Converging Lines at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery

Cree Steven's mixed media painting, Fortify This One, is made of acrylic paint/pastes/gels, paper, cheesecloth and leather. 

   With a variety of indigenous backgrounds, Cree Stevens, Shaun Hedican, Elliot Doxtater-Wynn and Kristy Cameron each have unique personal approaches to express their respect for their ancestors, to pay homage to family and to the artists who inspired them. Their work is on display at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery till February 25 in a show called, Converging Lines: Recent Art from the Northwest.

Cree Steven's sculptural work, Wiigwaasaatig.

     Leaves, feathers, bark, tools, jewelry, craftwork, animals or the remnants of animals appear in a variety of forms and in more than one artist’s work where First Nation’s styles are mixed with traditional and contemporary western art approaches. This variety creates a strong show to make an overarching statement on the value of variety and how variety can be achieved through personal expression.

     Many locals already know Cree Steven’s work from craft shows where Steven’s should get an award for having the best vendor’s booth, a “booth” more akin to a miniature professional gallery with displays that are an art in themselves. Steven’s work sells quickly enough that she practically burns herself out, along with her partner Bruce, in a rush to create new work and set up for the next show. Stevens has sold many of her large birch-bark and antler works along with her intricate and beautiful jewelry.

     So it is a delight to see Steven’s larger wall pieces and sculptures at the gallery. Her work exudes mythological power and beauty that seems barely containable within the clean Scandinavian symmetry of design and gorgeous copper accents within the wood, bark and antlers. Copper acts as a binding element in the works as if it represents the blood, energy and power of living things, creating an elegance that refreshes familiar imagery and objects in unexpected ways. 

Elliot Doxtater-Wynn's untitled piece.

    Shaun Hedican plays with a familiar spidery Woodland style adding depth with a background out-of-focus imagery and shadows. In other works the style is seemingly tattooed to the bones of animals, potential talismans used in ancient rituals. The spear, titled “Family Staff” is both artful and menacing as it exudes it’s function beyond art and the gallery. It almost seems out of place as if it were either a museum piece or a found object, stolen from a ritual and mistakenly placed in the gallery. It’s gloriously alive and threatening. 

Shaun Hedican's
work, Family Staff

     Three large untitled paintings by Elliot Doxtater-Wynn command a wall where the leaves that form the clothes belonging to the man or woman in the paintings have fallen to organize as rectangular shapes on the floor. The bold cartoon-like figures are more animated and seem to belong in an otherworldly space, but they are held in place by the leaves made heavy with their shiny coating. A story is forming in the images with it’s meaning kept mysterious and subjective.

Kristy Cameron's work, Cattail Legend

     Playful in her approach, Kristy Cameron dives into the netherworld with creatures and characters in settings that are wonderfully suggestive of journeys into the mythical. In the painting, Cattail Legend, a man in space is holding up a planetary sized bulb of cattails that supports a massive tree. Without knowing the legend, what happens next is anyone’s guess, but the painting is ideographic in its presentation suggesting that the little man, thus humans in general, are but a small thing compared to nature, yet important for its survival. The little man has the burden of a world on his shoulders. 

     In other works, Christy plays with abstract flows of colour that would be beautiful on their own merit, however with the little woodland style animals, one called, Michi Peshu, the paintings take on other dramatic and fun dimensions. 

Kristy Cameron's work, Trickster Rabbit

     Where today we are fearful of a revival of populism or tribalism, of people going “back to blood,” this show makes a great nod to the idea that we don’t have to play to group mentality or one standard or style in order to be accepted. We can retain our ancestry and still be part of what brings us all together, to share and help launch ourselves into the future without the loss of our cultures, our past, or the opportunity to shape it the way we like for the future.