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[Music]

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[Music] i’m really honored to be here

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and in conversation with my friend christy belcourt and talk about her beautiful artwork

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and i’d like to to start by doing the way we should always start when we’re

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gathered together even if we’re in a virtual space it’s a little odd because we’re not all

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gathered on the same land but to the exhibit that the pieces that we’re talking about tonight

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are from the art gallery of guelph and christie’s exhibit that she has with

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isaac murdoch called uprising so we’re in guelph if we’re acknowledging the land here we’re we’re

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talking about the anishinaabe the ancestral and treaty

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lands of the mischievous and currently you might know them as

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mississaugas of new credit and we have to acknowledge that these are the folks who have the

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inherent rights on the lands where we are meeting and where many of us

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are living and working so we have to think about who are

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the folks who have always been here and have those rights and then

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what is our responsibility to the folks who are the inherent right

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holders so if you’re thinking about what you can be doing what are you doing to be in relationship

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with people from the community what are you doing and to take care of the land in

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their absence while they’re not here because in guelph we are we are a little bit removed

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from the first nation but not we’re on their uh treaty lands so think about how

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do you are you in relationship with folks and what is your responsibility um to the

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reconciliation sylvan glitch

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thanks kalinda i’d like to welcome you all uh my name is shauna mccabe i’m the director of the art gallery of guelph

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um i would also like to offer land acknowledgement on behalf of the art gallery of guelph who is hosting this dialogue tonight and

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um clinda used the word responsibility and cultural institutions have a cultural

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responsibility as well um as a land acknowledgement really confronts the institutional

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legacies of colonialism not only have cultural institutions use deeply colonial methods to represent

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different communities like indigenous communities historically but because of the authority that they

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have these narratives have been accepted as truth becoming destructive policies that

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negatively affect indigenous peoples so we often offer this land acknowledgement to recognize the ongoing

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effects of settler colonialism wealth is situated on treaty land

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that is steeped in rich indigenous history and home to many first nations inuit mit people today

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and as we gather here this evening we would like to acknowledge that the art gallery of guelph resides on the ancestral lands of the atlantean people

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and more recently the treaty lands and territory of the mississaugas of the credit we recognize the significance of the

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dish with one spoon covenant to this land and offer our respect to anishinaabe

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metis neighbors as we strive to strengthen our relationships with them we express our gratitude and recognize

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our responsibility for the stewardship of the land on which we live and work also as kalinda noted we’re not in a

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place actually many of us tonight were gathered virtually tonight connected and yet physically dispersed

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and so it’s a good moment to really reflect on the meaning of place at this time of distance and in doing so

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recognize how the different traditional lands we reside in and move through every day as we go

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about our lives really inform our lives and we acknowledge the elders past present and future of these lands with

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gratitude and respect i’d also uh it’s my privilege actually to introduce our guests tonight

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our panelists christy belcourt and kalinda klein

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many of you know christy and kalinda already and this talk is presented as clinton

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mentioned in conjunction with an exhibition that’s on view at the art gallery of guelph that features christy belcourt’s work

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called uprising the power of mother earth and this is a mid-career retrospective of christie’s work

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so tonight he’ll be talking about her art in relationship to land-based practices that are also very

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important to christie and how they support environmental and social justice

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michief metis artist christy belcourt is currently based in anishinaabe territory on the north shore of

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lake huron in many ways she’s an environmentalist an advocate for the lands waters and indigenous

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peoples and a founding member of the otnoman collective she is also the project creator and

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coordinator of walking with our sisters a community driven project honoring murdered and missing indigenous

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women and much of her recent artwork focuses on revitalizing indigenous culture

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language and land-based knowledges while drawing attention to environmental impacts of resource extraction and climate

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change i’m also pleased to introduce kalinda klein uh kalinda has been an educator

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for over 25 years um she’s anishnabe and based in guelph where she is the first nations metis and

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inuit curriculum lead for the upper grand district school board and she’s very interested in providing a

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space for indigenous histories and indigenous voices she also hosts anti-racism educator

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reads which is a weekly podcast that focuses on racial and social

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justice kalinda also serves on the art gallery of guelph’s board of trustees

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two details for everyone who’s attending this event is being recorded as well

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if you have a question there’s a q a uh section at the bottom of your screens in zoom so please uh direct your questions

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to the q a posting area and we will deal with those at the end of the discussion

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thank you and i will turn it back to you kalinda christy would you would you like to say

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a few words before we get started introducing yourself hi everybody

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thank you for tuning in tonight to uh listen to me have a conversation with

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my friend kalinda uh it’s always a lot it’s always a real pleasure to be even virtually in the same room as

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kalinda we we’ve worked together and i was present at her her naming ceremony when

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she got her name and that was a very proud moment for her filled with lots of tears and emotion as

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they normally are and i want to thank shauna and the art gallery of wealth for

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hosting um uprising the retrospective i’ve seen a lot of people posting and

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tweeting about it and i just want to say that i’m really grateful for

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gallery spaces that are willing to host artworks and themes

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of indigenous artists who have maybe some uh i would say

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some things to say that that don’t exactly go along with uh where the canadian state wants to

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move in terms of the environment and so uh i just want to acknowledge

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um and my great gratefulness to the art gallery of guelph for for having my exhibit there uh i know

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it’s going to be closing pretty soon which is too bad but uh but i but i appreciate the time that it’s been there

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so i’ll just leave it there and then i’ll turn it back over to you kalinda and we’ll we’ll start our our conversation so welcome

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everybody thank you thank you for coming yeah thank you so much thank you christy i agree i’m i’m happy to be in

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this space and it’s been too long and how we’re going to set this up is have a slideshow of some of the pieces

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from the exhibit because we know that people are from all over the place and so you may not be

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able to get to the art gallery of guelph this it was exciting for me to see this

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exhibit at the art gallery of guelph because i also seen it at the thunder bay art gallery and i

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love seeing exhibits in different spaces because there’s a totally different feel

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to the the pieces and which ones end up taking center stage end up by changing

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in in different places so i’m going to share my screen right now

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okay i’m hoping that everyone can see my screen

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so i was thinking about what shauna started talking about place and

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and i think particularly in this time that we are all very aware of place uh in a

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different way than we maybe were uh pre-covered and this is a an early one of your

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pieces uh wiki bay from mary’s teepee and i i love how there’s there’s already

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uh this uh the beauty of the water showing up in your work and i was

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wondering if you could just talk about your sense of

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place water what your feelings were as we go through a couple of these pieces that

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i think are really tightly connected so this one obviously was painted almost

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20 years ago now uh when i look at it i think oh my god that’s

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uh such an early piece my dad i gave this to my dad so it

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normally hangs in his house but as it travels around he’s he’s grateful to have it travel everywhere

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um this painting was obviously at night time um it was during

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the powwow weekend in in and uh mary mary uh fisher and her family had a teepee out

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on the bay and that’s where we were staying and when i looked out of the teepee that reflection

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from the moon onto the water uh really struck me i i’ve been you know out uh

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camping or whatever uh at nighttime and looking out at water and watching how the moon reflects and

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follows you everywhere um you know you get a really intimate um

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relationship with that reflection i think of the water and the way that the light

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dances across of it across it and as you’re there in your own sort of

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silence underneath the stars you really feel the immensity of this world of creation of

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life uh and and you also feel very incredibly humbled because you know that

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you know we’re only here for a very short time uh we only get the privilege of being alive

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just uh like a blink of an eye really in the long the long long long timeline of this

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earth and what a gift it is to be able to sit and watch the water and to know

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that all of that life is in the water and how much life we are given by the water

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and and to be under the the canopy of of the stars and to feel that warm

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breeze in our face you know every moment is really precious and so when i look at this piece that

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just takes me right back to those moments all of them when i’ve sat at night time on a clear

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night underneath the stars and watch the reflection of the moon

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i appreciate that that feeling too and for someone who lives in the city it’s not very often that i i get to look

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up and see a sky that looks like this with all of the stars and i

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i’ve had a couple only a couple of moments this summer where i had that opportunity i know know

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exactly what you’re talking about um we’re working we’re working through the

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water water theme and with this one we have a little bit

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of a poem as well because some folks may not know um that you are also a writer

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and um also musician that some people like those those might be secrets that

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not everyone knows about but it’s out there now so i just would like to read this when water has no flag

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water knows no race the earth’s belly grew of sun and moon and stars until her waters

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broke and all of creation took its first breath crying out glorious is life

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into the four directions can you speak to to these pieces um

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well as we’ve seen um in the last um i don’t know it’s been

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happening quite for quite some time water work water walks water advocacy

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um and mostly led by indigenous women who are astutely aware of the importance

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of water to our lives of course we carry our babies in water

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in our wombs the water that comes down from the skies it recycles up into the skies again and

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falls down and there’s no drop of water that exists in this world that hasn’t somehow made it through

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everybody’s you know through everything all the time uh we’re we’re literally made of water

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and so without clean water without water on this on this earth that’s kept pristine and

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clean there’s no guarantee that the future generations will be able to survive or the future generations of any species

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will be able to survive and so we always wonder if the species that are going to be born

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in the next 500 years or so are going to have clean water to to to drink when

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they when they come out as little babies you know the baby birds and the baby bears and

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you know when you think about 200 years and we ask the question will they have clean water uh the trajectory that we’re on on this

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earth right now the answer if we ask the question will they have clean water in 500 years

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will people have clean water will animals and everything have clean water the answer is no

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and so we’re also watching multinational corporations uh push their way with their agreed

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agenda um sort of kind of hidden under the guise of

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democracy and uh and they promote capitalism which is proving to be a failure for the

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earth in the sense of that it promotes insatiable growth which is simply not sustainable

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and so there are um many of these multinational oil and gas companies that are pushing

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pipelines through territories with which they have no permission to go

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through or where they may have gotten sort of some pseudo permission um to go through those territories but

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where the people themselves are rising up and saying hold on a second like this river has sustained our people

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for thousands of years and it is simply um asinine and insane to want to put a

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pipeline through this river or through our lake or right now the nwmo is trying to

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bury nuclear waste near ignis and um we everybody knows that that’s going to get into the water

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at some point um you know nuclear waste has a shelf life of 100 000 years it’s unfathomable

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that if they’re going to be able to keep that contained without ruining

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on the future and and so indigenous women indigenous people are standing up and saying no you can’t

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do this and it’s kind of a david and goliath sort of um

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situation where we’re we’re seeing you know these multinational corporations who are backed by

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governments who are using an increasingly militarized police forces to force their way through

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uh they’re calling people who want to protect their land and waters terrorists um and which are mostly indigenous

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people who are being criminalized for wanting to just stand up for their lands and waters and and yet

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they’re putting a hero status onto people who are actually

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for the destruction of the earth and so there’s several pieces that i’ve done recently

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along these lines of um of people standing up for the water praying for

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the water of course in the water walks and the people who are doing that work and spiritually and ceremonially people

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are singing singing the water songs uh you know and there’s there’s great stories of historically

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of our nations um within our nations of of things like people marrying a beaver

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or uh you know marrying a mermaid and um you know

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being taken by the little people and being taught things about the water and these serpents and

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thunderbirds and there’s all sorts of things within our mythologies that tell us that we have a very deep

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spiritual and long-standing connection to water and the beings that are within water so this piece in particular

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with her carrying a fish is um sort of a nod or an oat

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to that older way of thinking which i think is not

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really old it’s just not really talked about too much and it should probably be more revitalized in the sense of

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we have relationships and treaties with species and with other beings that predate

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the treaties that we have or that i shouldn’t say we have i’m i’m not um treaty but um that

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uh first nations have with with uh non-native people there are treaties um that

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indigenous nations have with with each other and with other species that

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predate those treaties and somehow we never seem to talk about those

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i i love the connection here of the woman when she’s singing with the drum and into

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the baby fish in her belly and right into the water and and for me i have been

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unfortunate to have been gifted the permission to sing a number of different

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water songs and so whenever i’m at the water and singing one of those songs

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this is the image that that comes to my mind so i wanted to say a big genie watch for that because i

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just i just love this this image the the one other thing that you were talking about

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that that i was thinking i’d like to unpack a little bit more before we move on is this uh idea

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when you talked about capitalism and and that what i don’t always see us having the

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conversations when we’re talking about environmental justice and we’re talking about racial justice

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also talking about capitalism and that the how uh the connection is

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so clear and yet it’s not always part of the conversation

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do you have any thoughts on on that how do we make that part of the conversation how do we ensure that that becomes part of the

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conversation well i think we have to i think what you

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know what in my my uh opinion which isn’t always right of course

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i think that we have to start to have these conversations in ways that are non-judgmental

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we’re all caught in this capitalist uh you know nightmare and uh where

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you know uh products and things are wrapped in three layers of impossible plastic that

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will never bio-degrade and uh we’re we’re just we’re caught in this in the same way

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uh we can’t seem to escape it and there’s a lot of pressure put on consumers

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um aka us to stop consuming things that are plastic but yet there is

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no pressure put on the manufacturer’s end to do that and so this idea of

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insatiable growth has been um sort of tied in

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and married and melded in with the same concepts of philosophy

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and democracy and patriotism so because it’s sort of been

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tied in with this idea of patriotism and democracy the minute you talk about

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capitalism as being a bad thing people get very defensive

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and talk about you know patriotism and democracy along the same lines and then they always say well what’s the

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alternative do you want fascism do you want communism those are failed do you want this do you want that

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and so if people’s imaginations need to be ignited into what can be possible

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outside of the existing samples that have failed and this one is failing um and

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i think in the future um whenever that may be way down the line long after you and i

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are gone um there will be conversations had about how democracy failed the same way as

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people are speaking about it in terms of communism right now and i think that um i think that

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it’s inevitable because the earth simply cannot sustain this and i think that when we’re talking

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about capitalism it really is one and the same with democracy in the way that it’s all been

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tied together and unless people are able to unpack that and untangle it uh for themselves

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both of them are going to go down together and so we have to reimagine what the

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world could look like um in a place where uh

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the vulnerable are are not vulnerable you know and where there is no poverty

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um where the military doesn’t get the bulk of budgets and where people have a right

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to say no uh to projects that affect their lands and waters and you know there’s there’s a whole

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host of things that we could it reimagine the world to be a better place and

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reimagi imagine the content of this continent to be a better place where indigenous peoples have our land

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back and um you know those kinds of things are our conversations that we could have

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and have these imaginings and ignite people’s imagination on on what that would look like rather

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than just saying it’s not going to work because of this or because of that and because the only

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alternatives are ones in history that have failed already and that’s simply not true

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um you know there are like as many colors in the in the universe as there are

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possibilities and we can imagine a different

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path forward actually we must well speaking of reimagining and

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my absolute favorite uh painting of yours um because i have such

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a close personal connection um to this one revolution of love can you speak to it um

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well of course this is a depiction of the late josephine mondawmin

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and she led a revolution which is still unfolding

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in the sense of she she and her sister and i think there was maybe another who decided to to walk

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the water would carry the water in a copper pail and they would um have an eagle staff and and walk for the

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water and they saw this coming a long time ago and so they started to walk for the

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water and prey to the water um all around the great lakes and she made it

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herself she walked um the entire distance around every single

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great lake and she went you know i think she began with lake superior if i’m not mistaken i

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can’t i can’t recall but then she did eat each year she did a new great lake

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uh where she organized a water walk and as she started to organize these

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water walks other people started to see what she was doing and either join in with hers

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or begin to do water walks around their own bodies of water and what that involved was them walking

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with a pail of water that didn’t stop so when you went on these water walks and it was your turn

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to sort of take like they would relay you know and uh as you would walk up to the person to take the pail of water from them or

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the eagle staff the eagle staff always went with the water and the water would lead a little bit

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and um and then as the water as you took the pail of water you had to keep on going you couldn’t stop

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the water to continually had to keep moving and and then as you were going you also

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had to put tobacco in the in water bodies of water that you would come across and pray for that water and pray for the

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future put your good intentions into the water for all of the future generations to come

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and it was a very sacred ceremonial um it was ceremony and uh

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so what she started really was a revolution and i came across at this

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article a really long time ago with um i guess they were interviewing

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mother teresa and they asked her uh somebody asked her would you come to our anti-anti-war rally

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and she said no but if you make it for peace i will be there and that really uh resonated with me in

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the sense of i thought well that is so true when you make something for something

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it’s so much more powerful than if you do something that’s against um and when you think

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about what is it that you i remember a lot like oh my god i was in my late teens and

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this guy he said well you sure are against a whole lot of stuff but what do you what is it that you want you know what

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you don’t want but what is it that you want and i had to really think about think about it you know

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when we focus ourselves to think what it what do we want rather than what we don’t want

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it’s a it’s kind of even a harder question to answer sometimes it’s very easy to pick out what we don’t

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want and harder to say what we do and so if we want to be for clean water

27:58

we want to the future generations to have a cleaner clean planet clean air

28:06

clean water to be born into the future generations of all species then

28:11

then that is a pretty heavy um ask and it requires it’s going to

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require all of us to step up to do something for the water and so when i think about

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revolution of love i think of how josephine and everyone who participated in

28:30

in the water walks and did all of that work so humbly and and unheralded you know

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they did all that work for all of us and now it’s our turn and our responsibility to pick that up

28:45

and to continue it on we have to do this because the young people in this world are saying that

28:51

they have no hope young people are saying that they don’t see any hope for a future

28:56

and a planet that’s going to that’s going to survive that is completely shocking you know

29:03

anyone who’s my age and older never had to have that heaviness of that burden that they had to carry when we’re

29:10

thinking of love you know you when you watch anything um

29:17

like any documentary is on the oceans and when you go out onto the onto the land yourself and you stand by

29:24

a body of water everybody in this world has little spots that they love you know little private little private

29:31

spots on this earth that only they kind of know about and and it’s a place that they really love

29:37

to be and we think about all of the love that mothers have for their children and

29:44

have put into their children we think about the love that that the spirit world has for us we

29:50

think about all of the love that we’re that’s going around the world well it’s a revolution

29:55

for love and it’s the revolution for the future that win

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and when we think of it like that then the fear kind of goes away and the anger

30:08

goes away i have to think about energy and how um you know if we’re if we’re

30:14

engaged in fear over the future and engaged in

30:19

worry and stress about what’s going to what’s going what might be the future

30:25

then that’s the energy even um unconsciously maybe

30:30

and uh that we’re unintentionally putting out into the world and so it’s important to

30:37

refocus our energy into being for something that’s positive

30:43

and to manifest that feeling and that that energy within us to be able to put

30:49

that into the world to counter all of the hate that’s going on because right now that that

30:55

that hatred and that negativity and all of the awful things that we see are kind of taking over

31:00

and um and so we we need to find an antidote for it and oftentimes the antidote is the opposite of what

31:07

of what’s happening and so we need to uh refocus ourselves into having positive

31:12

thoughts and putting intentionally like with our with our minds and our

31:18

our good minds and our hearts to put that forward into a way that that leaves something for the future

31:24

generations but it also requires work and josephine showed us that she showed us that it requires

31:30

um people doing the work and it’s not easy to organize water walks it’s not easy to

31:36

walk around the lake the great lakes for days on end um it’s not easy to make sure everybody

31:42

has a place to sleep and that they’re taken care of and there’s food and there’s water and people are not getting sick or stressed

31:48

stressed out and all of that work it requires requires all hands on deck

31:55

now for all of us it’s not sufficient it’s not good enough for us to sit back

32:00

and uh and not engage the the young people are telling us to do it that they want us to do it

32:06

that the earth is requiring us to do it and there’s animals that cannot speak for themselves that need habitats and

32:12

homes and they need protection i walked with josephine on on one of the

32:19

walks the one where she was going down the st lawrence and and heading this way and i would say one of

32:27

the most beautiful moments for me ever would have been the moment where because

32:34

as you said the water doesn’t stop and it can’t stop and so i was walking with someone else the man who was carrying the eagle staff

32:41

and i was carrying to the bucket and as it came to our relay turn um he had stepped away for a moment and

32:48

so then i had to take both and um and carry them and it was um

32:53

it was like being wrapped in love what you were talking about that and it didn’t feel like work at all for

33:00

me because it was so important and that you know when something pulls on on your heart that it just

33:09

doesn’t feel like work i could have walked i felt like i could have walked for days

33:14

at that exact moment and so every time i see this particular painting i think of that i

33:20

think of all of like you said the hard work that’s involved in doing

33:25

orchestrating something like a water walk and it’s all done out of out of love and i love to from

33:32

this particular painting how you pull in different things that

33:38

folks who have some of their teachings are going to pull more out of the painting than maybe

33:45

someone else might and so for me that that’s really beautiful because there’s so many

33:50

different layers there and and there are some things that that i i don’t i don’t know if you think it’s

33:57

appropriate to speak to i don’t uh because i don’t have permission to but i see some things here and it just

34:03

um i could spend hours with this particular painting i don’t mind speaking to them because they’re in the

34:10

painting and there was nothing hidden in the ways that we were doing things um and then there never really is

34:15

there’s a beautiful openness about ceremonies i mean i could speak to the some of the

34:21

objects that are in there but i i wouldn’t i wouldn’t give teachings on how to sort of thing but um

34:27

so for example um the person carrying the eagle staff or or the person behind carrying the

34:33

eagle staff also has a yellow cloth and uh inside it looks like a little bundle and a little round ball i guess

34:42

looks like she’s carrying something in this yellow cloth and what we have seen everybody does it

34:49

differently but we make offerings to the water as we’re as we’re engaging in these ceremonies

34:55

and offerings are anything uh that

35:02

would be considered it’s not um i don’t know how to describe it it’s not an

35:07

exchange offerings are not a payment uh they’re a petition they’re a request they’re a

35:14

a begging of sorts um in a humble way to say please help and um and we know that that

35:23

in our teachings which are pretty universal across i would say across all indigenous

35:28

nations in north america that i’ve come across anyway um that it that there’s always a give um

35:35

you have to give something um in order to before you take something and you know if you’re picking medicines

35:42

for example we give a little bit of tobacco or we give whatever if we’re entering

35:48

into ceremony and we’re asking for for something in that ceremony we

35:53

give something and it keeps everything in balance it’s it’s a spiritual giving it may manifest

36:01

in the physical world in terms of your giving something physical uh but but it’s

36:06

actually the the acknowledgement comes from the spirit world to see that you’ve made the effort to give

36:11

and that that’s where the exchange comes in and that’s where keeping things in balance comes in so in her hand is the yellow cloth the

36:18

yellow cloth is a nod or an ode to the um to the moon full moon ceremonies that are happening

36:25

um which are also being led and done by women and these

36:30

full moon ceremonies are also extremely powerful women’s ceremonies and so

36:37

there’s a full moon that’s there again reflecting on the water in the painting um inside that bundle might be tobacco

36:44

or it might be food or whatever and and so it’s it’s going to be offered to the water

36:51

when we do our water bundles and our offerings that way where often people will take off their shoes

36:58

and socks and they’ll be standing in the water so in this case you see josephine standing right in the water

37:04

there’s a woman who’s scooping up the water there’s another person scooping up the water so there

37:09

three of them are are down there scooping the water there’s another one off to the right uh a lady a

37:17

woman who’s pregnant and out of her hand as you can sort of see it there’s some

37:23

little specks that’s tobacco that she’s offering tobacco to the water and then over on the other opposite side

37:29

the left-hand side there’s a younger uh person there who’s holding up the berries and so as part of our ceremonies

37:36

we always have food and we always um have berries as part of our ceremony so

37:41

she’s holding up the berries and then the um animals that are painted on on each

37:48

person is their clan and and then there’s uh another woman who’s standing there holding her belly

37:54

she’s pregnant so she has two because her baby’s uh her baby is a bear clan inside her tummy

38:00

and uh and then there’s the singers that are there and then the lots of other people and of course they’re surrounded

38:06

by by all of the uh they’re in they’re basically in the water i think that that’s about there’s

38:12

another person i can see holding berries there too and then the eagle staff uh that was that’s carried in part of

38:18

our ceremonies um i think that that’s about all i can sort of speak to in terms of what the

38:24

what’s in the content of the painting thanks christy i love that that was that

38:30

was one of my favorite parts that the the bear on the woman’s belly i love

38:36

that so i’m gonna move on to the next one now here we go uh so

38:45

fish are fasting for knowledge from the stars so we’re still working our way through through talking about

38:51

water um can you speak to this one this piece yeah so um my friend isaac for

38:59

everybody you probably already know who isaac murdock is um him and i uh work together a lot and

39:06

we’re we’re really really close friends and uh he’s he’s a storyteller as well as an artist

39:12

and his stories um are so engaging and they bring you to other worlds like

39:19

he’s a very gifted storyteller and so he was telling me

39:24

about i think it was sometime in january and he was saying oh this is the time

39:30

the fish are fasting for knowledge and i’m like uh yeah you need to tell me about that

39:35

because that’s just that alone made me like my imagination was going

39:41

wild and he said yes the fish fast and they they hang upright and he says

39:46

we’re not supposed to to fish at this time we give them this this moment

39:52

from one moon to the other moon uh so a full moon cycle where we where they’re fasting and they

39:58

hang ups up upright like that in the water and they are are gazing

40:04

into the stars there’s a connection between the fish and stars and they’re gazing into the stars for

40:09

knowledge and he says when when they they gain all that knowledge uh when we do

40:15

uh eat them we’re also eating that knowledge and that knowledge of the stars comes

40:20

into our bodies and informs us and uh that was it was just a you know to think that the fish fast

40:28

um for knowledge from the stars is is such a i don’t know it’s a

40:34

perspective and a window into a different way to see this world

40:40

in a way that is so important to not forget the magic and the mystery the great mystery that

40:46

that is here um that surrounds us at all times our human species

40:52

we we like to be we’re pretty self-absorbed into our own our own doings as humans

40:58

and we forget i think sometimes that the magic and the mystery doesn’t just extend to us in the moments that we

41:05

choose to to observe it but it’s going around us at all times you know that we are literally on a ball

41:12

of water that is circling around the ball of fire out in space

41:18

like we should all be in awe really that that there’s so much more here than

41:24

we will ever know as human beings there is so much more in this earth and on this planet than we will ever

41:32

ever understand and so we need to believe in that magic we need to believe in the little people

41:38

we need to believe in the spirits that surround us we need to believe in things that are of

41:44

higher power than ourselves and that we can um be appreciative

41:50

and humbled and grateful for this life and when we do that we walk in a

41:55

different way a way that makes you naturally i think um

42:01

not want to harm the earth because we realize it’s not ours to harm it’s not ours to to have control over

42:09

or to manage

42:14

thank you for talking about what a phenomenal storyteller isaac murdoch is i think

42:20

he’s the best storyteller that i’ve ever heard and how often do you feel with your paintings are you

42:28

inspired from story uh i don’t know if i would say

42:34

often uh it’s really hard for me to gauge um there’s been a few

42:42

paintings that have been directly sort of riffing off of some of isaac’s uh stories that he’s

42:48

told and and uh and i think he’s probably done the same with me you know i’m not a storyteller but i’m

42:54

but i’m sure that i’ve influenced him sometimes and so uh i i don’t know really if

43:00

there’s any that are directly off of stories in the way that this one is yeah

43:07

uh so this one we’re looking here this one the the detail is just uh phenomenal

43:15

so you’re looking at all aspects of of the environment in the composition of of

43:21

this painting and this is i certainly before i actually had met you

43:27

this style of your work is is what i had associated with with your

43:33

name and i’m wondering if you could speak to that yeah there’s a lot i can say about these

43:38

kinds of paintings so the one behind me here is about uh

43:43

i think it’s about eight or nine feet wide by about six feet tall um and so this painting if

43:50

this painting is a mirror it’s the same approximately about the same size maybe a little bit smaller

43:56

and it’s um of course done in dots people know that already uh to emulate

44:02

beadwork um and so the symmetry um in paintings like this

44:10

that i do on black is is comes from a very long

44:17

uh history of what our ancestors our grandmothers our aunties

44:23

uh all of the beadworkers in our in our families and in our communities in our

44:29

nations left us so metis people have a very uh long-standing connection to floral

44:35

beadwork as a part of who we are in terms of our cultural inheritance i suppose and a lot of times

44:44

the things that were beaded were items that people would wear um

44:51

and and what we would adorn ourselves with and so that might be a moss bag that’s made for

44:57

a baby or it might be a jacket or a vest um [Music]

45:03

it might have a bag of some sort so moccasins of course mufflops and and

45:10

things like that uh horse horse blankets and dog blankets and uh everything was adorned with beadwork

45:16

and so the the when people were making their patterns of course they would make two

45:22

sides to match and so a lot of the work that i do now

45:28

is sort of emulating that symmetry to sort of

45:35

pay homage to the the traditional feed work of of

45:43

of my people and with the black it’s also um

45:49

when trade cloth was was introduced and there was a lot of black um stroud wool stroud or something

45:57

sometimes it’s called melton um there was a lot of black and deep deep blues and mostly black and some

46:04

reds and those that that cloth was so highly prized by people because it was warm and it was

46:12

sturdy and people would would use it um for all sorts of things and and also the

46:18

beads would just the colors would just pop off of that black and so people women really really like the like

46:25

the black with the with the beads on it and i know with uh within the anishinaabe

46:30

tradition uh these these um floral designs and the idea of using

46:36

black and and the same similar sort of like bright colors on the on

46:42

the black is also a tradition and it it was a kind of a artistic tradition that

46:48

crossed over into several many different nations uh indigenous nations

46:54

and um in this painting there’s about two hundred thousand dots i believe

47:01

uh and so the the i’m painting it in acrylic it’s acrylic on canvas and um

47:09

what can i say it’s titled um this painting is a mirror because i want people to reflect

47:17

um the beauty that is within themselves that they are the earth and the earth is them and so

47:23

when they look at that at the painting i want them to see themselves

47:28

so when i see people i see the beauty that’s within them i see the the you know

47:35

the stars that they came from the light that we are born from and the spirit that exists within them

47:42

and all of that is all part of the earth we are all really just one everything is interconnected uh there’s

47:50

not you know when we think about people are talking they talk about

47:55

biodiversity and they talk about ecosystems and how uh you know you want everybody

48:02

was watching that thing on mushrooms not long ago how the mushrooms are communicating and there’s underneath the root system and all of

48:08

that and you know when you think about the earth is sort of living breathing

48:13

it’s a living breathing organism and and we are simply on this earth and everything

48:19

is all connected we are all part of this living breathing planet and there’s nothing separate at

48:26

all and and so we are literally the plants we are the water and the water is us and the plants

48:38

that’s a good segue into this one too the detail is just so spectacular in

48:45

this one and i love the the way the colors pop on this cream color and background too

48:52

so i’m wondering if you could speak a little bit to honoring my spirit helpers

48:58

yeah this is um uh everybody oh well in my belief anyway

49:06

everybody has you know their grandmothers their ancestors um other maybe

49:13

spiritual beings that are around them that that give them a hand sort of silently as little little silent

49:20

partners that help you out kind of thing and um sometimes we don’t realize that

49:26

like one time i was uh riding in this car it was my granny’s car and it was old

49:32

and uh and i was going over this bridge it was in ottawa and i was going over

49:38

this bridge and i felt like there was somebody in the car and i looked i looked

49:43

in the rear view mirror and i was thinking that’s so strange like who is riding in the back seat here

49:48

and i just i just felt like there was somebody there it was like the weirdest feeling in the world and then all of a

49:54

sudden my axle broke and uh if i hadn’t have sort of slowed down to look in the rearview mirror to

49:59

say who is back there um uh then i don’t know you know maybe i

50:04

would have went off the bridge you know but uh like i’m not saying that that would have happened i just don’t you

50:10

know you just don’t know there’s a grand mystery here that we can’t we can’t understand so i believe that that there’s helpers around all the time

50:18

and sometimes in my paintings i get stuck and i’ll i’ll just sort of say okay please like help me with this

50:24

color or help me with this something because i’m stuck here and sure enough you know they always come through and

50:30

give me a hand so i i don’t do that often but so i wanted to make a painting that

50:35

honored them and it’s this painting is um pretty large so

50:42

i think it’s about seven feet tall by about 12 feet long if i’m not mistaken

50:48

um and uh there’s there’s a much longer story about the muskrat you know in creation

50:55

it’s a creation story um and then there’s also uh the

51:00

seventh generation midwives purchased this and so they like it because it’s the roots look like the placenta on the

51:06

on a room and they also um

51:12

also the stones are like sweat lodge and then that dome is almost like a sweat lodge so there’s a lot sort of of references to

51:20

spiritual or ceremonial practices here and then that little um perch that’s in

51:26

there was i put her in there because i was out fishing and i i caught the perch and i didn’t

51:33

really need to um because i was going after walleye and uh and uh when i tried to take the hook out

51:40

it like anyway it was well it was not good i was gonna put her back in the water and

51:46

and i ended up it ended up she she died so i i put her on the water anyway and all

51:51

of a sudden this massive eagle like this wingspan was so huge it came

51:56

flying down and just scooped up that perch and went and sat up on the tree up by the up by the shore and just started eating

52:03

the perch and and i was thinking well i’m so glad that this fish was able to you know nourish

52:12

nourish an eagle and so then i decided to put her in the painting to like recognize her life oh that’s beautiful

52:20

that’s beautiful so that that led into the when you’re just talking about the fish

52:26

again i the detail on this one is just um spectacular

52:33

and it almost feels like um the australian like uh like uh

52:39

acknowledging the work that australian aboriginal folks do mostly i

52:44

think because of the colors that are on there is there anything specific you’d like to

52:50

to talk to us about this one yeah a lot of people say that but that was really unintentional it wasn’t it

52:57

was not it was not what i was meaning to do but i suppose that it just ended up

53:02

doing that you know because of the dots and stuff and and that’s that’s pretty cool but um the sturgeon so

53:10

um i had a dream that i was uh in water and talking to a sturgeon

53:17

and um which is strange because i don’t know anything about sturgeons and i never did know anything about

53:23

surgeons before this this dream and the sturgeon told me that

53:29

she missed the frogs and i and i said okay i woke up and i thought well what

53:34

what what on earth was that all about because up until that moment i literally had no connections to fish at all i

53:41

wasn’t fishing i’m not didn’t live on a lake i just you know i just never really thought about about

53:48

it and um and then so i thought well that’s pretty powerful that’s definitely like in the realm of a

53:56

spiritual dream rather than just a regular old you know eat a banana midnight dream

54:02

and then you get nightmares you know you’re not supposed to eat bananas at midnight did you know that that’s that’s uh that’s what they say if you’ve been at

54:08

it not midnight but if you bananas at night you get you get midnight i mean you get nightmares that’s what these things

54:14

so anyway um the the sturgeon um said that she missed the frogs so i

54:20

started to uh google good old google um i started to google like what is the

54:27

connection between sturgeon and frogs and i came across um a website of the

54:34

menominee nation uh who uh does sturgeon ceremonies and i just read

54:41

this little blurb that said the sturgeon will wait for the frogs to sing before they will come back to spawn

54:48

and i thought well why then am i having this dream about a sturgeon missing

54:53

frogs like why why is why is she telling me this and then i

55:00

started to research some more and and found out that sturgeons have to be 25

55:05

years old before they’ll be before they’ll lay eggs um that they have to have clean water i

55:12

i clean clean shorelines to lay eggs in they won’t lay it where there’s been development or just disturbed disturbance of the disturbance

55:20

is that even a word anyway um where the shoreline has been disturbed and uh

55:26

and they won’t lay eggs in dirty water that um most of the rivers

55:33

that sturgeon would swim back to spawn in are blocked from

55:39

dams for hydroelectric projects and most of those rivers do not have fish ladders

55:45

that are big enough for sturgeons to get back and so they continually through their

55:51

their ancestral pole i guess want to return to the places

55:57

where they’re supposed to to lay their eggs and they’re not able to and i also heard that the

56:04

wherever sturgeon’s i guess habitats have been destroyed it’s also coinciding with

56:11

where frogs habitats are and are being destroyed and so the idea that sturgeons and frogs

56:18

have a relationship um that has nothing to do with us humans and it’s not a predator-prey

56:25

relationship at all it’s just it’s a very long uh

56:30

thousand thousands of year old relationship um where the sturgeons wait for the

56:35

frogs to sing and and if there’s no frogs to sing then how will they know

56:41

you know to come back to spawn and you know sturgeons like uh they

56:48

they’re caught for their caviar uh well caviar for their their eggs and uh there’s it’s sold for

56:55

150 bucks a tin and an ounce and you know there’s

57:00

there’s a a huge pressure on these really majestic fish and

57:08

in my opinion people shouldn’t be catching them at all because there’s they’re they’re in

57:13

decline and um you know we need to protect we need to

57:18

we need to be able to allow the animals to speak to us in our dreams and then

57:24

somehow have the courage to stand up for their their homes um and to protect their

57:31

homes so that they can survive and and their great great great great grandchildren will also have

57:37

have clean water and land to survive in

57:42

so a theme that i that i’ve noticed in in your work is the listening to our more than human

57:49

relatives and that reminder that that comes out that we’re how are if we’re going to

57:57

have that future that you keep talking about we need to be listening and

58:03

and i think that many of us are are good at the talking part and not always so good at at the

58:10

listening and i connect that to um the title of the exhibit of

58:16

uprising and of that listening and the uprising with the

58:23

the more than human relatives and what what is your connection to the the title of your of

58:30

the exhibit well i think i’ve been clear for a number of years that

58:36

nothing short of of an uprising is going to is going to change things the trajectory

58:42

that we’re on is not it’s not a positive one if we allow

58:47

multinational corporations to continually uh control governments and

58:54

and police forces we are not going to end up in a good a good place it’s not a place that’s

58:59

going to be a just and fair place for everybody um

59:04

and we’ve we’ve already seen that in full view these days so uh

59:10

we absolutely need that for the earth and um it’s i don’t say that lightly you know

59:18

talking about revolution is not a romanticized idea it comes with a lot of suffering but the

59:25

alternative is suffering anyway and so like i was saying we have to

59:30

reimagine a future and work towards that and be courageous enough to to stand up for

59:35

that future that we want um i do see that we’re we’re at the um

59:41

eight o’clock mark now and there’s a lot there seems to be a few questions yeah okay i want to make sure that i get

59:48

to i love the okay we don’t can’t talk to all about but when we were just talking about the uprising i wanted to make sure

59:54

that some folks who may be new to your work also know that in addition to

1:00:01

all of the the beautiful paintings that you do that that there’s also been this banner work

1:00:08

that you and isaac have been working on i’m wondering if you could tell people a little bit about that

1:00:14

because i most folks may not know how a generous the two of you are with these

1:00:20

particular images okay um well we

1:00:26

started isaac made his lino cut of the thunderbird woman

1:00:32

and i’ve i’ve always been uh like him and i were working on on these things uh out of out of my home

1:00:39

for a few days and i’ve always been really attracted to that really stark black

1:00:45

on white and um and so we were sort of going in that direction and

1:00:50

starting to do this work and then all of a sudden thunderbird women came out and boy was it ever powerful and it just took off like wildfire and

1:00:58

um clayton mueller thomas uh asked yeah the one on on the left here

1:01:04

where it says water is sacred stop energy east there was a number of uh

1:01:11

sort of movements organized or protests organized around winnipeg and uh and david solnit from 350.org

1:01:19

uh we’re trying to get in touch with isaac and saying please can we use your thunderbird woman

1:01:25

um for our print screen printing and we stopped by there we happened to

1:01:31

be passing through winnipeg and we stopped by there and we started painting some banners and participating

1:01:36

in this in this screen printing and that that began uh our friendship

1:01:41

with clayton and with david and um and then they sort of taught us how to do this and

1:01:47

as other communities were facing encroachment upon their lands and waters um from multinational

1:01:55

corporations they they wanted to also make banners and so we would travel around and and help do it

1:02:03

do this and we also would print sometimes 900 1 000 banners and then we would ship

1:02:09

them off to different frontline actions for their use we’ve never charged anything for any of

1:02:16

this at all we’ve always done done this work as a service to the

1:02:21

community and to our our i guess our nations and uh we’ve uh we’ve also offered our images

1:02:29

online for free um copyright free we don’t want any

1:02:34

uh names on it we don’t want any sort of recognition or anything and this is this

1:02:40

is about us all fighting together for the same cause and we have to do what we

1:02:46

what we what we can to contribute and you know in

1:02:52

we talked started this conversation talking about capitalism and i think it is important for artists

1:02:58

to copyright their works um and and that naturally they have copyright over over all of their works the minute that

1:03:05

they do their work they own the copyright such are the copyright laws in in canada

1:03:10

but um i also think that there’s uh a lot of room for us to be able to share

1:03:17

uh without worrying about um you know when it comes to this kind of

1:03:22

thing we have to be able to like organize and unite without worrying about if somebody needs recognition for

1:03:29

their artwork because that that’s not it’s not gonna it’s um it’ll slow slow things down

1:03:37

you don’t need any things when you’re trying to organize uh to stand on the front lines for an

1:03:42

action you don’t need any sort of things coming in your way and so uh isaac and i are really happy to be able

1:03:49

to just say go ahead and use them if you want to use them you know like put whatever messages you want on there

1:03:55

tailor the messages to your own community we we’re redoing the website now but

1:04:00

we’re going to put it back up under ottomancollective.com and under our banner folder and they’re

1:04:06

there for anybody to download you can take them use them for whatever actions you want to protect your lands and

1:04:13

waters where you’re from even change the language if you know it doesn’t have to be you can wipe out what it says on there

1:04:19

and put it in a different language whatever language you want to use them for so we’re we’re happy to

1:04:25

to have people use all of our images for free when it comes to water protection and we also land our images out for

1:04:31

people to do their own fundraising for their own actions because it costs money you know to to get the

1:04:38

materials and to be out there sometimes people need need to be taken

1:04:43

care of in terms of food and water you need to you know have some money to do a little bit of organizing it’s not

1:04:48

much but sometimes people need to raise some funds to keep going and so we lend our our artwork for

1:04:55

people to make t-shirts and sell them and do all that kind of stuff thanks we can put it over to the

1:05:02

questions now i wanted to make sure that everyone knew that because it’s uh it’s such a

1:05:07

gift to all of us so i’m going to turn it over to shauna to manage the questions

1:05:15

for us everyone okay so we have a few questions

1:05:20

a lot of very just super positive comments christy about your work in the

1:05:26

exhibition and we will make sure that you get a copy of these comments as well after

1:05:31

the webinar but some questions someone has asked debbie reynolds has

1:05:37

asked i saw the exhibit today um with a piece called harvest i noticed

1:05:42

that crows are outlined in red and other birds in blue and i was wondering what the significance this serves

1:05:49

um none it’s purely aesthetic i just liked it

1:05:56

sorry sorry there isn’t any more deeper answer than that but there’s there isn’t um the

1:06:02

fish and stars work um debbie would like to know i could not

1:06:09

find your name on this piece just wondering if there was a reason that you did not sign i didn’t sign it really

1:06:23

thanks for pointing that out um so e m williams i love your work in

1:06:30

its own right and i very much admired your collaboration with valentino and the idea of art being wearable would

1:06:37

you ever consider collaborating with high-end designers again or indigenous indigenous designers here in canada

1:06:43

and forgive my ignorance if you have already done so uh yeah i i would definitely love to

1:06:49

collaborate with indigenous designers um inside canada or outside canada it

1:06:54

doesn’t matter i i’m very very much open to that and

1:07:00

i don’t know if i would ever work with a you know one of the fashion houses

1:07:08

one of the better known fashion houses again i didn’t have a particularly bad

1:07:13

experience with with valentino uh it was just um i think in the end there was no

1:07:21

protection for my work from the knockoff the knock-offs so

1:07:26

um there was there’s multiple uh sort of fake storefronts

1:07:33

that that are all over the place that present as being english speaking storefronts

1:07:40

that are tailored to markets in north america and um those storefronts we’re offering

1:07:46

um and when i say storefronts i mean like those online storefronts that

1:07:52

sort of have no face or name they sort of go under different company names and all this stuff and you can’t really find anybody behind

1:07:58

them uh they were offering multiple knockoffs of the valentino line

1:08:04

that we had collaborated on so uh you know and in they had even taken liberty to sort of

1:08:10

adapt some of those pieces into other designs but they basically

1:08:15

took my art and put it all over these pieces and whenever i would like come across it i would complain and i would

1:08:22

say okay you have to take this down you don’t have copyright you can’t do it and they would take that down on one

1:08:27

site and then it would pop up on three other sites and so um that that issue

1:08:33

was uh was the one that was discouraging and valentino was you know like me i guess

1:08:41

we put up our hands sort of like well what can we do about it uh because these are overseas companies

1:08:47

that are just you know marketing this stuff all over and you can’t really stop it once it starts

1:08:53

right and i and i think that uh it was you know it was a it was an okay

1:08:59

experience working with them um it wasn’t as in-depth as i would have

1:09:04

liked it to have been uh in the sense of like i would have liked to have a longer type of a relationship

1:09:11

with them to be able to do um it was it was fast it was fast and furious

1:09:16

you know and and then i don’t like that they appropriated native designs following

1:09:23

our cooperation i tried to guard against it by asking them have you ever before but i guess i should have

1:09:29

said will you ever in the future so and i didn’t ask that question just assuming that they were like conscious

1:09:36

of that kind of thing and they weren’t and then that was disappointing but i mean it was a fairly good

1:09:41

it was a good experience but i would absolutely want to work with indigenous designers for sure okay

1:09:48

um there was also a question more about the composition of your work

1:09:55

so what kind of paint brushes um are you finding best for your your work uh best for acrylics and that

1:10:03

give you the good control that you have when painting um i’ll i will use anything at all just

1:10:12

about except for student grade stuff i never use never use student grade

1:10:17

paints and never use student grade paint brushes they’re just gonna end up being frustrating beyond belief i use a lot of

1:10:23

uh script liners so uh windsor and newton make some good ones i even go on like i think it’s

1:10:29

called micro mark something it’s like a they make little mini machines for doing little mini uh

1:10:36

what are those called like you know people that make little ships and bottles and stuff and like

1:10:42

like miniatures and little miniature villages and like little things like that anyway it’s this this company called micro mark and they

1:10:49

have all these like they even have a little mini jigsaw it’s like the most amazing little things i think it’s so cute but they

1:10:55

also have these incredible paint brushes that are very fine very tiny strip liners that will you

1:11:02

know get the details so you have to kind of search around for those but otherwise sable brushes are

1:11:09

considered to be the best because they hold paint well everything is smooth when you’re using them i like using rounds as

1:11:15

opposed to flats but the sable brushes are like 50 bucks a brush and so in my entire career

1:11:20

as an artist i think i’ve only ever had one or two of them i just i don’t think i’m cheap i just think i

1:11:26

i just think like that’s an awful lot of money to pay for a brush and do i really need it and can i get

1:11:32

can i get the same effect without it and mostly the answer is yes so um in terms of acrylic paints uh i’ll use

1:11:40

any just about anything um liquitex is good golden has got a really good reputation

1:11:47

those are the brands that that are the best just stay away from anything student

1:11:53

grade at all if the price is cheaper there’s a reason for it and it’s because they don’t put enough

1:11:59

pigment into the medium and so you end up you know having to

1:12:06

use 20 coats of paint to get the same opaqueness as you would to you know

1:12:13

one that you maybe paid a little bit more for it’s better to invest in good paints good brushes

1:12:19

and good canvases and you will see a big huge difference in the quality of your work

1:12:25

when you do um yeah stay away from the cheap stuff it it’s it’s annoying it’s frustrating

1:12:32

you’ll you’ll see when you go and buy the good stuff save up for it it’s expensive though it’s like it’s as expensive like there’s

1:12:38

certain stores i can’t go in and one of them is like a bead store because i’ll come out with beads that i

1:12:44

probably won’t use in my lifetime at shoe stores i have this thing for shoes and uh and

1:12:50

art supply stores and i can’t go in there because i always end up you know spending way too much money the art supplies are

1:12:56

expensive but once you get a good stock they like they go far you know and and the only thing is care

1:13:03

for your brushes really well always pull the paint never push it uh try not get it get your ends all

1:13:09

fringy once they get once they sort of fray they’re no good anymore unless of course you’re doing sort of

1:13:15

rough rougher work and you know that that’s your style

1:13:20

okay um i had just one question i know kalinda also had this question more or less um

1:13:26

one of the reasons we wanted to do this event tonight was actually because tomorrow is orange shirt day

1:13:32

the day when we mark the legacy of residential schools and um particularly among young people

1:13:39

and students and schools and we wondered if you had any um thoughts or

1:13:44

or words for children and youth at this time

1:13:59

i think my thoughts and my words are more for

1:14:06

adults than children and youth and that is

1:14:13

we really do have to get off our phones in social media you know we have to spend quality time

1:14:21

not i’m not saying people don’t but i’m saying the stresses of the world our kids pick

1:14:27

up on that they feel that from us and we have to instill

1:14:33

hope in the sense of we have to have it ourselves and we have to believe in that most of

1:14:41

the problems that kids have is because it’s because of adults adults not

1:14:47

either you know they’re not safe or they’re not being protected or

1:14:53

they’re around people who are stressed and frazzled and none of us have enough hours in the

1:14:58

day and kids feel that so my message is mostly

1:15:04

when you when you’re around children you’re you’re laughing and joyous and they’re safe and

1:15:11

that’s what kids need

1:15:17

and able to tackle on the problems that will face them they don’t need to do it now and and

1:15:22

also we we have to sort of step up as adults and fight for them otherwise they’re

1:15:30

going to face uh worse than than what we have now

1:15:35

freedoms will be restricted so we have to guard and protect our freedoms um with with everything that we have

1:15:42

because there will be less for them later on um children and

1:15:50

the only thing i would say for youth and children is if you want to be an artist

1:15:57

don’t let anybody discourage you don’t let anything stand in your way

1:16:03

just pour your heart out into everything that you do give it a 100

1:16:09

and um you know people will be people are shitty people will give you real

1:16:16

discouragements you know they will they’ll tell you oh that’s not going to give you be a good career for you or

1:16:21

that won’t protect you in the future or whatever but you know you really do this is your life yours your spiritual path you have

1:16:28

to follow your own path not anybody else’s and and the other thing is that in terms

1:16:33

of indigenous people i would say for us it’s really good when youth and children get out to

1:16:39

fast or at least youth fasting is a really really important thing

1:16:44

uh we need people to be out fasting and attending ceremonies so that that’s and and learning their

1:16:51

languages so those are those are hard tasks but i don’t i don’t know

1:16:56

kids kids have it going on kids know what’s up so i i wanna i wanna learn from them rather

1:17:01

than me tell them something you know like i i think they can tell us a whole lot rather than the other way around so um

1:17:09

i know that there’s uh a couple other questions that i just saw when i’m looking at the chat and uh there was one that said um

1:17:17

where do you store your large canvases when they’re not being exhibited um

1:17:23

mostly they’re stored they’re already um owned by other institutions or

1:17:31

people and so they go back they’re going to go back to those places and they have much larger walls than i

1:17:36

do so i don’t have to worry about that um and then the other ones that i that i can’t store in my house i take them off

1:17:43

the frame and i roll them up and they become stored that way so they get the larger ones get rolled

1:17:49

rather than stay on this on the stretcher um a question from megan rook who is a

1:17:55

lovely ukulele playing youth who i know and it’s a great question megan what do you

1:18:02

think of the intersection of art and politics do you think it is possible for an

1:18:07

artist of any media to remain neutral um i think it’s possible

1:18:15

for anyone in any vocation to remain neutral if they so choose

1:18:20

um and many artists do you know there’s some artists who are exploring color and that’s that’s

1:18:27

what they that’s their bag that’s what they’ll do and they still bring beauty into the world by exploring

1:18:32

this color and they don’t want to be involved in politics or have any sort of position on things

1:18:38

i’m i’m not in that category i can’t help it but uh you know so i do

1:18:44

think it is possible yep to remain neutral i i don’t i wouldn’t know how myself but

1:18:54

um there’s also a question uh you spoke a bit about your creative process is there anything specific you do for

1:19:00

inspiration uh no i mean

1:19:06

i have a lot of ideas that i will never manifest in my whole life i will you know never be able to fulfill the

1:19:13

amount of ideas that i have and um so inspiration comes in all sorts

1:19:19

of forms sometimes it’s a reaction to something i don’t like and sometimes it’s a reaction to things something i do and uh i i don’t know how

1:19:27

to say that except that um yeah it’s just i you know i don’t know

1:19:33

where other people get their ideas but it’s just you get a vibe or a feeling and you just uh that feeling sort of

1:19:40

verbal gurgles up from the pit of your stomach and it’s almost like you can’t stop it

1:19:46

and then you just go for it okay it looks like it’s about it um

1:19:56

any questions uh kalinda oh i think i think that i’ve had a

1:20:03

wonderful time what what what a lovely tuesday night um opportunity for me as well to be holding

1:20:10

a little bit of space uh with you christy it’s been great listening to you i’m feeling

1:20:17

inspired this evening as well well i’d like to thank you both um

1:20:23

christy and clinda for being here um for having this discussion and uh

1:20:29

just very grateful for your generous and thoughtful words tonight and and the inspiration so i think a lot of

1:20:36

people have noted in their comments how inspiring you are um and i would say both of you are actually um and i would

1:20:42

uh recommend everyone check out kalinda’s kalinda klein’s book club anti-racism educator

1:20:50

book club on wednesday evenings and it’s it’s a it’s a great

1:20:58

great content and great conversations there as well um and with that i will say good evening um

1:21:04

to to you both and to all who attended thank you very much for being part of this um i will share all of the comments as i

1:21:11

said with christy so she has all of that and we will be sharing the video as well and we will make sure it gets to

1:21:17

educators as well through kalinda in particular because it will reinforce the um education package we we’ve already

1:21:23

created around this exhibition thank you all and have a great night

1:21:29

okay thank you so much i really appreciate this and if there was any questions that we didn’t get to i apologize for that and

1:21:35

uh i just want to say thank you to everyone who tuned in and of course to kalinda thank you so

1:21:45

much

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