Artist of the Month
Dawn Marie
Marchand
In her downtown studio, overlooking MacEwan University, Cree and Metis artist, Dawn Marie Marchand, prepares for her final exhibit as Artist in residence for The City of Edmonton’s Indigenous Relations Office (IRO). A self-portrait, where she is portrayed as a horse, in line with the meaning of her Cree name, sits on an easel. In the various corners of the multi-room space are pieces from her last exhibit, just hauled in the night before from the university campus across the street, where they were placed as visual reminders to consider consent, during Sexual Violence Awareness Week. Ribbons were tied to these tree-like structures by students and staff in this interactive display, as part of an exercise where they were called to consider the meaning of consent. Now, they are set aside, as Dawn Marie prepares for her final showing at City Hall, that will run from November 8 to 20.
Dawn Marie was surprised to be approached by the city to be the first to hold this part-time, one year residency position. She speculates that she may have caught their attention from having designed the Treaty 6 Soccer Ball for Free Footie, a free soccer program for kids who otherwise would not have access to playing in a soccer program. What they may also have been drawn to was her extensive experience working in the arts community, as an educator and mentor, as well as curator and collaborator for temporary art exhibits, small and large, including The Works Arts and Design Festival and the Edmonton Folk Music Festival.
The path that brought her to this position, though, was not a direct one; Dawn Marie found her way to art indirectly, not for lack of trying to explore it earlier on. In high school, she was steered away from any art classes, advised, instead, to focus on classes more career oriented. She did, though, do some acting and modeling, as well as a bit of journalism for the High School Rage newspaper, and even used fashion as a creative outlet. “One day my hair would be spiked up, the next day, I’d being wearing a suit,” she laughs, “It was just my way of expressing myself at the time.” A poet, a playwright, an actress, a published author, to name a few creative outlets, Dawn Marie the visual artist didn’t have the freedom to begin to emerge until she was in adulthood.
While working toward a BA in journalism, she ended up taking a drawing class just to fill a credit requirement, ignoring warnings from a counselor that the class would be very intense and course-load heavy. While taking that class, she came to realize she could draw well, and her professor, recognizing real talent, encouraged her to keep going. In these classes, her unique perspectives on the world around her, which expected to be regarded as weird, were, actually, celebrated. She had found her niche, and soon found herself being recruited for a new indigenous arts program at Boreal Forest Institute for the Indigenous Arts in Fort McMurray. The program offered artistic training that moved away from Eurocentric pedagogy and more toward mentorship and immersive learning.
Art, though, she still treated like a hobby or side project, and once she had children, she found herself setting it aside. When her marriage ended, she took up her “hobby” again, while her work life centered around supporting the art of others. There came a point, though, where she realized she needed her own art to be her primary focus. She needed to give to herself what she had been giving to other artists for years, as now it was her livelihood. What she began creating was multimedia art, rich in meaning, full of important commentary, and best appreciated in person, even, sometimes, interactively. Eventually, she attracted the opportunity for the residency, at a time when she was just coming out of a time of great personal struggle.
