Client: Springboard for the Arts

Year: 2021

Disciplines: Creative Direction - Project Management - Mock Up Design - Project Direction - Mural Design - Illustration - Painting

The Brief: Create a mural for Springboard’s new location in St. Paul, MN. The mural will highlight Springboard’s sustainable rainwater collecting efforts. The mural also beautifies a space for community to gather which represents and pays respect to the first peoples of Minnesota, the Dakota and Ojibwe nations.

The mural explores my personal relationship with water and the intersectionality of Native culture and sustainability. Having spent the first 21 years of my life next to the great lakes, I feel a sense of belonging and direction while near them. In Native culture, we believe everything living thing is connected. Water is no exception. Whether it be above or below-ground, water systems are connected and provide life for everything we see and experience. Similarly, the Dakota and Ojibwe people are entwined. Over time, especially more recently, we have appreciated and traded art and customs with one another and created a beautiful blend of culture. Likewise, I wanted this represented in the mural; how we are still very different but celebrate each other.

As an Ojibwe woman, I felt equipt to narrate from that side. However, not being Dakota, I wanted to do my due diligence in representing the Dakota people in my story. Before paintbrushes touched metal, I met with Holly Young, a Dakota-diverse artist. I also met with Giizh Agaton Howes, and requested my illustrations be shared with other elders and youth of the local Indigenous community to help ensure a unified message from a multitude of people from both cultures.