Whenever I tell the story of why I am an artist and why I claim being an Indigenous artist, I begin with my family.
I am a member of Matachewan First Nation (Ojibwe) and a descendant of French settlers. My family is both Ojibwe (Batisse) and French Canadian (Plourde, Carre, Filion). My parents moved south from their home community when I was a child, and I grew up in southern Ontario, physically separated from the places I come from. That distance produced a sense of disconnection, a longing for a place that felt both mine and out of reach.
As a child, I learned to sew from my mother and have worked in fabric and beads and string ever since. In 2019, after my Ojibwe grandmother passed away, I inherited her beading and art supplies. I began teaching myself beadwork using both traditional and non-traditional approaches as a way of exploring relationships – relationship with my body, my family, my ancestry and the glorious world.
In Ojibwe culture, beadwork is understood as a form of medicine—held both in the act of making and in its viewing. I carry this understanding into my practice.
I am also a health care professional with a deep interest in anatomy, the nervous system, and the relationship between the body and feeling. My work draws on anatomical structures, physiological processes, and forms from the natural world. Through beadwork I revisit these systems, slowing them down, allowing them to be viewed in a new light.
Where should I begin when I tell the story of my body—
in bone, in nerve, in feeling, or in memory?