In conjunction with her CCBC gallery show, we asked artist Nikki Manzie to share with us a bit about herself, her inspiration, her audience and her other projects. In this interview, Nikki shares her journey through understanding and connecting with the land and ancestors.
“The Land Dreams in Ceremonies: Reparation” will be on view in our gallery from March 7 – April 25, 2024.
“Art is part of the fabric of “me”. Creating is like breathing… I create because it feels both natural and necessary to create”
– Nikki Manzie
In my early 20’s I worked as an artist for 2 years, painting nature and wildlife on canvas. However, realizing art alone would not sustain me as a young single parent, my professional practice took a backseat. I worked full-time in the “healing arts” for three decades. Every now and then, art resurfaced professionally through commissioned pieces. I knew when I retired from the healing arts, I would return to an artistic practice full-time.
The practice that evolved was a combination of all that I have honed as skill, knowledge, and experience. The evolution could not have happened without my relationship to the spirits and to the land. What was natural to me as a child ~ speaking to the spirits and elements of nature, addressing trees, plants, and animals as sentient folk, and having multitudes of “mystical” experiences ~ did not “go away” as I grew to adulthood. It refined and expanded.
Zoom forward a few decades, to 2011. I was living in an area just outside of Victoria, BC, amongst the giant cedars and old forests in Tsartlip traditional territory. I had moved to the Island 3 years previous. One day as I walked, I was wondering how the ancient grandmothers had learned herbal lore… Suddenly I felt something grab my attention, and when I looked up, a gnarly old vine was directly in front of me at chest level. She pulled me to her ~ my heart was struck, and I gasped…
That was the beginning of my apprenticeship with Ma Honeysuckle (my affectionate name for her). I continue to work with this plant, and she continues to “teach” me through direct relationship. It’s difficult to express this in a way that the logical mind can understand, without sounding completely “out there.” The best way I can describe the process is that direct relationship with land and non-human beings actually helped bring perspective to some of the “mystical” events and dreamtime experiences that I had carried with me from childhood/ young adulthood, and also began to stir up blood and bone memory (ancestral knowledge).
In 2013, my husband encouraged me to look more deeply into my ancestral traditions. As I did so, I realised that I needed an entry point into the vastness of Ukrainian folk knowledge. That entry point was folkcrafts. What I discovered was that all of the practices, studies, healing arts, and “mystical” experiences actually fit together ~ made sense, had names, “belonged…” Including the relationship with land and spirits of the land.
I began crafting Motanky (talismanic dolls) and studying the various kinds of Motanky, their purposes, the rites of season and life they are crafted for, the techniques and rituals for crafting, and whatever history I could find. I had made Pysanky (talismanic eggs) as a child, though lacked the knowledge, intent, and ritual associated with them, and so began to explore and study this as well. Then I began to research Rushnyky (talismanic embroidered cloth)…
Delving further into the studies and crafting, I began to explore various intersections: between the folk traditions and crafting of my ancestors, and my own experience and expression of tradition as diaspora; between plant materials utilized by my ancestors and those I have a relationship with on the lands I find myself; between functionality & aesthetics, and the medicinal/ healing applications of natural dyes.
As I deepened my direct relationship with land and the ceremonial path of folk-crafting, I necessarily questioned my relationship with how I occupied land… With respect to crafting, especially ceremonial/ ritual crafting, I began to hold the question: “How do Ukrainian Canadians (any settler) respectfully root their sacred knowledge in a land where they are (invited/ uninvited) guests?”
And it is this question that continues to be my guide as well as the main message of the art I create.
"what first made you want to become an artist?"
Art is and was such a part of me that becoming an artist was not a decision – it was a natural expression of me. Pursuing art and crafting as a career, however, was a different process. My responsibilities as a parent and the financial needs of raising children had me pursue other work for several decades. Returning to art and crafting as my main work carries a different significance now – it is how I make social statements, how I do my part in supporting the Earth, how I express my spirituality, and how I support collective change.
This is a tricky question…
It depends on one’s world view. Some folk shy away from my work. There is a world view that dolls, especially talismanic dolls, can carry negative intent or capture the energy/ spirit of the holder/ keeper of the doll. For those folk, the emotional response brings dismissal of the work… Even though the “rules of making” the talismans – especially the Motanky – are specifically so they do not carry negative intent nor capture someone’s spirit, I will not force my perspective on someone else’s world view. Their perspective and emotional response is just as valid as my own.
For others, the crafts are met with curiosity, delight, or recognition of the intent in their making. Most of my work is commissioned by folks who have a particular need or intention ~ and these individuals have a very personal relationship with the talismans. That feels satisfying to me as a creator, and to them as the keeper or holder of the pieces.
"what emotional response do people have when they view your work or hold it in their hands?"
"what do you do when you are not creating? does it feed your practice?"
To be honest, I take my handwork with me wherever I go. If I’m at the laundromat, for example, I’ll be working on various pieces – embroidering takes a lot of time!!
While I have retired from bodywork, I still work with the healing traditions and knowledge by offering workshops, and one-on-one healing support. Crafting is often incorporated into the workshops and sometimes into one-on-one work. Whether or not crafting is “present” in my work, the knowledge, traditions, and intention that inform the crafting are inseparable from my “other” work, so I never really feel very far from it.
Nikki Manzie has practiced art and crafts for over 40 years. She has worked as a therapist and teacher of earth-based spirituality and medicine for 30 years. The two disciplines combine as she explores and integrates the crafts and folk healing traditions of her Ukrainian grandparents.
The transdisciplinary nature of traditional handcrafts combines knowledge of life- and seasonal-rites, herbs, folk healing, “magical” traditions, and earth-based practices along with technical skill of the craft. As a relational maker, Nikki bring this knowledge and crafting into the current focus of her work: “How do Ukrainian Canadians (settlers) root their sacred knowledge and traditions in a land where they are guests?” Through her work she seeks to stimulate inquiry in self and others about “right relationship” to land, community, and peoples.
The pieces she crafts are relational to the individual or community they are made for; to the lands that she, as a guest, lives and walks upon; to the spirits, ancestors, traditions, and materials she works with. Each piece is crafted in ceremony, with prayers and intentions for the support, empowerment, and well-being of that which it is created for. Materials are specifically chosen to express and enhance these prayers and intentions.