Visions of excess

Native artist Jane Ash Poitras
conjures shamanistic experience

Peyote Vision at the Woltjen/

Udell Gallery, 1558 West 6th.
Continues until Sept. 12,
Tues.-Sat.: 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

HE SHAMAN of

native Indian lore is a

curious and alluring
figure.

Feared and revered by his
fellow tribesmen and women, he,
or sometimes, she, has a reputa-
tion for being a visionary with
strong discernible ties to the
powers that lie beyond human
reach.

Known for the ability to under-
stand, interpret, and even control
some of the powers of this ‘‘spirit
world,” the shaman is viewed as
both a profound trickster and a
medicine-man/woman whase own
acquired powers are transmitted in
and through dreams, trances, and
ecstatic states.

jane Ash Poitras is a native Ca-
nadian Cree from Edmonton who
participated in a shamanistic ritual
involving such ecstatic states at
Salt Lake Indian Reserve in
Arizona.

Under the influence of
“peyote,” a hallucinatory drug
derived from cactus, specifically
for use in this particular native

Archie Graham
SPOTLIGHT FEATURE

service, she claims to have experi-
enced ‘‘visions’”’ that empowered
her with greater knowledge than
before.

The mixed media art works on
paper at the Woltjen/Udel} gallery
are records, or as the artist cails
them, “acknowledgements” of
this experience.

They are abstract, paint-
ing/collages which include
childlike drawings of bird-
creatures, old newspaper col.
umns, shaman figures, black and
white photographs of native peo-
ple, totemic masks, handwritten
text, and prehistoric cave-like im-
ages of buffalo, bear, and deer.

The surfaces are brightly col-
ored, heavily worked, vigorously
scored, and repeatedly layered.
The treatment is not only

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energetic, bul often feverish.

One image fades into another as
in a hallucinatory dream. We
seem to be looking at a
sophisticated but mesmerizing
kind of graffiti, the desperate
signatory marks of generations of
native people.

Poitras’ works appear to be at-
tempts to construct contemporari-
ly relevant shamanistic mandalas,
hallucinatory icons filled with pas-
sion, protest, and an earnest sense
of the mystical wholeness of
nature. ;

Poitras is one of a growing
number of native artists who are
managing to overcome ail the cul-
tural barriers the white world
throws at them. But like so many
of her counterparts in that world
she struggles with another for-
midable difficulty that crosses all
culiural boundaries: How to find a
ianguage that has not been co-
opted by the world-and-image
mongers of the mass-media?

The hand-written texts, for ex-
ample, which loom so large in the
works currently on view at Wolt-
jen/Udell, are vaguely reminiscent
of born-again Christianity or some
naturalistic cult of the psychedelic
‘60s. These otherwise fine pieces
deserve to be shed of such
associations.

Wednesday, September 4, 1991 ~ North Shore News - 35

‘92 Season

“The Razzle Dazzle Comedy Club”
extravagant!
November &-23
“Dracala”
chilling!
December 3-14

“Fhe Milliemairess”’
(Coconut Theatre Co-production)
provocative!

February 7-22
“Children of Darkness”
raffish!

March 20—April 4
“Amadeus”
compelling!

April 15-25
“The Death & Life of Sneaky Fitch”

(First Impressions Co-production)
entertaining!

May 22-June 6
“Charley's Aunt”

hilarious

Season Tickets
Wednesday or Thursday $49.00
Friday or Saturday $56.00

For more ticket information and reservations call

983-2633

Hendry Hall is located at
815 - 11th Street East, North Vancouver