Submitted by: Lisa Shepherd, Métis Artist
Materials: Velveteen, glass beads, cone jingles, hand-tied tassels, ribbon, kohkom print cotton lining.
I thought about our interconnectedness. To each other. To nature. The animals, the plants, the sky, the earth, the water and all the people.
Our family has been escaping to the forest when we can and making offerings to the water. It’s a time of feeling small but, with that, also a release of so much that we carry every day. There is a strange comfort that comes with loss of control. Okay, so here we are. Isolating, and at the same time realizing the deep need that we have for each other. For connection to each other and to all living beings.
I worked through so many thoughts as I stitched this mask. It was like untangling thread. Frustrating at times, but necessary in order to move forward with creating. Like many other artists I’ve read about, I took a good two weeks of being entirely unproductive at the start of this pandemic hitting our part of the world. Then, one day, I realized how much I was grieving normalcy. Had it really been only two weeks prior that I was sitting with students at a high school, all talking about spring break plans? How fast that changed! With naming the grief, my inspiration and desire to create came back again.
This mask was created for the Breathe community Facebook group – A collection of traditionally crafted masks demonstrating resiliency through 21st century pandemic.