Lara Felsing, Harvesting Tray with Deerskin Medicine Bag. (For Branching Songs exhibition). Second-hand cotton fabric, canvas, floral broadcloth, burlap and cotton thread dyed with Sweetgrass, tobacco, cedar, sage, Chaga, moss, spruce cones and needles, Saskatoon berries, strawberries, dandelion, yarrow, wild mint, bee pollen, shale and charcoal, buffalo wool, wood hoops. 12″ across X 1.5″ deep, 2023.
Lara Felsing, Medicine, Sweetgrass and flagging tape. 36″ X 1″, 2022.
Lara Felsing, What About Charlotte? Charlotte Small. Hand-dyed second-hand cotton fabric and embroidery thread coloured with Sweetgrass, Chaga and spruce cones and needles, clay, tobacco, strawberries, strawberry leaves, charcoal, dandelions, graphite and vegetable dye printed photograph on wood. 12″ X 12″, 2023.
“Standing in the silence, Charlotte Small was an important figure, giving a voice to the many multi-skilled women who were unpaid and nameless in the male dominated fur trade that was highly dependent upon Aboriginal and Métis women acting as guides, translators, confidantes and expert wilderness survivalists. Charlotte Small performed all these roles as a wife, mother and daughter. Her courage and achievements will withstand the test of time and serve as encouragement for the generations of Aboriginal women to come, and recognition of the many silent women of the fur trade.”
– Pat McDonald, historian and author, Rocky Mountain House
(Charlotte Small celebrated as a national historic person. Cision Canada. (2018, December 24).
Lara Felsing, Forest Basket, (Return to the Mothering Spirit of the Land). Woven with castoffs from the forest near my home and fabric remnants, Lodgepole pine needles, birch bark, flagging tape, buffalo wool, deer hide, second-hand fabric dyed with spruce cones and sinew, 9” X 3”, 2024.
Forest Basket (Return to the Mothering Spirit of the Land) was made with castoffs from the forest near my home. It weaves together the story of the land, past, present, and future. As a harvester, I look to the teachings of knowledge keepers, Elders, and ancestors, and I created this basket in the spirit of Rematriation—a return to the sacred mother.
Lara Felsing, Banff National Park (Lake Louise is Overflowing). Second-hand fabric dyed with pine cones, floral broadcloth, dandelion, second-hand string and plastic buttons, plant pigments, pink paint found at the Banff Centre, photograph. 14.5″ X 17.5″. 2024
Banff National Park (Lake Louise is Overflowing) tells of the current state of one of Alberta’s most visited tourist destinations and the toll it’s taking on the area’s native plants and endangered animals. With an ever-increasing number of visitors and a rapidly diminishing population of native species, this painting depicts an overflowing Lake Louise, where the lake is overwhelmed by human occupation and is spilling onto the land. A grizzly bear is being forced off the frame, even though it is secured with two plastic buttons – representing a human attempt to fasten it to its habitat. The stitched frame around the photograph is unravelling, and in the photograph the land is smothered with rows of visitors “12 rows deep”, as described to me during a conversation with an artist who lives in Banff last fall.
Ellis, C. (2024, July 4). Parks Canada looking at human use limits due to explosive visitation in Lake Louise. Rocky Mountain Outlook.
Lara Felsing, Wolves in the Tonquin Valley. Chaga tea, handmade charcoal stick, strawberries, plant pigments, clay and Saskatoon berries on unbleached cotton. 16″ X 24″, 2022.
The Tonquin Valley is the home to one of Jasper National Park’s last caribou herds. The recreational trails made by humans have created a linear path for wolves to access the herd and easily hunt the caribou. As reported by Joanne McQuarrie, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter for the Jasper Fitzhugh, recreational cross-country ski tracks and footprints made from walking in the snow are creating a network of efficient hunting trails for local wolf packs.
In this painting, I have divided the composition into three horizons. The bottom of the painting has a hand-stitched overlay of floral broadcloth, which was a popular trade item between the Hudson’s Bay Trading post and Indigenous people. Floral broadcloth is still used today to make ribbon shirts and skirts. In this painting, it represents Indigenous values regarding the land and animals and a connection to past ways of coexisting with other species. The middle section of this painting depicts recreational cross-country ski tracks rendered a deep orange colour with berries and tea. This is how I feel a wolf pack would perceive ski tracks imprinted in the snow. Wolves create their own linear trail systems throughout the forest for efficient travel.
Although the recreational ski trails can be interpreted as having a low environmental impact because the tracks melt away, they are creating a highly efficient method of travel that perpetuates easy hunting and therefore driving down the population of local caribou.
The top section of the painting is left as blank snow, acting as a prediction of the cost to these species when human interactions affect their natural way of existing.
Lara Felsing, Reclamate. Embroidery thread on found birch bark, 9.5″ X 8″, 2022.
Lara Felsing, Return of the Buffalo, Chaga and strawberry dyed salvaged cotton, charcoal, dried dandelion dyed embroidery thread, Saskatoon berries, floral broadcloth and cotton remnants, soil and dried grass, 20″ X 32″, 2022
The image of the buffalo is culturally significant to the Métis people, as buffalo sustained our community for generations, and it continues to represent Métis resilience. This painting is a study for an upcoming piece titled Return of the Buffalo, which celebrates the recent introduction of a small Buffalo herd to traditional land at Métis Crossing.
Lara Felsing, Quote by Tom Porter. Second-hand cotton dyed with black spruce, dandelions, strawberry leaves, poppies, bluebells, Sweetgrass and fireweed harvested from my garden and the forest near my home. 36″ X 21″, 2023. (Image from Hauntings exhibition catalogue by Astra Papachristodoulou and Michał Piotrowski)
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