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Entering a Different Reality
Boozhoo, aaniin, hello,
This blog story is the 25th already in a series titled "Teaching Stories."
The series features my jewelry and works of art, occasionally along with images of paintings by kindred artists. The stories thematically connect the jewelry and artwork displayed with the Seven Grandfather teachings of the Ojibwe Anishinaabe People.
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The question we will ask ourselves today is: What is it that defines us as Native Woodland artists? What makes us spiritual artists? And how do we deal with the sacred?
Me and my fellow artists, what unites us is that we work in the discipline of the Canada-basedNATIVE WOODLAND ART. Most of us are painters with an Anishinaabeor Ininew (Cree) background. Some of us call ourselves MEDICINE PAINTERS, rather than Woodland artists. Woodland artists is a name that outsiders address us with.
Finding the core of the ancient art forms of our Peoples by drawing on their pictorial and oral traditions that spring from pre-dawn time lies at the base of our art. (Re)telling engaging teaching stories through our canvases and designs and drawings - and in my case, sometimes jewelry - is always our common goal. In the process of telling stories trough our paintings or jewelry-making or graphic and digital design, we find much joy and inspiration and, above all, HEALING and MEDICINE in tracing back the footsteps of our ancestors.
So, as a Woodland artist I basically consider myself a MODERN STORYTELLER. What I do, trough the guidance of the sacred records and teachings of long ago, is (re)create the ancient symbols and visual language of the mazinaajimowinan, or pictographs; respectfully I render these traditional elements into my graphic art and contemporary designs of precious metals and stone.
There is always a healing aspect to the creative process involving our art-making. So, in a way, we are storytellers AND healers; trough our creations we tell HEALING STORIES. We heal ourselves and we heal those who listen to our stories.
This requires continuous learning from and studying – and sometimes even dreaming about – the ancestral teachings. Sometimes, in doing this, we enter a different world where we ‘see’ and ‘hear’ things we would never experience in this reality.
As we are limited in what we know - or can reveal - about the ancient ceremonies and teachings, the challenge for us lies in creating abstract designs that work on a mysterious level and approach, or (respectfully) represent, the sacred.
Nahaaw, miigwech gibizindaw noongom. Thank you for listening to me today. Giga-waabamin wayiiba giishpin manidoo inendang, I will see you again soon, if the Great Mystery wills it. Mino bimaadizin! Live well!
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Read more about the spirit and philosphy of our art project:
Illustration: Giizhig Nenaandawi'iwed ("Sky Healer")
From the series "Dance of Life."
© 2022 Zhaawano Giizhik
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About the author and his sources of inspiration:
![Zhaawano Giizhik at Agawa Rock]( "The author at Agawa Rock")
My name is Zhaawano Giizhik. My clan is waabizheshi, the marten.
As an American artist and jewelry designer currently living in the Netherlands, I like to draw on the oral and pictorial traditions of my Ojibwe Anishinaabe ancestors from the American Great Lakes area. For this I call on my manidoo-minjimandamowin, or "Spirit Memory"; which means I try to remember the knowledge and the lessons of my ancestors.
The mazinaajimowinan or ‘‘pictorial spirit writings’’ - which are rich with symbolism and have been painted throughout history on rocks and etched on other sacred items such as copper and slate, birch bark and animal hide - were a form of spiritual as well as educational communication that gave structure and meaning to the cosmos.
Many of these sacred pictographs or petroforms – some of which are many, many generations old - hide in sacred locations where the manidoog (spirits) reside, particularly in those mystic places near the coastline where the sky, the earth, the water, the underground and the underwater meet. It is these age-old expressions that provide an endless supply of story elements to my work; be it graphically, through my written stories, as well as in the context of my jewelry making.
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