Nokomis

Nokomis was born in the bush two hundred miles north of Lake Superior almost seventy years ago. Her father was a trapper, her mother kept the home fires burning.

She says that she began her so-called 'artistic career' by making the traditional crafts - smoking hides and making moccasins, jackets, mukluks and small beaded jewelry items. But later in life began painting memories of what it was like to grow up hunting, fishing, trapping...generally living and independent life without a safety net of any kind.

When she was six her family moved close to a tiny railway hamlet so that she could go to school. By the time Nokomis had reached her teenager years she had left the bush entirely to get close to a proper school system. Since then she has llived a mainstream lifestyle, but paints memories of those earlier years. The stories of that time are written on the back of her note cards and prints. Here's a link to her favourite story. You can read many of those stories on her website, Native-Art-in-Canada .

A few years ago Nokomis started 'playing around' with polymer clay. She says that it was fun to use this space age medium to translate a few of the Ojibwa traditions into marketable artworks