Wikipedia

Gail Tremblay

Gail Tremblay (December 15, 1945 – May 3, 2023[2]) was an American writer and artist from Washington State. She is known for weaving baskets from film footage that depicts Native American people, such as Western movies and anthropological documentaries. She received a Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 2001.[3]

Gail Tremblay
Born(1945-12-15)December 15, 1945[1]
Buffalo, New York, United States
DiedMay 3, 2023(2023-05-03) (aged 77)
Olympia, Washington, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationBA University of New Hampshire, MFA University of Oregon
Known forInstallation art, basket weaving, poetry

Background

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Tremblay was born on December 15, 1945, in Buffalo, New York.[1] She claimed her father was of Mi'kmaq and Onondaga ancestry,[2][4] and that her great-grandfather once lived in Kahnawake near Montreal. She never offered any documentation of this and the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Indian Arts and Crafts Board determined that she was not Indigenous after a thorough investigation of her claims.[5][6] Her father was Roland G. Tremblay (1917–2013), who was born in Somersworth, New Hampshire, to Peter Tremblay and Bernadette Demers Tremblay.[7]

Gail Tremblay received her BA in theater in 1967 from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Oregon, Eugene in 1969.[1]

Writing and education career

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Tremblay was a faculty member at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and taught courses in English, art history, and Native American studies. She began her faculty appointment at Evergreen in 1980[8] and taught her last class in 2018 in the newly finished fiber studio at the Longhouse.[9] She was recognized by the Poetry Foundation.[10][11] Tremblay also wrote exhibition catalog essays about other artists, including, "Speaking in a Language of Vital Signs," for the 2008 exhibition catalogue, Joe Feddersen: Vital Signs at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University.

Visual art

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An Iroquois Dreams That the Tribes of the Middle East Will Take the Message of Deganawida to Heart and Make Peace (2009), Smithsonian American Art Museum

Tremblay described her work as combining historical Native American techniques and materials with mainstream artistic expression.[12][13] Her poetry and art were inspired by the cultures of Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands.[8]

Tremblay says she learned basketry from her aunts, but "update[d] them for a contemporary audience" through the use of modern materials such as film stock and film leader.[14] Tremblay's art draws from Native American history, Indigenous cosmologies, along with literature, Western movies, and other pop culture references. She created a basket using red and white film leader entitled, And Then There's the Business of Fancydancing, inspired by Sherman Alexie's film, The Business of Fancydancing (2002), in which the main character, a Spokane man, is lovers with a white man. Tremblay describes the work, saying, "I chose to use Porcupine Stitch because there are so many difficult and prickly relationships between characters in this film.”[14] The film influence on her baskets also includes When will the Red Leader Overshadow Images of the 19th Century Noble Savage in Hollywood Films that Some Think are Sympathetic to American Indians (2018), a basket woven using 35mm movie film from the movie Windwalker (1981), which was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2021.[15]

Artweek reviewer Marcia Morse writes, “And Then There is The Hollywood Indian Princess (2002). Using the Northeastern Woodlands fancy-stick basket weaving, Tremblay wove with, not brown ash and sweetgrass used by Northeastern tribes, but recycled 16 mm leader and film on sexually transmitted diseases, elegantly subverting multiple stereotypes.”[16]

Exhibitions

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Tremblay'sy solo exhibitions and group shows include Gail Tremblay: Fiber, Metal, Wood (1988), Museum of the Plains Indian, Browning, Montana;[17] The Empty Fish Trap Installation (2004), Evergreen State College Gallery, Olympia, Washington;[17] Gail Tremblay: Twenty Years of Making (2002), Daybreak Star Cultural Center, Seattle;[17] Reframing Images, Conceptualizing Indigenous Art (2013), Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon;[17][better source needed]and Art of Gail Tremblay (2017), Eastern Washington University Downtown Gallery, Cheney, Washington.[18]

Works in public collections

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Publications

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  • Night Gives Women the Word (Omaha Printing Company, 1979)
  • Close to Home (University of Nebraska, 1981)
  • Indian Singing in 20th Century America (CALYX Books, 1990)
  • Farther From and Too Close to Home (CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2013)

References

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  1. ^ a b c Vigil, Jennifer C. "Gail Tremblay." Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: Vision Project. (retrieved 10 May 2011)
  2. ^ a b Yeahpau, Mandy (2023-07-11). "Remembering visual artist and writer Gail Tremblay (Mi'kmaq and Onondaga)". Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Archived from the original on 2023-08-03. Retrieved 2023-08-03.
  3. ^ "Artist Collection". ArtsWA. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  4. ^ "Gail Tremblay". Artist Trust. Retrieved 25 April 2023.
  5. ^ "Gail Trembley". Arts WA. Washington State Arts Commission. Retrieved 8 December 2024. For approximately forty years, Tremblay claimed the lineage of the Onondaga, Mi'kmaq, and Mohawk (St. Regis) Nations. Before her death, the U.S. Department of the Interior's Indian Arts and Crafts Board began an investigation into her claims. With the support of the Nations noted, as well as genealogical research, they determined that Tremblay was not Indigenous.
  6. ^ "Daybreakstar Interview with Gail Tremblay". Daybreakstar Radio. United Indians of All Tribes Foundation. 2022-12-05. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
  7. ^ "Obituary". Tasker Funeral Service. Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  8. ^ a b Bataille, Gretchen M.; Lisa, Laurie, eds. (2003). Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. Routledge. p. 317. ISBN 978-1-135-95587-8. Retrieved 1 May 2020.
  9. ^ Tremblay, Gail (October 29, 2021). How I Gained the Skills to Team Teach, Was Asked to Come to Evergreen, Got to Work in the Longhouse, Sit on Its Advisory Board and Teach the First Academic Program in the Paimārire Fiber Arts Studio on the Indigenous Arts Campus. Artist Papers, Gail Tremblay Estate: unfinished and unpublished essay on the history of the Longhouse. p. 36.
  10. ^ Foundation, Poetry (2023-07-05). "Gail Tremblay". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  11. ^ "Gail Tremblay on Native American Authors | ipl: Information You Can Trust". Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  12. ^ "Froelick Gallery". Archived from the original on 2017-07-26. Retrieved 2008-06-22.
  13. ^ "Gail Tremblay | When There Is No Category for a Film in a Native American Language on Oscar Night, Clearly It Is in a League of Its Own | American". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
  14. ^ a b "The Arkansas Arts Center". InCollect. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  15. ^ a b "When will the Red Leader Overshadow Images of the 19th Century Noble Savage in Hollywood Films that Some Think are Sympathetic to American Indians". SAAM. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Archived from the original on 14 May 2022. Retrieved 14 May 2022.
  16. ^ Morse, Marcia (2008). "'Tattered Cultures' at the Academy Art Center". Artweek. 39 (9): 29.
  17. ^ a b c d "Gail Tremblay CV" (PDF). Froelick Gallery. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  18. ^ Pohl, Grace (9 November 2017). "Eastern Washington Downtown Gallery hosts EWU Student Bazaar". Cheney Free Press. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  19. ^ "Basket". PAM. Portland Art Museum. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  20. ^ "Strawberry and Chocolate". NMAI. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  21. ^ "In the World of White Line Fever..." WillametteArt. Willamette University. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  22. ^ "And Then There is the Hollywood Indian Princess". WillametteArt. Willamette University. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  23. ^ "Contemporary Native American Art In The Gallagher Law Library". UW Law. University of Washington. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  24. ^ "A Note to Lewis and Clark's Ghosts". WillametteArt. Willamette University. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  25. ^ "A Note to Lewis and Clark's Ghosts". NMAI. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on 2022-11-15. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  26. ^ "Trimet Public Art Database". PublicArt.Trimet. TriMet. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  27. ^ "Hunting for the Red Queen on the Big Night out". Arts.WA. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  28. ^ "Five Women Artists in the Whatcom Collection". Whatcom. Whatcom Museum. 22 March 2019. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  29. ^ "And Then There's the Business of Fancy Dancing..." ArkMFA. Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  30. ^ "In Great Expectations, There is No Red Leader". PAM. Portland Art Museum. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  31. ^ "It Was Never About Playing Cowboys and Indians". DAM. Denver Art Museum. Archived from the original on 15 November 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  32. ^ "Brooklyn Museum". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved 2023-07-09.
  33. ^ "Gail Tremblay | When There Is No Category for a Film in a Native American Language on Oscar Night, Clearly It Is in a League of Its Own | American". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2023-07-09.

14. https://daybreakstarradio.com/2022/12/gail-tremblay-interview/ Daybreakstar Interview December 5, 2022

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