This week on Minnesota Native News, we explore Athena LaTocha’s new exhibit in Grand Rapids that explores the relationship between man made objects and untamed nature. We’ll also check out the 2nd annual Leech Lake Days.
Transcript
MN Native News: Athena LaTocha Exhibit In Grand Rapids & 2nd Annual Leech Lake Days
MARIE: This week on Minnesota Native News, we explore Athena LaTocha’s new exhibit in Grand Rapids that explores the relationship between man made objects and untamed nature. We’ll also check out the 2nd annual Leech Lake Days. First, here’s reporter Cole Premo.
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ATHENA: “Letting the iron, just letting it run, letting it pool and letting it spatter and capturing that. I'm capturing that, those kind of moments, you know, and freezing them.”
Athena LaTocha says she’s more of an instigator than an artist, letting the raw material speak for itself. She’s worked with paper, ink, lead, tire shreds, grass, and many other types of materials. The list goes on..
Using these elements, her pieces often reflect the relationship of untamed nature and what is man made. She says she has an...
ATHENA: “Intrigue with materials, you know, and how, how place can influence that and how place has stories as well that can, um, that can learn to what it is that you do. You know, so there's a confluence.”
Her newest exhibition, showing at the MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids, features an element well-known to the region. Iron.
ATHENA: “I've always wanted to, you know, for what, for almost 15 years now, I've been wanting to work, spend some time with iron, you know, and get to know iron a little bit more. But when you're getting to know the material, it's getting to know the history too, you know? And it's not just this, this thing, you know, there's something that brought it there, right? There's people that handled it. There's people that have stories about it.”
Fittingly, the exhibition is called “Mesabi” after both the Ojibwe word Mizaabee-wajew, meaning giant mountain, and the Mesabi Iron Range …a rough line of iron deposits in Minnesota -- and where she’s doing her exhibition.
So, in a way, she’s going to the “source”.. to work with iron in its many forms and create a piece of art reflecting the area.
The project required working with molten metal.
ATHENA: “There's the lure of the molten metal, you know, and there's a seductiveness with that. It's very, um, it's very hypnotic. You know, and it really kind of pulls you in because it's working with a different element, not just the element of, um, the element of the iron, but it's working with fire, you know, and liquefying it, right? And then seeing it move and flow and wanting it to move and flow in a way that you weren't controlling it. You're kind of like letting it do what it does, you know? So there was a certain kind of, there was a certain allure with that too.”
While Athena LaTocha is not from Minnesota, she’s Lakota and Ojibwe from Alaska and says working with iron helped ground her to the area, like a coming home of sorts.
ATHENA: (41:39)”everything just kind of lit up, you know, the possibility of being in the woodlands, possibility of working iron, the possibility of being around Ojibwe and Lakota communities.”
As for the art itself, this Mesabi exhibition, I’m going to admit that I’m not the greatest at describing art… so let’s have Athena walk us around her piece, which was at the time a work in progress, and kind of bring it to life for us.
ATHENA:Speaker 1: (01:05:53) (WILL EDIT DOWN)
“I work on the floor. I can often see better when things are on the floor and I have some distance from them and they're not on a table or on an easel. So I can walk around them and consider them from all directions, from all sides, um, and access it more freely. So we're looking at, um, a lot of these poured iron forms and Spatters. some of them are spirals or um, ovoid spatter forms with an opening. And I'm also developing some works on paper using the, uh, some of the um, the spill from the poor little spatter forms, little minute spatter forms at, um, are separate from the larger forms that are just extra. Um, so I gather all those in a bucket and together with, you know, filings as I've worked on some of the pieces and laying them out on pieces of paper and introducing various chemicals and liquids to them to get them to rust. And moving them around on the paper and situating them in places and letting them rest there for a little while and stain the paper and to build up layers of rust on the paper. And then saturating the paper, relocating those iron elements to a different location and letting them rust and stain. Um, so there's, in the, in the works on paper there's more of an element of hand. There's more evidence of the hand cause you see a gesture or movement.”
You can see Athena LaTocha’s exhibition, Mesabi, all through the month of July at the Macrostie Art Center in Grand Rapids. I’m Cole Premo.
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MARIE: Next, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe recently celebrated its 2nd annual Leech Lake Days. Reporter Kayla Duoos was there and she shares some of the sights and sounds from the celebrations.
[ambi sound with clip of Chairman Ferron Jackson’s speech] (if you’re crunched for time, upload what you’ve got and I’ll cut it)
REPORTER: That’s Leech band Member and MNDOT Tribal Liason Levi Brown on June 28th welcoming a crowd of about 800 people to Leech Lake Days.
[ambi from crowd cheering?] (upload what you’ve got and I’ll cut it.)
This is an official Band holiday for Leech Lake.
Band Leaders decided that in addition to celebrating the usual U-S federal holidays, the Band would create its own holiday.
It’s a time to acknowledge all of the positive things about being indigenous and living on the Leech Lake reservation.
Deputy Director Gordon Fineday sits on the planning committee.
I asked him to share his thought process behind the event.
FINEDAY: I think growing up here at home, we don't really have a chance to celebrate who we are, we always celebrate different things, different holidays. We never had a day designated for us and for who we are and to show that we’re still here, for me that's what resonates with me. I wanted this event so my kids and my grandkids will have something that they can say hey i'm from here, this is home, we’re still here.
It sounds like others agree that this event was needed.
Sydney Harper shared why she’s proud to celebrate being a Leech Laker.
AUDIO CLIP:
The holiday celebration is spread over 3 days.
Over the first two days there are 12 booths from the Band’s various programs and over 15 activities.
There’s a hand-drum contest…
[more ambi sound - hand drumming contest]
There’s also games, crafting, cook-offs, car pile-ins and a best of “rez cars” display.
On the third day of the celebration is the Band’s pow wow.
It used to be on July 4th.
But the planning committee moved it to coincide with the Band’s holiday rather than the U-S federal holiday.
For further coverage on Leech Lake Days, check out LeechLakeNews.com
I’m Kayla Duoos with the DeBahJimon, for MN Native News
OUTRO