Translations of Cormorants
One of the delightful things about drawing is the looking – in drawing you give attention to details that are often otherwise missed – like the space around a bird.
This video belongs to a poem I wrote for the artist Billy Gauthier who I listened to at a symposium last year at Toronto’s Power Plant. He was one of the speakers in a group of Indigenous artists and scientists from the Arctic and Amazon, come together to talk about climate change. It was an incredible conversation to listen to. Billy, in particular, inspired me deeply. And continues to. Here is Billy: http://www.michnunatsiavut.org/billy-gauthier.html.
For those of you interested in process – these cormorants have undergone some interesting translation to become what you see here. Photogrpaher and film maker Paul Esposti photographed them in flight in Mimico (in flight above Lake Ontario/Leading Sea/ Niigani-gichigami (in Ojibwe). I used Paul’s photos to draw stills with ink and pencil on vellum (about 90 drawings). He then photographed each image, and Paul turned them into an animation, did the sound design and edited.
If you'd like to hear the word for cormorant in Ojibwe (gaagaagiishib) you can listen here. (Ojibwe People's Dictionary).
