BIG Small Talk with Collective Co-Conspirator: David Garneau

BIG small Talk is a chance to introduce people that Harbour Collective works with behind the scenes. Sasha Kucas speaks with David Garneau for a fun conversation of BIG small Talk.

This former Coca-Cola addict, Scrabble-playing University of Regina professor who identifies himself as a painter is now a ribbon shirt-wearing Fellow of the Royal Academy of Canada and a 2023 recipient of the Governor General (GG) Award for outstanding achievement in Art! David Garneau, we applaud you. Bravo, kind humble gent! Bravo!

We chatted online one morning about his interests and successes. I even threw in some crazy questions to mix things up.

Tell me about your connection to Harbour Collective.

Liz. It’s all Liz. There have been various attempts to get something like this going, but Liz is the mover and shaker who made the Metis Art Collective a reality. It takes a social engineering genius like Liz to coordinate it, write the grants, and get the substance together.

Congratulations on winning the Governor General.

It has been an embarrassment of riches this year. I just returned from an induction into the Royal Society of Canada. It was important to show up not just as myself but as visibly Metis. Allison Elsner create two ribbon shirts for me. I’m a somewhat reserved person who has worn only black for the past quarter century or so. To wear such finery was challenging but I had to fly the flag! For the Governor General’s award (Outstanding Achievement in Visual Art), I asked Jason Baerg to create a suit. The results are remarkable. The jacket echoes Metis jackets from 150 years ago. The ribbon work on the back references the North Saskatchewan River, my Great, great Grandfather’s fiddle, and his music intertwining with my voice. It was well-appreciated in Ottawa!!

What are you working on right now?

As part of the Governor General’s award, I have 15 paintings installed in the National Gallery. They are also supporting my art workshops with Indigenous youth and Kokum Jo-Ann Saddleback in Edmonton early next year. The still life paintings will be in an exhibition in Montreal in fall, 2024. A large tour of that work will begin in spring 2025. A book will accompany that exhibition. I am writing. I have an article on Indigenous materialism coming out Borders Crossings soon. I am also working on a book chapter on Indigenous Public Art. Mostly, I’m painting. I post a new painting every Monday morning on Facebook.

I thoroughly enjoyed your films in DOCKED- they were moving paintings.

That is the result of a collaboration with the terrific Peter Brass. I came up with the ideas but Peter realized my vision, and added some of his own. I would love to work with him again.

How do you approach your art practice?

I have a systematic approach to my still-life paintings. During the non-painting times, I have a little sketchbook for my ideas. Every three or four months, I start a new cycle of paintings. I take a few days to sit down with possible objects, play with them, with the lighting, I take photographs, choose ones to paint, and then paint them. Some things will burble around for years before I can do them. The resolved conceptual ideas are just waiting for the opportunity to become a reality. I have heard of people having creative blocks, but that has never been an issue—there is always something to do. If I get bored or stuck with painting, I work on writing for awhile, or think up performance possibilities.

When working collaboratively, my approach is more intuitive. With the Tawatinâ Bridge public art Project, for example, I slowed things down: consulted with Elders, community members, knowledge keepers, Metis, and First Nations folks, checked into museum collections, etc., long before I started painting the 543 paintings with my team. I have kept up many of those Edmonton relations for other projects.

Humour is a big part of my work and life. I enjoy the absurdity of life. My art works are stuffed with meaning and humour. There are jokes in there—especially the still life paintings—that may never be decoded.

From what you have created, what is your most meaningful piece?

The one I am working on is always the most meaningful. While I like private contemplation and making time, I have grown to appreciate collaborations. I have worked on large curatorial projects for the Mackenzie Art Gallery, the Museum of the American Indian in New York, two projects in Sydney, Australia, and the Montreal Indigenous Biennale. Each was a partnership with an Indigenous woman. Most times, they invited me to work with them. They saw something in me that they needed and I certainly could not do these projects without them. The opportunity to work with curators and artists to make something that no individual could make on their own is an exceptional thing. That sentiment extends to public art projects, especially the Tawatinâ Bridge in Edmonton, where I worked with a dozen or more artists. I was also the art director for the Indigenous Peoples Experience project, an educational space and museum with floor projections that run the length of a large building in Edmonton’s Fort Edmonton Park. The results are extraordinary because of all the people working on it.

If you could re-live a moment, what would you choose to re-live?

The first thing that flashed in my mind was Lac La Nonne, a small lake where we had a cabin as a kid. It’s just northeast of Edmonton and very close to Lac Ste. Anne. I remember fishing and all the stuff you do at the lake, but I also recall our neighbour, a couple of cabins down, was a painter from Victoria. The idea of leaving Victoria every summer to paint at this prairie lake left an impression on me. That this modest place could be a perpetual source of inspiration. Painting as a thing you do for eight hours a day was appealing to me even then.

What animal do you identify with?

It goes back and forth, wolves and crows. Crows and ravens are interesting because they are everywhere. Their intelligence, curiosity and success at adapting astonish me. Wolves often come to me in dreams. When I’m painting, I feel like a hibernating bear. Don’t bother me if I’m painting or cooking!

Do you believe in aliens?

Well, this ‘visitor’ once told me that if I believed in him, he would believe in me.

What is your favourite book?

I read bell hooks “Art on My Mind” every few years, especially her brilliant essay on Jean Michel Basquiat. I often listen to Jack Reacher audio books from the library when I paint.

What is the worst-smelling place you have ever been to?

My teenaged bedroom. In addition to the usual funk produced by an unruly body at that age, I unleashed a stink bomb whose odour imbedded itself into everything. It consisted of a fat rubber band wrapped around a light bulb. Turn on the light, the rubber heats up. The smell goes directly to the cerebral cortex.

What is your favourite beverage?

I have been trying to get off Coca-Cola. When I was three, my parents had a party, and all sorts of beverages were left behind. I tried one, and it just disgusted me, so I tried to rinse it out with another. The first drink was sherry. I tried washing it down with a cup of coffee that had a cigarette butt in it. To this day, I do not drink wine or coffee, nor do I smoke cigarettes. When I try to, the disgusted sensation of all three comes to my senses. Since giving up Coca-Cola a month ago, I have been searching for a new drink. Chai tea and diet root beer are beverages I now drink unhappily, separately.

You MIGHT run into David Garneau in a Thai or seafood restaurant but are more likely to see him walking his dog in the mornings. He gets up without an alarm clock, earnest and enthusiastic to greet his students. So you might catch a glimpse of him at the university. Forget about seeing him on the weekends as he will be painting.

This talented introvert sings Johnny Cash, maybe while cooking, the activity he does to relax. Some company might show up for dinner unannounced to crash your fam jam! Maybe throw another drumstick in the mix—just in case.

David Garneau (Métis) is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. His practice includes painting, curation, and critical writing. He recently curated Kahwatsiretátie: The Contemporary Native Art Biennial (Montreal) with assistance from Faye Mullen and rudi aker; co-curated, with Kathleen Ash Milby, Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, National Museum of the American Indian, New York; With Secrecy and Despatch, with Tess Allas, for the Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney, Australia; and Moving Forward, Never Forgetting, with Michelle LaVallee, at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina. Garneau has given keynote talks in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and throughout Canada on issues such as: misappropriation; public art; museum display; and contemporary Indigenous art. His paintings appear in numerous exhibitions and public and private collections. His performance, Dear John, featuring the spirit of Louis Riel meeting with John A. Macdonald statues, was presented in Regina, Kingston, and Ottawa. David recently installed a large public art work, the Tawatina Bridge paintings, in the City of Edmonton.