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At her art studio in Baudette, Ojibwe artist Cindy Godin Hamilton said she never dreamed learning to sew doll clothes as a child would one day lead to her own exhibit.
“It wasn’t until the late ‘90s that I started working on my genealogy, and a family member had sent me a picture of my great-grandmother, and she was wearing her pointy toed moccasins,” she said. “Something just clicked with me. And I just was like, ‘I have to learn how to make those.’”
Godin Hamilton didn’t know it at the time, but that photograph of her great-grandmother from the early 1900s, Marie Morrisseau Godin, would become the impetus for her artistic and cultural awakening.
At the time Godin Hamilton was living in California with her husband who was stationed there with the Navy. She said she couldn’t find anyone to teach her how to make the moccasins so she taught herself. With the internet still in its infancy, it wasn’t easy.
“I did go to libraries, and I went through microfilm, old records, just trying to find anything that would show me what direction to go to to make them,” Godin Hamilton said. “I was kind of specific on how I wanted them to fit.”
And she learned the process. Then she began selling the moccasins and other traditional works of leather on eBay.
“I started just getting so much feedback from customers that were Native, that were like, ‘I am so glad you were doing this and that you were continuing this,’” Godin Hamilton said. “And then that’s really where it kind of clicked. And I realized that this was something that was almost a lost art, and that I needed to share that.”
She got so good people began calling her the “moccasin lady.” In 2006, Godin Hamilton and her husband moved back to Baudette after his military service ended to help care for family. Then about 10 years ago, she had another awakening of sorts. Her sister Theresa McDowell paid for one week of a two-week painting and drawing class.
“It was my birthday gift that year, so I went for one week,” Godin Hamilton said. “Then the teacher was like, ‘You have so much talent that I can’t let you go home after one week, so I’m giving you a scholarship, so you’re going to stay for all next week.’”
After that she enveloped herself in art.
“I was just hooked. I’d always loved faces, faces you know, really interested me,” Godin Hamilton said. “That’s when I'm like, ‘Oh, OK, well, maybe I could join this Lake of the Woods Art Guild,’ and so I did, and it just kind of took off from there.”
In 2017, she began learning how to bead. And then things really took off. Godin Hamilton already had a solid foundation in leatherwork, but when she began combining that with beading and embroidery, it took her art to another level.
Now she has a solo show at the Warroad RiverPlace Gallery in northwestern Minnesota. Since opening in October, the gallery has become an epicenter for Native American artistry. Its exhibit of Godin Hamilton’s work, titled “An Indigenous Artist’s Journey Through Leather, Beadwork, and Portraiture,” is only the gallery’s second featured solo exhibit.
Godin Hamilton’s pieces on display include hand-stitched mittens, mukluks and gauntlets featuring intricately beaded animals and flowers. There are also oil and pastel paintings of Native faces garbed in traditional regalia.
Godin Hamilton pointed out a portrait she painted of her great-grandmother and noted the legs she included in the depiction.
“See, there are even little ankle wraps,” Godin Hamilton said. “I tried to get them in there, and she wore them all the time.”
The work is based on the photo that inspired her. In the black-and-white acrylic portrait her great-grandmother wears her hair pulled back. Her head slightly poised to the side is adorned with dangling earrings. And the pursed smile on her face gives off a sense of strength.
“It started me on a journey through art. That is, it’s always evolving. I’m always learning something,” Godin Hamilton said. “And especially when it comes to my culture in that it really started me just learning everything I can and passing it on too.”
One visitor at the gallery that day was community member Barbara Shade. She said she’s drawn to the genuineness of Godin Hamilton’s art.
“There’s not many artists that have so many surface supports. That includes wool, clothing, paper, canvas, leather and she has it all. And she tells stories with each stitch that she has in her leatherwork, and all her beadwork, there's a story there,” Shade said. “I was just looking at her portraits, and she has that perfectly placed, thoughtful paint stroke in the eyes that just sucks you right in and brings you to that moment that she's captured on her medium.”
The gallery’s director, Samantha Thibert, said Godin Hamilton’s representation of Ojibwe culture is why she’s the perfect fit for RiverPlace.
“She has a great story about her journey as an artist and how that ties in with her culture,” she said. “So, I think it was an important story to tell, and one that maybe she hasn't told yet to the wider community.”
Holding back emotion David Hamilton, the artist’s husband, said he never questioned her abilities.
“I saw that she had a talent that was far beyond anything that I had seen and I was capable of, and of anything I'd seen personally from anybody I knew,” he said, holding back tears. “I’m in awe of what she’s capable of. It’s just amazing.”
Even though Godin Hamilton’s journey began later in life her advice for others is it’s never too late.
“You can always learn, always keep trying, always try to do something, try something different,” she said. “You might be great at it, you never know.”
Godwin Hamilton’s exhibit is showing until Sept. 27 at the RiverPlace Gallery in Warroad.
English (US) ·