0:00

okay well i guess we’re live now um one of the first things i’d like to

0:07

do is like thank thank you cruz and thank you judy for being here with me today and doing some

0:14

beads and chats i’m really i’ve i have um

0:20

a pre-existing relationship with judy we run into each other at conferences and

0:25

she’s been very generous and this has been like a really great opportunity to meet you as well cruz and get to know

0:30

you better i know your mom like i hang out with your mom a lot so kind of uh it’s fun meeting people

0:39

like around my own age who are doing super cool amazing inspiring things so

0:45

yeah um so first things first i do have to uh talk about um lovely people who are

0:54

funding these series the heart and soul fund by epcor was created to support

0:59

organizations that bring joy to our community and provide a lifeline to those in need

1:04

it is designed to help the arts community and charitable organizations build resilience and deliver programming that uplifts

1:11

edmontonians that is a um so speed and chats

1:17

has been uh made possible through support from heart and soul the heart and soul fund from epcor so

1:25

if you want to learn more go to epcor slash heart and soul fund um to to hear more about it and see what

1:32

else is happening because of that great initiative um and so

1:38

i will start off and introduce myself i just kind of started rambling so for those of you who are

1:44

in the audience um my name is francesca hebert spence i am the well i was previously the junk

1:50

curator at the art gallery of alberta i am one of four curators on the

1:55

borderline biennial contemporary art 2020 um my colleagues sandra fraser lindsay sharman

2:04

and felicia gay are the the three other curators who were on the project and are

2:09

associated with the art gallery of alberta the rainy modern in saskatchewan and

2:15

um felicia’s at the mackenzie right now so yeah it’s a multi-multi-diverse

2:24

uh team of individuals um and it was a really great opportunity to work with

2:30

some spectacular folks and and learn more um as as an emerging curator and so the

2:37

project that we worked on was borderline and um the

2:43

borderline in edmonton has since closed because of the provincial wide closures

2:49

um but the work at the re rainy modern is still up and that is where judy and chris’s um

2:57

work is on display and so they’ll introduce themselves and then we’ll start talking about the work that is presented up above

3:04

um that is and while we’re beating so yes

3:12

if you’d like to ask thank you francesca it’s really great to be uh here doing this thing i can’t do with

3:19

both in okay so uh tensei judy anderson at sega song as a nikki how guest on this land from

3:25

the gordon first nations treaty for our territory saskatchewan i’d like to take this opportunity to

3:31

acknowledge the ancestors of this land so i’m living in calgary right now so the traditional territories of the people of the treaty seven region

3:37

in southern alberta which includes the black foot confederacy comprising of the sixtica the pakani and the kainai first nations

3:44

as well as sutina first nations and the estonian dakota which includes the chinooky bears pawn wesley first nations

3:51

and the city of calgary is also home to the metis nation of alberta region 3.

3:58

hey my name is cruz anderson and uh i’m from the george gordon first nation just like

4:04

my mom and you work in

4:09

uh kind of art yeah art

4:16

yes yeah okay well um i can pull up the slide again and if

4:23

you guys want to talk a little bit about your work

4:28

and a little bit of do we want to start talking about like

4:34

intergenerational collaborations or do we want to start talking about um the names of your work and

4:40

how that has come about and then we can also just start getting into the beating and the making while we’re having that

4:47

discussion sure how about we start with um talking about the the titles maybe the

4:53

work specifically because um as i was saying to cruz cruz like i didn’t i’m clear obviously but um tell us what

5:00

you work in with your art this will probably be a nicer lead-in to talk about that stuff

5:05

hey i have a question so i see that there are there are 14 people here but is there any way that we get to see them

5:11

too or do they just listen i think they just listen um they’re

5:16

they’re individuals that can type into the chat um and so that’s how folks can

5:24

um interact but the um i don’t think their screens

5:31

can pop up unless they request access okay thanks it’s not like a traditional zoo yeah

5:39

okay yeah fabulous okay you can see people’s names if you want to call out to folks um you can see their

5:47

names yes if you go to uh attempties

5:54

i’m not entirely sure if people should know that or not okay here we go

6:03

okay cool okay okay so do i so we’ll discuss the

6:12

titles first of the the piece that’s showing in there so um i’ll just say that the uh so what we’re

6:19

doing is that the pieces are actually having a conversation and what we wound up doing is we wound up using um

6:25

cree to to say these uh statements that we wanted to make um so what i wound up using was um

6:33

plains crease that’s the dialect that i come from and i wound up

6:38

writing my phrase in syllabics and i don’t have the title of like i don’t actually

6:44

use the word that i um or the phrase that i have in the syllabics in the

6:50

title of the work um i think partly because i um because i think partly because i want

6:57

people to hopefully do the work to find out what that what the phrase is um because i’m

7:05

because i’m really well we’ll talk about this a little bit more but because we’re really talking about this um

7:11

disconnect from our languages and then also understanding each other as human beings and so they’re actually

7:19

phrases that um evoke emotion so the title for the bare one

7:25

is i’ve seen him this way and how we wound up doing it was um

7:30

the and you can jump in whenever you want crews we wound up doing is that the animals

7:35

that we we chose so the bear on there is related to cruise and then the cayute is related to me

7:42

and so we each came up with a phrase and so my phrase on the

7:49

should i just tell them what it says in real life sure okay so my phrase actually says i’m

7:55

homesick and so it’s about emotions and then how in for me anyways because cruz has a

8:03

lot of other things that he likes to say about the work but for me it’s about how we don’t always speak about our emotions or we’re

8:09

not really in tune with each other’s emotions or you know emotions are just a and i’m going to put this in our quotes like

8:15

difficult thing for people to manage and so having that break between understanding what that says and

8:21

and uh hearing it or feeling it as the person taking it so my the beadwork that’s on

8:28

the coyote it’s in the shape of saskatchewan so i’m from saskatchewan and i live in alberta and while i love living here and

8:33

i’m happy that i’m an invited guest i also am always homesick for

8:38

saskatchewan and periodically quite often actually it’s just i’ll just have this

8:43

sense of home or i’ll think of home and this voice in the back of my head says i

8:49

want to go home right even though i’m even though i’m here i still have that like

8:54

that real sense of like groundedness to the prairies in saskatchewan and so um

9:01

what cruz wound up doing was he responded to my my phrase i’m homesick

9:08

with and you can talk about your half uh

9:16

so i guess just to kind of go back on the on the work the uh when we were first

9:23

kind of starting talking about the uh these pieces um it started with language

9:30

and um kind of like the the disconnect between our uh our language and it was actually out

9:36

of fast uh back in saskatchewan like maybe four or five years ago

9:42

um we were just like on a on a day when people were out we were

9:48

just kind of sitting around and looking through some books that were on the porch of the

9:53

land that we were on and there was a a little pocketbook uh cree

10:00

uh yeah it’s a it’s a little cree like a pocket book like for uh phrases

10:06

and stuff and so just kind of like flipping through it and um it’s something that

10:12

like you know if it’s in french it’s like you know like where do where’s the bathroom you know like uh bread cheese you know whatever um

10:20

but for this this creep pocket book it was like these really like uh extreme phrases

10:26

um throughout most of the book like i’m depressed i’m afraid of the dogs like

10:32

[Music] and like catastrophic emotions to just

10:38

like normal emotions and stuff and i thought that that was really like a powerful um just

10:47

book to have for our language that’s not really reflected in other languages um so we kind of went through and uh

10:55

and uh there’s in like verb conjugation like uh i guess he i you know like uh

11:03

and grammar and stuff and so we uh we we used um some of the phrases that

11:09

were in the book like the very extreme emotional phrases uh that work that we

11:15

felt kind of reflected our our situations um and uh the the

11:23

words are in uh korea in our in our artwork and um but when we

11:30

kind of uh i guess showed the text in our artwork we tried to abstract it

11:35

the way that um kind of the way these words are kind of hard to access uh

11:42

in our in our culture as well so my mind say uh i’m having a hard time dealing with my

11:47

emotions and uh no it says i’m angry

11:53

no oh yeah we’re learning new things here and uh

12:00

and then my mom says uh she is having a hard time dealing with those emotions

12:06

and then uh her say i’m homesick and might say she is homesick so they’re kind of speaking

12:11

to each other uh and then um yeah that’s kind of how it started

12:19

with the text and then we thought that the uh the like the bears close to me and uh

12:27

and the coyotes close to my mom so we thought that these kind of fur furs would kind of symbolize our

12:35

their role as protectors of each other and then they’re in conversation with one another

12:40

uh kind of dealing with these emotions so the other thing i want to add too is

12:46

that well while we say in english that my response to his piece is

12:52

he is having a hard time dealing with his emotions that there’s no gender in in there so it’s more like

12:58

that person something like that right as opposed to he specifically

13:04

yeah but i does exist so it says i am i and they yeah yeah and then also cruz

13:11

chose to work with his in swampycree oh yeah the book so the book just said pocketbook cree

13:17

and as we were going through it um so so basically the book that so i i use

13:25

the swampy creek because that’s what was in the book because i thought that like as a cree person uh just picking up a book

13:31

like that’s just the crew you’re exposed to whether it’s uh your career or not so i thought that

13:38

that was good to include as well yeah this interesting conversation about access

13:44

and and also engaging with language um

13:50

joy arcane’s work is about a lot of that and so to see the similarities and to see like

13:55

the rhythms or resonance with that is really lovely um

14:00

yeah i i also like meant to preface this production oh god i have a stick that

14:06

has a box tape to it for when we start beading um and it just

14:11

fell on the floor so we’ll just ignore that um but the one of the reasons i wanted to have

14:19

a conversation with uh judy you and and cruz um is

14:25

is because i’ve been [Music] i don’t know if the word enamored this

14:31

it’s also interesting to discuss like the different words for emotions and like the depths and intensity of

14:37

emotions because we spend a lot of time kind of batting around them to to

14:43

take away the intensity to not be overly emotional um but yeah i’ve really

14:52

really enjoyed or respected um and just been really curious i don’t

14:59

even know if that’s the right word of of your work as collaborators um

15:04

both as like family who works together but um for example

15:12

um the work that was indeed speak on the exploit rope and like making this

15:19

work to feel closer to each other during like what is a really difficult time and like most

15:24

most people’s lives when you’re a teenager and you’re interacting with your parents there is like this uh tension that exists and like you’re

15:33

becoming an adult and an independent human and there’s also like this concern and care

15:38

um but like a growing acceptance that happens and so to see like this

15:44

process manifested into an artwork it was like a really beautiful moment and these um

15:50

this this growing not pattern but um for example like

15:57

one of the things that i state in my bio is that um makotowin or kinship is like my

16:02

process of moving through like curatorial spaces or institutional spaces um

16:08

but what happens when you have like when you are working with family um because like my my process is to like

16:16

search for like what are my obligations and to learn those things um but like you guys enact that

16:24

when you work together and that’s really something that i find really beautiful and inspiring um so i was just hoping to

16:33

talk a little bit about all of that today and talk about yeah

16:41

um thank you thank you for those words um what i was gonna say is that um what i have to do is i have to

16:47

acknowledge um the fast so all of all of this work

16:52

all the work that i do and i’m i’m going to say probably most of my practice comes from

16:57

spirituality and it’s come from that place so it all started the work

17:02

with cruz all started with the fast um i went to when we fast

17:08

we’re um told that you don’t go out for yourself and so you have to go out for somebody else in this in this particular

17:14

fast i wound up going out for my youngest son brielle and so while i was because he got sick

17:20

all the time right and so well well i was out there fasting as because you’re praying and you’re thinking and

17:25

and all of that um i was told he was going to be okay real’s gonna be fine and it was crews

17:32

that i needed to worry about and the thing is that you know like he was coming into his teenage years

17:37

and we thought everything was okay because you know kids they don’t tell you everything that’s going on right we

17:43

can all go back to what we kept from our parents at some point in our lives right some

17:48

good stories he tells me some of those now and i’m just like no no no i don’t want to know that skateboarding keep them cheers

17:55

[Laughter] so things like that right but so at that

18:00

time so we had to take a i had to take a closer look at cruz and see you know like what the what was going on and

18:06

and why he needed to be honored and then i had to think about in what ways could i honor him

18:11

than what was already happening and i thought well putting him in my work and so i started um honoring him in my

18:19

work when he was about 12 and then he was getting into and so but that was like in my practice like i was

18:25

thinking about me and i putting a little bit of him into it and i wasn’t thinking about him as this whole

18:31

human being um so then what i started to do is i started to think about well how could i honor cruz more based on who

18:39

he is at that time and so that’s how exploit rogue came out because he was a

18:44

budding graffiti artist uh not he wasn’t he wasn’t very good uh at that time

18:51

but but at the same time everybody starts out there no matter what they’re doing right and so and i

18:57

thought this was a really important time in his life and also if we looked at traditional uh

19:02

ways of being for indigenous people back then at that time he would have been he would have been in deep training for

19:08

you know becoming a man but in this society here today we don’t do that you know children are in school and they’re

19:14

told to sit still and whatnot and we’re not really teaching them based on their gifts you know we’re teaching them

19:21

the things that they need to know but not based on their gifts so you know i could see that in even if he

19:27

wasn’t that great at graffiti there was a gift in there right like so and and there was a place where he

19:33

at least as you can speak to this in a second but where i felt that he found acceptance was in you know in

19:39

those letters that he was building and in the in the colors and and that he was experimenting with and whatnot

19:44

and so i couldn’t you know say just because i don’t want you to be a graffiti artist doesn’t mean that you

19:49

can’t be one right and then and so i had to like really switch and think about like how graffiti is in art

19:56

and and hold crews up because of that and so that’s how that piece came to be yeah yeah

20:06

but i didn’t get it done so it was its first burner from when you from when you were about 12 or 14 right yeah yeah it

20:11

was just a drawing that i did when i was very young and then and then

20:17

i beaded it and then it took me probably from start to finish like definitely took about like if i put all

20:23

the smashed all the hours together probably six months full time but i think it took me about a year and a half to make

20:29

oh wow so he was about you were 18 when it went up in that first exhibition right

20:34

17 17 when it went up and so i have pictures of him that i always show of because that’s when it went up and it

20:41

was super cool because he was pretty proud yeah yeah that’s cool out of

20:48

yeah yeah and then from there so then what happened though is that he wound up switching to i think lads in

20:55

the audience um he so he got mr fogerty he’s i never used to call him loud it was always just

21:01

mr fogerty so he went he went to school at um campbell collegiate in regina and he got

21:08

mr fogerty as a art teacher who was like an amazing man um yeah really really uh really pushed

21:16

cruz’s art and really helped his career and whatnot right and so that’s when we actually started

21:21

collaborating together because they went on a um trip to new york and we did fundraiser

21:27

and that was the first time we did yeah like collaboration yeah yeah and chris did this painting uh he

21:34

started to paint with graffiti in the style of picasso and so we got he did the

21:40

reason i’m smiling because i love the title that he chose for this little painting is called it was you can say it

21:45

oh it was uh so i was like really into the picasso and like

21:50

the cubism uh stuff in high school and uh they kind of abstracted

21:56

from life to make those kind of compositions and so i just did the same thing but with uh graffiti letters instead of

22:04

like figures or still lifes and uh the first painting i did i just called it if picasso wrote because

22:12

writing is you know you call like doing graffiti writing yeah and then and then i did a

22:18

beaded copy of it smaller but a copy of it and then i my title was i was just like totally

22:23

taking all the coolness

22:28

yes if picasso beated what he wrote so like the iterations and these

22:35

conversations that are happening between you guys as as artists and as artists that like respect one another

22:41

yeah and uh respect your practices which is really lovely yeah and so oh i’m gonna add this and

22:47

sorry i’m just like jump in now i’m just gonna keep talking and so what i found is like so we wound up we’ve done a bunch of collaborations

22:54

and what we’ve done for most of our collaborations has been for donations to fundraisers and uh what we do is

23:02

we’ll he’ll do a graffiti piece and then i’ll beat it and then it always has some kind of like

23:07

cheeky title so i like because i think cruz is really really really good at that

23:13

and so that’s what we continue doing which should bring us back to which we didn’t finish saying was like for the

23:19

piece that’s showing in the rainy is the title so i’d like cruz to talk about the title for his piece because i

23:24

think it’s pretty pretty good oh yeah do you want to

23:30

talk about that right now yeah yeah so uh

23:38

so for the the pieces in the raymie um uh my mom went with uh what were your

23:46

your titles they they were more poetic and kind of longer the way that she uh kind of titles her

23:51

work um but when we were kind of thinking of the

23:58

pieces and like kind of putting them all together um the kind of objects that

24:04

were going to hold the text we were considering like uh how they would be displayed um in a

24:12

museum or in like an art gallery and typically indigenous objects are displayed under glass

24:20

with very little like information and they don’t usually have titles they’re usually just

24:26

descriptive words to talk about their history you know so we wanted to kind of uh oh and

24:33

usually like paintings like michelangelo or whatever are are hung with like titles and

24:41

uh not under glass they’re shown as artworks uh so we wanted to kind of have a

24:48

conversation with that in the artwork so we um i made kind of very european

24:54

uh traditional uh artwork so like gold leaf paneling

25:00

with with the cree words and so we wanted to put those european objects under glass the way

25:05

that the indigenous objects are and then i just used titles uh i just

25:12

went on the glenbo website and looked at some of the indigenous stuff and i just copied their

25:17

like kind of formatting for titling indigenous artwork so it was just a descriptive word like

25:22

gold leaf panel and then they usually put the type of indigenous so i just put

25:28

cree um 21st century and then uh listed the materials

25:36

like gold coldly like panel wood whatever on fur and then there’s always an item

25:42

number to go with um to go with like the objects like one two

25:49

three four five a b c you know um and that’s usually actually i think

25:55

where the title of the work is it’s just like a number like a barcode um so i just made up some item numbers

26:01

for them uh which they’re the titles of the work and it’d be a 420-a and 420-b

26:12

it’s really interesting um like working in uh a couple of different institutions

26:19

there are definitely like works if i had to

26:24

well first of all like you learn like either when the work was acquired

26:29

like you learned how to glean information out of like those accession numbers and so um you either like if you know

26:37

the donor numbers if you remember the donor numbers if you’ve worked enough in the database um you can also like remember

26:45

like know what date it was brought into the collection you can usually tell um if it’s a donation or not and so it’s

26:52

like it is like a second language yeah um and this idea of like categorizing works and like

26:58

when you have those numbers on the very end you realize that it was either like a large purchase or a large donation

27:05

um and so it has to do with like the provenance and so this like musiological aspect of the

27:12

work um is really quite interesting because it does speak

27:18

to a specific way of being that’s also just like widely accepted um

27:25

and and to and kind of calls out the fact that we do need to be doing the work of finding like more appropriate or

27:32

respectful ways of identifying work that has no provenance um and what is the labor that we have to

27:39

do when we bring in work where we don’t know the community and we don’t know the maker and how do we honor people who have made

27:47

these works who’ve made these these um yeah like these

27:53

these really precious um i don’t want to even call them objects

27:59

that have like lived i have lived lives and somehow like ended up in these spaces

28:06

um and how do we access them do i need to know the secret code to like be able to clean that

28:12

information um how how do we get access to these institutions

28:18

to to spend time with our works and so the title of um

28:24

she is homesick like that just like

28:30

there’s like a heart clench there’s a different word for it but like it’s like a little squeeze of

28:36

when there’s so many like lonely objects and vaults

28:42

there’s so many like lonely pieces and and the nature of institutions

28:47

is to collect more and to have like an encyclopedic collection

28:53

and what would it mean if we create a deeper relationships with everything

28:58

that we had and so there’s like this really beautiful sorry i’m like just going off

29:05

on a rant now no you’re saying some really sweet things because i just want to comment to

29:10

the one thing about that loneliness in the in within the collections right because

29:16

that you’re really putting spirit to the to the pieces and i think that you know when indigenous people make

29:22

work there’s definitely spirit in there and so i’m going to use an example so uh catherine boyer

29:28

super good friend of ours yours and mine right so i’ll fight for her no just kidding

29:35

i like her more i love her the most oh but i think i oh did you just say i

29:42

love her the most yeah you totally beat me i was just gonna say yeah but i love her

29:48

she had it she had a piece collected uh two two years ago maybe bite by um the td

29:54

bank which is really nice piece and then i recently had some work collected by the td bank and when i let her know i said now our pieces

30:01

are together so they won’t be lonely you know so there’s that like sense of that you know spiritness

30:07

and in the work because definitely i’m putting that into my work and i know she does as well and then the other thing this is a

30:13

little more cheekier but i was going to say if you look at the succession number for cruises piece you can tell that it’s a

30:21

little less your date your number 420a

30:27

and you’re right i did not notice that i am

30:36

am a square sometimes did not even question it well he said it

30:41

in such a deadpan way just let it kind of slide on by so the other thing that i wanted to

30:46

mention though like based on that work and what cruz was talking about um what kind of goes off of it is that

30:52

we we were very deliberate like everybody when they’re making art on choosing our materials

30:57

and so he wound up working with um gold but i’ll talk about mine first and then i’ll maybe get him to answer that sorry

31:03

that i’m running that um so i did so i wanted doing mine in

31:09

in copper so two different colors of copper and so i was thinking about like the

31:15

idea of this precious metal and in which metal is is precious to who

31:20

and in what ways people wind up working right so for indigenous people copper is like

31:26

yeah right so we love we love copper so but then cruz’s response was in gold

31:34

yeah to kind of go with the like the eurocentricity of the

31:40

work i was creating to talk about like that making that

31:47

legacy of like making and yeah yeah then also you said something

31:52

about like when you were working in gold before um remember when we had that show on sultan oh yeah and you had talked about

31:59

how putting it in gold and putting it into collection [Music] elevates or talking about elevating oh

32:06

that’s i guess that’s graffiti yeah that was a different piece okay never mind it was super cool though

32:12

i was gonna say it does make sense if you’ve been working within a graffiti practice and i think this also speaks to

32:18

like bead work and and customary practices in general where like you there is a conversation

32:26

about like is this an art object like the fact that there are entire bodies um entire exhibitions by

32:34

artists that we would never at any point would think that like an institution would question but there’s definitely

32:40

stories of people like of curators having to justify like solo exhibitions of indigenous folks as

32:47

work because it wasn’t recognized as artwork um

32:52

and i’m really fortunate to be in a position

32:59

where because of my qualifications because of like my experience i haven’t had as like i haven’t had

33:06

similar experiences but like there’s stories that um that have been shared with me and so i

33:12

don’t think it’s like entirely a um something that no longer exists

33:19

um and so to this this discussion about like what is

33:26

art what is considered art what is art making and and and to do sly little things

33:33

like uh having it like coated in gold like that’s that’s a kind of like a cheeky way to be

33:40

like if you didn’t think it’s valuable there’s some gold on it there you go now

33:45

it’s shiny you’ll like it um if i could i would like curate an

33:51

exhibition on beaded earrings mostly because i have a giant giant collection of beaded earrings by

33:58

like so many beautiful amazing artists and there’s so many artists who have

34:03

working galleries that are also selling like commercial beaded earrings in the same gallery

34:11

shops and like one of them one of those things is considered art and then the other

34:16

isn’t right and so this conversation about production and about

34:24

accessibility um i’ve started my phd we had an entire

34:29

thing on marxism and capitalism i haven’t gotten it out of me it’s like

34:35

invasive this is how people become marxists um but but yeah like how do we

34:43

how does our taste dictate like how what we deem cultural production with like a

34:49

capital a art um and how do we as artists

34:55

speak back to that how do we as cultural producers speak back to that um and especially like using copper like

35:01

having the cultural nuance behind that and and understanding that like it’s a really powerful material

35:09

um it we are constantly speaking in code

35:16

and we’re constantly speaking to one another um and so

35:23

when you have that like resonance with another artist or with another um with a

35:29

doctor or like a writer i think like it’s just very important to continue

35:38

like fostering and facilitating those things and that it’s like myself i’m i get very stressed out

35:45

when i’m writing about things get really like nervous on video as you can tell

35:51

but when we have conversations um it provides people more access

35:58

to to understanding like why it’s important or like that affirmation of like

36:03

this is something that like you and cruz talk about too like that’s really lovely to know that

36:11

i’m not just some weirdo in a corner that’s thinking about these things and um yeah i just

36:19

wanted to i feel like so many attitudes yeah so i think like so many people are thinking about things like that so like

36:26

when you mention that you know how the earrings are being sold in the shop and then how the work is being shown in the gallery i think like

36:31

catherine blackburn is an excellent example of that right so she’s yeah she’s in alberta as you

36:37

know and then do they do they have her earrings or her beautiful work in at the aga in the in the shop i don’t think they

36:44

have katherine blackburn’s last time i was there it’s not in the shop but um the earrings that i’m wearing are

36:52

made by one of the um one of the tour guides

36:58

i am forgetting her right name right now um but she’s she’s brilliant

37:05

and really talented and just like beaded hats as well and um it’s just very

37:13

interesting to see that delineation but catherine blackburn was also selling her

37:19

work at the national gallery at the same time that she was in abu dhabi and so

37:25

to see like those those conversations i definitely bought a pair of earrings from the shop while i

37:31

was there but um yeah i just

37:36

this idea of like adornment and also just being able to carry

37:42

your community with you um you’re wearing like a bethany yellow

37:47

tail shirt like blazer yes

37:52

and like the decisions that we make when we go into these spaces um and how

37:59

like we arm ourselves and protect ourselves and they’re all very intentional yes

38:06

also the elk tooth necklace i didn’t notice it before no it’s actually tight

38:12

yeah they’re getting along

38:18

that’s that’s good yes well i was going to say that catherine blackburn is um her work is selling in the remy gallery

38:27

yes and say just turn that off just turn it off um it’s showing in the gallery and i see that i’m just going to

38:32

answer there’s in the question there’s a there’s a uh or sorry in the chat there’s a question it’s from

38:39

belinda and she said can you talk about your thoughts and around integrating animal hide slash fur

38:45

into your work are there protocols around the use concerns do you want to answer that first uh

38:55

are there protocols integrating well we get all our furs

39:01

from uh laurange where my dad’s from uh from the uh robertson training company they uh kind

39:09

of buy furs from the indigenous folk who are out uh hunting and trapping

39:14

so i think it’s a pretty ethical way of uh getting the furs we’re not just buying them from a big company

39:21

and i think indigenous people usually have the go-ahead to put fur in

39:26

their work um no matter what because it’s been traditional to us for so long in a part

39:33

of our culture so i am so i have a teacher

39:39

and i always asked her i’d always go to her with my ideas for my work just to make sure that i wasn’t breaking any

39:45

protocol and i don’t know i don’t know what i what art piece i was on and so i one

39:52

turn i said okay maria this is what i this is what i want to do can i do it and and then she said yes

39:58

you can do that and then she looked at me really hard in the eyes and she said judy i give you blanket permission

40:06

to work in the way that you want to because i know i will follow we will do things in a good way and that

40:12

your heart is in the right place and so even though every time i still come up with an idea i’m just like okay

40:18

i’m sending this to to uh maria on the on the waves and if anything happens so

40:24

if i get a message back from her on the waves and i won’t do it so um

40:29

so that yeah definitely really um i think that it would be better if we could go straight to the

40:35

source for our for the furs and and the hides that we use but what we’ve decided to do is to

40:42

go in the best way that we can right and so while robertson is the middle man we

40:48

know that indigenous people are supplying supplying the work or supplying the furs

40:54

and whatnot so that’s what we’re doing so we’re like being down south it’s um more difficult to wind up contacting the

41:01

people that do that yeah yeah hopefully

41:06

did we kind of answer your question belinda

41:15

oh okay she’s asking about the symbolism well thank we got into ethics that’s

41:22

a place to start so it was really funny i actually started working with um

41:27

fur in my work on the um in the honoring work that i did so like

41:32

if anybody’s familiar with the um maria campbell halfway box i did then

41:37

then i did uh real’s helmet so my youngest son’s helmet and then a few other people so linda

41:43

duvall sheila norris my best friend i always have to say that my bff uh

41:51

brendan mcdougall and then he said i’m missing um at any rate in those works that’s what i

41:57

really started to use for and it was kind of like not a non-intentional thing it

42:02

happened by accident uh i was working on actually i wound up buying an otter and

42:09

i kind of didn’t know why i bought it and so i was at robertson’s and i found this otter and i loved it and i thought it was beautiful and i bought it and i just

42:15

brought it home and and there and as you all might know it fur is very expensive

42:21

and so i kind of felt like oh what did you do why’d you buy this and but then it worked itself into the

42:27

work it worked itself into that piece with brielle and it wasn’t that i was forcing it it was just kind of like it moved its

42:33

way slowly into the work like it was sitting here and then all of a sudden it got a little closer and a little closer and then it wrapped itself around that

42:39

piece and i was like yeah because at that time my um he was doing a lot of swimming and he just

42:45

reminded me of an otter and like because he he swims better underwater than he does above water so

42:50

he’ll float on his back and would chat with me and whatnot but then spent most of his time under

42:56

and so i felt that there was this like real correlation to him in that otter and then it started working itself out

43:01

in that manner so i i don’t know i was someplace and i picked up this this fur and i said this is sheila you

43:07

know and then so it just kind of kept kept moving itself into that way so

43:13

when i when i work with it it’s um it’s it’s kind of how i feel about that person not that that not in the same way

43:20

like with real where i said like real is in the water and um you know reminded me

43:25

of an otter and what not but in the way that just like for some reason that that animal

43:30

really seemed to match that person you know not in how they looked or anything but yeah in that way so when

43:37

we’re working with this work specifically and because we were talking so personally about our feelings and

43:42

sharing those feelings we wanted to um show ourselves and so um so people do know the hack

43:49

read book um that i made for maria the is and from her parts of me emerged

43:55

and so in that it’s like it looks like a book and then out of it comes the the kaiut and so from not just from her

44:02

book from but from who she is as a as a human being i i wound up discovering stuff about myself and so that kind of

44:09

represented me and then so in this work in the same way

44:16

no that’s good okay yeah and he’s a bear

44:23

spiritually spiritually a bear not very hairy yeah [Laughter]

44:31

um yeah it also like is an interesting question because um especially in the

44:39

first way that we we had like understood that question

44:44

was um how do we have access to to that fur

44:51

and and to to that to that being um i don’t know i feel like the

44:58

questions around like materials and materiality aren’t posed in the same way to like non-indigenous

45:04

makers um like the reason why we use for the reason why we use like this

45:09

particular fox and um why do you use beads when you

45:15

could paint beads you could be christy belcourt and like make giant paintings of like what you

45:21

want to be um i think there’s a lot more questions and a lot more um

45:31

like presumed like there’s a

45:38

either like a presumed presumption that there’s a story or that there is there has to be

45:45

um a reason for it to to make it valid and so i think i don’t know if this was

45:53

like a conversation i had with you guys last week or if it was somebody else but like at what point can we make things because

45:59

we want to make them um at what point can we make a work for judy thinking about judy and and to

46:07

make these decisions based on our feelings towards judy and to like make intuitive decisions

46:14

um when can we paint a flower and it can just be a flower

46:22

um not not medicine um

46:27

yeah i think those are also things that i think about especially when

46:32

we have um questions being posed within within especially these forums

46:38

too um which is why i proposed a breed in chat so it can be a little bit less less

46:44

formal um in front of me i just have not done anything

46:52

just a bad curator in the corner like trying to pick up these

46:58

yeah oh yes so like what time did the lad just asked a question in the

47:04

chat asking does the concept for this piece predate the pandemic um yeah actually so when we did the

47:12

studio visits and the conversations that was the summer

47:18

of 2019 um and actually i meant to say uh judy has

47:26

a picture of cruz’s paintings cubist graffiti

47:32

paintings hung in in their home and so i was able to see when we did the

47:39

studio visit with judy uh cruz wasn’t there and i didn’t have like the opportunity to meet him

47:44

but i was able to see his work and so i think like that was another like and it was like a mother’s pride of like

47:51

also here is cruz’s painting and it’s like hung over an entryway like it’s this

47:57

massive um to like to put if you’re thinking about like things

48:02

that you’re going to put into your house and like what you’re going to like give way to you have all of judy’s beautiful like

48:08

work the maria campbell piece was there and then cruises was like over the foyer

48:16

into the living room like in such a prominent like space you could just the the love was

48:22

palpable and like the respect was palpable and so um judy is

48:30

also one of the artists who has like two different

48:36

bodies of work included in the exhibition and so um we really couldn’t decide

48:44

and absolutely needed the the work where cruz and judy work

48:50

together um to be to be in the show and so there’s two different bodies of work

48:56

that are that are being displayed so sorry if you want to talk about like what the how do you think the work has

49:03

changed in context of the pandemic and how did like the production of the work change since um

49:11

yeah we well i guess you guys are together now but there was there a time that you

49:16

weren’t together in the pandemic and you had to collaborate on this work well we did like so um the great thing

49:23

is that chris and i do a lot of it traveling together so whenever there’s anything um whenever i go anywhere i want him to

49:28

come with me so i try to find the space for him to join me on any of the the um

49:34

[Music] residencies that i’ve been on and whatnot and then we wound up having exhibition together on salt

49:40

spring attached to the salt spring national art prize and so we went there last um fall so we were still like i i want to

49:47

say this is that the idea for this particular piece that’s in it um at the ramy is

49:53

it was cruz’s idea he said mom this is what we should do yeah exactly that needs to be said right

49:59

and yeah and then his idea has always been like i know what i’m doing right and i’m uh

50:04

was what what are we doing again what what are we doing again right what’s your phrase what’s my phrase no

50:11

um and also we actually wound up having a lot of discussion so we’re very clear on what

50:16

we were doing and then um so we already we had the idea down

50:22

before the pandemic started but then he had um booked a flight to come visit before the pandemic started and he still

50:29

came so you know he wore the mask and everything on the plane and whatnot and i have to say that my work takes a

50:36

lot longer to do than his work his work takes a lot of work but mine takes

50:41

more so we um last year he came because i oh i also bring him in

50:47

to talk with my students in painting because he’s actually uh so far an atelier trained painter and

50:54

he knows he’s done a lot of research in european methods of painting so he knows how to grind paint and

51:00

uh cook up uh old european uh stuff anyways

51:06

but and this is stuff we learned when we were both when i was attending the princess school of traditional art and he was taking classes with them on the

51:12

outside so anyways um i know how to make a portion of the things that he does

51:18

and so we wound up making the panels he needed for his uh for the gold leafing

51:23

it’s traditionally um gessoed panels anyway so that was all done and all made

51:29

and so when he came he he sat down at the table and he spent a couple of days working on the gold leaf and i was sitting at the

51:35

my thing beating and baby and then he got up and he left and i was still beating two months later and his piece was done

51:43

and i was like crying he’s done i’m still but he’s you know

51:50

there’s still a lot of work that goes into it it’s just a different yeah yeah yeah you have to plan it out but

51:56

once you kind of get it get it done um like the text took a long

52:01

time my friend helped me out with uh kind of abstracting the text and uh so we had to do that in photoshop

52:07

and then print it out make transfer images and then uh

52:12

just like cut down the birch panels uh prime them with like rabbit skin glue

52:19

let them dry gesso um that takes another day and then bowl them takes another two days and then put your

52:27

transfer image on but then when you’re actually gold leafing it takes like i don’t know like two days but but like

52:33

the the uh but like the process of like planning everything out takes it it takes a long time

52:41

too but yeah but not as long as beating because but like so like like maybe

52:47

maybe it’s almost equivalent but the beating was just seemed to like never end so if um on the piece that i’m a

52:53

homesick one uh i wound up switching to size 15 beads and so they’re really tiny yeah

53:00

because to get the uh like and so it’s for the

53:05

braided portion of it yeah and so to get in the design i had to go to a smaller bead so then you know

53:11

that as soon as you do that you double your time so i mean i could have done it with big beads but then it wouldn’t have had that

53:17

it looks better with the small beads yeah exactly it looks so much better making that decision for your mom it

53:24

looks better like this you should do this and like walk away and go get some supper

53:30

and you just sit there and be for the rest of your life the rest of your life yeah

53:37

but i actually do i always talk to him about my ideas always and like okay this

53:42

is what i’m doing and so just you know compositionally because sometimes i’ll come up with three compositions i’ll think this one’s good

53:48

i just want to make sure so they’re always you know and even brielle and larry and sotler is my husband um

53:55

always i’m just like hey which one do you think looks better to you and then they’ll point at something and you know walk away so

54:01

i think my family’s always involved with my process for sure

54:07

yeah that makes sense uh this conversation around like time is

54:12

really interesting time and like intention so um one one thing i’ve like said about

54:21

beating in the past is that it’s like a labor of love and so like when you make something and

54:26

i’ve definitely used the exploit robe as like a as an example of this um

54:34

so if you were to so if beating is like a labor of love and it

54:40

especially if you’re working with 15s it definitely is um how like you you talk about your work

54:47

being or your mom has talked about your work being cheeky um

54:53

where would would you consider gold thiefing

55:00

or or graffiti like this work about intention because of like the planning that goes

55:06

into it because of like i guess how would you define um

55:11

your work uh cruz like through the material or through the process like is it labor of love

55:18

is i think it depends on the on the on the

55:25

artwork like when i’m doing paintings uh they take a long time so

55:30

and the process is is fun drawings and paintings and stuff but sometimes like uh it’s just like um

55:38

you have an idea and you want to make the the artwork but like you hate the

55:43

process so you just make it to make it and then

55:48

move on with your life um

55:54

some of them have went yeah i guess that makes sense this idea of

55:59

like working through ideas and um i think sometimes there can be like

56:07

preciousness with how we work um or like even just not wanting to make things

56:14

based by um to make things not for like

56:22

the pressure to do everything perfectly the first time but to to move through an idea to to

56:27

look at the idea say whether or not it’s good or whether or not the material worked for it and then to move on and

56:33

and to do something else or to to make those edits is really

56:38

i think like that’s a real gift to be able to do um not putting

56:46

not feeling that pressure and not putting that pressure on yourself is um it takes a lot of time to get to

56:52

that place so yeah i think i think that’s like lots of people

56:58

i think that that’s common for for for most artists but i think some of the like

57:03

sometimes the most interesting work that you see are like little uh um sketches like not like drawing

57:09

sketches but you can tell they’re like the beginning of an idea that someone just like uh

57:15

went through touched on a little bit but the immediacy and uh and everything is really

57:22

sometimes the most interesting i think yeah yeah especially like with the graffiti

57:28

practice and the critiques around the museum and but i realized it’s 2 59 and i could

57:34

probably like keep you guys from here for like another hour i just want to say one i just want

57:40

to say one thing real quick because we just touched on this and i’ll take less than a minute um but my mom is actually listening her

57:46

name is eileen anderson and she said at the very beginning in the chat hi mom or hi this is your mom

57:51

like we forgot her name i’m just kidding eileen um i just wanted to say that um so i

57:57

didn’t learn beating i just want to acknowledge that that sheila orr was my teacher in beating and she introduced me to quilling and then the person who

58:03

taught me to quell was jacob pratt but i just wanted to acknowledge that uh last year

58:08

at christmas i taught my mom a little bit of beading um we have to still pick it up so we only did the one thing but just like how

58:15

that’s how that um intergenerational way of handing down those ways of making for indigenous people the line got

58:22

broken and so sometimes it’s it’s sideways and then it kind of goes this way and then it goes back up you

58:27

know kind of it moves itself around in in ways and so and then i also want to say hi mom

58:36

do you um do you have any last words that you want to say uh because hi mom seems like a really

58:44

good place to end [Music] [Laughter] well thank you so much for all of your

58:50

time today you guys and thank you it’s been a pleasure getting to know you better cruise it’s so nice to see you again judy

58:58

um yeah well thank you everybody for coming to the talk and um

59:05

leah has graciously posted um judy’s website i don’t know do you also

59:11

have a website cruise that you would like to plug in no i just no i really do

59:18

yeah that’s also just where it’s mostly pictures of my cat though um but yeah well thank you very much

59:25

everybody for your time and taking the time to come this afternoon um there is

59:33

um lots of really great stuff if you haven’t checked out borderline at the raimi modern um

59:39

there’s also a borderline catalog that has images of all of the work that’s in the show

59:45

so um be sure to check it out and thanks so much for your time i’ve said that like five times now so

59:50

i’m going to end the presentation i’m going to say that i’m going to say thank you everybody for coming and like hi everybody that didn’t

59:56

point out your names noreen leah oh who else alex is there too so all of you thank you so much for coming

1:00:02

thanks for coming bye

No results found