Fond du Lac Arts

Vern Northrup made a career as a wildland firefighter. The day he brought a camera to work would turn his occupation into a creative vocation as nature photographer. Image: Vern Northrup [credit: Vern Northrup]

The Oshkii Giizhik Singers began with Lyz Jaakola and a dream about a women’s hand drum group. ----- Image: The Oshkii Giizhik Singers began with Lyz Jaakola and a dream about a women’s hand drum group. [credit: Andrea Canter] Music: “Maija’s Sweetheart Song” , “Mikinak” , “Anishinaabekwe” from  the Oshkii Giizhik Singers' album It's a New Day for Love (2008)

The artist Ikwe (Kelsey Van Elt) visited an abandoned school on Fond du Lac to record ambient sounds and to use those to tell the story of former student of the school, her great grandma Harriet Smith. Image: Kelsey Van Elt  [credit: First Nations Fund website] Audio: AANIKOOBIJIGAN GIKINOO’ AMAADIIWIGAMIG. Great Grandmother’s School: That’s How Some Things Go… , featuring:    - Marjorie Ellison (...

Gary Charwood, Jr., wanted to turn his life around and find some way to contribute to community. He did that was a film camera and traditional practices. Image: Gary Charwood, Jr. [credit: Gary Charwood, Jr.]

Alexandera Houchin shares her relationship with the important bikes and her life and how they became part of her creative writing.  Image: Alexandera Houchin scaling bike trail Coconino Overlook. [credit: Alexandera Houchin]

Wendy Savage looked into her ancestors’ fur trade past to find designs for a new series of beadwork art. Image: Article about Wendy Savage's art, featuring an image of a beaded purse by Wendy Savage. [credit: Wendy Savage] 

Valerie Whitebird thought she’d be a bead artist. But it was the ribbon skirt that called to her imagination. ----- Image: Ribbon skirt by Valerie Whitebird.  [credit: Valerie Whitebird]

Rizal Agaton-Howes went to college freshman orientation hoping to find a drum group. There wasn’t one. So he and other students started their own. ----- Image: Rizal Agaton-Howes helped establish a drum group at the University of Minnesota – Morris. [credit: Rizal Agaton-Howes]

The Cloquet’s Pinehurt Park bandshell formed a backdrop for Giizh Sarah Agaton-Howes’s childhood summers. So she was thrilled when the city and the Fond du Lac Band decided to incorporate Native public art into the structure, and that they asked her to do it. ----- Image: Giizh Sarah Agaton-Howes.  [credit: Jaida Grey Eagle]

Aleyna Morales was going through a rough period in her life. She found her bliss in baking. Image: Aleyna Morales  [credit: Aleyna Morales]

Textile artist Maggie Thompson shares the story behind her latest work, "The Hospital Gown Project," and how art works as a kind of therapy to help us process emotions and experiences.

When Joyce LaPorte was five, her grandma showed her how to sew and to make her first No Face Doll. Joyce continues to make No Face Dolls, which are now in museum collections around the world, and to teach others to make them.

Thomas Peacock was the kid with his ear to the door when older relatives were in the next room, talking family and Fond du Lac history. So, it was no surprise he grew up to be an author and historian. In 2018, together with wife Elizabeth Albert-Peacock, he started Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing, to promote Native authors and illustrators. 

Allie Tibbetts had already written two children's books drawn from Ojibwe culture and language. But now she wanted to write a story to remind her daughter and other Ojibwe children where they came from. That became her 2025 book Anangokaaning Wenjibaad: The One Who Comes from the Stars .

In 2019, Chi Ma'iingan stepped away from his job as police chief to create Round Lake Traditions, contemporary apparel with traditional Ojibwe floral designs.

Karen Savage-Blue decided to challenge herself as an artist. For one year, she made a painting every day, even on way-too-busy days and days when everything seemed to go wrong.

Multidisciplinary artist Moira Villiard loves the image of the hand. In the fabric piece, "Resist and Reclaim," she embroidered hands on a denim jacket stitched together with handwork made by the women in her family, past and present, evoking the invisible labor of women across the centuries.

Biidaasige Thomas Howes is a cradleboard and lacrosse stick maker. He uses the craft of steam bending wood to create his work, a skill taught him years ago by a Red Cliff birch bark canoe maker.

Janis Fairbanks talks about her new memoir Sugar Bush Babies: Stories of My Ojibwe Grandmother and the grandmother that inspired her love of storytelling.

Jeff Savage shares his experience of quarrying pipestone and making pipes from the red stone that has been used by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.