Artist Statement

Aandakiiwan explores the quiet, profound way life shifts with the seasons. Working in monotype on ledger paper, this exhibition draws on sweetgrass, yarrow, sage, and other traditional medicines — plants that carry both physical presence and spiritual weight in Ojibwe culture — pressed and printed directly into each piece.

The show unfolds across three installations. Four scrolls, one for each season, hold the monotype prints, each carrying the imprint of the plants gathered and used in that time of year. A second piece gathers sunrise photographs taken across several seasons, printed onto ledger paper, tracing how light itself changes as the year turns. The third installation reimagines the ribbon skirt as a kind of weather blanket — each row or ribbon marking a day, a week, a month, building a record of time the way the blankets are made: one entry at a time, until a whole year takes shape.

Together, the works ask viewers to slow down and notice what usually passes unmarked — the turning of a season, the color of a sunrise, the accumulation of ordinary days into a life.

– Anna Johnson