Artist-in-Residence

Artist: Raechel Wastesicoot | Image: STEPS Public Art CreateSpace Residency line up

Raechel Wastesicoot – May-Dec 2024

RESIDENCY PROJECT: áhsire: ceremony is where you are

In partnership with STEPS Public Art’s CreateSpace Public Art Residency program, and sponsored by CN Railway, artist Raechel Wastesicoot plans to build a community-based blanket/quilt with the community of Port Hope crafted using beadwork and textile work that share memories and moments taken from ceremony and special sentiments in the lives of community – Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

This blanket explores the figurative idea of place, what makes something, somewhere, or someone feel like home. It is based on her personal experience in ceremony, specifically in moon ceremonies (experienced by Indigenous women/non-binary/gender fluid), and the idea that “ceremony is where you are”.

Raechel will incorporate memories from the Port Hope community, weaving them into one blanket, showing how Indigenous and non-Indigenous people’s experience of community and relation to place is sacred in unique and similar ways. When complete, the blanket hang on a wall in a prominent public building (Town Hall), essentially decolonizing the space by taking up literal space.

To share your memories and experience of home with Raechel, you can add your thoughts to this google form.

ARTIST BIO

Raechel Wastesicoot is a mixed Kanien’kehá:ka beadworker and land-based communications specialist. Her mother’s family is from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, and her father’s family immigrated to Toronto from Northern Italy in the early 1960s. Her spirit name is Mein-gun Kwe, meaning wolf woman, which was gifted to her by an Ojibway Elder. Following a teaching passed down to her: from the land, for the land, and by the land, her beadwork comprises contemporary pieces featuring upcycled, vintage, and harvested materials. With the land and sustainability at the centre of her approach, the pieces she creates aim to have as minimal an impact on the environment as possible, and heavily feature gifts from the land, including antler, fur, hides, and porcupine quills. Instagram: @wolfwmnbeads

CREATESPACE Public Art Residency program
Critical Mass is thrilled to partner with the 2024 CreateSpace Public Art Residency program, a national public art program for emerging Black, Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) and racialized artists to: Build community-engaged public art skills; Receive mentorship and support from peers, artistic advisors and mentors (through 10-15 virtual professional development sessions over 10 months); and Create a temporary public artwork in Port Hope.

STEPS Public Art believes that public art should reflect the diverse identities and perspectives of the communities that host it. The CreateSpace Public Art Residency is designed for artist capacity building and community collaboration to foster more equitable public spaces.