Art to Inspire Inspired Me!

For the last two months, I’ve been leading a program at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) that I’ve just LOVED!

The class was brilliantly designed by Colleen Leduc a learning and programs coordinator at the gallery and a certified art therapist.

Photo from the WAG website

Colleen has taught the class in the past. But this year her administrative responsibilities at the gallery increased and she couldn’t fit time to lead the sessions into her schedule so she asked me and a colleague of mine to take over.

What a privilege!

The class is called Art to Inspire and this year we offered eight-afternoon sessions on Thursdays in April and May. The people who participated have dementia or Alzheimer’s and come to the program with their caregivers who may be family members or friends.

One participant took the piece he’d made in class home and framed it and then brought it to the next session to show us

Our sessions were held in a large sunny studio looking out over the WAG’s rooftop. We began each session with coffee or tea and cookies and friendly conversation around the table getting to know each other.

We talked about our interests, events in our lives and families, and what was going on with the weather and the news.

At our last meeting yesterday one of the participants said the sense of community created through these conversations had been the best part of the weekly sessions for her.

Photo from the WAG Facebook page

Our second activity was going into one of the galleries in the WAG and looking at a piece of art, or several pieces of art and discussing them. I LOVED this part of our sessions with everyone offering their unique ideas about the artwork and the feelings the artwork evoked.

Both caregivers and those with dementia or Alzheimer’s shared wonderful observations and insights.

After our time in the gallery, we would go back to our studio and create some art. I have included some of the marvelous pieces members of our group created in this post.

We used all kinds of different things for our creations which were often connected in some way to the artwork we had studied in the gallery.

I realized that just because someone has Alzheimer’s or dementia doesn’t mean their artistic instincts or talents have been hampered at all. The work created during our eight sessions was just amazing!!

Leading this class was just a delight for me. My own life was enriched immeasurably by the wonderful people I got to know in the last two months because of the class. I am so grateful to the WAG for giving me this opportunity.

There was one participant in the class who said at the end of every session, “That was so much fun MaryLou.” That moment always made every minute of preparing for the class worthwhile.

The program runs in partnership with the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba, and the University of Manitoba College of Rehabilitation Sciences.

Although the current program has come to an end people who are interested in the course can keep checking the WAG website for information about future classes.

Other posts………

Wraggling Along

Ageing

Warli Art- Kids Love It And You Will Too

Art in Bloom

This Artwork Makes Me Laugh

I have yet to pick all my favourites from the hundreds of pieces of art in the latest Inuit exhibit Sanaugangit which just opened at the Winnipeg Art Gallery- Qaumajuq. But this piece by Michael Massie a Nunatsiavut artist from a region of Labrador has already guaranteed itself a spot in my top ten list just because it makes me laugh.

The piece is called The Endurance Game and is about three mischievous brothers out caribou hunting in summer when the mosquitoes are at their thickest. The three brothers devise a game which will pit them against each other. Who will be able to endure the outdoors the longest as the mosquitoes swarm around them?

View of the sculpture from the rear

Michael Massie has chosen to portray the first brother here trying his hand at the endurance game. He is using the fresh hide of a caribou to protect himself from the mosquito onslaught. We know the caribou has just been killed because it still has its antlers hanging from its skin.

The mosquitoes in the sculpture are larger than life since no doubt the man perceives them to be huge as they crawl all over him. Somehow Massie has made the mosquitoes look fragile and monstrous at the same time.

An article from the Canadian Encyclopedia says Inuit have a long tradition of playing endurance games to strengthen themselves for extended rigorous hunts.

Artist Michael Massie

Does Michael Massie’s work allude to that tradition?

I know we have some summers here in Manitoba where surviving the swarms of mosquitoes is definitely a test of endurance, summers when we wonder who will win the endurance game? People or mosquitoes?

That lived experience definitely means many local art gallery visitors will be able to identify with The Endurance Game by Michael Massie and chuckle along with me at the character’s creativity in trying to ward off all of those mosquitoes.

Other posts……..

Grandfather, I Have Something To Tell You

Why Did the Creator Make Mosquitoes?

Antony and Cleopatra and the Mosquitoes

Storied Land-Metis, Indigenous People and Mennonites

Miriam Rudolph has created a series of prints to tell a story of the Metis and Indigenous people of Manitoba and how it intersects with the story of her Mennonite ancestors. Miriam has called it Storied Land: Repmapping Winnipeg. It is part of the Headlines: The Art of the Newscycle exhibit currently on view at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Each print is accompanied by a collection of articles from local news sources including the Winnipeg Free Press which describe the subject of the print.

Miriam went to the Winnipeg archives to read old Winnipeg Free Press newspapers to find stories about Indigenous people. In older editions of the paper, which she photographed she found little mention of the Metis or First Nation People of the province.

Now there are many more stories about Indigenous people in the newspaper and the Free Press has Indigenous writers and columnists. Miriam illustrates this by having the Indigenous people with their ribbon skirts and drums appear prominently in this print.

Here Miriam shows the East and West Reserves in red ink- land near Steinbach and Winkler that was given to new Mennonite immigrants to Manitoba. But this was land that Metis families also claimed as their own.

The Metis were petitioning to have official rights to the land but the rights of the Mennonite immigrants were rewarded instead. See how the Mennonites are front and centre and the Metis family at the top is smaller and in the distance?

In 1881 a railroad was built right through Winnipeg. North of the tracks smaller cheaper houses were built for new immigrants coming to Canada from other countries and later for Indigenous families coming to Winnipeg from off their reserves.

Bigger fancier houses were built on the south side of the tracks for wealthier families. The railroad tracks continue to divide Winnipeg but some recent articles in the Winnipeg Free Press suggest that moving the rail tracks might be good for the city.

This is Miriam’s print of Rooster Town. It was a settlement of some sixty Metis families that was located where the Grant Park Shopping Mall is now situated. The people who lived there had jobs and were contributing citizens of the city but were treated very rudely and unkindly by other Winnipeg people. Their community came to be known as Rooster Town.

In 1959 the people who lived there were forced out of their homes. You can see the roosters, the Metis family and the small homes in Rooster Town compared to the larger homes of other Winnipeg residents.

Mennonite Settlement in the North Kildonan area of Winnipeg began in 1928 when a new wave of Mennonites immigrated to Canada from Ukraine. Some 20,000 arrived. Palliser Furniture is an example of a business that began in North Kildonan where one of the small houses became a woodworking shop.

The land was gardening land and was valuable because properly cultivated it could provide a good supply of food to the city. It was offered to the Mennonites. People built homes and raised chickens. This print provides a contrast between the Mennonite settlement in North Kildonan to Rooster Town where people couldn’t purchase land or homes and where amenities like electricity and water weren’t provided.

In this print, we see the powerful politicians who decided a hundred years ago that an aqueduct should be built to bring water from Shoal Lake to Winnipeg. Aninishanabe people were living on a peninsula on Shoal Lake but in order to make the water flow properly to the city the peninsula was turned into an island making it difficult for the Indigenous people to get supplies.

In June 2019, an all-weather road was finally built to connect Shoal Lake to the Trans Canada Highway. Miriam shows the aqueduct in red. The road is called Freedom Road. You can see the Shoal Lake families in the bottom left-hand corner. Some Mennonite churches were vocal politically in advocating for the building of the road.

Miriam is heartened about the future of positive Indigenous-settler relations by the possibilities offered by the Naawi-Oodena land grant which makes the former Kapyong Barracks located in the Tuxedo and River Heights area of Winnipeg a large urban First Nation reserve.

The plan is to develop it into a community with homes, businesses, sports facilities, and schools. In her print, the Indigenous people are front and centre and the settler people are off to the side.

Photo of Miriam Rudolph from the Winnipeg Art Gallery website

If you want to know more I suggest you watch the video of a lecture artist Miriam Rudolph gave at the Winnipeg Art Gallery about these prints. She links each one with many Winnipeg Free Press articles and pieces from other media sources including Mennonite ones that provide added insight into each of her prints. She explains them in much more detail than I have and it is just fascinating.

I am giving a tour at the art gallery this morning which will include these prints of Miriam Rudolph’s and writing this piece last night was a way for me to prepare. I hope you will enjoy learning about them too.

Other posts……….

Life’s Journey and Tea Parties

The Wheat Oracle Who Wore Pants

Art from Obituaries

What’s A Parfleche?

Robert Houle- photo from the University of Manitoba website

Parfleches are everywhere in the exhibit of Robert Houle’s work called Red is Beautiful currently on view at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

What is a parfleche?

Parfleche in the British Museum

It’s a piece of an animal’s hide folded to make a kind of envelope to carry food, medicines, sacred objects or clothing.

Made by the Indigenous people of the Plains, parfleches were sometimes used as saddlebags but were also often worn around the neck and covered the heart. So they provided protection from an enemy’s arrows. And this explains the French Canadian origin of their name.

“Par,” comes from the verb parer, “to ward off,” and the second part, flèche, means “arrow.”

Photo of a parfleche by Henri Stamm

To make a parfleche, an animal’s hide was soaked in water and scraped clean. It was then stretched, pinned to the ground to dry and finally formed into an envelope shape. Women painted patterns onto the hide, patterns that often reflected something about the parfleche’s owner.

Painting and creating parfleches is a prominent artistic practice of Manitoba artist Robert Houle. When I was writing for the Winnipeg Free Press I had the privilege of interviewing him and he explained where his inspiration for making parfleches had originated.

“A seer or sage came to our family home on the Sandy Bay Reservation for each of my eight younger sisters’ naming ceremonies,” said Houle. “I was fascinated when they opened their parfleches and took out the bear claws and rattles they kept inside.”

Some of the parfleches on display in Red is Beautiful are ones Robert Houle has created for specific individuals.

This one made in 1999 is for Edna Manitowabi an Anishnaabekwe woman who prior to her retirement was a professor at Trent University where she taught courses in Indigenous culture and knowledge.

Edna plays the role of Naomi in the movie Indian Horse

Edna is also an actress who has appeared in numerous theatre productions and a number of movies and has been instrumental in establishing Indigenous theatre groups and performance venues.

Edna is the founder of an Indigenous Lodge in Rosseau River, Manitoba where she translates stories and songs and teachings from Ojibway into English.

Robert Houle has also created a work called Parfleches for the Last Supper where he has designed a unique parfleche for each of Jesus’ disciples.

Photo from the Art Canada Institute book about Robert Houle by Shirley Madill

The parfleche for each disciple was created from handmade paper, acrylic paint and porcupine quills. The black parfleche is for the disciple Judas, the white one for Jesus’ beloved friend John and the last one which is yellow and white is for Jesus himself.

Robert Houle studied the temperament and actions of each disciple before choosing the colour of their parfleche. This early parfleche work in 1983 was a way for Robert Houle to examine the religious faith he was taught at the residential Catholic schools he attended through the eyes of his own culture.

In his 1985 installation, Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians from A to Z Robert Houle has created 26 parfleches. There is an alphabet letter stencilled onto each parfleche and above it is the name of an Indigenous group whose name starts with that letter.

The parfleches look like they are being displayed on a library shelf and the Indigenous groups are identified with English alphabet letters. This references the way history books written by Europeans in their languages have been used to tell the story of Indigenous groups. These tellings have often been full of misinformation and are an example of cultural appropriation.

Parfleche II-C by Robert Houle

Many other beautiful parfleches are a part of the Robert Houle exhibition Red is Beautiful at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. It is on view till the end of the month.

Other posts………..

Paris/Ojibwa

Abstract and Frustrating

He’s From Winnipeg

Art From Obituaries

Who would think of creating art from the obituary pages of a newspaper?

Dianna Frid that’s who.

The obituary artworks she’s created are currently on display at the Winnipeg Art Gallery as part of an exhibit called Headlines- The Art of the News Cycle.

Dianna Frid

Dianna reads obituaries, hundreds of them, in the New York Times. She cuts out interesting ones and pastes them into a scrapbook. She circles phrases or combinations of words in the obituary that are thought-provoking or intriguing.

Then she chooses one of the phrases she’s circled

cuts out colourful letters to create its words

partitions the words in interesting ways

and displays them in four black squares.

The phrase the shape of a spoon comes from the obituary of Adrian Frutiger who designed type or fonts. His fonts are used on signs in public places around the world. Many fonts you use when you are creating a document on the computer were designed by Adrian Frutiger or inspired by his work.

This is the page in Dianna Frid’s notebook. She has Adrian Frutiger’s obituary on the right and on the left the phrase she circled in it and the sketch for her artwork

Adrain Frutiger once said in an interview “If you remember the shape of a spoon you used to eat your soup then the spoon had a poor shape.”

He went on to explain that when you are reading something if you remember the design of the font in which it is written it is a poor font. The font should help you read and understand the message of the written words without you actually taking notice of the font …… just as the shape of the spoon should help you eat something and enjoy it without you noticing the spoon’s shape.

Inspired by that phrase Dianna created her artwork.

“Look at me when I talk to you” the words of this art piece come from the obituary of a man named Clifford Nass who did research into how technology impacts personal interaction. He discovered that people were often far too busy multi-tasking on their various screens to actually spend time in meaningful exchanges with one another.

In a talk at Stanford University Nass encouraged people to make face-to-face time with others a priority and suggested we need to bring back an old admonishment he rarely hears now, “Look at me when I talk to you.”

This piece was inspired by the obituary of a musician named Lucia Pamela who liked to tell audiences her album Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela was the result of her building a rocket, touring the Milky Way and stopping on the moon to record her music. She was the ‘only one from earth’ in a place called Moon Town where the recording was done.

You can see many more of Dianna’s interesting obituary art pieces on display at the WAG right now.

Since seeing Dianna’s art I have been looking at the obituaries in the Winnipeg Free Press with a new eye trying to spot unique phrases.

Here’s a couple I’ve found recently.

“nothing left to lose”- This came from the obituary of Stephanie Bednarczyk who left Poland after World War II and came to Canada with as she often put it “nothing left to lose.”

“two peas in a pod”– This came from the obituary of James Birch an airline pilot from England who came to Canada in 1953. His obituary said that he and his wife Jean were made for each other like “two peas in a pod.”

I’ve always enjoyed reading obituaries, in fact, I often use them to find names for the characters in my fiction writing, but Dianna’s art has inspired me to look at them in new ways.

Other posts……..

A Different Kind of Obituary

Using Newspapers to Create Art of Exquisite Beauty

He Made Things Tick

Unique Memorials to Winnipeg Folks

Using Newspapers to Create Art of Exquisite Beauty

Canadian artist Myriam Dion recycles old newspapers into intricate works of art that simply take your breath away. She makes tiny precise cuts in the pages of newspapers to create meaningful masterpieces. You can find some on display now in the Headlines exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

The name and date of the newspaper Myriam uses for each artwork are hidden somewhere in every piece. If you look carefully at the top of this photo you can see this one was from an August 2020 issue of the Wall Street Journal.

The page in the newspaper that inspired this artwork was describing the wildfires in California. Myriam often tries to pick appropriate colours and designs that convey something of the story. Here she has used the reds and oranges of the fire and the edge of the artwork looks sooty and singed.

Myriam usually includes some images that relate to the story on the page she uses for her artwork. Here you can see people in their cars trying to escape the fires.

Myriam works with an Exacto knife. With bigger works, she sometimes makes a stencil but most of the time, she doesn’t have a pattern figured out ahead of time before she begins cutting. She just improvises and lets the image and the content of the news story guide her hand. Dion says she has been influenced by handicraft arts like weaving, embroidery, lacework and other traditional handicrafts.

In this piece, Myriam has not only cut but has also folded the newspaper as well to create a collar.

If you look closely you can see an image of American Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, well known for her rulings that were instrumental in gaining equal rights for women in the United States.

Myriam used a copy of a page from the New York Times June 15th, 1993 issue, the day President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the Supreme Court.

Myriam used a collar shape for her artwork because Ruth Bader Ginsberg was known for the unique collars she wore with her judicial robes.

There are other pieces by Myriam on display in the current Headlines The Art of the News Cycle exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, each as intriguing as these two. You will want to check them out.

Other posts…………

The Wheat Oracle Who Wore Pants

Perfect Companions

I’m Back At Work

Cora Hind- The Wheat Oracle Who Wore Pants

In a new exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery called Headlines: The Art of the News there is a photographic portrait of Ella Cora Hind. Later she dropped the Ella from her name and came to be known as Cora Hind.

When I toured the Headlines exhibit with curator Riva Symko she told us Cora had been an agricultural reporter known for her uncanny way of correctly predicting wheat prices.

Cora often dressed in men’s pants, something quite shocking for a woman at the time, and tramped through Manitoba grain fields to collect information to write her agricultural stories for the paper.

Cora was born in 1861 in Ontario. Both her parents had died by the time she was five and so she and her two brothers went to live with their grandfather who taught Cora all about farming. Cora wanted to become a teacher but she failed the algebra part of her qualification exam. So together with her Aunt Alice, she decided to move to Winnipeg in 1882 where they’d heard there might be employment opportunities.

This photo of William Luxton who refused to hire Cora is in the Headlines exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery

Cora had always dreamed of becoming a journalist so when she arrived in Winnipeg she went to see William Luxton the editor of the Manitoba Free Press. He was a friend of one of Cora’s uncles and so welcomed her warmly to his office, but was shocked when she said she wanted to write for the paper. Luxton told Cora women didn’t write for newspapers. Being a reporter was rough work often involving interviewing less than-savoury people. It wasn’t for a woman.

This old typewriter is part of the Headlines exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. When the Free Press editor wouldn’t hire her Cora learned to type and got another job.

Cora wasn’t deterred. She heard about a new office machine called a typewriter. She rented one, learned to type and got herself a job working for the lawyer Hugh John McDonald. But she was still interested in farming and grain growing and in 1898 started making crop predictions. Farmers came to trust her expertise and knowledge and she would submit articles about farming to the newspaper under the name E. Hind.

This portrait of John Dafoe who hired Cora as a reporter is also in the Headlines exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery

In 1901 the brand new editor of the Winnipeg Free Press John Dafoe, being a little more forward-thinking than Mr Luxton, hired her as an agricultural reporter.

Cora would go on to earn an international reputation as an agricultural journalist and her predictions about harvest yields soon were the accepted source for establishing the price of Canadian wheat. She became known as kind of an ‘oracle of wheat’ for her accurate crop predictions.

She was also famous for the way she strode through grain fields in riding breeches, high leather boots and a Stetson hat. She went across Canada inspecting farms. In 1924 she travelled more than 10,000 kilometres checking out crops.

Cora played an important role in getting the vote for women in Manitoba

Cora founded the Winnipeg branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club and helped form the Political Equality League with other Winnipeg suffragettes campaigning for women to get the right to vote in Manitoba which they did in 1916.

This photo shows the vest made by a Cree woman from Norway House for Cora. The vest is in the collection of the Manitoba Museum and Cora is wearing it in the portrait on display in the Headlines exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. In an exhibition at the museum showcasing the vest visitors were reminded that while Cora helped win the vote for Manitoba women in 1916 Indigenous women would not be allowed to vote until 1952. – photo by Lyle Dick

Cora Hind was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Manitoba in 1935.

This sculpture of Cora Hind by Miguel Joyal is included in the Winnipeg Citizens Walk of Fame in Assiniboine Park

When Cora died in 1942 they halted trading at the Winnipeg Grain Exchange for two minutes in her memory.

Other posts……..

What a Woman!

Finding Nellie’s House

Grain is King

Winnipeg History in Iconic Photos

A new Winnipeg Art Gallery exhibit called Headlines celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Winnipeg Free Press.

One of the interesting pieces in the exhibit is a collage featuring photos from the newspaper over the years. It is fun to examine them and try to figure out what news story each photo represents.

Can you find Dale Hawerchuk signing with the Winnipeg Jets in 1981, images of the 1997 flood, protesters overturning a street car during the strike of 1919, the building of the Manitoba Legislature that began in 1917 and Elijah Harper rejecting the Meech Lake Accord in 1987?

What about swimmers at the Pan Am Pool in 1967 during the Pan Am Games, a pair of Siberian Tigers welcomed to the zoo in 1961 and a photo of author A.A. Milne meeting the bear who inspired his Winnie the Pooh book?

See the huge crowds in 1923 lining the streets to get a glimpse of the magician Harry Houdini? Of course, there’s the iconic Salisbury House which opened its doors in 1931, the Witches Hut at Kildonan Park built in 1970, and IF day a reenactment of a possible Nazi takeover of Winnipeg staged in 1942.

Check out the old Winnipeg City Hall demolished in the 1960s, the return of the Winnipeg Jets in 2011, the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral built in 1952, the Gimli Glider emergency landing in 1983 and a light artwork called Bokeh installed in Kildonan Park in 2019.

Recognize the performer Spoon Man at the Winnipeg Folk Fest, Burton Cummings in his grade 11 St. John’s Highschool picture or the Arlington Bridge?

Did you know Carmichael and Clementine were the first polar bears at the zoo brought there in 1939 and 1940 respectively or that the Golden Boy was placed atop the Manitoba Legislature in 1919?

This section features some iconic Winnipeg food, a fat boy with chilli fries, Alycia’s Ukrainian Restaurant and Manitoba Imperial Cookies from Goodies Bakeshop. The blizzards of 1966 and 1997 are shown along with photos reminding us of the Folk Fest, Festival du Voyageur, the flight of the Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds over Winnipeg in 2020 and the Santa Claus Parade.

The man hanging onto the parking meter or is it a fence pole looking like he’ll be blown away by the wind is legendary Winnipeg Free Press photographer Jack Ablett. Is that his camera in his hand?

The Headlines Exhibition is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery till the end of May. You don’t want to miss it!

Other posts………..

Finding Fossils At the Art Gallery

I’ve Been Captured By A Famous Winnipeg Photographer

A Sad Memory at Winnipeg’s City Hall

Winnipeg Welcomes the World

During the ten years I have worked at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq I have given tours to visitors from around the world.

I made a map with stars showing all the places the people on my tours came from last week

But this last week during the five days I worked at the gallery I think I set some sort of record for international visitors. This morning I sat down to list all the countries the participants on this week’s tours came from.

Central America -Mexico and Guatemala

Asia -Japan, China, Korea and Thailand

The Caribbean- Jamaica and Barbados

Africa- The Ivory Coast and Somalia

South America- Chile

The Middle East- Iraq and Afghanistan

Europe- Italy, Belgium, France, England

North America- Canada

Winnipeg artist Wanda Koop’s unique artwork showing the Manitoba Legislative Building at the Forks

This past week made me realize……..

Winnipeg really is a world class destination that attracts people from across the globe

International travel is back after its pandemic hiatus

The Winnipeg Art Gallery is an important place for people from other places to learn about Canada and its culture and history

Other posts……….

A Dream Day At Work

Oh What Fun!

What’s a Portscape?

It’s All About the Frame

Jennine Krauchi- The Frame

This stunning beaded picture frame is the first thing that catches your eye when you enter A Hard Birth an exhibit currently on view at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

The photograph it showcases is by Joseph Langevin and was taken in June of 1870. It depicts Metis leader Louis Riel and the members of his provisional government. Their efforts ensured that Manitoba would have representation in Canada’s Parliament and be an official province.

Jennine Krauchi

Although the photo is a significant one it is the frame surrounding it that takes your breath away. It was created by Jennine Krauchi a master Metis beader who learned the art from her mother who in turn had learned it from Jennine’s grandmother.

Jennine worked on the frame for two years, first drawing out a pattern on paper, a pattern she had designed after carefully studying Metis beadwork dating to 1870. The beads are some of the smallest made and come from Venice.

Fleur de leis and shamrocks in the beading reference the Irish and French roots of many Metis families. The survey chain in the corner is a reminder of how Canadian soldiers were sent to Manitoba to survey Metis land that had been in some families for generations.

Jennine says beading is like praying for her. If she is sad or angry she stops beading because she thinks her troubled spirit will impact the quality of her work.

An example of porcupine quill beading by an unknown Metis artist dating to 1840. It is also part of the Hard Birth exhibit which tells the story of how our province joined Canada in 1870.

Metis beadwork was originally done with bones, shells, seeds or porcupine quills on hides. When the Grey Nuns came to the Red River Settlement they taught the young Metis women embroidery and the women adapted the embroidery patterns for beading Indigenous motifs.

Metis beaders are well-known for their colourful and intricate work and Jeanine Krauchi’s The Frame is such a fine example of the art.

Also included in the A Hard Birth exhibit is this special chair Jeanine Krauchi designed for Louis Riel who was prevented on the threat of death from claiming a seat in Canada’s Parliament, even though he was elected to it multiple times. The chair features Jeanine’s marvellous beading.

Other posts about the A Hard Birth exhibit……..

15 Ways To Use a Metis Sash

Stepping on the Chain

What in the World is a Wool Sack?