“Being an artist is who I am,” says Roberta Memogana. She  is originally from Holman Island in the Northwest Territories where she lived all her life. She learned to make her art from her father and one of her older sisters who make similar art. Because of all the intense weather at home, she learned to sew, draw and carve. Her dad even taught her how to work on skidoos, but she never put that talent to use. Primarily, she works with printmaking and drawing. Her art relies on stencils that she paints in to create scenes of things her culture experiences, but she only makes happy scenes of things she’s seen and gone through and her memories of things back home.

She’s always sewn to make herself winter clothing like shoes, kamiks, mitts, hats and parkas. Memogana also sews Christmas ornaments and does freestyle painting. She does a lot of orders for people. While she enjoys freestyle painting and sewing, she always comes back to her five-step process of stencil printing. Once she’s created her work and titled it, she puts it up for sale to get feedback and more orders from the print. That’s how she knows she’s done a good job.

Memogana makes her prints using thick mylar which is a clear plastic which lasts a long time. Her dad, when he made prints, made his stencils out of seal skin. He would draw his image onto the pelt and cut it out and use that as his stencil after drying the skin out. The skins didn’t last as long as the mylar does. His stencils are in the museum heritage centre.

Thinking of her artist journey, Memogana took five or six years off of making art and just recently started picking it back up. She’s been doing it for educational purposes and because she’s been meeting so many people, she’s found many people get excited to meet her.

She’s found the reactions surprising because she doesn’t consider herself a famous or professional artist, she just sees herself as an artist. While she doesn’t see herself as a professional artist, she just had a show in Toronto and the Edmonton Art Council is selling her art in their gallery downtown. Her son also sells her work in the Arctic Markets in Inuvik.

She’s also illustrated four children’s books and she’s in the process of translating a children’s book into her language. To prepare herself for that work, she took the Aboriginal Language Education Prep Program that taught translation and transcription. It took her four years to complete and while it was difficult, she found it enjoyable.  The program combined the Teacher Education Program along with language education to equip participants to be teachers and to teach, read and write in their language. They also had to switch over from the old writing system to the new writing system, something she found challenging.

Thinking of her education as an artist, educator, creator, translator and writer, Memogana says, “I overeducate myself… When I’m stuck with something, I go and learn how to do something. Basically, I’m in training, an entrepreneur, jack of all trades.” She took an art course back in 1995 to learn different techniques and got a certificate and diploma for her art. She was also an intern in museums in Ottawa and Hull, QC.

When it comes to obstacles, Memogana struggled with alcohol a few years ago but it's been 33 months since her last beer. She’s very proud of her sobriety. At one point she started losing her parents and family members, going home every two months for a funeral.

To balance her mental well being, she always finds time for herself, taking walks and being sure to have the right mindset. She thinks about how next time something better will happen and remembers she can’t change the past. “All you could do is work better to change the future, and that's in your hands, nobody else's,” she reflects.

Her advice for Indigenous students considering leaving their home community is, “furthering their education is really important nowadays. You can't really get a job anywhere without your high school diploma, and it's an experience when you further your education, either in a university or a college… It's always a learning experience. You learn everywhere you go, and if you do decide to go, you will find yourself out there. There's a whole world out here that I didn't really know about.” Currently, Memogana lives in Edmonton.

“Enjoy your art. No matter how it turns out, you can always fix it, and keep creating.”

If she could share a message with her younger self it would be that there’s always a way to work around challenges. “Never give up on your dreams. Never walk away, maybe for a little bit…to think about how you want to do it the second time, but never give up on your dreams, because maybe there's something better at the end of what you're going to accomplish,” she would say.

When it comes to inspiration, Memogana is inspired by children, seeing them play or just being kids. Seeing kids out on the land reminds her of her own childhood and she creates art based on those happy memories. While she misses the North, she doesn’t miss the cold. “Coming from a huge, huge family, it was always a blessing just to have a pen and paper,” she recalls. While she has been educated to do different things, what she really enjoys is her art and it’s taken her further than all of her education, something she never anticipated.

As far as her current projects, she’s working on translating a children’s book and she’s working on a large stencil painting. The painting is of a memory she has of being in Niagara Falls when a swan flew down and landed in a pond. She’s struggling to get the drawing right.

Being an artist is who she is, though Roberta Memogana has trained for and does other work. She was a museum intern and she translates children’s books but her art is what makes her come alive. Art runs in her family and while her materials are different, it’s special that she is making stencils just like her dad did.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.