Program brings arts to Onion Lake

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For the past two years, Darren Gowan has been sharing his artistic talent with the people of Onion Lake, inspiring would-be artists, and giving them the skills and knowledge they need to discover their own abilities.

A carver by trade, Gowan was given the chance to also become a teacher, thanks to the Saskatchewan Arts Board's Artist in Residence grant program.

Through the program, Onion Lake received an annual grant of $25,000 for each of the last two years to cover supplies and salary for Gowan. The purpose of the program is to make the arts more accessible to people across the province, often in rural areas.

Onion Lake is only the second First Nation in Saskatchewan to have its Artist in Residence bid approved. The first, Meadow Lake Tribal Council, received funding for a Storyteller in Residence, while the Onion Lake grant was for a Visual Residency, or in this case, a Visual Rez-idency.

"I don't make a whole heap of money but it's fulfilling and it was always an adventure," said Gowan during the inaugural arts show at the reservation's youth centre on Dec. 6 to 8, held to give some of Gowan's students a chance to show off their creations, and their newly discovered talents.

How an Artist in Residence fulfills his or her role is predominantly up to them, but at least 20 hours every week for the entire year has to be spent working on community projects or making appearances. This freedom was appealing to Gowan, who could also devote time to his own works when he wasn't in the public eye.

Frequently, he could be found dividing his time among the community's schools, although he preferred to work with the younger students in the elementary grades. Although he's not trained as a teacher, he conducted classes, and often served as the children's first formal introduction to the arts.

"Children are the most honest and their work is not diluted or perverted. The stream of consciousness between pen or pencil and paper is honest," he said.

He himself had very little instruction before he found his talents as a carver, and he espouses a method of teaching where he lets his students find their own style. He shows them the basics, then stands back and lets them work. And he is never disappointed in the finished product, especially with the work produced by his younger students.

One of the projects at the public schools was to create four 4 x 8 foot murals made up of individual tiles of 64 square inches, a concept thought of by a Grade 3 student.

"The sheer logistics of taking all of their tiles around to the kids and making sure they weren't damaged," Gowan said, who despite the challenges still enjoyed transporting almost 300 tiles between classes.

Near the end of his time as Artist in Residence, Gowan also began a program for adults wishing to learn about art. Although the response wasn't as great as he anticipated, the level of talent displayed left Gowan almost speechless.

One of his students, Glen Little Wolf, had never carved before taking lessons from Gowan. During the art show, Little Wolf was putting the finishing touches on a soapstone creation representing four months of labor. The sculpture, titled Mother and Child Reunion, shows the harmonization of a baby with its mother as the child is rocked to sleep with sacred songs.

"He had taught me how to look at the rock in a three-dimensional figure," Little Wolf said of Gowan's instruction. "There were some techniques that I had to overcome prior to carving, like sometimes I can't even draw."

While Gowan's term of two one-year contracts has come to a close, his work in the community will not likely be forgotten. Not only has he had an impact on the people he has taught, he also believes other bands will be successful in their applications for Artist in Residence grants because of his experience.

"For years in the arts board's existence, they didn't recognize Aboriginal arts, but now they realize there's a whole plethora of work in Indian Country."