The Story behind my Medicine Bags

In 1994 I went back to the Ontario College of Art to study painting. My goal was to learn technique and to be stimulated by other artists and teachers. I had already had a successful career painting large impressionist style, oil paintings. 

After a trip to Antarctica in 1992, my dream was to be able to paint paintings that had the feeling of ice, the deep blues, cobalts, turquoises of the faults in the icebergs had triggered a strong desire to change my work to feel cold to feel the ice. 

on my own, I began to work in cold glass, meaning, plate glass that I manipulated, glued, sandblasted and painted.

I showed my Glass work to the teacher that was going to teach me how to paint ice and he said you’re in the wrong class. He loved the work I had done so he sent me down the hall to the glass blowing studio to meet with the teacher there who allowed me in his class. 

 My plan was never to blow glass, but to work more in cold glass and produce more work that looked like ice and felt cold. The following year I took a course at OCA called native studies. My teacher, Robert Houle, was an amazing contemporary artist. I was the only non-native. Today we would say indigenous but in 1995 the course was named native studies. I loved the course. It was an academic course, but required a studio project for the end of the year. I learned about aboriginal people, their culture, the traditions, and their art. For my graduate show, I made a series of blown glass medicine bags. I had learned to blow glass. This was a deviation for my original plan, but I loved it.

My teacher also loved the work and this inspired me to share this work beyond my class show. I became a glass artist and studied all over the USA and Europe  I loved working in glass.  In 1997 my cousin developed  brain cancer and knowing there was nothing I could do to help I made her mother a glass medicine bag that I decorated with indigenous things precious beads, copper words, birch bark and feathers. 

My Aunt was so taken by this gesture I realized that there was something I could do 

My glass work became the focus of my career but at the end of every week I with my team created a few medicine bags which I decorated and gave away. Through out my career of almost 18 years I gave about  300 medicine bags away to people who needed them.

They became a little less elaborate but they all carried the strong and powerful intention I put into every one that I made.

That of healing and protection. I never sold them I believe that would lessen the power they had. It has been one of my greatest joys to hand someone an unexpected gift. Often I didn’t really know the recipient someone who knew about them would ask if I could make one for a friend. I always did.

In the years after I gave up my glass studio I was not unhappy to have finished working in glass but I did miss making my medicine bags and in 2023 I was introduced to clay! 

I started making medicine bags in clay 

Then I joined a studio in Maui where I could really get into my work and eventually these medicine bags became my tools to learn this new medium

Just as I had with glass blowing 

In glass I went from medicine bags to large glass vases covered in flowers and in clay I went from medicine bags to installations and large pieces in fact I was giving away the medicine bags I made and I was learning my skills from making the medicine bags !

Now I make small medicine bags in clay every few firings and am able to give them away again 

I hope to be able to continue this tradition honouring where they came from and how they helped me and how I can give back and make the world a better place. 

To protect those I care about and do something when there is nothing I can do.

As I continue on my journey in the world of ceramic art, which I love so much.