Friday Special Blend
Friday December 23rd, 2022 with Susan Johnston
TRIAS Art Prize Part Two, featuring Christine Toulouse and Andrew Morrow

In this episode, Susan speaks with artists Christine Toulouse and Andrew Morrow. Quillworker Christine Toulouse’s work, Courage, won an Honourable Mention for the Indigenous and Inuit Healing Art Award, and painter Morrow’s work Neither Brightly Lit Nor Completely Enlightened won the Art as Healing award. About Christine Toulouse About Christine Toulous (www.christinetoulouse.com) Christine Toulouse is an emerging Anishinaabe artist from Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation whose primary focus is in the traditional realm of quillwork, a form of textile embellishment using dyed or natural-coloured quills from porcupines to weave into birch bark. Christine works to connect land and season to practice. She absorbs and passes down Indigenous memory and knowledge, tethers herself to ancestors and traditions, and invites past into present allowing for memory to become reality in her work. Christine’s technique has been passed down from quill artists preceding her. She was taught the traditional craft of quillwork from her Grandmother, Ida Assinewe (Toulouse) who is a quill box artist herself. Ida Assinewe (born 1929), originally from Wikwemikong Unceded Territory has been practicing quillwork since the young age of 6. Ida Toulouse recalls learning quillwork from her mother, Mary Begone’aasong. Examples of Ida’s work can be found at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, and she has completed many commissioned quill boxes throughout her lifetime. Christine’s works can be found within the private collections of other Indigenous artists such as Owner, Metal Fabricator, Designer and Sculptor of OneKwe, Kathryn Corbiere; Designer, Paula Naponse of Ondarez; Sealskin Jeweler, Charlotte Lee of Designs by Oolootie; and Founder and co-director of nêhiyawak Language Experience Inc., Belinda (kakiyosew) Daniels. Christine’s first three solo exhibitions have been dedicated to her late mother who was instrumental in encouraging her to learn and pursue quillwork. Her practice involves promoting the significance of quillwork as a process to learn, heal, grow and share. ​ About Andrew Morrow (AndrewMorrow.com) Since 2004 Andrew Morrow has been known for large, densely-textured figurative works, spanning a range of references, from Western history painting to contemporary visual culture. Working from shared and personal photographs, and from in-person sittings with family, friends, and strangers, Morrow’s recent work positions the studio as an axis for connection and community-building. His paintings are placeholders for, and traces of, intimate exchanges with his sitters and the people and places in his life. Resisting closure, Morrow’s works are as much about painting and an indeterminate relationship with representation, as they are about the subjects depicted. Often synthesizing multiple figures, landscapes, objects, abstracted passages, and personal textual notes, Morrow generally starts his paintings from in-person sittings, making provisional drawings that are then translated into finished works. In his works, fragmented people populate shifting painted space, inviting encounters between the viewer, the artist, and the paintings. Current and upcoming: Untitled, solo exhibition, Galerie UQO in collaboration with gallery Director Marie-Hélène Leblanc, Fall 2024 Background: On Tuesday December 6, the Ottawa Art Gallery and the Ottawa Hospital announced winners of the TRIAS Art Prize. TRIAS Art Prize is a juried art competition that intersects art, science, medicine, and community, and winning artworks will be displayed at The Ottawa Hospital with the aim of enhancing care through restorative art, engaging the community, and supporting artists from Ottawa, Eastern Ontario, Western Quebec, and Nunavut. Winners include: Art and Science Residency winner: Svetlana Swinimer Indigenous and Inuit Healing Art Award winner: Koomuatuk (Kuzy) Curley, Sikusilingmiut Honourable Mention: Christine Toulouse, Courage Art as Healing winner: Andrew Morrow, Neither Brightly Lit Nor Completely Enlightened Honourable Mention: Jovita Akahome, Soul