Artist spotlight on Robin McKenzie

By Kelly Anne Smith

NORTH BAY – Robin McKenzie is an Aboriginal textile artist from Kebaowek First Nation or Eagle Village. She has been creating fabric paintings for three years. “I draw out my design first. I decide what size I want and find the fabrics I want. Then I piece it all together.  Then I sew it and stretch it over the canvas.”

I still have pieces I haven’t done because I haven’t found the right fabric that I want for it. Like this one. It took a long time for me to find the highway. It’s hard some times to find what I want for my vision.”

Robin shows a large work. “This is the first piece I made that’s going to be one of a kind. I’m not going to make any other like it. It’s the Highway of Tears. So here are the anonymous men taking our women. I left them faceless because we don’t know who they are or what they look like.  Here are their last footsteps, they were ripped from, walking. Here’s the moccasin vamps which represents their unfinished lives; and then the Red Dress for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. And I do it in the four colours because we all have Missing and Murdered Women, not just Native people. We all do but the difference is there is less publicity when one of ours goes missing. There is a lot of stereotyping going on. If they are teenagers, they say they ran away. Or if they are women, they say they were out partying and just wait a few weeks. Which is sad, really sad. It’s emotional, that’s why I’ll only be doing one.”

Robin just finished a work about Residential Schools. It’s called Keeping Warm. “I went to hear a lady speaking at my son’s school. She talked about how she had two sisters there. Her and her other sister were older and they had a younger one. They all came out at recess. They were forced to go outside in the winter for an hour, no matter how cold or snowing or blowing it was. She said they had on little dresses and little shiny black shoes that were not very warm. And their stockings kept falling down when they were walking around outside. They had on knitted sweaters.”

She said that her and her sister would walk the youngest around for an hour keeping her in the middle, trying to keep her warm and make her move. So that’s them walking together. It’s one of a kind too. It is emotional. It does take a lot of energy out of you.”

Robin’s art is becoming widely known. She enjoys travelling for art shows and cherishes her new community in North Bay. Robin and Andy have a son who attends Nbisiing Secondary School. He enjoys drumming and being a fire-keeper. “Getting back to his roots has really helped him. He’s learning about his culture. I lost the culture. I’m learning from those around here. They inspire me a lot.” Robin recently donated a large colourful work of art to the library at Nbisiing Secondary School.