The voices of creation speak to Darin Corbiere. Starting today, we get to see what they told him.
The recent arrival to Lheidli T'enneh territory came with a well established arts career back in his original home of Ontario. The Anishinaabe First Nation painter and tinker moved to Prince George about a year and a half ago and almost instantly became an active member of the local fine arts community. Seeing Things In A Different Light: Changing Perspectives is his Prince George debut exhibition.
"What can I say? I am feeling fortunate, blessed, excited to be here in Prince George," said Corbiere, who came because his wife was accepted into a master's degree program at UNBC and he followed after she had been here awhile doing her studies.
He arrived "with no employment, no prospects, just showed up blind," he said. He grabbed the first job he came across, as a labourer at Nechako Bottle Depot. He is, however, a teacher by profession and also a former officer with the Sudbury Police Service. His skill-set was soon discovered and put to use by the Activator Society (an organization that supports men as they transition from incarceration to balanced community living) and the Urban Aboriginal Justice Society (a not-for-profit agency that works to reduce the number of Aboriginal people in conflict with the law).
A slap of realization hit Corbiere when new Ontario premier Doug Ford enacted a sweeping staff reduction. When he checked his service record, Corbiere knew he would have lost his job in that wave of layoffs. He was instead in Prince George following what he feels is a higher calling and it has come out in his art.
"When I came here I started looking for arts organizations right away, I found Studio 2880 right away, I met Lisa Redpath and Sean Farrell (managers with the Community Arts Council, operators of the Studio 2880 arts complex), I got the privilege of meeting the artists involved in starting the Northern Indigenous Artists' Collective, and Lisa has really been my guide into everything that's happened for me since then. My gratitude is so high. And I've flourished here. I've painted 40 or 50 pieces since I arrived in Prince George. Things have really taken off for me in the past year."
Space was one of the benefits of the new contacts he made here. In his duties with the Activator Society, he got to spend large amounts of time at their Aghelh Nebun wilderness camp. He had access to large creation spaces in the buildings there. He made large creations.
The biggest stands more than six feet tall. It is comprised of smaller pieces of wood on which he has painted partial images that, when arranged the right way, forms a single image. He took it as an official entry in the Grand Rapids Art Prize competition in Michigan and it now forms the focal point of his exhibition.
The act of building one broader piece of art from several smaller pieces of art is a theme in his work. Apart from a few exceptions, all of it is paint (everything from felt pens to alcohol ink) on wood.
The most common recurring element is the image of a feather, sometimes overt and sometimes subtle, on a long, thin strip of wood. He calls each one a feather when alone, and a wing when assembled into a number together.
"I heard a voice, and it asked me to create 1,000 of these feathers," he said, now somewhere between 100 and 200 in the past few years.
Another voice, a female in water, described to him how he should paint her on a pair of unfinished planks that now dominates Corbiere's office and will be another feature piece in the exhibition.
"She told me the story of what to do to bring her out in the paint. I could see her in the water, and I thought she was just swimming, but then my wife told me she was down at the bottom, I hadn't seen that in the painting but she did, and then I realized she was actually moving to the surface. Whatever had been holding her down, she let go of, she is resurfacing."
Another recurring element of Corbiere's work is making a whole creation. He wraps the entire physical structure in the image, so to see more of the swimming figure, or more of the feathers, turn the wood over.
Darin Corbiere is Seeing Things In A Different Light and you can, too, when he unveils the Changing Perspectives exhibition today from 5-7 p.m. at the feature gallery at Studio 2880. A free reception and artist's talk are included. The show will be available to view until May 9.
