Judy Chartrand
Judy Chartrand (born 1959) is a Cree artist from Manitoba, Canada. She is an artist who grew up in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia. Her works frequently confronts issues of postcolonialism, Indigenous feminism, socio-economic inequity and Indigenous knowledge expressed through the mediums of ceramics, found objects, archival photography and traditional Indigenous techniques of beadwork, moose hair tufting and quillwork. Life and work Chartrand is a self-taught ceramicist, she was initially inspired by the Pueblo San Ildefonso potter, Maria Martinez whose instructional videos she initially learned from. She was in her formative years influenced by trips to visit the Vancouver Museum located at the Carnegie Community Centre in downtown Vancouver where she developed an awareness of design and painting of ceramics. And early motif utilized in her work was referencing Mimbres bowl forms and surface decoration, which is a design language she has referenced back to frequently in her work from renditions of historical Mimbres pots, to public art installation like the one done for the Olivia Skye Public Housing Building which featured illustrations of women in the style of Mimbres surface decoration. Her series "If This is What You Call, ‘Being Civilized’, I'd rather go back to