tender

Wally Dion, born 1976, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Fabric Star Quilts.

Wally (Walter) Dion is a Canadian artist of Saulteaux ancestry living and working in Upstate New York. Working in a number of media including painting, drawing and sculpture.

Wally explains:

"The first fabric star quilt was made as part of a 2022 residency at Wanuskewin Park. It was my way of reflecting upon prairie tall grass and the reintroduction of bison into the Great Plaines. I wanted to make several transparent quilts and superimpose them; one in front another... a quilt for the microbiome, another for the bison, their manure & hooves, another for the summer fires that scorch the ground and a final quilt for the sweetgrass braid.

I was considering how all of these things worked together for thousands of years to create what is known as the 'prairie tall grass ecosystem'. A vast and fertile expanse of land stretching from the foothills of Alberta to the banks of the Mississippi. I wanted to highlight the invisibility of systems when everything is working well, as it should be.

I started with the green quilt because it is the colour of the sweet grass braid that is exchanged in ceremony and relationship building. I considered the nature and tradition of quilting; impoverished craftspeople using tiny scraps of fabric. I considered the act of offering fabric and adherence to tradition. I thought of a thousand tiny prayers and how that might look; invisible acts of respect and adherence to protocols spanning decades. My thoughts travelled across the land, imagining the trees and rocks collecting these prayers like a bush of cloth, or an etched boulders."

Sansa Stark

Bird Spirit, Bird by Ningeosiaq Ashoona(Inuit)

in order for kamala to achieve anything, and in order for her to make correct choices on the admin she's about to hire, she must be placed under the same pressure because the genocide has not stopped and netanyahu is currently in washington dc while the US blocks his ICC warrants. children have not stopped dying nor has the US shown any sign of budging despite israel growing more and more emboldened. remember the last time you heard about how bad things were in gaza? they're actually worse now. famine has spread throughout the entire gaza strip, polio has been found in the sewage water, the rafah crossing has been closed and destroyed, aid has been reduced drastically since february, and more and more people are dying of disease and starvation, and you hear about it less because communications are down and journalists have been killed. this is not by accident. this is by design: the design of the united states government.

i know its inconvenient that this is happening still, right when you want to just campaign for kamala passionately and painlessly, but it is even more inconvenient for the people dying because of US policies under US bombs. move kamala left (or hell, move kamala to acknowledge the existence of international law) or accept that you can't stop genocide no matter who the nominee is and that there is a moral, political and social price to be paid for that—not to mention the billions of your tax money going to bombing people across the world.

And I feel like that conversation really changed me cause I've always been bad at school and been a slow learner so I just sort of decided I wasn't smart and it wasn't my fault I wasn't born with the same advantages of people around me and I think that's something we all do as self protection from the truth that the only thing truly keeping us from what we want is usually ourselves and our decisions about our own narratives that aren't actually in stone even if we see them that way

I realized my friend was actually just not a quitter, and that she also felt not good enough often but decided to keep going in times where I know I would have stopped in her place

And I feel like taking ownership of my life a lot in the last few years has made me understand her better, even with stuff like chronic illness that practically begs us to victimize ourselves and then that way of thinking makes us sicker and more dependent on others when we could be accepting help without considering ourselves so helpless

It's really weird interacting with anyone once I've realized so much of that because I see my old self in people when they talk to me like I have something they don't because I am finally making different choices than I used to and honestly it is very irritating regardless of intention