Sobey Long-List 2025

 

Super thrilled to be a chosen long-listed artist for the Sobey Art Award 2025. Very happy and honored to be recognized in Canada as a contemporary artist and Indigenous Anishinaabe Kwe.  Congratulations to all the artists! We are headed into challenging times and must keep our heads up high. 

Miigwetch folks!  

What is a Big Blue Smudge? BIG TIME MEDICINE!!!

Big Love,

Char Vicky

New Haunt Cookbook Mixed Media 2024

                                     Photo Credit: Paul Wong

A video flip-through of my book/scrapbook/cookbook.  Mixed media, paper, drawings, seasonal cards. As part of "She Listens For Her Voices" for the group exhibition Prop House A Collection of One Million Objects was curated by Paul Wong and hosted by Griffin Art Projects.  May-August 2024. Group exhibition with Cathy Busby, Germaine Koh, Parvin Peivandi, Jason Payne, Jay Senetchko, Bagua Bagua Arts Collective, Lisa Baldissera. 

WE ARE INDIGENOUS NOW

                                                             Hangz w. Neil Eustache 2008

Dearest Friends, 

Hello there my dudes. I am a busy woman these days, and all I have to say is: BENCH. BENCH. BENCH. In this blog post Cool Indians on Main Street is fondly remembered; CIOM, sigh.... 

This past week, I was in Mt. Pleasant on Main St. benching by myself and taking in the peeps and sights that the ancestral lands (Squamish, Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh) have to offer. The scenery has changed a great deal since the old days pre 2010s. (Pre 2010 Olympics, TRC, condo dev., Pandemic, global politics Sh*t show) I was hoping for a sense of nostalgia for 15 years gone-by, but it was not felt.  I felt a sad longing for community.

I was looking for something OLD TIMEY.

Where do we gather now?  At auctions, art benefits, galas, awards receptions, art openings?  The views have changed in my experience, but there is still an empty space to offer a seat. An open invitation to bench.  A new opportunity to offer up space for a new group of Benchers.  The bench can be a free arena again.  It was once called the littlest rez on Turtle Island.  What is needed is not a new name for Dude Chillin Park; what I want is a new space to bench where one can sit and occupy space in an Indian/Indigenous manner of presence.  A new venue of occupation could occur where Indian sweater (Cowichan sweater) spotting is simply a pastime and not an official conversation to panel art-speak.  All the familiar faces that once walked by have moved on to find cheaper rents. The days of hangin' and benchin' on the littlest Indian rez are officially over.  The ground, garden, and bench of CIOMS past have been removed/paved over/condo-commodified years ago.  My dudes have moved away, and our bench is forgotten.  I never got into the Dude Chillin Park scene and never found a new bench and lost all those old benchin' buddies. Speculation and bench sightings are happening now and then, but nothing too official. Maybe benchin was meant to be and kept unofficial, as it might have been co-opted as official branding of “community” to sell more real estate? Gentrification benching? Something to laugh about, but happy anecdotes for good times and good Old Timey times sell. This is the Cool Indians on Main St blog update thus far. 

 

Deepest Respect to the Ancestral Lands and benchin (lower case letters intended) Indigenous folks,

Char Vicky

Charlene sits on a Main St. bench smiling, wearing a black jean jacket 4/5/25