South Surrey resident Rose Tashoots鈥� bright and vibrant art work is getting some very prominent exposure this summer 鈥� on a highly mobile platform.
The former Terrace area resident 鈥� born a member of the Wolf Clan of the Tahltan Tlingit Nation of northwestern B.C. 鈥� was selected to create a digital design as a wrap-around decoration for one of TransLink鈥檚 fleet of buses.
The work was installed in time to honour National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21, as well as National Indigenous History month throughout June, and the bus will be in service around Metro Vancouver for some two months up until mid-August.
The assignment follows a commission last year that also included TransLink. Tashoots, a residential school survivor, partnered with the Orange Shirt Day Society and TransLink to create a T-shirt design for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day.
Her first digital work (she usually paints with acrylics on canvas and wood, as well as creating beaded roses and earrings), the moving T-shirt design, incorporating the words 鈥楨very Child Matters,' depicted a broken heart and parents reaching out to children 鈥� one of whom, a little girl, is depicted literally as a fragmenting image.
The current bus design is both a representational and symbolic depiction of B.C. wildlife and the environment, and for Tashoots it celebrates the ancestral connection with the land and its creatures that is at the core of Indigenous culture.
It鈥檚 also an interesting fusion of styles 鈥� bears and cougar, and an eagle swooping aloft with a salmon in its claws, carry their traditional First Nations crest designs, but are seen amid a naturalistic panorama of water, a tree-lined shore, and a majestic, snow-topped mountain range looming behind.
Tashoots, who admits to being an experimentalist who frequently likes to challenge herself with her art, said the need to provide a background for the lateral bus design prompted her to create something closer to nature to fit the more realistic outlines of her animal drawings.
鈥淚t was just to bring it out more 鈥� to make it more life-like, more real. In school (鈥� she holds a First Nations fine arts diploma from the Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art at Coast Mountain College in Terrace 鈥�) they taught us to draw crests without any background, but I chose to put it in for this piece.鈥�
In Tashoots鈥� strong, clean-lined, accessible drawing style, one might even detect a vague vestige of the cartoon characters she had a knack of sketching on notepaper for her schoolmates when she was in Grade 1.
鈥淏ack then I was drawing Tweety Bird and Sylvester and characters like that. The kids used to like them, and one or two of them of them even bought drawings from me for five cents,鈥� she chuckled.
But Tashoots has only latterly dedicated herself to the life of an artist, she acknowledges, inspired by the work of Northwest woodcarver and sculptor Dempsey Bob.
Her fascination with the work led her to enrol in the Diesing School in Terrace, which Bob supervises.
But there was an even deeper reason behind her decision to reconnect with the arts, she admitted.
The spectre of the residential school system cast a pall over her life 鈥� as it has done with so many Indigenous people, Tashoots noted.
While she was moved to a school near Watson Lake bordering the Yukon, she was only there for about a year 鈥� unlike her late husband, Albert who was forced to attend residential school from the time he was five to when he was in his late teens.
The system of institutional abuse hit her and her family hard, nonetheless.
One of her siblings died by suicide after he came out of residential school, she said, while a sister became a chronic alcoholic who later died in a car crash.
鈥淭hat took a toll on me,鈥� she said.
Tashoots is frank to acknowledge that she too battled alcoholism while on the Tahltan Reserve (she is now 23 years sober), and has been prey to depression.
But it was she and Albert鈥檚 proud boast that all five of their sons graduated high school (鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that ever happened before on the Reserve,鈥� she said).
鈥淎s residential school survivors, we turned things around and made sure our kids' lives were totally different from how we grew up.
鈥淭here is life after residential school. It鈥檚 up to the individual to pick yourself back up, get out there and live and make a better life.鈥�
The turning point that led her to rediscover her artistic self was when her husband died in 2018, she said.
鈥淎fter losing my hubby to cancer, I had to find something to keep me focused and to stop me from slipping back into depression. I chose art for the kids.鈥�
Her sons are all adults now and have children of their own, and although her grandchildren aren鈥檛 old enough yet, she hopes that one day she鈥檒l be able to pass on some of her artistic expertise to them.
It also makes her happy, Tashoots said, that she is following the artistic bent of her own grandmother and great-grandmother, who were both accomplished in making beadwork and clothing from moose hides.
While she has lately been developing her painting-on-canvas skills, she is also planning to make her own foray into making clothes and marketing them online.
A resident of the Morgan Crossing area for the past six years, she said she counts the decision to relocate down south one of the best she ever made.
鈥淣ow doing my art here, and being chosen to have my design on the bus makes me stronger to keep on doing what I鈥檓 doing,鈥� she said.
鈥淚 love doing art 鈥� it puts peace in my heart and soul.鈥�
