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Potawatomi (Turtle Clan) artist Jason Wesaw’s exhibit consisting of sculpture, drawings, prints, and installation is linked to the beliefs of his culture related to land, specifically the ground where Tube Factory now sits. This land has been part of Potawatomi lands at different times in history before the United States existed. For this reason, Wesaw used earth and materials from Terri Sisson Park on the Tube Factory campus to create some of the works in this fully commissioned show.Tube Factory’s chief curator, Shauta Marsh, looked to Wesaw because she felt his work offers a form of time travel — connecting us to a time before and to the present and ways to envision a future with shared connections and value tied to the land. And, in doing so, Wesaw brings people together today and across generations. “An overarching tenant of my practice is a commitment to examining relationships,” he said. “Relationships act as a guidepost for me, whether it’s connecting to family and community, to spirit and my observations in the natural world, or to materials: those which are considered modern art mediums, or found and harvested materials.”
Two pieces anchoring Wesaw’s Sovereign Spirits exhibit to the place where the Tube Factory sits are the tall flowing installations of shimmering satin and taffeta ribbon.
“They address the way that I interact with the underside of life, the places beneath the surface where spirit moves in subtle and powerful ways that only focused reflection and observation can reveal,” Wesaw said.
Wabshkya Sen or White Stone, is a piece about the help we receive through ceremonies that bring us healing and good health, both physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Bean Creek draws attention to the urban stream just outside the walls of the gallery, where we can be reminded that the cleansing, moving spirit of the water can often be found sharing its life force if we simply pause long enough to let our senses guide us to her flowing banks for a quiet moment.
Wesaw will also create an installation composed of black ash baskets or Gokpenagenek. A quintessential and ancient art form amongst the Potawatomi, black ash baskets are not merely functional or decorative objects, they weave together ancient cultural knowledge about the importance of maintaining relationships to the land and each other with a value system based upon reciprocity.
“These baskets are a reflection of our community’s ongoing presence on this Land and they remain a treasured art form practiced by the Potawatomi and many other Tribal Nations. Many of the baskets on view in this collection were made by ancestors of the Pokagon Potawatomi people of northern Indiana and southwest Michigan, with others having been made by their descendants who now carry on this beautiful, customary art form,” Wesaw said.
The intimate, small-scale oil pastel drawings that line the wall illustrate Wesaw’s process of observation and structure, ideas that often are fleshed out even further in his larger works. The textile pieces from his ongoing Blanket Series explore ideas around the transfer of knowledge that occurs between spirit, nature, and human beings, what he sees as a subtle, gentle ceremony of offerings and giveaways.
In the textile and ceramic works, lies an interest in the power of ornamentation, with materials like dyed deer tail and shiny, small objects drawing your gaze closer into the work. Collectively, the work in Sovereign Spirits shows a wide breadth of materials being used, but there is a united spiritual aesthetic of the pieces, regardless of the time, space and dimension in which they are constructed.
“In a quest for connection and common ground,” Wesaw said. “Where is it you look to find the source which helps you move with meaningful purpose, fulfillment, and Love? With Sovereign Spirits, I hope to take you on a journey where you can explore the power of Self, including the connections we have to the communities around us, the longing we feel to belong, and our desires to understand our place amongst all of creation. As we so casually ask for help or guidance from a higher power in difficult times throughout our lives – we must also understand that when spirit comes looking for something from us – that we need to be ready to give back without hesitation or fear; in essence, to have faith. The work in this exhibition recognizes the role of land, water, and skies as we seek a deeper, clearer understanding of Spirit and Self.”
The exhibition’s title, Sovereign Spirits, resonates with meaning across history. “Sovereign is a word most-often used to describe the undisputed authority of political entities, or to imply supreme power and autonomy. Indeed, this is a word that the Potawatomi — and all Tribal Nations — have become eerily familiar with in our centuries-long fights to maintain our traditional culture and inherent human rights, in a country founded on freedoms for all,” Wesaw said. “By stripping away themes centered around history or distinguishing labels like ‘Indian’ and ‘Native American’, what we may find as those layers are peeled back is a deep awareness of the natural world around and within us, and the connection we have to beings other than humans. In an increasingly fast-changing world where the land and people are being eaten up as a resource, there is a humble acknowledgement we can make in understanding the power of reciprocity and the place Spirit holds in the physical world we are living.”
About the Artist: Jason Wesaw works in an array of media including ceramics, textiles, works on paper, and traditional cultural pieces. His projects relate stories about the Potawatomi people’s ancient and evolving connection to the Land, the Sky, the Water, and Beyond. He balances being an artist with working in his Tribal community as a Peacemaker and participating in traditional cultural ceremonies across the Great Lakes. Wesaw is Potawatomi (Turtle Clan) and lives near the historic Pokagon Potawatomi settlement of Rush Lake in southwestern Michigan. His work is in the permanent collections of the Eiteljorg Museum, Grand Valley State University in Michigan, the University of Notre Dame, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Indiana State Museum, and many other regional institutions. He was recently a Mellon Artist-in-Residence at the Newberry Library for the ‘Indigenous Chicago’ exhibition and is a core artist in the current “Woven Being” group exhibition at The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University.
Learn more about Wesaw by visiting his Instagram account @jasonwesaw.
The show is part of a long term project, Social Alchemy, conceived by Big Car co-founders Shauta Marsh and Jim Walker and artist and philanthropist Jeremy Efroymson, explores historical and contemporary examples of utopian experiments, fictional utopias and dystopias, and social and cooperative-living design projects
The exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Efroymson Family Fund, Ruth Arts, the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The exhibition runs through October 19. It is free to visit during Tube Factory operating hours, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the weekends. The opening reception for “Sovereign Spirits” is also free to visit, and is on Friday, March 7 from 6 to 10 p.m. in the Main Gallery of Tube Factory artspace in Garfield Park.
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