'My art is for my people': Haudenosaunee artist aims to paint the joy of her community on her own terms
Shayde Sandy's work is featured on a GO bus in Ontario to mark Indigenous History Month
Shayde Sandy's art is about her community, not "healing the world."
As a Haudenosaunee artist, she said she gets asked about reconciliation and the role her art plays in it, but she says it "isn't about that."
"My art is for my people," she told CBC Hamilton.
"I'm not trying to solve anything."
Sandy, 24, is a multidisciplinary artist from Six Nations of the Grand River. Her art is now travelling through the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area as a bus wrap, part of transit company Metrolinx's commemoration of National Indigenous History Month.
The piece, called Intergenerational Love, was a four-by-five-foot oil painting made in 2022.
Sandy wanted to change the negative contexts that can come with the word "intergenerational." Her grandfather, her cousin and brother were all immortalized in the painting during a "candid moment."
"[I wanted] to show that there's happy moments in our life, and it's not so serious all the time," she said.
Her bus wrap piece — which will be featured on the side of a GO bus for at least a year, according to Metrolinx — shows a joyful family surrounded by a Woodlands-style background, symbolizing community and connection.
A way to represent her Six Nations community
Encouraged by her grandmother from a young age, Sandy grew up surrounded by artists — her father, a soapstone carver, and her cousin, a muralist.
Sandy said she always had a "fascination with people" and would draw her family a lot.
It wasn't until attending Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., however, that she began to fully appreciate her Haudenosaunee culture. Inspired by Cree artist Kent Monkman, she started portraying her own community.
WATCH | Kent Monkman on changing the conversation about what's in museums:
Sandy does portrait commissions now, and though requests are open for anyone, she's found herself painting mostly other members of her community in Six Nations in southern Ontario.
"That's what I mainly wanted to do anyways, just because you don't see a lot of Indigenous people in portraits," she said.
It's important for Sandy to capture happiness and positivity in her pieces and to depict colourful, happy and healthy people.
"I would say portrait art is kind of a westernized idea, but I think it's so important that we're involved and get to enjoy these things as well," she said.
With a past riddled with traumatic histories of colonialism, Sandy likes being able to show that her people "are still here."
More than an 'Indigenous artist'
While Sandy loves what she's doing for her community now, she also hopes to not only be known as an Indigenous artist.
"You get put in this box, [people] just always expect you to talk about the past and talk about sad things and whatever," she said, adding that Indigenous people can sometimes feel "confined" to traditional art styles.
"A lot of our traditions hold us back at times, and people are kind of closed-minded sometimes … I always try to think more modern."
Her cousin, Hamilton-based artist Kyle Joedicke, agrees.
"It can sometimes feel really insurmountable to get away from the trap of rez life. I don't mean to say that in a disparaging manner, but the reservation system was set up very specifically to keep us away from post-secondary achievements and having enriched lives," said the Cayuga artist.
Joedicke, who has been pursuing art professionally since he was laid off at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, said everyone's experience in the art world is likely to be different.
"But the one thing that I have found that has really helped me in the forward momentum of my career is just persistence," he said.
'A better sense of ownership'
Joedicke's art focuses mostly on murals following Woodland-style art, first created by Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau.
His art has shifted in the last few years, he said, from being a place for him to learn and reconnect with his background, to giving back to the community.
He now hosts an annual fundraiser in September at Doors Pub in Hamilton where all proceeds go to the Indian Residential School Survivor Society. He also recently worked with the Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA) to design infographic panels along the Dundas Valley Conservation Area.
The project, called the Basadinaa Experience, allows visitors to read about "First Nations' knowledge and perspectives on the land," according to the HCA.
Joedicke said importantly Indigenous art out in public space, like murals — or Sandy's bus wrap — help other Indigenous people in the community feel connected to their culture and identities.
"It does start to take up a lot of space in the community, and it gives the urban Indigenous community a better sense of ownership over the spaces," he said.
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