VISION
"Life as a river meanders to flow,
Knowledge sets canoe afloat,
With paddles we direct our way".
A 3D exterior monumental installation and two 2D multimedia artworks are proposed by the following collective of artists and collaborators:
ARTIST COLLABORATIVE:
Jean-Marc Duchesne (Conception & Coordination)
Jimmy Sam
Joel Tapiatic
The vision of The Cre8art artist collective is to collaborate and create for the new James Bay Eeyou School (JBES), an outdoor monumental artwork that symbolizes and aims to inspire and preserve traditional cultural values, as well as to impress community pride, edify knowledge, honour Eeyou Itschee, and encapsulates the role that education plays as expressed in the above final verse, "...we direct our way".
As our students move forward while gaining safe, insightful and learned passages, evermore exacting routes must be navigated and charted. The new school, a symbol of a new vessel, with guidance to edify youthful minds and hearts into a community of knowledgeable paddlers as they venture unto new directions.
3D EXTERIOR INSTALLATION
VISION
Cree history recounts the paddle as a traditional tool, "a useful instrument of trade, travel, subsistence, and play," (Dunkin J. 2019). Today, it stands to signify a Cree nation that continues to advance forth, resilient, inspirational, [and], "enable[s] movement through nature-culture spaces, [...] the ways in which the paddle linked bodies in myriad ways." (Dunkin J. 2019). It is with that vigour of possibility that the proposed installation aims to embody. Equally reaching the sky as does the Mitchuap, the Paddle will become another larger than life symbol to all of Chisasibi's youth who attend James Bay Eeyou School (JBES) as they chart educational routes unto tomorrow.
DETAILS
the proposed PADDLE ONWARD monument would be set in the ground and at a safe calculated angle to insure stability and to suggest the forward motion stroke of a paddler. The paddle from ground up would tower equal to the height of the school building. As for the portion of the paddle in the ground, the swirling motion of water would be landscape around its base, around the paddle.
The design of the paddle is to be drawn from a Chisasibi Cree traditional design.
The materiality of the over-sized structure will be aluminum, as it will need to withstand years of environmental wear and tear.
PADDLE ONWARD
A colossal monument
Dimension: 12m. (40ft.) high and set in the ground at a maximum incline that an approved engineering group will evaluate project to be infallible.
Materials: Laminated Black Spruce, paint, weather-coating.
Process: Stacking, lamination, carving, sanding, painting and preservation weather-proofing.
Artists:
Jimmy Sam and Cree Elders Association
Joel Tapiatic (JBES Cree Culture teacher)
Collaborating Artist and Coordinator:
Jean-Marc Duchesne
(Visual and Digital Artist & JBES Art Teacher)
CONTACT
CRE8ART
ARTISTS
Jimmy Sam & Cree Elders Association
Joel Tapiatic (Wood Carver & JBES Cree Culture teacher)
Jean-Marc Duchesne (Conception & Coordination)
