Artist’s Statement:
“Gathering” is a reflection of the artist's personal journey through reconnection and education – a bringing together of knowledge, by word, page, and experience. Gathering brings us together just the same, whether picking berries to preserve for harsher times, water to quench parched throats, or medicine to heal new and old wounds alike. We gather for Orange Shirt Day, to support, educate, advocate, and heal. It is the artist’s hope that this design might serve as a reminder to those who wear and see it to gather together what is important to them, and to honour and protect it, that it might one day be gathered by another – to sustain and heal and continue.
Artist’s Bio:
Madelaine McMillan is a 2-Spirit artist and writer from Simpcw First Nation roots, gratefully working and creating in Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory where she was born and raised. They began their studies with Thompson Rivers University as a Psychology Major while writing in her spare time before deciding to pursue it more closely to become a graduate of the University of British Columbia Okanagan with a BA in Creative Writing and a Psychology minor. With a lifelong, self-made curriculum in artistic practice, Madelaine explores imagery and language to plot a course between dualities in their lived experience – urban and natural, digital and traditional, independence and community, healing and grief… The trails, sometimes ambling, sometimes geodesic, chart a web across which each line resonates with the whole of it when struck. It’s a journey full of poetic diversions and metaphoric rabbit holes, but one well worth wandering.
*Part of the profits from this shirt will be donated to the Orange Shirt Society .