Saskatoon Express: Exhibition explores art and legacy of Sarain Stump

(This article was originally published as part of a column that appeared in the Nov. 12, 2018, edition of the Saskatoon Express.)

By Shannon Boklaschuk

An exhibition now on view at the Kenderdine Art Gallery on the University of Saskatchewan campus is focused on the life and work of Sarain Stump, an Italian-raised artist, writer, musician, actor and educator with direct ties to Saskatchewan.

Titled Mixing Stars and Sand: The Art and Legacy of Sarain Stump, the exhibition is co-curated by Anthony Kiendel and Gerald McMaster and is organized and circulated by the MacKenzie Art Gallery. It features dozens of works, including drawings and paintings on animal hides, and is a smaller-scale version of the show that was featured at the Regina art gallery earlier this year.

While Stump was very influential in this province and internationally – particularly from 1970 to 1974 – his work was largely overlooked by the mainstream art world. In 1974, at the young age of 29, Stump died while swimming off the coast of Mexico. He is buried on the Sweetgrass First Nation in north-central Saskatchewan.

A Nov. 5 Galleries West magazine article about the exhibition, written by Steven Ross Smith, notes that Stump’s story is “complex with many unanswered questions.”

“He was raised in Italy, where his mother died soon after he was born in 1945. His father was a soldier abroad. Sarain wrote in a family letter: ‘I am a little more than a half Indian: Shoshone and Salish.’ He said his mother had Indigenous ancestry, and his father’s family originally came from Coeur d’Alene in Idaho. Some online sources maintain Stump was born in Wyoming, but in the letter, shared with McMaster when he did research in Italy, Stump says he was born in Venice,” Smith wrote.

“In any event, in 1966, when he was 21, Stump migrated from Italy to Canada, seeking community. He took ranching jobs in Alberta, studied Meso-American Indigenous cultures, began drawing, married an Indigenous woman, Linda Jaine, and, in 1972, taught at the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural College in Saskatoon.

“McMaster, as a young man, worked with Stump for a year teaching children around Saskatchewan to appreciate their Indigenous art heritage, and was inspired by Stump’s prophetic claim that ‘one of the major forces for our people’s rebirth’ would be art.”

The exhibition runs at the Kenderdine Art Gallery until Dec. 15.

On Nov. 24 and 25, a performance work co-created by Edward Poitras and Robin Poitras inspired by the art and life of Sarain Stump will be showcased at Convocation Hall at the U of S. Called TRACES, it is presented by the U of S Art Galleries and Dance Saskatchewan Inc. and is produced by New Dance Horizons and NDH/Rouge-gorge.

Performed by dance artists James Viveiros and Marcus Merasty, TRACES features the solo piano work There Is My People Sleeping, composed by Alfred Fisher and performed by Gordon Gerrard, and an original live modular synthesizer sound score composed and performed by Gary James Joynes, with excerpt ambient/recorded sounds by Charlie Fox.

TRACES follows two earlier works that were created in the spring, the first through invitation by the Regina Symphony Orchestra. Both were created in residency at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in conjunction with the exhibition Mixing Stars and Sand: The Art and Legacy of Sarain Stump.

The performances will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 24 and at 1 p.m. on Nov. 25. Admission is free.

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