Teweikan

A reminder to members of City Daily Photo that the theme day for November is Friend.

I start today with three versions of the same shot, first the normal take, and two edits to enhance the colours of this pair of topiaries.

Collective Work/ Teweikan is a topiary inspired by a First Nations word for the drum, a central part of many indigenous cultures in North America. The imagery on the drum includes the eagle and the medicine wheel.

Across from the above was this unfinished topiary of a swan. This was here last year as well, and while there was no one doing so during my visit, I remember a couple of visits from last year where this was the site of one of the groundskeepers using this topiary to explain the process of creating a topiary. Hence the unfinished status of it. I enhanced the colours for a second take on this photo.

The next topiary on the trail was one that was here last year. On The Trail Of The Algonquin People, designed by Anishinabe artist Dean Ottawa, depicts a family working together to build a birchbark canoe.

I wanted different settings of the same two shots, including black and white in one case, choosing two different vantage points.

Aataentsic

Yesterday my final shot was the normal version of this first shot, which I edited with enhanced colours of the Mother Earth: The Legend Of Aataenstic topiary. Of all of the topiaries at MosaiCanada, this one has been my favourite.

Here we have two more cases of a normal and enhanced take on the same shot.

The topiary even includes a waterfall.

One more case of a normal and enhanced look at the same shot today.

And here's a final view of the topiary.

I leave off today with this final view of where I've been, and there's still more to come.

Mother Earth

I have two shots to start off today, both with different settings of the same pic, one natural and the other black and white. It's a very similar stance to my current header, taken last year, and taken from the general location where the First Nations topiaries began.

Mother Earth: The Legend Of Aataentsic is the title of this topiary, the largest of all of them at MosaiCanada when you include all of the animals that are part of it. The idea of a mother earth tends to be common among world cultures, and so it is with First Nations peoples. Animals spring up to life around her- bison, horses, caribou, deer, moose, the eagle, even bears. 

Several bison, or buffalo depending on how you think of them, are grouped over at one side.

Horses are nearby. I edited two versions of this shot, the original and one with enhanced colour.

Moving a short distance away I photographed them again.

Then I turned my attention back to Mother Earth. I have more from this tomorrow.

Raven And Moon

The path at MosaiCanada continued into an area of First Nations culture influenced topiaries. This first set was new. Raven And Moon Masks is the title, and it recreates two works of art. On the right is The Raven And The Light, based on the 1992 work of Haida artist Lyle Wilson, a nod to legends in which the raven brought the light of the morning star to humans after stealing it from a spiteful chief who was hoarding it. On the left the topiary recreates The Moon Mask, a 1995 work by Tony Hunt Jr. of the Kwakiutl First Nation. That work relates to the ceremonial telling of the story of the full moon in opposition to the half moon.

Across the path we have another one you might remember from last year. Wisakedjak And The Creation Of The World is based on the Anishinabeg vision of how the world came to be. The creator, Kichi Manito, destroyed what had come before by flood after animals had fallen to fighting amongst themselves. His son Wisakedjak told the surviving animals that one of them would have to dive deep beneath the waters to retrieve a clump of earth so that plants could grow again. The muskrat succeeded in the effort, the earth was placed onto the turtle's back, and the world began again.

Born With The Sun is the title of this topiary. Artist Christine Sioui Wawanoloath was behind this work that concerns itself with the First Nations idea of zoanthropic beings- those combining animal and human traits. That kind of metamorphosis presents itself in the canoe, while birds fly past.

Today I leave off with two perspectives from the other side of Wisakedjak.