After facing a series of personal challenges, Master of Fine Arts (MFA) candidate Brody Burns (BA’21) never thought he would see his thesis project on display at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) Snelgrove Art Gallery this summer.  

“I honestly never thought I’d make it to my MFA,” Burns said. “But at the same time, it feels so good having that accomplishment and being able to rest and … really reflect and heal right now.”

These paintings were part of an exhibition, No Words Necessary, from the College of Arts and Science graduate student in the Department of Art and Art History. Since successfully presenting his thesis project, Burns will be graduating at the USask Fall Convocation on Nov. 8. 

A Treaty Six Plains Cree artist from James Smith Cree Nation, Burns’ paintings explored emotions and concepts that go beyond the use of words while using acrylic, oil paint and digital media. 

In his own words, the figures in his paintings “represent the energy and emotion that connects everyone and everything. Like synapses firing in the brain, information is communicated between all beings physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.” 

The concept of the paintings was a way for Burns to begin processing the experiences of helping immediate and extended family members facing serious health issues. 

“That was always a challenge,” he said. “It was something that was holding me back emotionally and mentally. It was hard for me to stay focused. 

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

An Indigenous art bus stop with holes in each of its glass windows and covered in police tape on Nov. 6, 2023, near the intersection of Locust and North Third Streets.

Indigenous art on a bus stop was destroyed in North Lawrence after an apparent vandalism incident.

The bus stop, located near the intersection of Locust and North Third streets, had holes in each of its glass walls and was covered in police tape on Monday.

The bus stop is one of 10 artworks by six artists that are on display on glass bus shelters around town. The works were placed over the summer, as the Journal-World reported.

The work that was damaged is called “The White Buffalo” and was created by artist Mona Cliff (HanukGahNee).

Lawrence Transit staff worked with the Indigenous Community Center on the bus stop beautification project, according to a news release from the city’s transit department in June. The ICC led the artist outreach and selection process. The Douglas County Community Foundation provided funding for the project through the 2021 DCCF LiveWell Community Wellness Grant.

The Journal-World has reached out to the Lawrence Police Department for more information about when the vandalism occurred.

Maestro Luke Frazier explains instruments in an orchestra to students at Waterford Elementary School. Frazier, conductor of the American Pops Orchestra and a Parkersburg native, was the featured artist in the Artsbridge Artists on Tour program last week. (Photo Provided)

PARKERSBURG — Maestro Luke Frazier, conductor of the American Pops Orchestra, returned to Parkersburg last week for the Artsbridge Artists on Tour series.

Frazier, a Parkersburg native, and members of the orchestra entertained students with renditions of “The Three Little Pigs,” Britney Spears’ “Oops I did it Again,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and The Commodores’ “Brick House,” among others.

Students also learned about musical instruments in an orchestra and met with each musician.

The American Pops Orchestra kicked off its week-long tour in West Virginia and Ohio with performances at St. Marys High School for Pleasants County third- and fourth-graders, followed by a performance for Ritchie County Schools third- and fourth-graders.

It continued its tour at Waterford Elementary School and Wood County elementary schools. Frazier also conducted master classes at Parkersburg High School and his alma mater, Parkersburg South.

Maestro Luke Frazier of the American Pops Orchestra speaks to students at Blennerhassett School in the Artsbridge Artists on Tour series. (Photo Provided)

“The performances were outstanding and very well received by everyone in attendance,” said Paula Oliverio, Artsbridge arts education coordinator.

Frazier was the second of three scheduled artists in the Artists On Tour programs. The third and final program of the series is in April, with The Children’s Theater of Cincinnati performing for students in kindergarten to second grade.

From left, Artsbridge Arts Education Coordinator Paula Oliverio and Maestro Luke Frazier of the American Pops Orchestra. Frazier, a graduate of Parkersburg South High School, last week participated in the Artsbridge Artists on Tour series. (Photo Provided)

Members of the American Pops Orchestra directed by Maestro Luke Frazier perform a song during the Artsbridge Artists on Tour series. (Photo Provided)

Buffy Sainte-Marie, wearing a shining dress and long necklace, was led on the stage by a group of Indigenous people in traditional regalia after she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1995.

Her iconic dark hair and fringe hung long as she told the crowd about the importance of artists from remote communities.

“Most especially in the whole wide world, I’d like to acknowledge all the grassroots Indian artists who haven’t yet taken home a Juno, but who continue, as they have in the past, to capture our hearts at powwows across Canada, doing that magic which music does so well,” Sainte-Marie said to applause.

Those words now ring hollow for some Indigenous musicians after a recent CBC News report raised doubts about the singer’s ancestry.

Some musicians say they were disappointed to learn they may have lost career-shaping industry awards to someone who may be neither Indigenous nor Canadian. They say it amounted to lost opportunities at critical times in their careers.

“Juno winners have toured the country and the world, and the runners-up get to play the neighbourhood pubs and occasional summer festival,” said Billy Joe Green, an Anishinaabe rock and blues musician who was a nominee for Indigenous Music Album of the Year in 2009 when Sainte-Marie took home the honour.

“Resentful? I can’t afford that luxury.”

Sainte-Marie has received numerous Junos, the $50,000 Polaris Music Prize in 2015 and a Polaris heritage award for her 1964 debut album “It’s My Way!,” among a slew of other honours.

The story of her birth, childhood and identity has shifted throughout her six-decade career, with her identifying as Algonquin and Mi’kmaq before saying she was Cree, adopted from a mother in Saskatchewan.

However, CBC located her birth certificate, which says Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 in Stoneham, Mass. The document lists the baby and parents as white and includes a signature of an attending physician. CBC said Sainte-Marie’s marriage certificate, a life insurance policy, the United States census and interviews with family members corroborate the information on the birth certificate.

Sainte-Marie, 82, said in a statement the day before CBC’s story ran that she doesn’t know who her birth parents are or where she’s from, but called herself “a proud member of the Native community with deep roots in Canada.”

While Sainte-Marie’s career was skyrocketing in the 1960s, Green was also trying to make it in music, never surrendering to “the day-to-day rejection, racism and to the many number of obstacles” that came his way.

A life’s work culminated with the Juno nomination for his album “First Law of the Land” in 2009. While Sainte-Marie took home the hardware and accolades, Green said his opportunities evaporated and he struggles to make a decent living despite playing better than he ever has.

“I’ve accepted ‘life on life’s terms’ for the most part,” Green said in an online message to The Canadian Press. “Yet, I’m still reflecting on this very unpleasant circumstance that confronts all who lost opportunities.”

Karmen Omeasoo, who performs under the name HellnbacK, was nominated the same year as Sainte-Marie as part of the hip-hop group Team Rezofficial.

He first met Sainte-Marie as a child, with his mother explaining that she was an icon, so he understood losing to someone of her stature.

“If we get beat by her, who cares?” Omeasoo said in an interview. “If one of us wins, we all win. That’s what it felt like … I held onto that.”

Now that feeling is gone. He thinks about all the Indigenous musicians who could have won and what it would have meant for their careers — recognition, radio play, touring opportunities, record sales.

“I’m feeling very duped. Like something was taken from me. Something was taken from all these other artists,” he said.

Omeasoo said he can only speak for himself, not all Indigenous musicians. But, he said, the revelations have shaken him to his core. He imagines how meaningful it would have been to bring the Juno back to his First Nation in Maskwacis, Alta.

“I could have brought that hardware back home to my mom, my dad, my grandma, my kids.”

He continues to create with his wife, Lisa Muswagon, under the name The Resilience, but said it’s a constant battle to make music and provide for their children.

Chester Knight, who was nominated alongside Sainte-Marie in 1997, said his album “Freedom” should have won the Juno because his was actually an album for Indigenous people. The song “Love Me Strong” was “popular then and has grown to be even more popular now,” he said.

There have been calls for the Junos to rescind Sainte-Marie’s awards. An emailed statement said the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Junos, is aware of doubts about Sainte-Marie’s ancestry.

“We are processing the information presented and are consulting with our Indigenous Music Advisory Committee, other community members and key stakeholders,” the statement said.

Knight, who is from Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan, said the Juno Awards mean a lot to the artists competing for them.

“It is unfair to my brother and sister artists who grow up in poverty and racism, and are somehow able to create something of emotional value like I did,” he said in an email.

“Artists have to raise a family and balance a music career and a job career to fuel the production of an album.”

Black Bear, a drum group from Manawan First Nation in Quebec, was nominated in the same category as Sainte-Marie for “Come and Get Your Love: The Tribe Session” in 2016. The group said in a message to The Canadian Press they “work and walk in truth and this includes being true to yourself, your family and friends.”

“We certainly don’t know where to stand considering what (Sainte-Marie) has done for Indigenous artists and done to those same artists as well by taking away opportunities like Junos.”

READ ALSO: ‘I know who I am:’ Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Indigenous identity questioned

READ ALSO: Documents contradict Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Indigenous heritage: CBC report

Buffy Sainte-Marie, wearing a shining dress and long necklace, was led on the stage by a group of Indigenous people in traditional regalia after she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1995. 

Her iconic dark hair and fringe hung long as she told the crowd about the importance of artists from remote communities.

“Most especially in the whole wide world, I’d like to acknowledge all the grassroots Indian artists who haven’t yet taken home a Juno, but who continue, as they have in the past, to capture our hearts at powwows across Canada, doing that magic which music does so well,” Sainte-Marie said to applause. 

Those words now ring hollow for some Indigenous musicians after a recent CBC News report raised doubts about the singer’s ancestry. 

Some musicians say they were disappointed to learn they may have lost career-shaping industry awards to someone who may be neither Indigenous nor Canadian. They say it amounted to lost opportunities at critical times in their careers. 

“Juno winners have toured the country and the world, and the runners-up get to play the neighbourhood pubs and occasional summer festival,” said Billy Joe Green, an Anishinaabe rock and blues musician who was a nominee for Indigenous Music Album of the Year in 2009 when Sainte-Marie took home the honour.

 “Resentful? I can’t afford that luxury.”

Sainte-Marie has received numerous Junos, the $50,000 Polaris Music Prize in 2015 and a Polaris heritage award for her 1964 debut album “It’s My Way!,” among a slew of other honours.

The story of her birth, childhood and identity has shifted throughout her six-decade career, with her identifying as Algonquin and Mi’kmaq before saying she was Cree, adopted from a mother in Saskatchewan.

However, CBC located her birth certificate, which says Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 in Stoneham, Mass. The document lists the baby and parents as white and includes a signature of an attending physician. CBC said Sainte-Marie’s marriage certificate, a life insurance policy, the United States census and interviews with family members corroborate the information on the birth certificate.

Sainte-Marie, 82, said in a statement the day before CBC’s story ran that she doesn’t know who her birth parents are or where she’s from, but called herself “a proud member of the Native community with deep roots in Canada.”

While Sainte-Marie’s career was skyrocketing in the 1960s, Green was also trying to make it in music, never surrendering to “the day-to-day rejection, racism and to the many number of obstacles” that came his way.

A life’s work culminated with the Juno nomination for his album “First Law of the Land” in 2009. While Sainte-Marie took home the hardware and accolades, Green said his opportunities evaporated and he struggles to make a decent living despite playing better than he ever has.

“I’ve accepted ‘life on life’s terms’ for the most part,” Green said in an online message to The Canadian Press. “Yet, I’m still reflecting on this very unpleasant circumstance that confronts all who lost opportunities.”

Karmen Omeasoo, who performs under the name HellnbacK, was nominated the same year as Sainte-Marie as part of the hip-hop group Team Rezofficial.

He first met Sainte-Marie as a child, with his mother explaining that she was an icon, so he understood losing to someone of her stature. 

“If we get beat by her, who cares?” Omeasoo said in an interview. “If one of us wins, we all win. That’s what it felt like … I held onto that.”

Now that feeling is gone. He thinks about all the Indigenous musicians who could have won and what it would have meant for their careers — recognition, radio play, touring opportunities, record sales.

“I’m feeling very duped. Like something was taken from me. Something was taken from all these other artists,” he said. 

Omeasoo said he can only speak for himself, not all Indigenous musicians. But, he said, the revelations have shaken him to his core. He imagines how meaningful it would have been to bring the Juno back to his First Nation in Maskwacis, Alta.

“I could have brought that hardware back home to my mom, my dad, my grandma, my kids.”

He continues to create with his wife, Lisa Muswagon, under the name The Resilience, but said it’s a constant battle to make music and provide for their children.

Chester Knight, who was nominated alongside Sainte-Marie in 1997, said his album “Freedom” should have won the Juno because his was actually an album for Indigenous people. The song “Love Me Strong” was “popular then and has grown to be even more popular now,” he said.

There have been calls for the Junos to rescind Sainte-Marie’s awards. An emailed statement said the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Junos, is aware of doubts about Sainte-Marie’s ancestry.

“We are processing the information presented and are consulting with our Indigenous Music Advisory Committee, other community members and key stakeholders,” the statement said.

Knight, who is from Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan, said the Juno Awards mean a lot to the artists competing for them. 

“It is unfair to my brother and sister artists who grow up in poverty and racism, and are somehow able to create something of emotional value like I did,” he said in an email. 

“Artists have to raise a family and balance a music career and a job career to fuel the production of an album.”

Black Bear, a drum group from Manawan First Nation in Quebec, was nominated in the same category as Sainte-Marie for “Come and Get Your Love: The Tribe Session” in 2016. The group said in a message to The Canadian Press they “work and walk in truth and this includes being true to yourself, your family and friends.”

“We certainly don’t know where to stand considering what (Sainte-Marie) has done for Indigenous artists and done to those same artists as well by taking away opportunities like Junos.”

For many, the formative dreams of becoming a successful artist or creative, no matter the medium, were written off years ago. We get up. We go to work. We come home exhausted. This cycle repeats, despite the unused paints and canvases in the corner, the camera collecting dust on the dresser, or that unfinished novel on the computer.

Have a conversation with artist C Fodoreanu and one might walk away either feeling inspired or resigned to their creative hiatus.

Just home after working at his day job as a pediatric physician, he speaks about all of his creative endeavors as if he has no choice but to pursue them as well. Outside of the hospital, he is a skilled photographer, but he also works in sculptural and video art. To hear him tell it, the demands of his career have never suppressed his creativity. If anything, they are symbiotic, one fueling the other and vice versa.

“I often look at them as the same dreams, but from different angles,” says Fodoreanu, whose full name is Andrei Cornel Fodoreanu. “It’s part of the same journey of reaching for the truth, whatever that might be, but different ways of getting to it. Art is medicine and medicine is art.”

“I don’t turn myself off from being an artist when I’m at work,” he adds later. “I’m the same, but maybe when I come home, some of the insights I have from work will translate into something artistic, something visual. I’ll take the time to express it instead of keeping it inside.”

San Diego artist C Fodoreanu’s photography is exhibited in a recent show at California State University Los Angeles.

(Courtesy of C Fodoreanu)

Listening to Fodoreanu recount his life is equal parts beguiling and inspiring in that he’s managed to pursue both his passions (medicine and art) with uniform enthusiasm. What’s more, he’s done so while assimilating into American life after immigrating to the U.S. from, of all places, Transylvania, Romania.

“It really was a magical place,” says Fodoreanu, who grew up “very close” to Bran Castle, the medieval fortress that is most commonly associated with the fictional Count Dracula.

Vampire associations aside, Fodoreanu says growing up in the region laid an artistic foundation that persisted throughout his life. His photographic work is moody and wistful, dark but expressively romantic. When he was still a young boy, he learned the practice of glass iconographic painting and developed a love of poetry and music. He was also fascinated with his dad’s analog film camera, and eventually began using it to take pictures of nature and the people that fascinated him.

“It was winter and I think I was trying to take pictures of the mountains or something, and I don’t think I knew exactly how to roll the film in the camera,” Fodoreanu recalls, adding that his naïveté on how to operate the camera resulted in double exposed images that looked moody, but still evocative. “For me, that was powerful and I fell in love with it.”

One of the places he often found inspiring was the nearby Lake Sacalaia. Also known as Pike’s Lake, Fodoreanu describes it as a “magical” but “religious” place that he loved visiting as a child despite its associations with strange apparitions, mythical creatures and what he describes as “eerie silences.” Look up the lake online and it’s often referred to as the “Loch Ness of Transylvania.”

“We spent lots of summer at that lake,” says Fodoreanu. “We didn’t have cell phones at that point, of course. We didn’t even have TVs. So for us, we would fish and spend time at the lake.”

San Diego artist C Fodoreanu’s sculpture “cor fabrica.”

(Courtesy of C Fodoreanu)

This age of innocence, however, was shattered when the Romanian revolution began in 1989. Also known as the Christmas Revolution, it saw the people overthrowing the Communist government, but not before hundreds were killed and thousands injured by government fighters and secret police. For Fodoreanu, who was a teenager at the time, it marked the first time he became fascinated with the fragility of existence and the very human desire to repair and preserve it.

“For the first time ever, I was seeing dead bodies. The insides of human bodies,” Fodoreanu recalls. “There was a sense of ‘why them?’ and ‘why not me?’ It drew me to the human body in a fascinating way. It became more of a preoccupation with the inner workings of the human body, not just the magical aspects. I wanted to fix things, to put it back together and that made me want to be a doctor.”

Just after he completed high school in Romania, his family moved to Los Angeles. Fodoreanu eventually attended the University of California San Diego and then went on to Harvard Medical School, graduating in 2011. Still, that ineffable fascination with what lay beyond the body, whether it was rooted in spiritualism or magic, continued to press upon him.

Years after moving back to San Diego and beginning his medical career, he visited Transylvania just before the COVID-19 pandemic. Once he was back in San Diego, and during the lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic, he began to sort through a “dusty old box” of photographic negatives from his youth. He says looking at them again transported him “back through time.”

“It not only connected me back to the legends of the lake, how important it was for me to have a space like that growing up, but also how I was thinking at that point. What kind of dreams and ideas I had,” Fodoreanu recalls. “Is that boy proud of who I am right now?”

San Diego artist C Fodoreanu’s book of photography and poetry “Ode to the Lake Sacalaia.”

(Courtesy of C Fodoreanu)

He distilled these existential deliberations into “Ode to the Lake Sacalaia,” a book that includes analogue and digital photography, as well as video stills, essays and poetry. Divided into four sections, Fodoreanu seamlessly explores memory and present tense, his grainy analogue images lovingly contrasted with his current works of bodies in motion. The contents of the book were further curated and presented this year at a gallery show at the Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery on the Cal State University, Los Angeles campus.

In one of the poetic passages from the book, entitled “Queerly,” Fodoreanu explores memory and what he calls a “new humanism.”

“We are the same,

me and you,

you and me,

same height,

same eyes,

same heart beat

both on the same side,

almost alike, sky. Same love,

and pain, mostly unfulfilled,

mostly pain, drenched.

The lake then does its trick:

grains and shines, splits and seeds,

whirls and beats; bits and shadows,

tears and scars, mine. You,

adding to my equation.”

He extends this humanistic outlook to his other creative endeavors as well.

He curated a studio show in 2019 called “street smart,” with proceeds benefiting an educational fund for young artists. This led more recently to “water hands,” a body of work where he collaborated with a group of at-risk youth to photograph their hands while they thought of their past and what their hopes were for the future. The results were recently displayed at the Medical Education and Telemedicine Building (MET) at the UCSD School of Medicine.

In addition to the show, Fodoreanu was also asked to give a presentation about the work at the inaugural Sidney L. Saltzstein, MD Endowed Lecture on Compassionate Care. He has even added sculpture to his repertoire, creating a massive stainless steel piece (“cor fabrica”) depicting the human body.

“I’m even working on a play,” says Fodoreanu, laughing. “Wagner said that theater is the ultimate art form and I kind of agree with that.”

For Fodoreanu, there isn’t at all a sense of staying in a particular lane. He sees both of his lives, the medical and the artistic, as a means of giving back and embracing the universality of humanity. And while they might seem to most people like very different dreams, he can’t help but think they’re one and the same.

“That’s kind of the goal as an artist,” he remarks. “To take that empathy and message of my medical practice and spread it around through my art.”

Name: C Fodoreanu

Born: Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Fun Fact: In addition to both his art and medical practice, Fodoreanu also recently found the time to go back to school and is completing his MFA thesis at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Combs is a freelance writer.

From the Cochiti Pueblo to traveling the world, one artist has followed his dream but has never forgotten his roots.Virgil Ortiz found a niche for art by the time he was 6 years old. To have an exhibit to portray his Native American history is something he never thought would happen.”It’s such a contemporary art space and gives an artist a voice, a pillar, to educate everybody on what we want to talk about,” Ortiz said.Ortiz welcomed the opportunity to have his work featured at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. From flashing lights to giant sculptures, Ortiz is highlighting the importance of preserving Native American history. “Our history, which is really not taught in our schools, it’s not our history books. It’s been basically been swept under the carpets,” Ortiz said.Through his exhibit, he shows a group from the future on a mission to preserve his people’s history.”Their purpose is to come from the year 2180 to the present time and historic times and what they’re doing is collecting our songs, our traditions, our ceremonies, our artwork, our designs, storing them and protecting them,” Ortiz said.The focus of the exhibit is not only to preserve the traditions of the Pueblo people, but to display the impact of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt — what he calls the first American revolution.Coming from a family he would say is familiar with creativity and art, he learned early to find his passion for it. As a kid from rural Cochiti Pueblo, Ortiz said his Native American background paved the way for him to become the artist he is today.

MADISON (WKOW) – On Friday, Madison residents got their first chance to celebrate artwork from Indigenous artists from around the Midwest.

The Indigenous Artist of the Upper Midwest Exhibition opened at the Marzen Gallery on Atwood Avenue.

The exhibit features artists from a number of communities including the Ho-Chunk, Menominee and Ojibwe. The exhibition includes contemporary artworks by Rabbett Strickland, Tom Jones, John Hitchcock, Leah Yellowbird, Melanie Sainz, Chris Sweet, and others.

One artist for the exhibit says it means a lot to have his work represented in Madison.

“I was born and raised in Wisconsin, and I’ve spent a lot of time in this area and it’s just really great to be, you know, be a part of this,” said Christopher Sweet, Ho-Chunk artist.

You can check out the exhibition until December 15.

For Toma Villa, a member of the Yakama tribe, his newest work goes far beyond a pretty picture.