Waawaashkeshi Apishimon
Macie Dixon, Waawaashkeshi Apishimon (2026), Grass and shell with photo emulsion
My Great Granny Gladys Taylor had a house on the shore of Mud Lake, in her yard she had big beautiful lilac trees. She was my dads grandmother on his mothers side. When he and my mom separated, my great aunts (his aunts) brought me and my mom a house warming gift. It was a baby of the big lilac bush from my great grannys. We planted it together, I was just 5. When we moved to a different house we dug up the now very large tree and brought it with us. Now it is at my moms current house and is about as large as Gladys would have been in my memory. This really laid down a foundation of care for plants. The way the women in my family have always been so connected, whether or not they are blood, has also been intertwined into this care.
Land as pedagogy is an act of resistance. That is what this body of work is about. Nurturing the land (growing grass) is a form of protest. This kind of knowledge building revolts against institutional knowledge building which is built from colonial values. Not only is this important on its own, as well as how love and happiness can be an act of resistance. The care and tenderness that it takes to grow grass is the concept.
Using a recycled plastic box that was once my pet spider's home, to house the dirt and grass I will learn its small ways of telling me how it is feeling. I needed a teacher's help (Tannis Nielsen) for a map to the deer lays, and had Amber Thomas, and Errol Ricard in two separate occasions go with me to take pictures at said deer lays. I borrowed Xander Stonefish’s polaroid camera to take the photos. This created a need for community. The deer lays symbolise the Mutual care that we give and take from the land. I used a technique of polaroid emulsions, onto shells I harvested at my favourite beach the previous summer. The process of that was tedious and required tenderness. Having me in the shell, in the deer lay, placed into the basket of grass, created a spiral of lays within lays, which mimics our connection to the universe. The process of this work is the concept.
Dying Rivers/ Public Transit
Dying Rivers/Public Transit
Watercolour paint, Watercolour Paper, Transparent paper, Acrylic paint, Video, Sound.
40’’ x 29’’
This work is about the rivers under us that have died and the transit that has replaced it. This shows the struggle to live in this system and how the water couldnt as well. This connects us to the water. I am using this to create a relationship between viewer and water if that relationship isn't there already, and if it is i am creating a space to grieve over these losses.
Ephemeral Pools
This piece is about the relationship between the artist and their landscape paintings. This piece was first shown to me in a dream. I used an installation with smell, sound, and touch involved to really draw the viewer in and make them feel as if they were in nature. I projected a video of clips I've taken at ponds, of wildlife like fish and turtles alongside lots of lily pads and other pond plants. This is supposed to make the viewer think about their relationship to these living things and how they are often taken for granted. The song I made had recorded sounds of a woodpecker and the wind, and I added instrumentals over top to try and capture the calm and whimsy of the woods. The choice of size and use of the bowl was to recreate the micro environments created during the early spring during the melting of snow. I tried to mimic an ephemeral pool, which was something I was very interested in as a kid playing in the woods with my sisters. This was the first iteration of a hopefully larger project in the future.
Highway 7
This series is about the feeling of being alone at night in winter. The liminal feeling that happens when the night is no longer dark because of the moon bouncing off the snow, how abnormal it is to see things at night. I’m Using charcoal to capture the shaky atmosphere of the heart pumping. The box is to add a three dimensional layer to invite the viewer to look closer and get enveloped into the world. The third piece of the series is a song, to add more to the atmosphere and make the view feel unease. This is a piece that has built off my goal of creating an atmosphere from my art and to transport my viewer elsewhere
Teaching Rocks
This piece is about the petroglyphs/teaching rocks on my reserve. The story goes, these drawings were made thousands of years ago by my people and for all those years they were considered magical, and a place of great ceremony and it was said that there were water spirits living under the rocks to enhance ceremony and prayer. When colonization happened we were not allowed to perform our ceremonies or religion and were taken away and displaced. Because of this, years and years went by where the rocks were hidden and unused, therefore the spirits went away because they had no one to talk to or help. After some time archaeologists found these rocks and with good intention built a structure around them to try and make sure the acid rains wouldn't ruin them, but with this it's said that the rocks are sad that they don't get to feel the rain and air anymore and the water no longer runs under them. In this assignment I've changed the ending of the story and broke the glass of the structure and made it so the rocks can live again and have the spirits and animals come back to them.
This symbolizes breaking the cycles that have been placed due to colonization. As I washed the rocks I found to use for this assignment I realized I had inserted myself onto the rocks, and realized I care so much about this because I see these rocks as myself and feel the need to take these colonial shackles off them but also myself.