CLIENT
Childrens Hospital
Foundation of Manitoba
YEAR
2023
Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba
Graphic Element Toolkit
I am deeply grateful for the invaluable opportunity to collaborate with the Children's Hospital Foundation of Manitoba in crafting graphic design elements. I hope that the families and children who view these elements throughout the halls of the Children's Hospital feel comforted to see themselves in these illustrations. Lots of folks from northern communities have to be flown in to receive health care, and they often have to stay close to the HSC to be near their loved ones receiving care.
This project, in particular, was significant to me. My brother has cerebral palsy, and, growing up, I was always in and out of the Children's Hospital at the HSC whenever he would have a seizure. By some miracle, a visiting brain surgeon from Toronto was able to diagnose my brother's underlying health concerns correctly and performed a delicate surgery on him to put a shunt on the left side of his head to improve his quality of life, and thankfully, it did. I'm very familiar with the hallways and tunnels at the HSC, and at the time I was asked to work on this project, my brother was in the hospital because he had to have an emergency shunt operation. The one that was placed in the left side of his brain some 20 years ago had stopped working. It was a very terrifying time, but it made this project all that more important to me.
Centred on Maskihkîy or Medicines in English, I utilized elements from beadwork as beadwork is a type of Maskihkîy for the soul. When you bead, you are supposed to bead with love and well wishes in your heart for whoever you are beading for.
The art of beading has been passed down through generations immemorable. Before Europeans brought over glass beads, Indigenous people on Kanatan carefully made beads out of stone. Many beadwork patterns were passed down through generations of families until today. Indigenous and Métis beadwork comes with a lot of history and culture. When we refer to older beadwork pieces from our ancestors, we refer to them as Grandmothers or Kookums because these works contain stories of the past and carry the energy of the person who beaded them to the present day. As an Ininew person, beadwork is maskihkîy; it is a sacred practice.
To represent First Nations People, I utilized the Cardinal Directions and a rounded buttercup. These are very old and traditional florals commonly used in Cree beadwork.
To represent Métis people, I picked the wild rose and placed the infinity symbol in the middle. I also used another traditional Métis beadwork pattern of a wild rose often featured in older pieces meant to mimic a butterfly.
I used a Fireweed blossom to represent the Inuit Nation and created a floralized version of Arctic Cotton. Fireweed is a wildflower that blossoms throughout the subarctic region and is used in teas.
Arctic Cotton is collected and used as wicks for the traditional seal oil lamp known as a ‘qulliq’ in Inuktitut.
In addition to the winding vines with mouse tracks (the dashed lines) and seeds (the dots), there are sage, tobacco, cedar and sweetgrass.