Red Crane Enterprises is the fine arts studio of the famous Mi'kmaq artist Alan Syliboy, who lives on the Millbrook First Nation reserve in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada. His work is representative of the traditional North American Indians of the Wabanaki who are of the Eastern woodland tribes.
He looked to the indigenous Mi'kmaq petroglyph tradition (rock drawings) for inspiration and developed his own artistic vocabulary out of those forms. His popularization of these symbolic icons has conferred on them a mainstream legitimacy that restores community pride in its Mi'kmaq heritage. With this purely Mi'kmaq vocabulary he has allowed his brush and pen to lead him to images of family for his series of serigraph prints.
The past, present, and future of strong family ties are celebrated in a series of spritely images that suggest the fantasies of Klee and Miro to those familiar with European art history, but their artistic roots are firmly twined around the rocks found in the ancient grounds of Nova Scotia.
EDUCATION
1971 Private Study with Artist Shirley Bear
1975 Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
ACTIVITIES
1991 Profiled in Kwa'nu'te, National Film Board
of Canada
1992 Delegate, Department of External Affairs (Canada) Trade Mission to
Japan
1992 Member, Board of Directors, Cobequid Arts Council
1993 Art is Healing Symposium, University of New Brunswick Art Centre, Fredericton,
New Brunswick
1993 Family Day Workshop, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
1993 From the Young, Artists-in-the-Schools, six workshops
1996 Member, Board of Directors, Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry
1996 Two murals, Youth Correctional Centre, Waterville, Nova Scotia
1997 Member, Board of Governors, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
1998 Nova Scotia Arts Council Grant
1998 Sable Offshore Energy Inc., commissioned mural
1999 Royal Canadian Mint, 22kt Gold Coin Designer
2000 Commissioned by the Valley School, Truro, NS for a multi-panel piece
to commemorate the Millenium.
2000 Commissioned to create a piece for the Canadian Canoe Museum, Peterborough,
ON
2000 Founding Member, Eastern Aboriginal Artists' Collective
2001 Commissioned by the Town of Windsor to create a multi-panel mural.
2001 Juror, Canada Council for the Arts
2001 Juror, National Aboriginal Achievements Foundation
2001 Juror, New Brunswick Arts Council
2001 Nations In a Circle, Aboriginal Arts & Cultural Festival
2001 Parks Canada, use of images for Tourism brochure.
2002 Featured in Aboriginal Peoples’ Television
Network series.
2002
Honoured by the Canadian Government with the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal
2002 Juror, National Aboriginal Achievements Foundation
2002 Producer, Songs From the Red Earth
© Nance Ackerman
..."I feel that I have gained the inner strength to conceptualize my spiritualism"...
"Tji'pijkam"
The Horned Snake