Jun 2, 202310 min read

These gifts come from kindness

Updated: Jun 5, 2023

We honored Memorial Day in ART YARD Advanced Studio on zoom with the next installment of our Earth Mother / Mother Earth themed session in which we memorialized a departed loved one led by ART YARD Artist Jacob Rath.

Jacob recounts: “I began class by acknowledging that George Floyd was murdered three years ago. I then jumped into the lesson, which was about an art exhibit I saw in Minneapolis: Piitwewetam: Making is Medicine. The show features artwork made by the Gustafson family. Many of the works in the exhibit were about the family's deceased son. I focused on showing six dresses from the exhibit, made by Shannon Gustafson. Each dress was accompanied by a letter that the artist wrote to her deceased son. The letters all focused on the artist's feelings of grief, the love for her son, and about things she found beautiful on Earth.

Wall text from the exhibition:

"One of the gifts of being human is to love. We love so deep and so forever that generations forthcoming can feel our love. Another gift of being human is to grieve: a most natural and challenging response to loss. This is a story of an Anishnaabe family’s journey of love and grief and grief and love.

Piitwewetam: Making is Medicine is a commemorative art exhibition presenting the work by the Gustafson family: Shannon, Ryan, Justine, and Jade. This exhibition honours their son and brother, Piitwewetam (Rolling Thunder), also known as the late Jesse Gustafson, who travelled to the spirit world in 2015.

Piitwewetam is an offering from the Gustafson family to each of us. As an Anishnaabe family, the act of giving is an essential part of their life. Gifts are offered out of kindness, out of love. To give is to simply offer without the expectation of receiving something in return. When we give, we are enacting a sacred law that acknowledges life. Within Anishnaabe tradition, a part of the grief ceremony is gifting. This beautiful exhibition acknowledges all of the good life, including relationships, teachings, singing, and dancing that Jesse experienced when he was here on Earth. Each piece in this exhibition will be gifted to friends, family, or to one another. These gifts come from kindness, from a deep love that honours Piitwewetam."

Jacob continues: “Everyone's work looked completely different, but everyone was able to create work which showed an appreciation for a deceased person and the Earth. I enjoyed being part of a group where everyone got to share their feelings and tell a story about someone from their life. Participants are instructed to gift their artwork to someone else.”

Jacob’s delicate watercolor rendition of the beach and dunes at Provincetown was accompanied by a poignant letter to his mother Laura which described how the landscape reminded him of the beaches at Montauk which they regularly visited together.

Dear Mom,

I made a painting of the dunes at Provincetown, because you are the one who made sure I developed a love of the ocean. Would you have guessed that I would move out to Minnesota when I grew up? It's beautiful, but I miss being near the beach. I don't always remember that until I'm back at the water staring at it.

The beach is where I learned to love and appreciate the world around me. I love the salt, the intense heat of the sun and sand, the aggressive current and waves, and the wind. This place is beautiful for all the same reasons as Montauk.

Love, Jacob

Dear Scotty,

Thank you for suggesting that I visit Provincetown. I loved it, but maybe not for the same reasons as you. But I suppose the important thing is that we both love it.

Love,

Jacob

Pat drew the mulberry tree on her grandparents property, depicting the berries in various stages of ripeness, paying attention to the surface of the leaves, and resting a top of a symbolic depiction of a nearby stream in a graphic symbolic style reminiscent of the work we viewed by Shannon Gustafson.

Pat Larash, Piitwewetam: Making is Medicine, In Memory of My Grandparents (in progress)

Ed honors the memory of his friend, Allan Hobson a renowned psychiatrist and dream researcher. Ed shared that Allan gave Ed his best compliment ever telling him that his artwork is empirical (based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.).

Ed Rath, Piitwewetam: Making is Medicine, In Memory of Allan Hobson I

Ed Rath, Piitwewetam: Making is Medicine, In Memory of Allan Hobson Il

Meridith explains: “I chose to memorialize my great aunt Anna Mae who died about a year ago. Anna Mae was an avid bird watcher who had feeders strategically placed about her small yard for the best views. She frequently sent me lovely gifts including jewelry that had been hers, my other great aunts, my grandmothers, or my great grandmothers. These aspects made me think of that wonderful Robert MacFarlane poem, Jackdaw, from The Lost Spells (Penguin Random House UK, 2020).

Meridith McNeal, Piitwewetam: Making is Medicine, In Memory of My Great Aunt Anna Mae

Karla writes: “I was so surprised by the contemporary expression within the garment designs in Jacob’s presentation. The strong geometry in black and white along with ribbon strips of bright color. My design speaks to the weaving of fabric but also to the complexities of minds and personalities. Fred loved bindweed (a highly undesirable plant) with its sweet delicate white blooms. He was a problem solver, a mechanical genius! Someone who could distill a paragraph to one succinct sentence! Robert often drew complex scenes in black marker and pen. Social commentary and a way of coping with discrimination. I miss them both. I am blessed to have known them.”

Artwork by Fred Elliott (left) and Robert Joy (right)

Karla, Piitwewetam: Making is Medicine, In Memory of Artists Fred Elliott and Robert Joy

On Tuesday we celebrated the AYB Gemini’s Golnar, Evelyn, Maraya, Kevin and Meridith in a GEMINI inspired art-as-healing ART YARD Advanced Studio in person at BWAC. In this challenging session ART YARD Artist Golnar Adili had us exploring our duality by drawing from observation with both hands simultaneously. Interestingly, as I wandered about taking photographs I could pick out all of our multi-talented instrumentalists! The giveaway was their dexterity and posture.

Golnar enthusiastically recounts: “It was such a great session drawing with both our hands simultaneously! As the last class in a 3 session series, we continued to dig into the subconscious by using our hands as unorthodox drawing tools. Also as celebrating our Gemini birthdays, it made sense to use both hands to show duality in this astrological character, the twins!

Advanced Studio Artists at work in our studio at BWAC (use arrows to scroll)

We started drawing from observation objects, landscapes, and figures, each looking in different directions and drawing freely. Artists were asked to start at the top of the object and move down. What a challenge, and what beautiful works that came out of it! Some had done detailed hair texture and beautiful mark making, some chose to do continuous line drawings. There were overlapping interests in depicting certain objects like the plant pot, and the rooster, and the Manhattan skyline drawn also by Assia, the smallest member of the group. We had so much great work to look at for critique!!”