Thompson Brigade youth day art-thingie at Pither's Point Park

The 2008 Thompson Brigade.

"We Crossed Four Provinces, Three Drainages, and Two Centuries of History
And Paddled into the 19th Century to Commemorate David Thompson."

David Thompson Wikipedia entry.

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[Pics click to enlarge. Check out the videos on the bottom of the post.]

The David Thompson Brigade was still on the water of Lake of the Woods, June 24, 2008, but one of the historian "voyageurs" arrived ahead of the pack to give a little lecture to the hordes of schoolchildren that had come out to participate in artistic activities, play games, learn about David Thompson and listen to a little spiel about prehistoric and contemporary regional Aboriginal art. I gave this little lecture while working on a painting about some of the images that the children and I discussed, in relation to the fur trade, voyageurs and David Thompson.

I arrived, almost on time, and found a spot under the big tent to lay out my stuff.



I started drilling, countersinking and screwing together the 1"x4" lumber to create a box. My first student group arrived during the construction of the box and the second during the initial stretching of the canvas.



Most of my groups were present during the stretching of canvas, which can take quite a while.
In this pic, you can see the rawhide/antler rattle and papier-mache "ShovelMask" that I used in my presentation.



But, I managed to begin the initial background colours during my last groups.







While Rodney Brown gave a performance for the teachers, children, passers-by and museum staffers, I began to lay out some of the images and ideas that we had worked up: canoes, top hat, beaver pelt, trade and "the land" [rivers and lakes, mountains, prairie].
The "top hat" is represented in the background as a transparent shadow.



Before the children left, I had mostly finished this composition.



In the studio: Weeks later, I finished working-up the piece, late one night.











The finished piece incorporated words, as well.



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Special thanks to Pam Hawley, of the Fort Frances Museum.



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An old video, showing a modification of the "Shovelmask", which I had used in my Aboriginal art spiel.





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Tags: David Thompson Brigade, Fort Frances, Pither's Point Park, Fort Frances, papier-mache, Rodney Brown, Fort Frances Museum, Canadian blog, First Nation, Native blog,Bingorage, Broken Vulture Art, blog,pics