Anishinaabe master carvers works featured in new exhibition in Thunder Bay

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY — An intricate carving known as the Tree of Life by the late Gordon Waindubence-baa is featured in the Thunder Bay Art Gallery’s Ahmoo Angeconeb: Man from the Bear Totem exhibition, which runs until Sept. 17. Red Rock Indian Band carver Michael Anderson’s Inner Conflict moose antler carving is also featured in the exhibition of sculptural objects made of wood, stone, metal, and bone from the gallery’s Permanent Collection, which includes more than 1,600 artworks.

“Gordon Waindubence was a master carver from Manitoulin Island — he just passed away in 2021, which was a major loss to his community,” says Penelope Smart, curator at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery. “[His] piece in this show, this beautifully intricate carving from antler and with some decorative elements of abalone, it’s untitled but we know of it as Tree of Life. You can read it as maybe connected to the story of Turtle Island because the turtle is sort of forming the base, and then there’s a tree and this eagle on top, so it’s really like this beautiful kind of pyramid that you may be able to read that kind of creation narrative or myth into, which is so beautiful.”

Smart says the carving is tiny and requires a close examination because it is so finely detailed.

“We only have this one piece by this artist in the collection, but his work is represented in other major collections,” Smart says, noting his work is in the Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. “His work is stunning and it was collected for decades. Looking at it here, you understand why he was considered a master carver. When you get up close you can see the details of leaves, the little face of the turtle.”

Smart says pieces of abalone were used to highlight the scutes on the back of the turtle’s shell.

“On the top of the shell, he’s got small square abalone insets,” Smart says. “The gleam off the abalone is so naturally suited to the soft palette of the bone and the antler — everything here just feels like it fits together and is happy together, which is a really nice way to kind of bring out the sculpture and just have it all together because they’re all related through material and that’s a really beautiful thing to me to see it out together like this.”

Smart says the exhibition was named for the late Lac Seul artist Ahmoo Angeconeb’s two wood and copper sculptures called Man From the Bear Totem and Man from the Bear Totem in a Box (1993).

“This was a piece that caught my attention in the collection because it looked so similar to the iconic metal sculptures outside that are also by Ahmoo,” Smart says. “These pieces were done as kind of practice or prototypes for his major sculptural commission outside. I knew that we were going to have another exhibition up this summer [where] the artist was interested in copper jingles, so the copper was intriguing me as another Anishinaabe artist who is also using copper in his sculpture. It’s an example of an artist getting really creative and experimenting with his materials.”

Smart says students on school tours and summer camps have said it was fun to see the cutout style of Angeconeb’s sculptures.

“It’s almost like this bear figure has hopped out of the wood, and I think there’s something really fun about that to kids,” Smart says. “Also, I think the scale is really interesting, so you have larger than life things, things like the size of an adult human body to like miniatures, so that kind of play of really big and really small is also really interesting to kids or to anyone really.”