Canku Ota

(Many Paths)

An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America

April 5, 2003 - Issue 84

Joane Cardinal - Schubert, RCA

From materials provided by Joane Cardinal-Schubert, RCA

A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts since 1986, Joane Cardinal-Schubert is also a writer, curator, lecturer, poet and activist for First Nations artists and individuals engaged in the struggle for Native sovereignty. Attended the Alberta College of Art (1962-64; 1966-1967) and the University of Calgary, BFA (1977), Cardinal-Schubert's painting and installation practice is prominent for its incisive evocation of contemporary First Nations experiences and condemnation of the imposition of Euroamerican religious, educational and governmental systems upon Aboriginal people. Cardinal-Schubert worked as assistant curator at the University of Calgary Art Gallery in 1978, and the Nickle Arts Museum, Calgary, Alberta, from 1979 to 1985. She has been a lobbyist for the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry (SCANA) and has won numerous scholarships and grants, including the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Award in 1976, and the Banff Centre scholarship in 1983. 1988, 1995. The Commemorative medal of Canada in 1993, and most recently in 2002, the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal for her contribution to Canada as well as to her community. The artist lives and works in Calgary, Alberta.

Artists Statement - Joane Cardinal-Schubert RCA
Joane Cardinal-Schubert was born in 1942 in Red Deer and attended the Alberta College of Art, 1962 - 1964; 1966 - 67, studying, painting , printmaking, and multimedia. In 1973 she began a BA at the University of Alberta, transferring to the University of Calgary in 1973, graduating with a BFA in 1977. For the past 20 years, her writing has been published internationally in art magazines, catalogues, and books. She has worked professionally as a curator, an artist, a lecturer, and most recently a director of video and Native Theatre. She has received numerous, scholarships, Canada Council Grants, and Awards for her work; notable is her election to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1985 and the receipt of the Commemorative Medal of Canada in 1993 for her contribution to the Arts. A video in which she participated in as Director and Art Director/animator was shown at MOMA, NY, in the exhibition 'Walk With the Ancients' as well as other international exhibitions. A retrospective of her work was organized by the FAB Art Gallery at the University of Alberta, in 1993 and her retrospective Joane Cardinal Schubert : Two Decades, organized by the Muttart Gallery in 1997, continued to tour Nationally until after the year 2000. She is represented in British Columbia by the Fran Willis Gallery, Victoria, and Spirit Wrestler Gallery, Vancouver; in Calgary by Masters Gallery; in Edmonton by Bearclaw Gallery, in Ottawa by Galerie Vincent, and in Toronto by Hollandar York. She appears in Vancouver filmmaker, Loretta Todd's National Film Board of Canada documentary entitled 'Hands of History. More than 26 solo exhibitions in Canada, the United States and Europe and numerous international touring group exhibitions have included her work. She is represented in such selected public collections as The National Gallery of Canada, The Art Bank, The Indian Arts Centre Collection, Ottawa, The Canadian Museum of Civilization, and The Thunder. Bay Art Gallery, The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and The Alberta Foundation for the Arts and in the collections of the Canadian Embassies in Japan, New York, Stockholm and Tokyo, and the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, (Duke and Duchess of York) London, England. Her work is included in many corporate collections such as Shell Canada Limited, Bank of Montreal, Bank of America, Esso Resources, and Northern Telecom and many international private collections. Her work is published in many, catalogues, reviews and books; notably in such publications as Canadian Art - From It's Beginnings to 2000, Anne Newlands, Firefly Press; By A Lady, Celebrating Three Centuries of Art by Canadian Women, Maria Tippett, Viking Press, 1992 and The Triskster Shift, Allan J. Ryan, UBC Press, 1998. In 2002 Cardinal-Schubert received the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal for a significant contribution to Canada, and her community. Joane Cardinal-Schubert lives and works in Calgary, continuing to address her family's history and place in Southern Alberta.

Joane Cardinal-Schubert, RCA writes ... "An Elder,  Art Thompson spoke of the pictograph/petroglyph ( Hopi) which is beleieved to predict nuclear explosion ... it was described as it is popularily known as - The Gourd of Ashes ... he described it as looking like a puff ball mushroom ... There are 3,  I think new paintings of mine on the  Spirit Wrestler site ... well - they are not new - they were painted when I was in Germany ... I was reminded of Pickering Ontario ... and many years ago going to the beach in the shadow of the nuclear towers.

I had already been fiddling with images and installations which included amphora ... which I imagined 'could' be like the Dead Sea Scrolls and unlock the languages of the pictographs ... as well as references to the Rosetta Stone which unlocked the language of Egyptian Hieroglyphs ... Midiwin scrolls ( Ojibwa) on birch bark were kept in hollow logs with moss at either end - perfect temp and humidity control ... the ethnologists removed these and redeposited them in museums ... but then later they were deaccessioned and ended up in Calgary push-pinned to the wall of a gallery, along with other 'Indian Effects' since I could not afford to buy them and rescue them ... I began to create 'homages' ... and that led to the idea of the amphora etc etc ... well that's another story ... So the Gourd of Ashes led me to a comparisons between 'containers' of things ... some good - some bad ... then I began to look at paintings as containers ... etc etc ..."

To view more of Joane Cardinal-Schubert's art: click here

To view more of Joane Cardinal-Schubert's art at Spirit Wrestler Gallery: click here

To read Joane Cardinal-Schubert's Curriculum Vitae: click here

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