Folk on the Rocks isn’t just a music festival. The annual event on the shore of Yellowknife’s Long Lake also spotlights visual artists.
Melanie Jewell is an Indigenous multimedia artist from Fort Smith. A member of Salt Lake First Nation, she studied fine art at the Alberta College of Art and Design as well as the University of Victoria.
Over the course of this year’s Folk on the Rocks, she worked on a mural that she described as “a carousel with northern animals … with a very girly palette.”
The sweetgrass carousel is a design she prepped at Makerspace after being invited by Folk on the Rocks organizers to complete a mural.
“It is really overwhelming. It is overwhelming in a really good way. Everyone’s been really helpful and hospitable. I’m really grateful,” said Jewell.
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“Making tools on tools on tools,” is how Yellowknife-based Carson McLean described his work at the Folk site.
McLean and Sebastian Arias-Tellez are blacksmiths who say they want to show the trade isn’t all swords and daggers.
“We’re doing a demonstration here, trying to show that blacksmithing is very functional,” said McLean.
Arias-Tellez is based in Victoria, BC and is a member of the Vancouver Island Blacksmith Association. The two met when McLean was in Victoria – he was drawn to learn the trade after watching Arias-Tellez.
McLean, from Yellowknife, said Folk was “a prime opportunity” to show off their work to artistically inclined attendees of the festival.
“We’re making nails, we’re making hardware,” he said, “and we’re just trying to show people that it’s still alive.”
