Violet Gatensby x DWF Print

11” x 17” two-sided poster 
Violet Gatensby 
In the design, you’ll see a figure with their hands holding the match which represents the action of lighting a match to smudge. A practice that many of us Indigenous people have done since time immemorial. 
Chanie Wenjack was a child who bravely left residential school and attempted to walk home over 600 kms to his family. Sadly, he didn’t make it and was found with only a jar of matches. This design is in honour of Chanie’s story and many more children in residential school who never made it home to their families. 
Violet Gatensby is an inland Tlingit artist from the Carcross/Tagish First Nation. Born into a large family, she spent much of her childhood on the land. She explored art as a youth and was supported by community mentors like Keith Wolfe Smarch and Claudia Mcphee, and later by Dempsey Bob, Ken McNeil, Stan Bevan and Arlene Ness. Violet went to fine art school in BC, and she holds an advanced diploma from the First Nations Fine Arts program at the Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art. A versatile and talented artist, Violet’s preferred medium is wood, but she also enjoys metalwork, designing, and painting. She has completed an astounding number of major commissions for a young artist, including a carved panel for the Yukon Supreme Court, public utility artworks for the City of Whitehorse, a dugout canoe apprenticeship with Wayne Price and she designed the 125 Yukon anniversary coins. Violet has been deeply influenced by the values of her parents and grandparents – stay connected to the land, have an open mind, be teachable – and she brings these influences into her art and the contemporary world. An articulate leader and community force, Violet is one of the North’s rising talents.