Stewart Steinhauer might have stumbled across the secret of how to get kids interested in reading — giant rocks.
Steinhauer, an aboriginal sculptor from B.C., dropped five person-sized granite statues onto the back patio of St. Albert Place Monday morning as part of a new exhibit for the International Children's Festival.
"These are chapters in the book of the Cree world-view," he says; each embodies a principle or story from aboriginal culture he hopes to share with others.
"Children have an intuitive love of stone," he says, which is one reason why he writes with rock instead of pen and ink. They love to touch, feel and climb on it, so he carved these works with that in mind.
As if to prove his point, a group of kids swarms out of St. Albert Place. "Oh! Statues!" says one. "I wanna look at it!" The statues are overrun with touchy-feely students seconds later.
"See?" Steinhauer says, amused. "It's an instantaneous thing!"
Rock artist
Staff asked Steinhauer to bring his works to St. Albert to add a visual arts aspect to the festival, says festival director Nancy Abrahamson. "They're beautiful pieces that represent aboriginal history."
Steinhauer, who is originally from Saddle Lake, grew up in the tail end of the residential school period. Living in High Prairie, Hobbema and Edmonton, he says he saw many perspectives on white and native culture over the course of his life.
He says he started carving stone in 1973 after the birth of his first child. "It blew my mind," he says, and carving became a sort of art therapy for him.
He switched from soapstone to granite in 1992 when some elders asked him to carve a statue for the reserve's new high school. Granite's not easy to work with, he says, "but for some reason it opened itself up to me."
Working without plans or models, he started carving man-sized sculptures out of boulders that are now on display throughout Alberta. "It's very childlike in a way," he says of his work. "It's just me, the tools and the stone."
Stone stories
Stone is an important substance to the Cree, Steinhauer says. "The stone is considered an animate being," he explains and represents communication — that's why it's used in pipes for pipe ceremonies.
The five works at St. Albert Place all refer to important figures in aboriginal mythology. Red Thunder's Gift, for example, features a huge thunderbird that holds a bowl in one cupped wing. The bowl collects rainwater, Steinhauer notes, reminding us of the gift of life nature gives us.
Buffalo Mountain is the newest of the five pieces and was carved specifically for this exhibit. Picture a granite letter "B" with the top half shaped like a buffalo and a hole in the bottom half set atop a white chunk.
This piece tells the story of the disappearance of the great buffalo herds, Steinhauer says. Rock Grandfather saw that the herds were endangered, so he created a hole in the mountains to lead the last free buffalo to safety. "When the time in the future comes when it's safe to come back, [they'll] come back."
Carvings on the statue show buffalo looping into and out of the hole, symbolizing the disappearance of the last herd and its eventual return. Buffalo on the white base represent the ghost of herds past. Engravings of a teepee and an arrowhead on the top half of the "B" represent key technologies in aboriginal life.
Steinhauer hoped his works would help kids have fun and better understand the aboriginal way of life. "I hope people of aboriginal ancestry can take pride in a knowledge of a richer, fuller past than the one that has been told to them."
The statues will be on display until Sept. 30. Questions should go to Heidi Alther at 780-459-1596.
