Designer puts aside sewing machine, picks up paint brush

Page 8

Two and a half years ago Native fashion designer Kathy Shirt was a victim of a hit and run accident. It took a long time to recuperate and she still suffers pain on her entire right side. But she used the time to reflect deeply on her life. Shirt has become more relaxed and contented and has decided to change careers; she'll no longer design fashions, instead her creativity will flow from the paint brush.

As a result of the accident, Shirt, who operates Kathy's Creations out of her apartment, was forced to quit a two-year fiber arts program at Grant MacEwan college. She was hurt and angry.

"I was walking from the bank back to classes and I got knocked down at 155th street and Stony Plain Road. The car came to a skid and my let went underneath the car. I was in a daze, I couldn't hear a sound," she recalls.

" I tried going back several times and I would get really angry, I would come home and spend a lot of time crying because the physical pain wouldn't go away, I thought to hell with it," she says and adds "perhaps it happened to slow me down."

Before the accident Shirt was known for her happy-go-lucky attitude in the Native community. After the accident she became somber, almost reclusive.

During this dark period she began a soul search and put aside the sewing machine and healed herself through her art. She paints her dreams on animal hides and canvas.

"It became an obsession," she says.

In her dreams she is able to smell, feel, see and communicate with the animals she feeds, she says.

Shirt began painting an environmental Mother Earth Series. Her art has always been a part of her life but now it's vital to her. In 1974 Shirt created a black and white painting to express how pollution harms animals of the water, land and air.

While she feels a close bond with nature, Shirt is also very close with her older sister Pauline, who helped her heal through the ordeal.

The tow sisters were always very close. Pauline would read old romance novels to Kathy, the younger of the two, she remembers fondly.

"We always had a good time. We would go out, get all dressed up in these floral dresses with crinolines and all that. We had a lot of fun going out dancing and doing the twist," laughs Shirt.

Growing up in Saddle Lake during the 50s, her parents Mr. and Mrs. Felix Shirt raised eight girls and one boy on a farm, when they were home from the Blue Quills Residential School. While they had a garden and livestock there wasn't always money for nice dresses or toys. So Shirt improvised.

"My dad's father carved out some wooden dolls for us. I used to watch my mother sew with this peddle machine, she would sew so fast! She would take flour sacks apart and dye them soft pastels and make summer dresses out of them. My mom made all our dresses when we were little. What was left of my mother's leftovers I would pick up and sew doll clothes by hand," recollects Shirt.

As a young girl she was a loner, a dreamer, someone who wanted to do good in the world.

"I used to dream to go far, far away into another part of the world and feed the people, like a nurse. I would write all my dreams down in a black scribbler book," she says.

The residential school environment had influenced her childhood career goals. After Blue Quills Residential School she went to St. Paul Racette High School.

At the age of 17, her parents had planned a marriage for her. To avoid it she asked for permission to care for her sister's son in Edmonton. The plan worked.

Shirt baby-sat until she found other work.

"They call them nannies today but I was housekeeper, bottle washer, cook, you name it," she says.

Shirt married at the age of 21 and had a son and daughter. But the marriage only lasted two years. While married she became a dress maker. After the divorce she raised the children on her own and as a means of survival began fashion designing.

"I like the individuality and originality of my work because nobody else had it. Being brought up in a residetial school there were so many kids no one was given special attention. Ever since I left that, I wanted to be recognized to have some attention," says Shirt.

Last month she bid farewell to fashion design and a final fashion show and sale was held at "Joe's Place", a restaurant and dining lounge in Edmonton's wasted.

She's now painting herself a brighter future.