Curator Robin Tinney comments: “Finding Critical Mass” is about realizing that Algonquin First Nations in Ontario need to choose: to collect, share and encourage our cultural past, present and future. We need to share our crafts, stories and artwork to heal the fractures within our communities and within ourselves. Without critical mass, we may cease to exist in any meaningful way. We must remember, and we must grow.

As an extension of this ground-breaking show, we are delighted to host a one-day rattle-making workshop by local artist Ada Tinney, a member of the Algonquin Nation Kijicho Manito Madaouskarini Community Bancroft/Baptiste Lake Region.  In this workshop, using deerskin rawhide and a pattern, students will cut and stitch pieces together, then paint a personal design. Handles of beaver-chewed sticks will be decorated with feather, beads, deerskin lacing. A demonstration will be given on how to secure the handle to the rattle which students will do at home the following day. All supplies needed for making the rattle will be provided at no extra charge.  

Melinda Shank-Miles speaks about her Painting; “Sky Woman”:  “My family was nomadic, constantly moving, from one place to the next. I wasn’t “from” anywhere. Displaced. homeless at times, my whole family spent months living in a tent. I think this is why the stories are so important to me. The story of Sky Woman is about making a home in a world where she was lost, displaced. It’s a story about strength, resourcefulness, compassion, new beginnings and togetherness. This story, and many others, present to me a shared connection to a spiritual place with deep roots, roots that were hidden from me as a child, buried beneath layers of the colonial history I was taught in school. I paint the stories I have heard and read, so I will never forget them, and so I can share them with my children.”