picture
- Museum number
- Am1996,12.1
- Description
-
Pictorial design or picture made from a roughly rectangular piece of birchbark, folded in four, with a bitten symmetrical design of four insects, two bees and two butterflies or moths, with four lobed design in the middle. The design is signed in syllabics, in biro by the artist.
- Production date
- 1983 (circa;date of collection)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 12 centimetres
-
Length: 14 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- This was, according to the letter with the gift, given by Nick Adey, then of Kitkatla, BC, to the then Miss E J Adey, in 1983.
With the correspondence is a typed statement about the artist with the following text:
'Angelique Merasety. Angelique Merasety is the only known person in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and possibly Canada still producing bitten birch bark artwork.
The delicate art form is produced on clean pliable birchbark. The bark is carefully folded and the artist imprints the design or picture with her teeth.
In earlier times, tribal competitions were held to determine which woman made the best bitten birch bark art, decorated birch bark baskets, beadwork and other traditional art forms. Angelique's mother was a champion in her day, but no longer practises this art form having lost all her teeth. Now 56 years old, Angelique recalls being fascinated by the art at the age of six. Angelique has been doing her own birchbark designs and pictures since the age of 20.
Angelique would like nothing better than to teach this dying art form to a younger generation the way she was taught by her mother and the older women in her tribe. With no daughter to pass her art on to, and the lack of interest on the part of the younger generation, this traditional Indian art form will eventually vanish.'
This statement reads as though it was written by a sympathetic non-native marketing the art close to the artist's home location.
Other examples of a similar form were acquired by the Ethnography Department in the late 1980s, perhaps by the same artist. [Additional comments and transcript by JCK,26/11/1996].
Note by M Caygill 30.6.11 - Artist's name appears to be Angelique MERASTY Levac.
- Location
- Not on display
- Condition
- Good.
- Acquisition date
- 1996
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Am1996,12.1
