Susqu/Miscou
Low and humid land
Artists
Nicole Haché
Ned Edward Bear
Miscou
Point of transition, for the boats going towards Saint Laurent, the right path to get to the mythical Indies. The place where the Indians and the corn are coming from.
The Basques, the Normans, the Bretons came here before the supposedly ‘discoverers.'
Cartier’s Cap of Hope, which, by a heatwave of August, gives birth to the Bay of Chaleurs.
Champlain writes in his log book: ‘Miscou is by the angle of elevation at 47 degrees and 25 minutes... An island bordered with rose bushes and wild raspberries.’ He also talks about their evil deity, the Gougou, named Koukhu, tall as the masts of a vessel, keeping in her ventral pocket some candies, humans that she was crunching by crying out. Swallowing once in a while a small boat with all the sails.
Sacred place, land of powwow, low-lying areas and swamplands of the Mi’kmaqs.
Island who has the shape of a heart, rocked by the spiral of the wave, guardian of a continent.
Occupied from 1620, before Grand-Pré.
The Recollects at the beginning, the Jesuits after 1635.
There was eight feet of snow in 1627: the residents get the ‘land sickness,’ the scurvy.
Fur trade and the trade of the elk’s skin.
Furnace for the oil of the walrus and of the whales.
Graveyard, the resting place for the Phoenicians ships, the Viking ship and the Lady Dorian who groans in his green piece of cloth.
Land of religions with its different churches; lands of mysteries, of heaths, of peat bogs, of bad bays, of pirates and of the island of treasure; close by, a source of fresh water in open ocean.
Harmony of cultures braided in counterpane: Mi’kmaqs, Acadians, Quebeckers, natives of Jersey Island, English, Scottish, Irish; mosaic of the human race.
Strength and originality of the islanders; from the ferry-boat to the bridge.
The herrings stream on the bride in light crystals, the blue lobsters are showing off, the bars are dancing on the shore, the cod wriggles at the bench of the Orphans.
Autumn, lands of heathers set with rubies and the summer of bunch of cloudberries.
Miscou is the epic of the Russian plane that came by the North Pole.
Miscou, the end of the earth, where the cormorants turn around.
A place where the lighthouse illuminates the bay like a cosmic pulsar.
Practically all the way to the Rocher Percé.
Nicole Haché
Caraquet, N.B.
Nicole Haché is an Acadian visual artist originally from Lamèque Island and now based in Caraquet, New Brunswick, Canada. She expresses herself through painting, installation, photography and sometimes performance. Self-taught, she has succeeded in asserting herself in the art world through exhibitions, presentations and artist residencies. She has received funding from the New Brunswick Arts Board.
She sits on the board of directors of the Constellation bleue artist-run center in Caraquet and is a member of CARFAC Maritime and the Galerie Sans nom in Moncton. She has also served on the Board of Directors of the Association acadienne des artistes professionnels du Nouveau-Brunswick (AAAPNB) (2015-2019).
Nicole Haché's work has been the subject of several solo and group exhibition projects. In 2009, she distinguished herself by participating in the Salon d'Automne in Paris. In addition to Canada and France, she has exhibited in the United States, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Egypt. She participates in several artist residencies in France, Burkina Faso, the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Vaste et Vagues Artist Centre in Carleton. During the winter of 2019, she will participate in a Cultural Creation Residency, organized and toured in New Brunswick by AAAPNB, ArtsLink and Mawi'art. Since 2013, she has been a cultural facilitator in schools across the province, a project developed by the NB Art Bank. She also freelances for various film companies.
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The work she created for the exhibition Irreducible Roots is inspired by the inspired by the Mi'kmaq origin of the name "Miscou".
Ned Edward Bear
First Nation
Wolistoqiyik, N.B.
Edward Ned A. Bear (Mosom Maskwa) is a Plains Cree/Wolastoqiyik who has worked in the visual arts for twenty-five years. He received his art training at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, being the first Aboriginal graduate from that institution. He then studied at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College (now called "The First Nations University of Canada") in the Aboriginal Arts Department and then continued his studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, NS. He holds a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of New Brunswick and completed two years of graduate studies in Critical Studies at the same institution.
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Having served as Director of Education for the Ekpahaq First Nation, he also taught Native Art at Fredericton High School. He chaired the development of the New Brunswick Museum Koluskap "Wolastoqiyik" website project.
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Throughout his career, Bear has maintained his art practice. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions at numerous regional, national and international festivals. Whether through his hand-carved masks or marble and limestone silhouettes, his art focuses on a contemporary interpretation of Aboriginal spiritual tradition.
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In 2006, he was awarded a fellowship from the Smithsonian Institute in New York. Bear was also selected in 2007 as a recipient of the Gibraltar International Artist Residency in Toronto Island, Ontario. He was part of a collaborative public sculpture project at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, B.C. In 2012, he presented a four-month solo exhibition at the Nova Scotia Art Gallery in Halifax called Mosom Maskwa: Pawakan.