Judy Chartrand in Studio Ceramic Canada

JUDY CHARTRAND featured in

Studio Ceramics Canada

Written by Amy Gogarty

Born in Kamloops, BC, Manitoba Cree artist Judy Chartrand was raised in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). While she is a status member of the Pine Creek Band in Camperville, Manitoba, where she has family, she has never lived on the reserve. One of thirteen children, she grew up in a multi-racial, urban environment, where she experienced both the positive aspects of diversity as well as the negative impacts of racial prejudice, poverty, and the inter-generational trauma of the residential school system, which her mother endured for twelve years as a child.

Although art was not important in her home, she was a curious and precocious child. She spent many hours in the Vancouver Museum, which was housed in the Carnegie Building at the corner of Hastings and Main between 1957 and 1967, when it moved to its present location in Vanier Park. ¹ After sitting vacant for a number of years, the building was renovated and reopened as the Carnegie Community Centre in 1980. The newly refurbished structure, often referred to as the “Downtown Eastside’s Livingroom,” housed a reading room, art gallery, dark room, pottery room, and other educational and recreational amenities.

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