enormous exhibition that encompasses Inuit art forms from 200 BCE to now, so it contained traditional older work as well as contemporary work by Inuit artists. 

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition was so huge that it was impossible for me to keep track of new vs old work and artist names.I was always glad of the careful spacing of sculptures, allowing the viewer to see it easily from all vantage points, especially larger ones, such as this, which changed so drastically from one side to the next.

The exhibition included sculpture, drawing, painting, textiles (tapestry and clothing) as well as printmaking. Having recently taken a Japanese woodblock printmaking course. which I blogged about here, I was delighted to see the woodblock displayed with the print allowing me to examine the registration marks and carving techniques. The woodblock carving itself being seen as an artform always makes me think of Canadian artist Paterson Ewen, whose paintings I greatly admire.

rooftop archive 12 - the noughties

I think this might be the last post about the rooftop archive. For my penultimate rooftop archive post visit here and within that post are links to all the previous posts of the archive. Though this sketch is probably from 1991, I forgot to process it and post it in the correct decade of the archive so I decided I would include it in this post anyway! Although it is an undated sketch, I remember creating it in my studio in Toronto before I started the second group of paintings in the My Tower of Strength series. I have long since discarded the rest of the sketchbook (either an A4 or 8.5x11 inch) this sketch manages to survive all my various purges. I used a variety of media to create this sketch – metal leaf, oilstick and some turpentine brushed around some areas of oilstick.

In 2000 or 2001, I was still living in the middle of Bray on Florence Rd and was enjoying creating large plein air sketches in my tiny backyard. In this one I was regarding the upstairs window and the strange pipes surrounding it. I was sketching with watercolours and charoal on paper, 84 cm x 60 cm.

There was also a geranium plant out the back that had managed to survive untended for years before we moved in. Again this is mixed media on paper, 84 cm x 60 cm.

I think this painting of the flower lesser celandine is from 2001 (though I'm not entirely sure). It is untitled, acrylic on card, 88 cm x 50 cm.

One of the reasons I think these works are from 2001 is that I also did a very large painting of dying tulips on canvas that year, before I became pregnant, and these remind me of that work.

untitled, acrylic on card, 88 cm x 50 cm

untitled, acrylic on card, 88 cm x 50 cm

I haven’t eaten any physalis in a long time (I don’t know why) but for awhile I loved the fruit itself and also enjoyed drawing it – I especially loved the material contrast between the solid orange fruit and it’s delicate, papery wrapping. 

untitled, mixed media on paper, 60 cm x 84 cm, 2000

untitled, mixed media on paper, 60 cm x 84 cm, 2000

more from the "Lost" series

I am still working away on my Lost series of contact monoprints. So in addition to what I blogged about here and here, I am posting more in the series. Because the process can be very random, I can never be quite sure if the print is successful until the final lifting of the paper away from the plate. Sometimes I may have either over-inked or under-inked the plate so I put the print to one side to study if there is anything I liked about it and perhaps make more attempts with the specific image. I have limited myself to three tools for mark-making: a sharp pencil, an eraser and an old credit card. These three tools are giving me crisp sharp lines, soft blurs and sharp areas, respectively. I am very happy with my choices! All of the works are the same size, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm (or 18.5 cm x 12.5 cm if they are vertical images), printed on Japanese mulberry paper.

Many things went missing from the shared studio

After thirty years abroad, they never regretted their return home

Despite the isolation, we made the place our home

There were only a few occasions when the whole family was together

The kitchen window offered a great view of visitors in the back yard

lunch pastries

I used to buy spinach pastries from a local bakery to have as my lunch, but then I found that too much salt was added and the poppy seeds were getting annoying as they always stuck in my teeth. I thought it would be simple enough to make them myself and regularly make them to take to work with me for lunch. Store-bought puff pastry makes it easy of course, and a roll of it provides enough pastry dough for four lunch pastries. They freeze well too, so I always make four at a time.

Unroll the puff pastry and cut into four pieces.

Decide on what you want to put inside: slice some cheese (I like cheddar or feta), some pesto (wild garlic is in bloom now, so here is my simple recipe for that!), and cherry tomatoes.

if including spinach (which I sometimes do if I happen to have it), be sure to steam it first in order to get out some of the water. In the past I have also whipped up an egg and divided it between the four pastries.

When the pastries are all folded and closed, I turn up the sides and gently slide the baking paper of pastries onto a cookie tray.

They bake in a preheated oven for about 15 minutes, till nicely browned and puffed. Please note, they do deflate a bit once they are cooled.

Sometimes I add too much cheese, or I have not properly closed the sides and the contents spill out. This is okay as once the pastries cool, any spillage (which is cooked) hardens and can just be cut and included with the pastry in the freezer container, to be re-heated later. These are always delicious and appreciated at lunch!

Patricia Hurl at IMMA

Recently I went to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) to see several exhibitions that were on, but most specifically to see the Patricia Hurl retrospective Irish Gothic. It was a gorgeous day, and the museum was especially welcoming with all the flowers happily in bloom, both on the grounds and in pots surrounding the parking lot.

The night before, I had prepared myself for the exhibition by listening to a conversation between Hurl and fellow Na Cailleacha member, Catherine Marshall (who was formerly a curator at IMMA). The conversation is available at IMMA's SoundCloud page here and is both a witty and insightful hour of chat.

Of course, photos of paintings do not show the urgency of the painting itself, but I was also delighted to see images from Hurl's life and memories, concepts which are close to my own practice.

Each painting had a personal didactic, in which Hurl disussed the work's content in such a way that the audience stepped into the memory and the very essence of the painting. I totally enjoyed reading the didactics as companions to the paintings and Hurl's voice was fresh in my head from listening to the conversation the night before.

As well as the large paintings from the 1980s, there was a plethora of sketchbooks and ephemera on display, along with more current works which were more intimate but nonetheless vital (such as the ageing self-portraits and the Warrior series). I had also seen some of Hurl's current 3D work, with the collective Na Callieacha, last year at a group show Bones in the Attic at the Hugh Lane Dublin Municipal Gallery. I blogged about that show here.

It was wonderful to see Hurl’s work collected together, and most especially great l to re-meet Trick or Treat, a painting that I had first seen at the GPA exhibition in either 1988 or 1989. 

"Lost" series continues

I have been happily working away on the Lost series of monoprints, a new body of work which I first spoke about in detail here. In addition to being happy with my work, I was delighted to receive the recent news that an image of my "breakthrough" print (the rainy bus image included in that first blog about the series) has been chosen to be included in the spring issue of the US literary journal out of University of Pennsylvania, The Penn Review. In the meantime, here are some more images from Lost.

The kids could play at anything in the back yard, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm.

When I was going through the rooftop archives, it was interesting to see that I had attempted, in the late 1990s, to use the gate in front of the house where I lived in Kerry as an artistic motif. I don't think my use of it was successful at that time but it is an image I have come back to. (Look here to see some of the image of the gate from the rooftop archive.)

The gate in front of the house led to a huge field, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 18.5 cm x 12.5 cm. 

Of course, I have used this image before in more recent work - most notably the small linoprints on silk fibre sheets that I made for Memory Is My Homeland (a search of this blog using that title will bring about works in progress as well as a virtual tour of the exhibition at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, in 2022).

Field Gate, Knockeen, image size: approx 6 cm x 7.5 cm, sheet size: approx 20 cm x 26 cm, 

It really is just a blink of the eye, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm. 

The friends of 1975: where are they now?, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm.