Mixed media help to share the stories of two local artists whose work is on display at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery, but also how their stories have changed as they have changed.
The gallery’s two exhibits, Mending with Tradition by Jessie Jannuska and Paper Letters by Katrina Craig, both utilize their work to process experiences in the artists’ lives. “Paper Letters explores the stories we tell, to ourselves and to others, to make sense of our experiences and our identity,” Craig explains in an artist’s statement. “To meaningfully change, these stories must be broken down and rebuilt, stringing together new narratives from these familiar yet difficult rhythms.”
It’s a theme that the gallery’s curator Sarah Hodges-Kolisnyk picks out in individual pieces throughout the gallery as they have been displayed. “[It] speaks to the cathartic nature of art, or the ability to be able to work through some things that might be difficult, might challenge us in different ways.”
Paper Letters
Katrina Craig’s work blends materials and stories together into recognizable forms. The Prince Edward Island-born, Winnipeg-based artist’s exhibit includes a blanket covering a wire figure on the ground, to a dress woven together from old text messages and journal entries to a mobile hanging from the ceiling made of yet more messages and even hand-spun wool that the artist has treated with natural dyes from her own garden.
Hodges-Kolisnyk has observed the engagement of gallery-goers with the pieces in the last couple of weeks and has seen how people try and gain different insights by attempting to read the messages. “The funny thing that I’ve noticed is that people go up to the pieces of text and try to read what’s written on the little cut-up papers,” she laughs. “I think that’s really fascinating that people are so interested in the little pieces that go into it and not just the big picture.”
“Katrina’s really interested in the work that goes into crafting the narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves and the narratives we tell others,” Hodges-Kolisnyk continues. “So much of Katrina’s process is about the labour that goes into the work and working through things as she’s working on them. It is about the process... and how that can you take you to a place of such different meaning when you’re working with repetition.”
Mending with Tradition
Similar to Paper Letters, Jessie Jannuska’s exhibit on the gallery’s second floor uses her art to process her own healing, drawing inspiration from personal connections and role models in her life. Jannuska, who hails from Canupawakpa Dakota Nation on Treaty 2 Territory, explores themes of Indigenous female empowerment through the medium of graphic novels.
“They’re all based on countless hours of getting to know the women,” Hodges-Kolisnyk elaborates, “She’s... putting in the creative thoughts, the artistic effort and skill to represent the key parts of their stories in a realistic way, but also in an inspiring way that perhaps only visual art can do.”
Hodges-Kolisnyk also notes that while the stories deal with heavy subjects like addictions and serious illness, they are also made more accessible to a first-time gallery attendee because of the popularity of graphic novelization.
These stories are all tied together by a piece on moose hide entitled “Wakanya Wiyakape Wocizani (Looking At Sacredness For Healing)”. Jannuska put it together with elders in her community and some of the subjects of her graphic novel pieces, working together to stretch the hide. “It actually represents them learning how to and working together to stretch this moose hide,” says Hodges-Kolisnyk. “Jessie did talk about going out with the woman who’s represented in one of the stories and hunting with her on the land. Being connected to the land was an important part of that person’s journey.”
Both Mending with Tradition and Paper Letters will be on display at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery until October 26. To learn more, you can visit them on the sout campus of Canadian Mennonite University, or visit their website.