Rare Woodland encounter Thanks to avid collector, trove of Indigenous artist Kakegamic’s works now on display By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 2:00 AM CST Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024 Last Modified: 1:39 PM CST Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024 Updates

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Winnipeggers have the rare chance to immerse themselves in the work of the late Joshim (Josh) Kakegamic, a key artist in the historic Woodland School.

Joshim Kakegamic: The Litman Collection features 53 works for sale by the late Kakegamic, a close peer of the late Norval Morrisseau, who founded the Woodland School of Art. It’s an impressive selection from Jerry Litman’s collection of Woodland painters.

“My father was the town dentist in Kenora, so the profile was such that the office became a spot where people would stop off and say, ‘Here’s some artwork for you,’” says Shelley Litman, daughter of the Winnipeg-born Jerry, who died in 2020.

Much of this work was in the Woodland School, known for blending traditional First Nations legends and myths with modern mediums.

You’ll have seen the iconic style, with its X-ray view of animals, people and spiritual beings; northern Ontario and southwestern Manitoba are among its key sources. The majority of the Woodland artists are Anishinaabeg.

“Norval Morrisseau’s studio was two buildings over from my dad, so he would take me there as a little kid, because they were friends,” Shelley Litman goes on.

The family was living amid a vital art movement, whose leader, Morrisseau, was called the “Picasso of the North.”

Born in 1952, Kakegamic, from Sandy Lake First Nation and Morrisseau’s younger brother-in-law, began painting as a teenager in the late ’60s. He was a remarkably fast learner.

“By 1970 he had already honed his skills,” says Mayberry Fine Art gallery founder Bill Mayberry. “You see the confidence within the drawing patterns of the (early) work.”

Kakegamic took lessons from Morrisseau and fellow Indigenous Group of Seven member Carl Ray, who had been delivering workshops for local First Nations. A workshop at Fanshawe College in London, Ont., introduced him to screen printing, and then he was off to Toronto, spending time at the Open Studio during one of the city’s more exciting periods in its visual art scene.

With his works’ bold but meticulous use of colour and line, Kakegamic developed a style of his own. But for someone who drew inspiration from his Woodland peers and the landscape, it was natural he’d soon find himself closer to home.

In 1973, at only 21 years of age, Kakegamic and his brothers co-founded the screen-printing business Triple K Co-operative in Red Lake, Ont. The first Indigenous-owned and operated printing company in Canada, Triple K also contributed considerably to Woodland School’s legacy, producing limited editions of many of its artists’ work.

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto mounted Silkscreens of Famous Native Artists from Northern Ontario in 1977 to showcase work from Triple K Co-operative.

“They were pretty amazing print-makers,” says Thunder Bay’s Ahnisnabae Art Gallery owner and operator Louise Thomas, whose gallery carries some of Kakegamic’s work.
“It was quite an accomplishment for Indigenous artists, especially back then. Red Lake is a drivable town, but even for that community, it was amazing… Starting from scratch, before computers, and working together.”

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Kakegamic exhibited in Canada, England and Germany. In the process, he established himself as a powerful voice in a historic artistic movement — but, in the words of Mayberry, remains “a little bit ignored because of the dominance of the few other artists.”

Tragically, Kakegamic died in 1993 while attempting to rescue someone on a Northern Ontario lake, after he’d bravely responded to a call to retrieve some young snowmobilers stranded on the ice.

Kakegamic’s work was spread in many directions, one of them being the Litman family, who moved back to Winnipeg from Kenora in 1979.

“I just never realized how much (my father) was accumulating, and then he had to get it into the house past my mother,” says Litman. “It was unframed. It was hidden. It was in closets. It was in drawers. It was in garment bags.”

It was also originally at her father’s place of work. Litman describes him often stepping out and coming back with a bag, its art object inside concealed, and a wry look on his face.

This seems to be a special case of “dentist office art” being much, much more than that.

Deciding what to do with the work in her father’s estate has been, she says, a bittersweet process. From the 350-odd works in his Woodland collection, about 170 are now with the University of Manitoba, 100 with Mayberry, and the rest with the Muse art centre in Kenora.

Of the Kakegamics, there are four Litman said she couldn’t bear to part with.

The artworks in the Mayberry exhibition are priced in the $700 to $5,000 range and can be viewed online at wfp.to/kakegamic. The sale runs to Dec. 21.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca