“I'm a multidisciplinary artist, and I like to use a lot of different mediums whenever I get the opportunity to,” Craig Commanda says. He is Anishinaabe from Kitigan Zibi and he’s currently living in Montreal. His career started with film and music and now he focuses on visual arts while educating on the side.

Within his visual arts, Commanda does quillwork, works with smoked moosehide, caribou tufting, beadwork and he’s been trying to get into drawing and painting, too. He recently completed a bronze sculpture residency. During his residency, he made a collection of sculptures that came from his experiences hide tanning and also objects that were repatriated from museums to his community.

Currently, Commanda is working on a fashion design project as part of a group of six artists. He's making a dress adorned with quilling, beadwork and tufting. When complete, it will be exhibited in the Museum of Civilization in Quebec City.

In terms of his motivation to go into the arts, Commanda feels it was something he stumbled into. At first, he wanted to be a musician, then he encountered film, which became a form of art therapy for him. He worked with Wapikoni Mobile, a non profit that goes into different Indigenous communities and makes short films with youth, showing them how to create films. He created a film to talk about his feelings while depressed. He went onto film school and part way through his film degree the pandemic started.

During this time Commanda met artist Nico Williams who was doing his master’s at Concordia and he learned how to bead weave. During the lockdown, Commanda practiced his beadwork and started hide tanning, joining a Montreal-based collective called Buckskin Babes.

As far as his education went, Commanda described it as “a journey of following my intuition and my dreams.” He started off at Algonquin College in Ottawa, in a program called General Arts and Science with a focus on media and communications. After that, he spent two years in Kingston at St Lawrence College, in a program called Music and Digital Media, where he learned about the mechanics of music alongside music history, recording technology, videography, and photography. He went home and made films for five years until he got his film production degree.

His advice for students contemplating leaving their small communities to go to school in a big city would be, “Spread your wings and fly. You’ve got to have some faith and take that leap, because when you do so, you're going to encounter a world where people are going to be curious about you, and they're going to want to know where you're from, your culture…. But that's not something to fear, because there's really good people out there, and you're going to discover the beauty of the world and people's cultures as well, and you're going to be able to exchange in that way and it's a really mind opening experience to have. I fully encourage it … you'll learn a lot of things, and you'll grow as a person as a result, especially with travel.”

“When you go out and you get your education, and you learn from other people too, you make a network that is a benefit to your community too… the more skills you bring back, the more skills you can pass on. Because that's the thing about knowledge, it's the gift that keeps on giving,” Commanda elaborates.

When it came to obstacles he had to overcome, many were mental including self-doubt about if he could learn or do new things. He learned the answer was “Let’s just have fun with it first” and not to expect perfection immediately. “It's more important to have progress over perfection, and it's more important to have fun doing the thing first than to be locked by perfectionism,” Commanda reflects.

Perfectionism is another barrier he’s faced and he’s found it’s better to pursue excellence instead as self-improvement. Knowing there are people who are better gives him encouragement that he can reflect on what his own voice is in the field and what he is trying to say. The other barrier he’s encountered is access, because some fields are harder to get into, like bronze. He was the first Indigenous artist to get a residency in bronze where he learned.    

During times of stress and doubt, Commanda looks to his support system and makes himself go outside. He spends time with friends and talks, allowing them to build him up. He also makes art, keeping his hands busy and helping him process his emotions. Music helps him process his emotions, too.

As far as inspiration goes, Commanda is inspired by old things like the repatriated items from his residency. He’s also inspired by learning traditional arts like beadwork, quilling and tufting because not as many people practice them but they are coming back. “I want to be part of that wave of people that learns these things and can eventually pass them on,” he shares, thinking of the workshops he gives. He also makes birch bark and black ash baskets. “I'm really passionate about preserving these techniques because not a lot of people do them….I like to be inspired by our culture that I come from as well,” he beams. He’s also inspired by Woodland art.

In closing, Commanda would like to say, “Spread your wings and fly, take that chance and follow your dreams. Follow your dreams as intensely as you can. Don't let anyone dissuade you from pursuing them, not your friends, not your family, not anyone in authority, that includes your parents, too…We only have one life….Use your time wisely, because it's a very precious thing, and not all of us get to grow old.. Never take your time for granted, because we could be gone tomorrow. Practice gratitude wherever you can, even if it's a little thing, that helps you to appreciate your own life and what you're able to do.  Be curious. Follow your curiosities, because you never know what kind of things you're going to uncover in yourself when you start doing the work. Don't be afraid to pursue things that are different from the thing you're doing now, because every potential person that you can ever be in life, you are already that. Don't be afraid to turn over those rocks and see what crawls out.”

As a multidisciplinary artist using different mediums, Craig Commanda is exploring with art every day. He started with music and film and branched into beads, hidetanning, fashion, sculpture and so much more. He’s learning so much and he’s paying it forward, sharing what he learns as part of a wave of resurgence.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.