CRAFTED NWT PAGE 22

Elizabeth Arey, Tuktoyaktuk, NWT Inuvialuit Man Doll, hand-sewn. Beaver fur, cotton, moose hide face, sealskin mitts, canvas mukluks. 38 x 25 x 7 cm Erica Lugt, Inuvik, NWT Arctic Sunrise earrings made using the Brickstitch technique. Delicas beads, Harp seal (Arctic), sterling silver findings, copper disc. 45 x 3 x 0.2 cm

Craft Tells Material Stories

Art is optical, creating illusion. But craft is always an encounter with the properties of a specific material. Artists like Jennifer Buckley, who uses fish scales in her art, show how material can be transformed while maintaining its integrity – much like our own personal journeys through life.

Craft Tells Beautiful Stories

It takes skill to create beauty. Although craftspeople work very hard, their skill is not meant to be noticed. Skill is just a means of arriving at beauty and a finished form well. Potter Wendy Stephenson invests many hours into her ceramics work to make it all seem effortless in the end result.

Craft Tells Family Stories

Craft passes through successive generations. When studying NWT craft, it is possible to trace unique family traits – the way an experienced beader, carver, or hide tanner’s own style has been adopted into the work of younger craftspeople. Artist Lucy Simon tells us, “I create traditional craft because I love designing. I have been doing it since I was 9 years old. I make craft to give to my children and my grandchildren. What I give them is part of me. It is who they are too. It is in me to share.” Through another lens, modern craft is often inspired by tradition. Many of our Indigenous crafts people are using traditional techniques that have been passed on to them through the generations, and applying them to modern designs. Jewellery Artist, Erica Lugt, is inspired by the Inuvialuit Drum Dancing Parkas her family wears for ceremony. She weaves these black and white triangle patterns into her beaded earrings, which are then adorned with strips of seal, another cultural symbol that is highly respected and honoured through her designs.

Craft Tells Stories About Daily Life

Craft, more than art, meshes with our daily lives. We look at art, but we use and wear craft. Craft is close to our skin, it feeds and nourishes us, it helps us work. Craft becomes an extension of our bodies. Crafts people like Dorathy Wright create parkas that enable us to thrive in our cold climate but that also remind us of the land, the people and the history that enables us to do so. Over years of use, they get worn in, like old souls that walk beside us in our daily lives. The story of NWT craft is still in the telling. We have an endless number of storytellers and this is a never-ending story.

Threading Black

Alberta Craft Discovery Gallery - Edmonton June 10 - July 3, 2021 (exhibition dates affected by mandated closures of galleries)

Alberta Craft Gallery - Calgary July 17 - August 28, 2021

Threading Black: eva birhanu and Simone Elizabeth Saunders on Connecting Race, Roots and Identity

SHIEMARA HOGARTH, Curator

eva birhanu and Simone Elizabeth Saunders share in this joint textile exhibit portrayals of the common threads that underpin an understanding of Black female Canadian identity. They invite observation of these connections and reflection on what they reveal about themselves in Canadian craft production. With look, don’t touch eva birhanu takes a mould of a 20-inch length of tightly braided synthetic hair and casts it in bronze. It appears defiant, standing gilded and devoid of the peculiar head on which it usually occupies space. Similarly, i know you want ‘em, a pack of gold-paint coated $7 hair extensions gives new value to the standard but often ‘othered’ 1 hair store braids. The 5ft hair weaving takes hair that once adorned its makers’ head and creates a woven tapestry in which a presence and an absence of the body are simultaneously felt. In wear my hair, a facsimile of hair – cooked noodles – woven in a metallic gold replaces the real or synthetic hair and asks us where and how we assign worth and value. Simone Elizabeth Saunders’ She Watches, She Waits strikes an omniscient presence with the likeness of Nina Simone, whose roots are imprinted both visually and through the act of hand-tufting. She Emerges, a hand-tufted self-portrait, through the sheer scale and texture of the work, lend weight to her assertion of herself wherein the act of making is an irrevocable marking of her existence. Audre Lorde once said that “if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” 2 eva birhanu and Simone Elizabeth Saunders define for themselves in this body of work permanent manifestations through sculptural and textile practices that reckon with the necessary conversations surrounding race, gender, roots and identity.

eva birhanu, look, don’t touch, 2019 cast bronze Bibliography

1 Devika Chawla, Teresa Gonzales, and Kristin McLaren discuss the concept of ‘othering’ as one whereby a difference is categorized in a lesser manner to separate the us/normal from the them/abnormal. 2 BlackPast. “(1982) Audre Lorde, ‘Learning from the 60s,’” August 12, 2012.