Image: Anong Migwans Beam, Deluge, 2019, 8’x12’, oil on canvas
petal, clay, berry, leaf: natural inks, dyes, and pigments of Northern Ontario
Oct 4, 2024 >> Jan 5, 2025
An exhibition that wanders off the beaten path. This group exhibition presents new expressions and experiments with natural inks, dyes and, pigments in Northern Ontario by four artists at different stages of their careers. Works of painting, textile, installation, video and photography cultivate new experiences of colour, landscape, gentleness, and community.
Opening Reception
Friday, October 4 @ 7:00 pm
Forage and Gather: Micro talks with artists Anong Migwans Beam, Betty Carpick, Tuija Hansen, and Sister Mullosk
An exhibition that wanders off the beaten path. This group exhibition presents new expressions and experiments with natural inks, dyes and, pigments in Northern Ontario by four women artists at different stages of their careers. Works of painting, textile, installation, video and photography cultivate new experiences of colour, landscape, gentleness, and community.
This event is free of charge. All welcome. Light refreshments will be served.
About the Artists:
Tuija Hansen (HBFA, MA) is a textile artist and instructor living and working in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Hansen studied felting, dying, and weaving at Kootenay School of Arts School of Craft and Design and Visual Arts and Social Justice Studies at Lakehead University. Her practice is strongly influenced by her northern environment and connects to her Finnish/Nordic heritage. Her creative practice spans textiles, weaving, foraging, and natural dyes. She also creates wearable garments, wares, and accessories under the banner of Tuija Hansen Fibre Design. She has exhibited her work in group and solo exhibitions in Northern Ontario, Toronto, and Iceland.
Anong Migwans Beam is a painter from M’chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. She is inspired by the physical history of place, the natural landscape, and the relationship between water and memory. Anong was born to artist parents, Carl Beam and Ann Beam, who encouraged her to develop as an artist. She was raised with a meaningful connection to her artistic familial roots and rich Ojibway ancestral heritage. As founder of Beam Paints, Anong creates oil and watercolour paints sourced from local pigments and minerals. Anong has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions across Canada.
Sister Mollusk is a textile artist and educator whose work is meant to spark curiosity for the natural world. Her practice is grounded in a gentle re-imagining of the local environment, prompting connection between self, materials, and place. She collects plants from the flowered fields, shadowed forests, and weed-lined roadways to make vibrant natural dyes, creating living textiles imbued with the ephemeral properties of nature. Beyond foraging and natural dyes, abstract quilting is Sister Mollusk’s primary medium. Her quilted works emphasize an organic accumulation of textile elements – reflecting evanescent processes of memory and feeling.
Betty Carpick is a multidisciplinary land-based artist, educator, and environmentalist, who offers stewardship of land and water shaped by her Cree and Eastern European heritage. Her work looks at social, cultural, and environmental issues in serious and playful ways by creating art that exists in the space between process and performance and the missing portions between the real and the imagined. Betty’s practice includes ink making, textile arts, writing, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, performance, and installation, often blurring the boundaries of these disciplines. She lives and works in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
This exhibition is proudly supported by:
