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In every corner of Minnesota, there are good stories waiting to be told of places that make our state great and people who in Walt Whitman’s words “contribute a verse” each day. That's the theme of our series “Wander & Wonder: Exploring Minnesota’s unexpected places.”
Afternoon sun filters through pine trees into a clearing just off Highway 61 near Grand Portage. A bird song fills the air and dogs bark in the distance. Lake Superior is a half-mile down the hill.
Dozens of curved pieces of light and dark wood lie on a makeshift table next to a small house. Artist Donovan Dahmen leans on the table, contemplating the partially assembled work.
“I try to incorporate teachings, teachings for the Ojibwe culture, to teach people about the spiritual aspects of who we are as Anishinaabe people,” he said during a recent visit to his home. “All of my pieces kind of have that element of teaching.”
Dahmen dabbled in art most of his life, designing and selling T-shirts and a few pen and ink drawings of wolves or eagles. Then one day as he studied a drawing of an eagle, he saw the feathers as wood. That set him on a path to cultivate the spirit of wood and transform it into art.
“I believe the wood tells me what it wants to be in the project,” he said.
The piece he’s currently working on will be 10 feet by 10 feet when complete. It features a woman holding stars in her outstretched hands along with the sun and moon, Ojibwe clan animals, a drum, a sweat lodge and wild rice.
“It’s called ‘Biidaaban,’ the spirit before sun comes up. Right before the sun comes up, there's a stillness — the light and the dark — and it has to do with balance," Dahmen explained.
He has six years of work invested in “Biidaaban.” The sinuous pieces intertwine, with light cedar and dark walnut giving the work a sense of movement.
“I’m really picky. I really want this to be fine art, not just kind of like a craft,” he said. “For me personally, maybe I didn’t have all the spiritual pieces together to complete it. It takes its own time. It's its own spirit.”
‘Speaks to us without any words’
Art has always been part of Dahmen’s life. As a kid he spent hours inside drawing while other children played outdoors. He was sometimes paid to clean the studio for his great uncle, the legendary Ojibwe artist George Morrison.
“He did a lot of different types of collages. And so that must have influenced me as a kid, even back then,” said Dahmen.
He tried art school but dropped out. He said he lost his way for a time in alcohol and drugs before reconnecting with Ojibwe teachings. “That culture filled kind of the hole that I think I had in me and was a healing aspect of understanding kind of who I was as an Anishinaabe person.”
Now 56, Dahmen feels like he’s just getting started. He’s now a drum keeper and a pipe keeper, helping others in their spiritual journey. His Ojibwe name is Maymishkwashwapeton. He is Binesi, or bird clan.
Dahmen usually works on his collage pieces outdoors. In rainy weather he might erect a waaginogaan, a domed structure made with thin cedar poles.
While he uses his English name as an artist, the Ojibwe culture is fundamental to his work. It surfaces in the wood he uses to make his art.
“The relationship with the wood is pretty special to me. It’s like when you get a board that’s freshly sanded and you run your hand across it, I feel this energy coming from it,” he said. “That’s a special connection with the wood, that spiritual kind of connection.”
At lumber yards, he said, he’s “like a kid walking into a candy store. I’m looking for specific wood that maybe has knots, that is sometimes wood that people don't want, you know, I’ll kind of gravitate towards some of that wood.”
Among his works, Dahmen has created a large collage of the spirit tree, an iconic cedar tree on the Lake Superior shore that is sacred to Ojibwe people. The collage made of more than 160 pieces of wood, hangs in the tribal-run casino and lodge at Grand Portage.
A 12-foot long wooden braid of sweetgrass he made is part of the art collection at Essentia Hospital in Duluth. He’s done a few smaller commissions.
Dahmen wrestles with the pressure to produce art quickly for commercial sale while trying to respect the process and listen to the spirits. He believes art is too important to rush.
“It speaks to us in so many different ways, in ways that we don’t even know,” he said. “It inspires us. It inspires us to be connected to nature. It inspires us to be connected to the culture. Inspires us to be connected to teachings. Art is a language, and it speaks to us without any words.”
English (US) ·