With an emphasis on Plateau culture and people’s own connectivity, the “Collective Strands of Spirit” exhibit on display at the Terrain Gallery highlights the artistic voices of Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
After the success of Joe Feddersen’s “Earth, Water, Sky” exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Culture last year, Feddersen worked with other Colville artists to put together an exhibit at the Terrain Gallery. Britt Rynearson, one of the featured artists and a key event planner for the show, said Feddersen wanted young artists in the tribe to be similarly recognized.
“He reached out to me and asked me to get a group of Colville artists together to have some sort of parallel show that could bring some of those museum people or art buyers to see other Colville artists,” Rynearson said.
Rynearson said the artists came together through previously established connections and filled the entire space at the Terrain Gallery. The show features a variety of mediums, including sterling silver, gouache and colored pencil pieces, brush work, blown glass, digital, textiles and beads.
Rynearson’s piece is called “Story Circle” and features two hanging sculptures consisting of about 200 wire circles, each filled with small beads.
“One of the sculptures is in desaturated colors — silvers and blacks — and the other one is more in earth hues,” Rynearson said. “The concept is that each little bead is a memory of something that we’ve experienced, and then each circle is a story we tell ourselves or we’ve created for ourselves about those experiences. For me, it was a real reflection on my own experiences and the stories I create that make me who I am.”
The show features only new art, with all of the pieces created within the last five years for “Collective Strands of Spirit” specifically.
Rynearson said she created her piece with the show’s theme in mind.
“I probably spent 80 hours on my piece, but a lot of it was me staying up all night working on it. I hadn’t done that stuff in a long time,” Rynearson said. “It was a little bit of a crazy ‘college art days’ kind of a project.”
According to the gallery’s website, the show is intended to highlight the diversity of work among Colville artists and honor individual voices. Rynearson said that the show helps shine a light on the work that adds to the conversation by artists of the Colville tribe, an Indigenous group that may not be at the forefront of Washington’s Indigenous art scene. Rynearson also said the Colville reservation represents 12 different tribes.
“We really wanted the show to be a conversation between ourselves, like our work talking to each other and really highlighting all of our different voices as Plateau people,” Rynearson said.
One of these other voices is Ryan Feddersen, Joe Feddersen’s youngest daughter who is an established public work artist. One of her first public art pieces was in Spokane and is called “900* Horses,” a temporary piece that memorialized the horses murdered by white settlers during the establishment of the city.
“All of the artists are Colville tribal members, and all of our work is relating to these themes about Plateau storytelling and about the animal people, the land and place and our histories, and yet they all look different,” Ryan Feddersen said.
Ryan Feddersen’s piece is called “Coyote Tries Again,” and features nine gouache works on paper.
“The series of nine coyotes are displayed being hung up to dry, and they are a sequence where Coyote gets thrown into the river, he wakes up and pulls himself back out again,” Ryan Feddersen said.
Her piece is the beginning of an ongoing project, and Feddersen said that she used Coyote and his character within Plateau lore as an icon to describe a larger idea.
“Before beginning his adventures, I wanted to start with a symbolic reminder that failures are inevitable and that it’s necessary to get back up and keep going,” Ryan Feddersen said.
Ryan Feddersen said she wanted visitors to see that her piece was about resilience and the importance of learning from failure.
“This piece in particular is about Plateau lore and the trickster coyote and how that continues to apply,” Ryan Feddersen said. “We’re looking at a lesson from Coyote in this exercise and how that is a lesson we need to carry on today.”
Both Rynearson and Ryan Feddersen’s pieces emphasize the power of individual perspective and reflection. Rynearson said that while her piece relates to her own experiences, she also hopes visitors can see their own stories in her piece as well.
“You want your piece to be significant to other people and you want other people to find meaning in it, but you can only do that if you put meaning in it yourself,” Rynearson said. “You have to start making meaning with your own stories and then hope that other people can find that same resonance.”
Rynearson and Ryan Feddersen’s pieces will be on display through March 1 at the Terrain Gallery, along with all of the other Colville artists featured.