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She is truly one of Canada's artistic darlings, a lady whose works have
influenced numerous other artists -- Native and non-Native alike. She
is a strong woman, one who believed in herself and her abilities and
managed to survive through times when artists really were a struggling
breed. I am speaking of Daphne Odjig-Beavon.
More commonly known to the masses as Odjig, she has been featured in a
number of books. Her art was used for the cover as well as interior of
Tales From the Smokehouse. In 1990, she was one of the select
individuals to grace Patricia Logie's Chronicles of the past, a book
which acknowledged and applauded the efforts of contributing
personalities from the Native community. Just a couple of years a go,
two close friends of hers from Toronto -- Mary Southcott and Rosamond
Vanderburgh -- released a 176-page biography about Odjig entitled A
Paintbrush in My Hand.
In 1982, she was the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from
Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., and in 1985, a Doctorate of
letters from the University of Toronto. Along came the Order of Canada
in 1987 and she was installed as a member of the highly exclusive Royal
Canadian Academy of Art two years later. Indeed, she's come a long way
-- a shining example and role model for other North American Aboriginal
people.
Now at age 75, this Ojibway lady from Ontario's Wikwemikong Reserve on
Manitoulin Island calls the interior of British Columbia home. There,
she and her husband Chester, approach their twilight years along the
northern shore of beautiful Shuswap Lake. She is the daughter of Joyce,
an English war-bride, and her father, Dominic, is of Odawa-Potawatomi
ancestry.
Odjig departed from her reserve as a teenager, moving to Parry Sound,
Ont., where she was besieged by discrimination which tormented her like
a sore tooth, even when she moved on to Toronto in 1942. However it was
there, in Toronto, that her spirit was ignited. She was totally
captivated, upon her first visit to a local art gallery. Suddenly, she
was surrounded y the works of the grand masters, people like Carr,
Kireghoff, Milne, Rembrandt and so on. That did it. She was hooked!
Besides, both her father and her grandfather Jason, were artists who
worked in wood and stone. With that sort of influence around her, it is
not unusual that she, too, became an artist. But not only an artist!
She became a world-renowned artist who was later referred to as
"remarkable" by none other than the famous Pablo Picasso.
Like any young woman, she met and married. She and her husband, Paul
Somerville, moved across country to B.C., settling at Coquitlam, where
they raised two sons. She lost him to an automobile accident in 1960.
With her son beside her, they farmed strawberries to get by. It was the
1960s, and Indian awareness and pride was on the upswing. Her
sister-in-law, Rosemary Fisher, coaxed her into doing art that would
illustrate her people. She got so caught up in the wave of Indianness
that she reverted to her family name, Odjig. For close to 20 years
she's used the name Fisher because of the discrimination she encountered
through the surname Odjig.
It was a new world, a new life and a new spirit. There was a flourish
of excitement in the air, and Odjig responded as she too picked up the
cloak of pride and the positive surge of 1960s Indian identity. The
true Odjig, the artistic Odjig, began to unfold. Now the world was her
stage, a stage which nurtured her and took her on a never-ending
journey. With her second husband, Chester, she moved to Manitoba where
she laboured intensively and lovingly at doing what she does best --
art.
Her first public showing of 78 pieces was in 1967 at Port Arthur,
Ont., now a part of Thunder Bay. From that day forward, there was no
stopping her. Her ink drawings were doing so well that she moved to
Winnipeg in 1971 and set up a craft shop. She and her husband produced
a series of Nanabush story books for children that same year. Muh of
her subject material was people: children, Elders, dancers, drummers and
singers, Mother Earth, etc.
In the mid-1970s she was commissioned by the El Al airline of Israel,
and wound up producing the "Jerusalem series" of prints. A couple of
years later, she executed a 27-foot-long mural, The Indian In
Transition, for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Surely, the world
was ready for this talent. Odjig set her mind; she would be recognized
for the artist she was. Not as an Indian artist, but as an artist among
artists. It was something she'd always wanted.
She herself once said: "Any art that endures must be much more than a
statement of sex or nationality." She knew all along she had a talent
that was credible and meritorious. But conditions had to be right for
her (as for anyone else) to express herself and receive the
acknowledgment she so rightly deserves.
Her own personal experiences in life "enter into everything that I do,"
she confessed. "It just comes out unconsciously," in her art pieces,
from "my mind and heart, " she added.
It seems that Odjig, and the company she kept, were destined for
greatness. One of her bona fide claims to fame is the fact that she
happens to be one of the original "Group of Seven Indian artists, along
with such notables as Norval Morrisseau, Jackson Beardy, Carl Ray,
Benjamin Chee Chee, Allen Sapp and Alex Janvier.
Then again, Odjig is an artist and a lady in a class all her own. And,
like her spirit, her art will be around for many, many years after her
physical presence is called to Great Sky Country. Still, the world will
admire her creations which are the conveyors of her soul, her spirit.
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