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For one northern Minnesota artist, painting is an act of connecting and valuing both personal memory and traditional Ojibwe community narratives.
Tom Gamache said his recent work “Wild Rice Manoomin Moon” began with a painting meant to help people understand the significance of harvesting wild rice. Gamache grew up harvesting rice himself, first with his father, and later with his best friend.
"I was still trying to convey that this was done before colonization,” Gamache said.
The painting is part of his “13 Moon Series,” a collection which depicts the ways Anishinaabe people would have made a living before European and American settlement. Along with his “Doodem Series,” more than two dozen works are now on exhibit inside the Miikanan Gallery at the Watermark Art Center in Bemidji.
Gamache, who is a member of White Earth Nation, grew up in the town of Cass Lake—east of Bemidji. He graduated from Bemidji State University with a degree in technical illustration and commercial art. It was after he retired from a long career, he turned to his own work portraying Ojibwe lifeways.
Gamache described the “13 Moon Series” as a “big calendar.”
In one painting, a small group of people set a fishing net under a layer of lake ice. Another painting shows a child whose cheeks bulge from eating too many berries. In another, a man stands in reverence looking up at the northern lights. In each scene, time itself is abundant.
While his works reach back hundreds if not thousands of years in the past, Gamache struggles with his own short-term memory.
A decade and a half ago Gamache suffered a severe heartache followed by a stroke days later.
Gamache’s wife Lori has become a spokesperson for her husband. The couple has been married for 47 years. She described her husband’s experience in a statement she read at the opening of the exhibit in mid-June.
“Quite a few years ago, Tom painted the ‘Wild Rice Manoomin Moon’ painting. He worked full-time to support his family, and it left little time to pursue his art. He is a true survivor.”
She went to describe how drawing and painting helped him recover.
"He had to learn to read and write again," said Lori Gamache. “His ability to draw wasn’t affected, and he actually used that ability to communicate with us while his speech was garbled,” Lori Gamache said.
She said her husband wanted to honor the people he had known growing up, relating a story about an elderly Ojibwe man who Gamache remembered from his youth in the 1950s.
“When night came you could find him at the post office pounding on the large mailbox outside using it as a drum. He would sing songs in Ojibwe,” said Lori Gamache. “Tom thought about how the language and culture were being lost. It motivated him years later to paint his ‘Wild Rice Manoomin moon.’”
Gamache said remembering and painting are reciprocal acts; one informs the other. The more he paints, the better his memory.
“Repetition. I look at it and I have to talk about it,” said Gamache. “Then it kind of comes to me. Some days are better than others. I will remember it right off the bat, but then the next day, I’ll think ‘what was that word again?’”
Gamache said he doesn’t feel any resentment when it comes to struggling with his memory.
"Feeling sorry for yourself just makes you hold everything within, and all it does is hurt you more. I am grateful that I am still alive and enjoying things,” Gamache said.
Gamache says his work seeks to depict respect for community and sharing, practices that go back many generations.
"It was tough though,” said Gamache. “I am sure... I can imagine it being a tough life, but a really good life.”
The exhibit “Gekendamaang: What We Know” is open through early September.
English (US) ·