Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

CUAG has developed an audio description tour for "Drawing on Our History," designed for gallery visitors who are blind or who have low vision. It is intended for in-gallery use, but can also be used remotely.

"Drawing on Our History" is a celebration of CUAG’s 30th anniversary, bringing the works of eight contemporary artists (invited by past guest curators) into an open conversation with a wide-ranging group of historical and contemporary drawings selected from the University’s collection and made by Canadian and international artists.

The tour provides an overall description of the exhibition, and descriptions of ten works from the CUAG collection, including the newest acquisition, “Medusa” by Ed Pien. It also features descriptions and interviews with three of the invited contemporary artists: Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, Mélanie Meyers and Marigold Santos.

In gallery, there are tactile reproductions of several art works, and a tactile path for independent navigation.

This tour was produced by CUAG, and designed with insights from members of Ottawa and Carleton’s blind and low vision community.

This audio description tour was written by Fiona Wright and recorded and edited by Nicole Bedford. Thank you to Rich Hillborn and Ludmilla Dubuisson for being the voices of the descriptions, and to artists Melanie Myers, Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona and Marigold Santos for their input. 

Thank you to the members of Ottawa’s blind and low vision community who consulted on this tour in the early stages, as well as Carla Ayukawa. Thank you to Walter Zanetti for making the floor tracks and to Patrick Lacasse, who installed them. 

Thank you to the curatorial team: Heather Igloliorte, Alice Ming Wai Jim, Anna Khimasia, Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Danielle Printup, Heather Anderson and Sandra Dyck. Artworks were generously loaned by the artists, private collectors, TD Bank Corporate Art Collection, Patel Brown, Cooper Cole, Norberg Hall and The Next Contemporary.

The exhibition is supported by The Joe Friday and Grant Jameson Contemporary Art Fund, The Reesa Greenberg Digital Initiatives Fund and The Mame Jackson Experiential Learning Fund.

This chapter describes a pastel on paper drawing titled Aujourd’hui l’echo de l’orage resonne by Rita Letendre, created in 1982, and measuring 47 by 67 cm. It is one and a half minutes long. 

Can you feel a storm after it passes? Maybe in the smell of the air, or the temperature change. In Aujourd’hui l’echo de l’orage resonne, or “today the echo of the storm resounds,” Rita Letendre focuses on sounds and reverberations. She has used pastel, a chalky pigmented material, to create an abstract composition of horizontal bands of vivid colour, blurring or almost vibrating as they transition upwards from rich blue to yellow to pale green to orange to red to black to blue and then back to red. Is her inspiration the sky after a storm, or is it the artist reflecting on the aftereffects of a more personal, emotional storm? As she has written, “My paintings are completely emotional, full of hair-trigger intensity. Through them, I challenge space and time. I paint freedom, escape from the here and now, from the mundane…The world isn’t only what we see or what we experience.” 

What are the textures or colours you attribute to emotions, both intense and tranquil? 

You’re done the tour now! Turn right and follow the path to the bottom of the stairs, where you began. Thank you for joining us.

This chapter is the text written by curator Alice Ming Wai Jim. It is two minutes long. 

Alice writes:

Marigolds thrive in the arid climates of Marigold Santos’s desert landscape paintings, one of which appears in the background of her studio depicted in the ink drawing shroud (arid interior I). The scene also affords us a glimpse of the artist’s take on the asuang (aswang), a traditionally terrifying shapeshifting creature of Filipino folklore.

Multiple configurations of this powerful, amorphous being populate Santos’s drawings and ceramics. Her reimagined asuang figures appear in numerous poses and positions — their shrouds at times made of thick dark masses, mystical woven textiles or braided voluminous hair, or exchanged for largebrimmed
veiled hats of different styles.

The asuang mythology arose from the Babaylan — pillars of society as shamans and healers in pre-colonial Philippines — whose meaning and purpose were inverted by the Spanish colonizers. Reconfigured again, Santos’s asuang figure is hybrid in state and status, negotiating strata and longing, becoming land; these are not uncommon preoccupations today, during eras of migration and diaspora.

The blemishes or ink spots, or perhaps striae or scars, all over their bodies are more than skin deep. They tell stories, the narratives that make a life legible to oneself and to others. A form of permanent body adornment, tattooing was a prevalent cultural practice passed down in all ethnic groups of the Philippine Islands before they were colonized in the sixteenth century.

Super enlarged tattoo motifs of the artist’s design monumentalize this living art form as a cutaneous archive of ancestral knowledge that Filipinos are reviving today as a vibrant, decolonial practice.

Please move to the next stop. Turn right and follow the path for 4 metres. Then turn right and continue for 7 and a half metres. The drawing is on your left. This is the last stop of the tour.

This chapter features an interview with artist Marigold Santos. It is two and a half minutes long.

Hi Marigold, what is the inspiration or story behind your work in Drawing on Our History?

The works in this exhibition come from various moments in my practice from the last 5 years or so. They range in material and application, from works on paper to ceramics, paintings, and includes my tattoo practice, which is another form of mark making and drawing for me. This particular collection of works reflect on, and speak of, the body, embodiment of experience, self-hood, empowerment, and diaspora. The imagery consists of figures reconfigured from folklore, objects pulled from sensorial memories like touch, taste, and smell, and textures and patterns that come from my heritage and the landscape of my childhood. 

Why do you choose to use Tagalog in some of the titles of your work?

My family immigrated to Canada in the late 80’s and I was just a child. I spoke Tagalog and did not understand English. We learned how to speak English very quickly, but my siblings and I stopped speaking our mother tongue in and outside of the home from that point on. Even though I can understand it quite fluently, I have difficulty in speaking it. Titling my work in Tagalog is a way for me to return to and honor my mother tongue in fragments. It is also a way for my work to reach folks who do understand Tagalog, and to create entry points into the work for them. 

Why are you drawn towards being an artist?

Making art for me, has always been about communicating something – whether it is communicating something I am curious about, asking questions of, researching, or experimenting with, communicating is the undercurrent for me. I communicate through my work, and I think through my work. I also transform and evolve as a person through my work. My art practice is a way for me to continue to critically ask questions and make joy. 

Go to the next chapter to hear the curatorial label for Santos’s work. 

This chapter describes the ink drawing shroud (buntis na erotica) 1, made in 2021 and measuring 33 x 25 cm. long. It is a minute and a half long.

Two female figures dance together, each draped in a delicate, transparent cloth, or shroud. Their bodies mirror each other: the back of one hand is posed on one hip and the other hand is raised in the hair, bringing the shroud up along with it. They each step one foot towards each other, bringing them closer, almost intimately, together. Though the different elements of their bodies: breasts, swollen bellies and arms, are visible, their faces remain completely obscured by the shroud and by the splotches of ink that dot their whole bodies. The use of the veil teases us by hiding and revealing the dancers’ bodies, perhaps apt as the title of the artwork “buntis na erotica” means “pregnant erotica” in Tagalog. With no background, the attention is focused wholly on these women’s gestures and powerful bodies. 

Go to the next chapter to hear Santos talk about her artwork.

This chapter describes flower abstraction (elongated) 1, 2, 3 by Marigold Santos, made in 2022 and measuring four metres high. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled “6.” This chapter is a minute and half long.

In this artwork, Marigold created an enlarged vinyl version of a black drawing of three imagined flowers. They snake up the wall of the gallery vertically, reaching the level of the balcony above. In the tactile version of this drawing, you can feel the stems, petals and leaves. Each flower has at least three distinct parts, bottom, middle and top, and the stems zig zag in different sections, before separating off into small blooms of various shapes and sizes.  The designs have very bold linework and are very stylized. The flowers appear to be surreal or otherworldly.

Santos is also a tattoo artist, and these black graphics recall a flash sheet, which tattoo artists use to display pre-designed creations. There are four flash sheets in this installation by Santos, and they are ink drawings on paper. They have multiple designs composed on one sheet.  Which flowers do you think inspired this design? Though they are rendered in black, can you imagine them with colours? Can you imagine these designs tattooed on skin? What is the relationship between the large flower designs and the smaller flash drawings?

Go to the next chapter to hear about another work by Santos, hung on the wall to your left.

Marigold Santos is a Filipino-Canadian artist based in Calgary, and was invited to be part of the exhibition by Alice Ming Wai Jim, a curator and art historian at Concordia University in Montreal. You can hear her written reflection on Marigold’s artwork in Chapter 36. This chapter will give an overall description of Marigold’s installation, and the next two chapters will describe specific works within the installation. Then you’ll hear from Marigold herself. This chapter is a minute long.

Marigold’s installation is in a corner of the High Gallery, close to one of the gallery’s exits. The ceilings here are 6 metres high and you might hear visitors on the floor above, as the balcony stretches out into the space above you.

The largest part of this installation is a black floral design made of vinyl and applied directly to the gallery wall, 4 metres high. It is 4 and a half metres in front of you. There are also nine other works hung on the wall, some quite dark that were drawn in charcoal and pastel on paper, and others done with ink on paper.  There is also one painting on canvas, as well as four tall square display cases with seven small ceramic pieces.

Go to the next chapter for information on Santos’s individual works.

This chapter is the text written by Mckenzie Holbrook for Glade and House. It is a minute long.

With its rhythmic brushstrokes and monumental trees, Glade and House demonstrates Emily Carr’s loose, expressive approach to painting on paper, in keeping with the large scale of the environment on British Columbia’s West Coast. The warm ochre tones suggest late summer or early autumn, painted with oil paints thinned with gasoline, which Carr valued for its economy and portability when working outside. Carr’s sweeping brush strokes emphasize the majestic trees, while the stumps in the foreground that line the path to the house at the centre of the composition, remind us of the giants that have been felled.

Please move to the next stop. Turn to the right and continue along this wall for 5 and a half metres.

This chapter describes Glade and House by Emily Carr, created in 1945, and measuring 89 by 61 cm. It is a minute long. 

In this scene, tall trees dwarf a simple box cabin, built on the edge of a cleared section of the forest. The clearing, or glade, has been painted in muddy yellows, and is dotted with short black tree trunks. At this time, Carr, the renowned West Coast painter, used a thinned oil paint that had a consistency of cream. The brown paper underneath peaks out between the softly arched brushstrokes of varied greens she has used to depict the branches of the trees or the blue of the sky. These expressive gestures attempt to capture the aliveness of this scene, though it seems a stark commentary on human impact on the land. Though the cabin, and its invisible owner inside, seems enveloped by the trees, who knows how long it will be before they become stumps? What future is the owner of the cabin pondering as they stand looking out of those two tiny windows, taking in the smells of the air and trees all around them. 

To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop. Turn to the right and continue along this wall for 5 and a half metres.

This chapter is the text written by Danielle Printup for Study for Cradle. It is a minute long. 

A prominent multidisciplinary artist based in Southern Alberta, Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Kainai (Blood) Nation, which is part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. She has worked across media for over thirty years, often using a minimalist aesthetic approach to engage with embodied understandings of land, place and community.  

This drawing, titled Study for Cradle, was made to draft the design for a three-dimensional sculptural work she later made using cotton, acrylic paint, and grass. It exemplifies HeavyShield’s ability to use minimal forms effectively, evoking a child’s presence with subtlety and power.  

Move to the next stop. Continue on the path directly behind you, for 5 metres, crossing the gallery. The drawing is in front of you.

This chapter describes Study for “Cradle” by Faye HeavyShield, created in 1992, and measuring 61 by 47 cm. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled “5.” This chapter is one minute long. 

In this graphite drawing, the artist has sketched out a baby’s garment, similar to a blanket with a peaked hood. Though the hood is up and the garment is filled out as if there is a little body inside, the face opening is dark. HeavyShield has layered dark pencil markings so that it creates the effect of a deep, cavernous void inside. Surrounding the form is a long triangular shape in soft pencil marks, almost like a shadow. The fabric is unpatterned, a simple white. The title “Cradle” perhaps refers to a cradle board, made and used by Indigenous peoples to protect and hold babies on their mother’s back.  

To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop. Continue on the path directly behind you, for 5 metres, crossing the gallery. The drawing is in front of you.

This chapter is the text written by curator Sandra Dyck. It is two minutes long. 

Sandra writes:

The groundbreaking American writer Audre Lorde famously described herself as “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” Lorde rejected external definitions of her identity that singled out, or marginalized, any one of these categories. Her poetry, she said, “comes from the intersection of me and my worlds.”

These questions of the part and the whole, of identity and belonging, are central to the work that Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona made for Drawing on Our History. Born in Qamani’tuaq — or Baker, as she calls it — to an Inuk father and a white mother, Kabloona has long lived away from the community. All her life, as she writes on these drawings, she has been asked, “What are you?” “Where do you belong?”

Kabloona belongs to making — to drawing, sewing, printmaking, knitting and building clay pots by hand. She belongs to the objects depicted in these drawings — sharp ulus with handles of wood or antler; a stone kudlik; a beaded sealskin marnguti that holds kudlik wicks; spherical ornaments made from ptarmigan gullets called puvviat — and to the creative acts that give rise to them. She belongs to her family tree, whose branches reach west to California and north to Inuit Nunangat.

Kabloona also belongs to the places she’s made home — Baker, Iqaluit, Ottawa. She belongs to the old stories she heard from her dad when she was a child. She belongs to the extraordinary legacy of visual culture inherited from Qamani’tuaq artists including Victoria Mamnguqsualuk (her grandmother), Jessie Oonark (her great-grandmother) and Luke Anguhadluq. Kabloona’s work comes from her intersection with all these worlds, and many more.

Please move to the next stop, which is in the High Gallery, or small arm of the “L.” Follow the path straight for 13 and a half metres. Then turn left and continue for 3 and a half metres. You are in the High Gallery now, with a 6 metre high ceiling. The drawing is on your left.

This chapter features an interview with artist Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona. It is a minute long.

Hi Gayle, what is the inspiration or story behind your work in Drawing on Our History?

I chose to share a personal reflection of my identity in my works for Drawing on Our History. Figuring out my place in the world has taken a lot of work. I wanted to show that even though I’m “half Inuk and half white” the people I identify with and who have also claimed me back are Inuit. I live in the duality of being an Inuit person and also being “half”.

Why do you choose to use of Inuktitut in some of the titles of your work?

I choose Inuktitut words for the titles of some of my works and English for others to represent my background in the middle of two cultures and my language learning journey. Friends and family help me name the Inuktitut pieces: teaching me and bringing me closer to those people.

Why are you drawn towards being an artist?

I like the idea of sharing my experiences and finding connections with other people. I think art gives my life deeper meaning and fulfillment. Also, my brain is constantly busy with creative projects and I’m the type of person who needs to keep their hands busy.

Go to the next chapter to hear the curatorial label for Kabloona’s work. 

This chapter describes Ilakka by Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, made in 2023 and measuring 35 cm high and 20 cm wide at the base and 12 cm wide at the top. It is a minute and a half long.

Behind you and to your left, one metre away, there is a display case with three vessels of varying sizes. Ilakka is the largest! 35 cm high, if you were to run your hands up the sides from bottom to top, your hands would go out and in, out and in, four times, with the curves growing progressively small as you reached the top. They are slightly irregular, and the exterior has not been glazed, so the reddish-brown clay feels dry and slightly rough. Instead of an overall glaze, Kabloona dipped her fingertip in white liquid clay and pressed it on the vessel while still wet, making dots all the way around, top to bottom. There must be hundreds! Each dot has then been turned into a face using tiny black brushstrokes: two eyebrows, two eyes, two dots for a nose and mouth. The variations of the brushstrokes change the identical faces into an array of expressions: smiling, frowning, stern. To top it off, each face is encircled with small red dots, creating the bright ruff of a parka hood. Kabloona’s use of her own biometrics is a way of literally imprinting herself, and all who came before her, on this object. This is echoed in the title’s translation: “my extended family.” 

Go to the next chapter to hear Kabloona talk about her artwork.

This chapter describes a series of six drawings entitled You should be a part of us by Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, made in 2023. Each drawing is on a horizontal piece of paper measuring 25 x 35 cm. There is a tactile version of part of this drawing. It is labeled “4.” This chapter is two minutes long. 

There are six black ink drawings in Kabloona’s series “You should be a part of us,” hung in a row on the gallery wall. In each, bubble letters of text in both Inuktitut and English appear above and below a line drawing of an object from the artist’s home. 

As you progress along the drawings, it reads: When I was growing up, people asked “What are you?” that said “you don’t belong (you’re not part of us.)” In Nunavut, Inuit asked, “Inuugaviit?” that said “Do you belong with us?” (you should be a part of us).

The drawings are of objects used in everyday Inuit life. In the first drawing there is a collection of ulus, or curved women’s knives, used for cooking and sewing. Kabloona has shown the texture of the antler handles using wavy vertical lines. Her qulliq, a gift from her sister, is a stone lamp shaped like a semi-circle. The smoothness of the stone is contrasted with a knobbly texture of a taqqut, a stick made of willow root for adjusting the flames at the base of it. The wick for a quilliq is typically arctic cotton, dried moss and willow fluff. In one drawing, her hands pick apart this wick material, readying it for the qulliq. In another, she threads a needle. Her fingers and wrists have tattoos of fine black lines. This final drawing in the series has the tactile version. Feel the patterns of her tattoos, and the weight she gives the lettering. How do the Inuktitut syllabics feel in comparison to the English letters?

Go to the next chapter to hear about another work by Kabloona.

Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona is an Inuk artist based in Ottawa, and was invited to be part of the exhibition by Sandra Dyck, Director of Carleton University Art Gallery. You can hear her written reflection on Kabloona’s artwork in Chapter 27. This chapter will give an overall description of the installation, and the next two chapter will describe two specific works. Then you’ll hear from Kabloona herself. This chapter is thirty seconds long.

Along the wall, there are six framed black and white drawings of objects from Kabloona’s home. There are also three vases in a display case. This section of the gallery is close to the stairs where you first came in, between two of the black floating walls.  

Go to the next chapter for information on Kabloona’s individual works.

This chapter describes Birds Carry the Sun to Birdland by Lucy Qinnuayuak, created in 1977, and measuring 38 by 47 cm. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled “3.” This chapter is one and a half minutes long. 

In this work, the sun is depicted as a charmingly irregular-shaped orange circle, held aloft in a yellow-green sky by nine birds. The colours are done with crayon, but the sun’s face is drawn in black ink, feminine eyes encircled by eyelashes gaze out at us, and her small mouth tilts to the right in a half smile. Her face has dotted lines across the cheeks, nose and forehead, in familiar designs of Inuit women’s tattoos. These black dotted lines also appear on the red, blue, green and black birds. 

Can feel the dotted patterns on the tactile version? 

Tattoos were opposed by Christian missionaries in the north for hundreds of years, something that Qinnuayuak, who lived between 1915 and 1982, would have experienced. They have had a revival recently, however, with many young Inuit women learning the techniques and designs of their ancestors. The directions of the birds, pointing east, west and north, create a symmetry to the drawings, and the black dots create kinship between the fowl and their precious cargo.  

Please move to the next stop, along the wall for 3 and a half metres, and turn to the left.

This chapter is the text written by Mckenzie Holbrook for Summer Landscape. It is a minute long. 

A founding member of the 1950s Toronto collective Painters Eleven, Kazuo Nakamura created artworks inspired by the New York abstract expressionist movement, as well as more figurative works. Nakamura viewed abstraction as a means to investigate and explore different modes of perceiving the natural world. 

The gestural, minimal brush strokes and muted colours of Summer Landscape bleed into the white expanse of the paper. As an artist interested in scientific ways of knowing, Nakamura portrayed the natural world as he saw it, unveiling the many ways beauty can be perceived. Here, Nakamura leaves viewers to fill in details; his loose gestural approach lends a moody, cool atmosphere to Summer Landscape. 

Please move to the next stop. Continue along this wall for 8 and a half metres. The drawing is on your left.

This chapter describes Summer Landscape by Kazuo Nakamura, created in 1954, and measuring 39 by 57 cm. It is a minute long. 

This drawing is hung above another landscape watercolour drawing by John Esnor. In Nakamura’s drawing, the artist used staccato brushstrokes of watercolour pigments to create a minimal, almost abstract, landscape scene of two trees standing on the left in a grassy field. Bright greens, vivid teal-tinged blues and hints of ochre are used to depict the leaves, grasses and smaller trees in the background.  Water makes the colourful brushstrokes feather out, as it soaks into the thick paper. It mimics the haze of summer heat that can sometimes blur your perception. Was the artist standing in this field while he painted it, the short and messy brushstrokes reflecting his rush to capture the colours and light of this view? Much of the page is left unfilled, and there are no details about the specific location. 

To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop. Continue along this wall for 8 and a half metres. The drawing is on your left.

This chapter is the text written by curator Sandra Dyck for Man with Snowmobile. It is a minute long. 

The Inuktitut syllabics read, in English: When the snowmobile first came up north, everyone thought they were mighty machines compared to a dog team. In this case it isn’t, the dog team is more reliable than the snowmobile. 

This humorous drawing, which depicts a forlorn Inuk man standing by his broken-down snowmobile, is one of ten by Kanginanak Pootoogook selected by curator Christine Macel to present at the Venice Biennale in 2017. Macel wrote of her exhibition, Viva Arte Viva, that it “seeks to convey a positive and prospective energy, which whilst focusing on young artists, rediscovers those passed away too soon or those who are still largely unknown despite the importance of their work.”  

Please move to the next stop. Turn right and follow the path for four and a half metres. The drawing is on your left. You are now moving back down the other side of the long stem of the “L.”

This chapter describes Man with Snowmobile by Kananginak Pootoogook, created in 2006, and measuring 51 by 67 cm. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled “2.” This chapter is one and a half minutes long. 

This work depicts an Inuk man standing just behind his bright red snowmobile. The fur-lined hood of his white atigi, or parka, is pulled up around his face. There are bands of orange, blue and dark green trim on the bottom of his sleeves and hem. His matching pants and blue tinted sunglasses complete the outfit.

Pootogook has included many details of the snowmobile, from the various components of the green outboard motor on the back to the gears of the track. The details stand out even more because the artist hasn’t included a background, just the white paper: we can focus on the cold and shiny red chrome, the smell of gasoline, how the fur trim would feel against our faces. Perhaps the background evokes the white tundra. Along the bottom, the artist has written in Inuktitut syllabics. 

To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop. Turn right and follow the path for four and a half metres.

This chapter is the text written by curator Danielle Printup for Plans for Tee-pee at the First Native Business Summit. It is a minute long. 

Bob Boyer was a renowned Métis artist, art historian, curator and educator who exhibited his work across Canada and internationally. Working across sectors in education, art and community organizations, Boyer was a passionate individual who significantly contributed to Indigenous visual arts in Canada.  

In 1986 Robert Houle invited Boyer to participate as a special guest artist at the First Native Business Summit in Toronto. This colourful drawing of a tee-pee in diagrammatic form is the design for the interior lining of the full-size tee-pee that Boyer later constructed for New Beginnings, an exhibition he co-curated with Houle for the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina.

The next artwork is to the right of Boyer’s, so stay here for the next stop.

This chapter describes Plans for Tee-pee at the First Native Business Summit by Bob Boyer, created in 1986, measuring 38 by 50 cm. It is two and a half minutes long. 

We are now at the back of the gallery, the top of the “L.” This ink and watercolour drawing is a diagram of the outside and inside of a teepee, flattened across a horizontal white piece of paper. A teepee is a conical tent structure, typically made with canvas (or animal hides) and stretched across a framework of wooden poles. It is primarily used by Indigenous peoples of the prairies. 

Here, Boyer has drawn the front and side view of the teepee in the top half of the composition: three triangles touch at the bottom corners. At either end, a rectangular tab has been added and labeled “cut and fold and ??,” similar to a paper model. The design includes a red zigzag line along the bottom, with green underneath. There are two eagles, wings outstretched, on either side of the circular entrance. The peak is yellow, contained by another zigzag, this time blue. At the top of the teepee is a piece of fabric, also yellow. It would usually be held up by a large pole, though here directions are given: “place tooth picks here.” At the top is written: Collaboration by Bob Boyer and Elder Jim Ryder.

Below is the design for the interior: drawings of four separate blankets tied together, end to end. Colourful geometric patterns of red, orange and yellow, along with polka dots, are featured. There are words written around the exterior and interior designs: culture, success, unity, war, society, life, universe, sun, eagle, art, extinction, earth, love, spirit, defeat and peace. The drawing is labeled “On the Edge” and underlined. The materials are also stated: “Tipi is acrylic on canvas. Liner is mixed media drawing on blankets.”

To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or, stay at this stop and skip ahead to Chapter 18. This artwork is right next to Boyer’s, to the right.

This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson for Untitled. It is a minute long. 

Kim Moodie is known for his highly detailed ink drawings. Mining and mixing historical traditions and cultural genres from illuminated manuscripts to comic books, graphic novels and children’s books, Moodie has developed a striking lexicon of imagery that densely populates the drawing space and offers infinite narrative possibilities.

Moodie created this fantastical work with twenty-five pages torn from a sketchbook and arranged in a grid. Each page is fully activated with the artist’s energetic, bold black lines depicting a host of beings and objects. We can observe that the drawings do not continue from one page to the next, yet the artist’s use of line, pattern and balance of negative and positive space creates the effect of a continuous, interconnected realm with manifold scenes of action.

Please move to the next stop, make a 180 degree turn and move down the path 2 metres and then turn right. The next stop is another 2 metres ahead. The drawing is slightly to your left.

This chapter describes Untitled by Kim Moodie, created in 1997, and measuring 125 by 117 cm. There is a tactile version of one part of this drawing. It is labeled “1.” This chapter is 2 minutes long. 

This large drawing is composed of 20 8 ½ by 11 sheets of white paper, pulled roughly from a spiral notebook, and arranged in a grid, four down and five across. Using only a thick black felt tip pen, the artist has created something similar to a page from a comic book, with 20 cells, or scenes. Crudely drawn characters appear across these scenes, pulled from pop culture and history: witches, spiders, Godzilla, Frankenstein’s monster. In the top left corner, a mummy wrapped in bandages lifts a giant bird by their outstretched wings, or maybe tries to keep it from flying away. Fights unfold across the pages: a soldier wields a gun in one scene and throws a grenade in another. Walls, towers and obelisks populate the background, as does a set of empty chairs which keep reappearing. The chaos is emphasized by the density of how the artist has drawn everything, there is no empty spot left on the page. A NASA shuttle flies above a falling Godzilla in a starry night, about to crash land on a witch. A spider hunts a fly in his web, woven above a two-faced horse-riding cowboy who points a gun both ahead and behind him. Who wins, who loses? Despite the serial quality of the drawing, there is no satisfactory ending when we reach the bottom left cell of the artwork. 

To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop. Make a 180 degree turn and move down the path 2 metres and then turn right. The next stop is another 2 metres ahead. The drawing is slightly to your left.

This chapter is the text written by Mckenzie Holbrook for Ex-Voto / Lung. It is a minute long. 

After graduating from York University in Toronto in 1977, Shelagh Keeley spent the next two decades between New York and Paris, creating the large-scale drawing and installation works for which she is acclaimed. Currently working out of Toronto, Keeley describes her practice as a visceral and cerebral activity.  

Keeley’s process is intuitive, often beginning the work with no set end in mind but rather exploring how her improvisational drawing takes shape. This encaustic drawing of a pair of lungs brings together much of Keeley’s philosophy of creation. She proposes that drawing offers an index of the artist’s body and expression, evidenced here by evocative linework which carries traces of her hand.  

Please move to the next stop, on the other side of this floating wall. Turn right and move for 2 metres, turn left for another 2 metres and then another left for 2 metres. Turn to the left at the felt circle stop.

This chapter describes Ex Voto / Lung by Shelagh Keeley, created in 1990, and measuring 145 by 95 cm. It is one and a half minutes long. 

You can reach out to feel the edges of this frame. This drawing is much larger than the majority of those in the exhibition! And there is one word to describe this set of lungs: messiness. Though the outline is drawn in graphite, or pencil, the edges of the oblong biological vessel are smudged, and there are dense layers of thick black charcoal that create the shadows or roundness of the lungs. A section of orange and pink pigment mixed together in the centre of the left lung creates the impression of a glowing, pulsating shape underneath, a sense heightened by the cloudy and translucent quality of the paper. The artist has also smeared a transparent wax over the drawing, and it creates a tactility to it, as we imagine the artist using her hands to pull the wax down and across the surface. The lungs almost reach all four sides of the paper, but in the empty space behind it, Keeley has smeared pinkish pigments, reminiscent of skin or flesh. In its size and textures, her representation of one of life’s primal forces is glowing, soft and visceral.

To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop, on the other side of this floating wall.

This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson. It is two minutes long. 

Heather writes:
Mélanie Myers explores the genres of landscape and land art as mediated by photographs, drawing from the seemingly unlimited image bank available on the Internet. Myers leverages drawing and papier-mâché as a practical and economical way of engaging with monumental sculptures sited in the landscape, extending an earlier theme of her work in which she examined touchstone works of land art by Richard Serra and Michael Heizer among others.

In this new installation, the Gatineau-based artist depicts a rugged Canadian forest landscape as though seen from the water. In the upper triptych, white “negative space” forms inhabit the shoreline amidst stumps, branches and a dense screen of coniferous trees. These ghost-like shapes reference British artist Henry Moore’s Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae (1968-69). In the drawing below, another enigmatic form, this one inspired by Moore’s Large Reclining Figure (1984) and patterned with delicate green scales, rests entwined with sprawling branches.

Building up the underlying surface with papier-mâché and sculpting freestanding elements, Myers pushes the forms and possibilities of drawing. Two French-style doors, structurally distorted like images reflected on
rippling water, serve as the foreground. Like the detailed wall drawings, the doors’ pencil-crayoned surfaces evidence the labour of their creation. Their alluring camouflage effect invites us to come closer, while their windows become frames through which to view the multi-dimensional landscape beyond.

Please move to the next stop. Continue to your right for 3 metres, and then turn right and continue for 2 and a half metres. The artwork will be on your left. You are standing in the middle of the gallery, towards the back, or top of the “L.” This artwork is on one of the black floating walls.

This chapter features an interview with artist Mélanie Myers. It is three and a half minutes long.

Hi Mélanie, how would you describe your drawing style? 

I use colored pencil, often drawing on prepared sheets or prepared structures of papier-mâché reliefs. The drawings are textured with tight repetitive marks, dense, quite colorful, figurative.

I think I impose strict little rules on myself without fully realizing. I feel like I draw what I see, like anyone else would. It's funny when I work with my assistant in the studio and I have to try to verbally explain to her how to draw the same as I did, that's when I notice the rules and constraints I’m self-imposing. For example, strokes that generally go in the same direction to form patches of color. Colors that do not overlap but touch each other. Unless it's pale. But 80% of the time it is pressed hard on the pencil.

There is negotiation between reproducing reality and letting go, or just following my arm, my wrist, allowing those gestures so that it creates a relationship between me and the landscape I’m looking at. For me, this is where it becomes drawing. When it's a conversation between the land and a body, mediated by the gaze.

What is the inspiration or story behind the installation in Drawing on Our History?

I explore our built environment a lot, not so much architecture or buildings, but rather the other systems that orient our body in space and frame our relationship to the outside, for example, the installation of art in public spaces. We often perceive them as something beneficial for everyone, but I'm not so sure that it's always relevant to plant a monumental work in our shared landscape.

This installation is part of my research on monumental artworks that have taken up a lot of financial, environmental and human resources. I reproduce them with more modest means, paper, pencil, my own time. By doing this, I can insert them into another environment, mitigate them, and have them relate to other elements that change the discourse or the properties of the original work.

Why are you drawn towards being an artist?

Visual arts, dance, literature, music are all forms of expression that move me perhaps more than real life, and I like to think outside of verbal language. There are tools and codes in visual communication that I understand really well, almost intuitively. And I like to operate in this realm because we don’t expect clear or structured results, like we do for sentences. 

I also like the flexibility and how daily life is organized when you’re an artist, you’re essentially self-employed! Of course, I have to do all the things necessary for the well-being of my family, like food, shelter, hygiene, etc. But it is soothing to go and navigate my art life in a parallel place where everything is flexible. On the other hand, this brings a kind of torture, because while everything is nuanced and nothing is true, it also means that nothing is clear, nothing is finished, there is no clear “check mark.” Also, it doesn't pay well. :)

J’espère pouvoir dessiner jusqu’à temps que je crève. I want to do this forever. It occupies my body and my thoughts with infinite challenges. 

Go to the next chapter to hear the curatorial label for Myers’s work. 

This chapter describes part 2 of Sans titre by Melanie Myers. It is two minutes long.

A confession: there was something left out of the description of Sans titre (Henry Moore, Reclining Figure et Vertebrae) in the previous chapter. And that’s because there is also something missing from Myers’ drawings: In the triptych, there are three white, irregular shapes – simply the papier mache base. Each one is different, with a point sticking upwards, or a curved bottom. It is a stark contrast to the forested area. The shapes are, in fact, the three components of renowned sculptor Henry Moore’s large bronze work, titled “Three-piece Sculpture: Vertebrae.” And indeed, they do look like the curved components of a spine, there but not there, in the forest. 

Below, in the shallows, there is another white shape, much larger: it is Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure. Myers has built the abstracted female form using papier mâché so that it pops out of the drawing. She appears draped over the arched branches that emerge from the water. The artist has also given her a skin, much different from the original bronze or even empty non-colour: green shimmering fish scales cover her entire body, even her head! It has not been drawn exactly on the form, however, but slightly shifted down and to the left, so that the unmarked papier mâché is still there, marking a slight movement or dissonance. 

Just like this shift, Myers has intentionally shifted the environment, the materials and labour, even dimension of the original sculptures, positioning them anew in this imagined landscape. How do you think this shifts their meaning? 

Go to the next chapter to hear Myers talk about her artwork.

This chapter describes part 1 of Sans titre by Melanie Myers, made in 2022-23. It is two minutes long.

In front of you is a set of two free-standing French doors one and a half metres apart. The artist has constructed them using papier mâché, and they are roughly the size of real doors: a little more than half a metre by 2 metres. On the backside, Myers has used pencil crayon to draw wood grain, but on the front, there is nothing so ordinary: it holds a beautifully drawn surface of a lake with lily pads floating on it. Behind the doors, through this portal, are two drawings on top of one another: the lower is a continuation of the shallow water with tree branches sticking out of the water, and ducks floating on the surface, partially hidden by the branches. Above is a triptych of the opposite shore of the lake, complete with a dense wooded area and thick red and orange undergrowth. Myers has drawn the details of the leaves, the texture of the rocks and branches, and the reflection of the trees on the water. The tops of the trees are jagged as they meet the sky, as if they have been ripped like a piece of paper. This landscape is repeated three times, almost identical though the colours alter slightly, and the trees point to the other edges of the paper, like a fan. It is late summer, and the sun must be setting because the water is getting darker. The colours of the sky reflect in the rippling water, oscillating between oranges, purples, and hints of blue.

The papier mâché bases even ripple: the doors have been caught mid-sway, and the bottom edge of the triptych juts out a little, right where the water meets the shore. This technique plays with our perception: what we think should be flat, like a drawing, reaches out into our three-dimensional world. Running your hand down each one, you would feel the edges of the strips of paper that were dipped in a watery glue and layered on top of each other to create the base.

To hear more about the artist’s play with drawing as sculpture, go onto the next chapter.

Mélanie Myers is a Francophone artist based in Gatineau, and was invited to be part of the exhibition by Heather Anderson, CUAG’s curator. You can hear her reflection on Mélanie’s artwork in Chapter 10. This chapter will give an overall description of Mélanie’s installation, and the next two chapters will go into more detail. Then you’ll hear from Melanie herself. This chapter is a minute long.

Mélanie’s installation is in the Main Gallery, along the wall that has very high ceilings. There are two pillars on either side of this section, and stairs to the right. Her installation consists of four parts, two on the wall and two freestanding in front of you. Each is made from papier mâché on which she has intricately drawn a lake and forest scene, similar to a stage set. 

Go to the next chapter for information on Myers’ work.

This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson for Medusa. It is a minute and a half minutes long. 

Ed Pien drew with a knife to create this shimmering tentacular tree with human figures amongst its branches. In 2004, Pien, who immigrated from Taiwan to Canada as a child, made a research trip to China where he encountered a spectacular cut-paper piece while visiting a temple. He began experimenting with the ancient Chinese art of papercutting, which dates back to the Northern and Southern Dynasties (385-581 AD).  

The monumental tree, figures and ropes in Medusa reference La pendaison (1633), a renowned etching by French artist Jacques Callot and American artist Nancy Spero’s Maypole: Take No Prisoners (2008), a sculpture comprising a central pole hung with colourful ribbons and cut aluminum heads. While Medusa shares these artworks’ indictment of violence, Medusa is also inspired by Pien’s experience of fireflies amongst ancient trees in Italy: a captivating homage to trees as more-than-human beings. 

Please move to the next stop. It is a straight line to your right for 7 metres. At the stop, turn left.

This chapter describes Medusa by Ed Pien, created in 2012. It is two minutes long. 

Tilt your head up, and imagine you’re standing underneath the canopy of a huge, knobbly tree, maybe a willow. The artist has created the tangled upper branches by cutting out the negative space from two different materials crinkled, flattened and layered on top of each other: translucent Japanese paper called Shoji paper and reflective film (similar to the material used on nighttime running outfits or highway signs). Though it appears to be almost black, as you move closer, the spotlights above hit it and reveal a beautiful purple-grey shimmer. 

The paper cutting has been intricately done, with some branches almost as thin as a spider’s web, or strands of hair, tangled together. Larger silhouetted forms appear caught in the branches. This, along with the title Medusa, evokes the long tresses of that fearsome and perhaps misunderstood mythological character. The artist has also cut small and medium circles from yellow, green, blue, orange, red and purple from the same material and affixed them to the tree’s silhouette, so that they appear to be floating across the branches. These adornments, as Pien has said, “celebrate resilience and offer glimmer of hope in troubled times.” Trying to increase that glimmer, you could pull out your cell phone flashlight, and the light bounces back even more strongly - the reveal stops you in your tracks, just like Medusa’s provocative gaze. 

To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop, a straight line to the right for 7 metres.

This chapter provides you with a description of the wayfinding tools that are part of the audio description tour. It is a minute long.

There will be audio cues within the audio description tour that will direct you through the gallery and to the various stops on the tour. 

Once you go down the stairs, there are also tactile floor markings that will help lead you on a one-way path clockwise around the gallery to the stops in front of the artworks. There are twelve stops on the tour. Stops will be marked with a circle composed of smaller felt circles. There are also tactile representations of several artworks, held in a tote bag provided at the front desk, that you can take with you on the tour. They are numbered and the audio description tour will notify you when there is one available at that stop. 

Please go down the stairs to the main floor. The stairs have railings and turn twice to the right. You will find the tactile path at the bottom. Turn left to go to the first artwork, in six metres. Stop at the felt circle and turn left.

This chapter provides you with a physical description of the art gallery. It is a minute and a half long. 

The Carleton University Art Gallery has two floors and is shaped like an “L.” The mezzanine, or upper level, where you arrived, and probably are right now, is a large balcony that spans the long stem of the “L.” There are two stairs, one in the crook of the L, close to where the gallery monitor sits at the front desk, and one at the top of the L. There is a railing that extends along the tall stem of the “L”, and there is a curved railing beside the front desk that looks down into the High Gallery (or small part of the “L” below). 

The audio description will bring you on a route for artworks on the main level, below. On this level, the long stem of the “L” is 23 metres long by 9 and a half metres wide. It has 2.4 m high ceilings, except along one wall, where it extends up to the mezzanine level above. This is the same height in the High Gallery, or small part of the “L”, about 5.8 metres. 

There are wood floors on the main level and the walls are white, except for four floating walls that are placed going down the middle of the long stem of the “L.” Those have been painted a dramatic black.

Only one chapter left to go before you can start on your way!

This chapter introduces the exhibition and is 3 minutes long. It was written by CUAG curators Heather Anderson, Sandra Dyck and Danielle Printup.

CUAG turned thirty in the fall of 2022; we’re celebrating our birthday with Drawing on Our History. 

Drawing on Our History is an experiment. We organized it using a polyvocal curatorial model that embodies and furthers our long history of collaborative exhibition-making. Each person on the curatorial team—five guest curators with whom CUAG has worked in the past and three CUAG staff members—invited a Canadian artist with a timely and compelling drawing practice. The drawings and drawing-based works made by these eight artists open conversations with drawings selected from Carleton University’s art collection.

Drawing on Our History illuminates over seventy years of art-collecting activity at Carleton. It presents the first drawing acquired by the University, which commissioned Elizabeth Harrison to render its crest and motto in 1951. It pays tribute to Jack and Frances Barwick, whose transformative 1984 bequest led to the founding of CUAG in 1992. It reflects on an exponential period of collection growth under the gallery’s first director, Michael Bell; today it includes 13,720 drawings, many of which were generously donated by artists and collectors. 

Drawing on Our History also features our most recent acquisition, the remarkable 2022 gift of Ed Pien’s Medusa, a monumental, shimmering composition drawn with a sharp knife. Pien’s arresting work points to some of the ways that artists use drawing today: to anchor personal and cultural identities; to investigate ideas, techniques, genres and traditions; to recuperate erased histories; to tell stories; to mitigate loss; to declare positions.

Drawing on Our History is installed by Patrick Lacasse and Andrew Johnson, amplified by public programs created by Fiona Wright and tours by Jessica Endress, and supported by administrator Vicki McGlinchey and research assistant Mckenzie Holbrook. Taken together, the work of the invited and collection-based artists, the guest curators and the CUAG team constitutes a multi-faceted look at drawing past and present, at the development of the University’s collection and at our evolution as an organization over three decades.

Thank you for your vital trust, generosity, participation, engagement and support. CUAG would not be here without you. You are an essential part of the gallery’s history, as well as its present and future. 

This chapter introduces the audio description tour.

Hello - Welcome to the Audio Description tour for “Drawing on Our History.”  My name is Fiona Wright, and I am the educator at Carleton University Art Gallery, or “CUAG.” 

This audio description tour will provide you with an overall description of the exhibition, as well as specific artworks and installations. You’ll hear from a few of the artists as well. There were so many artworks to choose from – the exhibition has over 100 artworks in it! I hope that we’ve chosen ones that can give you a real sense of the diversity of artists, and their expansive use of drawing. 

The Audio Description tour will lead you on a path to ten art works from the CUAG collection, as well as three installations by contemporary Canadian artists. There will often be multiple chapters at each stop, which will include a description of an artwork, and then more information from the curators or artists. 

The total length of the tour is an hour long. You can skip or repeat the chapters on this tour at any time. At the end of each chapter, you will be notified when you can move to the next stop. You can find information about wayfinding in Chapter 4.

Please stay here to listen to the next 3 chapters.