A Full Day

A full day yesterday that started with a studio visit to atelier Pickering where Katherine shared with me a new body of work that has painted canvases cut into shapes according to their flow and figuration and from there manipulated into the third dimension.

Here is an instance of the cut canvas:

Here is an instance of the finished form that these cuts can take:

Katherine's new work will be on display at the Vernon Art Gallery later this year.

After our studio visit Karen and I walked to the stone circle where we met Syilx elder Richard Armstrong, who shared with us who he is and where we are, then asked those gathered to do the same.

From there, Richard led us to a spot underneath a giant pine where we learned of the Four Kingdoms -- those on four-legs, those in the water, those in the air, and those whose plants have roots -- and how these kingdoms are his parents, and that the name Syilx translates roughly as "a tear from," and that the Syilx are made of pieces of these kingdoms.

Richard also told us that knowledge comes to the Syilx through "vision quests" experienced by younger members who, during puberty, are taken into the mountains and placed at eye level with the terrain. It is from this position that knowledge enters -- not, as Richard explained, through the "trial and error" methodology promoted by anthropologists like James Tate.

Something else Richard shared with us. Of the Syilx language, he said, "Our language is so precise that to write it is a step backwards."

Later that night I travelled downtown to the Kelowna Public Library where UBC Okanagan's Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies member Matt Rader introduced an evening of readings and performances related to his "Bodies of Knowledge" course. Hosted by Clayton McCann, the program featured contributions from Matt's colleague Michael V. Smith and Vernon's Hannah Calder, as well those from Matt's guests and students.

Panel Two

Yesterday's roundtable panel (on the body, sovereignty and territory) was the second in the Summer Indigenous Intensive series of weekly panels. Perhaps because it followed an electric first panel (and because the second martini, no matter how hard you want it, is never quite as perfect as the first), this panel did not quite achieve the overtone of its predecessor.

Although every presentation had its moments (Carmen's reminders of the blindered language that attends discussions of sight and sightlessness, Adrian's embodiment of the room by circling it, and David's chameleon military uniform and his attention to space-taking moments in history), the two that remain closest to me -- that walk closest to me -- are Lori and Michelle's.

I appreciate what Lori said about rocks. Watching her grandmother crush chokeberries with them and watching them piled up beside farmers fields, where they were once in the way of another kind of food production. Listening to Lori had me searching the room for Tania, who wrote beautifully on rocks (stones) in Presentation House Gallery's Nanitch catalogue earlier this year.

Lori also spoke of a work she made in response to Elliot Silverstein's controversial film A Man Called Horse (1970), where, apropos of her ongoing critique of the imposed upon indigenous body, she "unpacked" a handsome cracker, taught him how to crush berries, then allowed herself (her "princess" self, her "squaw" self, or a little torn from each of her selves?) to fall in love with him.

For her part, Michelle's presentation threaded traditional Mali, Caribbean and U.S. American folk and popular songs within a discussion of her own passage as a scholar interested in body artists like Suzy Lake, Cindy Sherman and Adrian Piper. She even busted a few moves here and there -- enough to wade our bodies deeper into that which she set in motion so quietly, so fluidly, so skillfully.

The American Body Politic

The second paragraph from the http://ushistoryscene.com text on "Indian Policy" and Reconstruction (for the full text, click here):

The decline of Native American political autonomy in the second half of the nineteenth century was one of the results of increasing national authority that also irrevocably changed the character of the American West. With its powers invigorated by the demands of war, the federal government, having abolished slavery, turned in the post-war period to address its remaining, and largely western, racial and moral problem groups: the Mormons, the Chinese, and Native Americans. Native American populations, living at various stages of what nineteenth-century Americans called civilization, proved a particularly tricky segment of the population to integrate into the American body politic. The nineteenth century’s Indian “Problem” or “Question” took many forms; American policymakers had to determine what was to be done about hostile tribes still vigorously resisting relocation, how reservations would be managed, and how to “kill the Indian but save the man” through various civilizing projects. Preparing Native Americans for the new social and political order of the postwar United States necessitated new approaches to Indian policy, producing a massive and multifaceted Reconstruction program that forever altered Native American life and the contours of the American West.

(image: John Gast. American Progress, 1872)

Skin Stitch Tattoos

Last Saturday at Bush Gallery Tania showed me her latest tattoo -- a skin stitch tattoo on the inside of her forearm designed and sewn into her by Jeneen, who is participating in the Earth Line Tattoo Residency.

I wanted to take a picture of Tania's new tattoo, but for reasons that escape me I could not bring myself to ask her. Yesterday, while at our second residency meeting, I noticed Jeneen had two new stitch tattoos she had given herself on her left and right shins, and I wanted to take a picture of those, too, but again was unable to ask.

After the meeting I approached Jeneen to tell her how much I admired her stitch tattoos and she produced a sketchbook that had more of her designs, some of them floral (think William Morris), some of them in the abstract modernist tradition.

In telling me about her designs, Jeneen said that if I was indeed serious about getting a stitch tattoo (I had asked if she had any appointments left, and she said she was all booked up) I might present her with some designs that I am interested in and we could continue the conversation.

The designs that are currently on my mind (apart from Jeneen's) belong to a American Civil War period carpet bag I found online a few days ago, a long ago auctioned-off bag that has a "Native American" carpet pattern on one side and an unidentified carpet pattern (European? "Oriental"?) on the other.

Here is a link to the bag (Lot 118), with a description below it.

Here is the "Native American" (Southwest?) side:

Here is the unidentified side:

Why my interest in carpet bags? Well, it begins with my interest in carpetbaggers, which in turn is derived from an interest in the United States' Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) as it might relate to Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commision. Am I the first to notice that while Canadian politicians and businessmen were announcing the confederation of their provinces in the summer of 1867 (the beginning of the Dominion of Canada), the United States was just getting started on the equally contentious job of "repairing" itself after a bloody civil war (1860-1865)? Not likely. Is it fair to compare the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed with the Canadian federal government's historic treatment of First Nations and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? That is a question I am currently pondering in advance of tomorrow's second roundtable (July 13), where the discussion will focus on how "The Body might be seen as an expression of Territory and Sovereignty."

Rodrigo Hernandez-Gomez

Seven days since Ayumi and Peter gave us our first breaths and encouraged us to consider how we might walk together. That night, while seated at a potluck at Platypus House, Rodrigo showed me an image of a clay figurine based on a pre-Columbian burial object common to central Mexico.

Each time Rodrigo makes this figurine, it differs slightly from the previous version. What remains the same is the process by which he makes it, which is modular: the legs, the trunk of the body, the head and the head dress. Rodrigo's intention is to scan this figurine towards the making of its three-dimensional print.

Wednesday was the first of our weekly round tables, and Rodrigo was the first presenter. The topic was multiple conceptions of the body and how one or more of them might influence the making of a work. Rodrigo began by asking, "Is a body always a collective? And if so, how does it think?"

As we thought about this, Rodrigo told us about Ayotzi 68, a collective he belongs to whose name is drawn from Mexican students who have disappeared. Rodrigo insists this disappearance is in fact a "massacre" -- not a random act of violence, but a "systemic" one.

"Death brings us together," says Rodrigo. "Indignity makes us think."

Bush Gallery

A rock I watched from my haunches while playing with the dogs at Bush Gallery.

A Portrait of Rebecca Belmore by Danielle Sturk

To chose not to be seen speaking is part of the artist's contribution to an artist's video of her.