Joanna Peterson – Culture reporter. January Term art students explored Native American culture and design while painting on a canvas tipi.
Adjunct Professor of 3D Design Totem Shriver said that McMinnville resident Kathleen Wallace called him two weeks before January Term and asked if his students would paint a tipi that she owned.
Shriver said he agreed to take the tipi as a two-week project for his Introduction to Studio Art class.
The class unfolded the 36-by-18-foot canvas tipi on the Linfield Gallery floor and designed the patterns and images that would appear on the finished product, Shriver said.
Shriver developed four guidelines for the project as Wallace didn’t give the class a specific design to follow. He wanted the results to please Wallace, respect nature, depict the Pacific Northwest and honor Native American Joseph Medicine Crow, class of ’38, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in August.
“I wanted to paint the tipi in a way that it wouldn’t have stood out 200 years ago as a contemporary style,” Shriver said.
The finished tipi features Native American designs, such as a medicine wheel, which represents the four elements; birds; and totems, freshman Ashley Tobiska said.
Junior Lily Helpenstell said the class ended the project with a celebratory ceremony with special guest Jan Michael Looking Wolf, a local Native American flutist, who won the 2009 Native American Music Awards’ “Artist of the Year” award.
Michael played a Native American flute piece and emphasized the importance of diversity and individuality, Helpenstell said.
Shriver said more than 100 guests were at the celebration, including Wallace.
“We had never seen Kathleen Wallace before the ceremony, but we all knew who she was because she started crying when she saw the finished tipi,” Tobiska said.
The tipi will be set up on campus later in the semester, Shriver said. The location is undecided.
“Collaborative art usually isn’t my favorite, but it was a fun process, and it brought us all together,” Helpenstell said. “We learned to defend our own thoughts and appreciate others’.”