The talent of students and faculty in the Indigenous Artists Program at Blue Quills First Nations College will be available for the entire province to view in a travelling exhibition sponsored by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA) Travelling Exhibition Program, called “Creator Paints the World … The Colour of Our Voice.”
Blue Quills is attracting the attention of the art community because “the program has a strong foundation in our cultural knowledge, in our ancestral knowledge, in our ceremonies and our language and that is the source that informs the art,” said Sherri Chisan, one of the curators for the exhibit and program coordinator for Leadership and Management and the Indigenous Artists Program at Blue Quills College.
The paintings, clay sculpture and stone sculpture will be on display in the Blue Quills Library from Jan. 6 to 27 before being packed up and transported to another location in the province. It will travel for the next three years throughout Alberta, spending one year each in north, central and southern Alberta. The program, organized by the Alberta Art Gallery, is to get art out into communities that may not otherwise have access to such work.
“What excites us is that it is produced by the people in our program and it celebrates the rich artistic traditions of our people. It really demonstrates the depth of talent that we have in our communities. My hope is that it will encourage others who have that talent to come forward and pursue it,” said Chisan, adding, “It’s also an opportunity for our artists to get exposure throughout the province.”
She explained that art is all about communication and “the more we tell our stories through art and invite others into our stories, we create a more positive world.”
Everyone in the community is invited to come down and see the displays.
“We come from ceremony, we learn in ceremony and ceremony teaches us how to be, how to be in ceremony, to be in the moment to create that moment,” states a press release from the college on the exhibit. “We learn, we experiment, we seek meaning, we teach ourselves and each other, we laugh and we heal, we build relationships, we build community. We express our life in art. What we create becomes who we are. We are learning about our spiritual self, together we are art and ceremony. Art brings humbleness. Art is spiritual practice.”
The travelling exhibition is financially supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and was made possible through sponsorship from Syncrude Canada Ltd.
