Artist: Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, born 1974, Kalamazoo, MI; lives in Bangor, MI)
Title: Water Carries Memory (mbish) and Water Carries Memory (mnedo)
Date: 2025
Medium: Oil pastels and leafing ink on watercolor paper
Dimensions: Each 17.5 × 23.5 in
Credit: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of the artist.
Vertical ribbons of blue and silver move rhythmically across the surface of Jason Wesaw’s Water Carries Memory diptych. The abstract forms suggest flowing water, shifting light, and reflection, evoking Lake Michigan just steps from The Block Museum. Created in 2025 following Wesaw’s participation in Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak, the drawings reflect on his experience working on the exhibition while extending key ideas from his installation practice into an intimate two-dimensional format.
The two drawings are part of a group of four works Wesaw created after Woven Being as a reflection on his collaboration with The Block. Three of the drawings, including the Water Carries Memory diptych, are abstracted interpretations of installations presented in the exhibition. Because those installations were created for specific spaces and moments, they can never be replicated exactly. These drawings function in part as a record of those ephemeral works while also standing as independent works in their own right.
The diptych refers directly to Wesaw’s installation Water Carries Memory. Inspired by the museum’s location along Lake Michigan, the installation incorporated sand collected from the lakeshore near the museum, forming a shoreline within the gallery. The sand originated in the Indiana Dunes, homelands of the Potawatomi and Miami peoples, and was brought to the site during Northwestern’s early 19th-century lakefill process that formed the land where the museum now stands. Ceramic vessels sat beneath a long curtain of blue ribbons, with three canvases partially visible behind them, like shapes just beneath the surface of water. Although the installation highlighted human manipulation of the landscape, the gently moving ribbons evoked the beauty and rhythm of water, creating a contemplative space within the exhibition.
In the drawings, Wesaw focuses exclusively on the water element. The organic blue and silver ribbons echo the movement of the installation’s hanging strands while removing the sand and ceramic components. This simplification returns attention to what the installation ultimately centered: water itself, rather than the world that has continued to change around it.
The Potawatomi words in the titles deepen this meaning. “Mbish” translates to water and “mnedo” to spirit. Displayed together from left to right, the diptych reads as “water spirit,” suggesting both the sacred presence of water and the memories, histories, and knowledge it carries.
Cycles and patterns are central to Wesaw’s practice. As the artist explains, “Patterns, or rather cycles, are a foundational aspect of traditional Potawatomi life in the Great Lakes of the United States… My observations of the beauty in these cycles, these age-old patterns, are the basis for much of my art.” The repeated ribbons in these drawings reflect those cycles while also engaging traditions of abstraction and color field painting that inform his broader artistic language.
Wesaw was one of four anchor artists in Woven Being, working closely with the curatorial and exhibition team over several years and contributing two large installations to the exhibition. His multidisciplinary practice spans ceramics, textiles, drawing, installation, and community-centered cultural work. He has also served as a peacemaker in his tribal community, describing this as inward-facing work that complements his outward-facing artistic practice.
The acquisition strengthens the Block Museum’s growing holdings of Indigenous art and extends the legacy of Woven Being within the collection. It also aligns with the museum’s interest in abstraction, offering a perspective shaped by Indigenous knowledge systems, environmental awareness, and relationships to land and water. Works like Water Carries Memory provide rich opportunities for teaching and research across disciplines including art history, Native American and Indigenous studies, environmental humanities, and history.
Through this diptych, Wesaw invites sustained looking and reflection. The works encourage viewers to consider how landscapes hold memory, how water connects past and present, and how abstraction can serve as a powerful language for cultural continuity and ecological awareness.
–Text based on acquisition research by Marisa Cruz Branco, Terra Foundation Curatorial Fellow
Bibliography
Eiteljorg Museum. “Jason Wesaw.” 2022.
https://collections.eiteljorg.org/people/3374/jason-wesaw
Museum of Contemporary Photography. “Family Day: Paper Quilting Workshop with Jason Wesaw.” April 2024.
https://www.mocp.org/events/family-day-paper-quilting-workshop-with-jason-wesaw/
Rainmaker Gallery. “Jason Wesaw.” 2020.
https://www.rainmakerart.co.uk/jason-wesaw-2/
Translations of titles provided by the artist in correspondence with Marisa Cruz Branco, January 28, 2026.
