Much more than 20 yrs right after Penobscot Country artists Jason Brown and Donna Decontie Brown first started producing and selling jewellery as Decontie & Brown, the pair have hung up their pliers for now in favor of a more expansive, interdisciplinary way of making art.
Shortly following the pandemic began, Jason Brown threw his enthusiasm guiding Firefly, a multimedia general performance artwork job that for the past two a long time has transformed his artistic lifetime. By music, video, dance and trend, Brown generates an immersive dwell encounter, drawing on ancestral Wabanaki audio and imagery, but with a futuristic twist.
“It’s Indigenous futurism,” he mentioned. “Many men and women assume of Indigenous people today as anything historical, or from the earlier. They do not see us as present, and they certain as heck never see us as futuristic. But we are below, and we will be below. A person of the explanations why I do this is to exhibit that.”
The path to Firefly was a extensive but inescapable one. In 2016, Decontie & Brown commenced building apparel and components in addition to jewellery, showing in vogue displays at important Native American art displays like the Santa Fe Indian Market place, the Read Museum Guild Indian Market place in Phoenix, Arizona, and far more locally at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor.
Brown produced his personal new music for some of all those demonstrates, spurring him to learn far more about recording and developing soulful digital beats over which to sing and drum. The songs themselves were previously there, drawing on the ancient Wabanaki audio he learned yrs in the past from tribal elders.
“There’s a rationale why these chants, these notes, these melodies have lasted for countless numbers of several years,” he mentioned. “They might have adjusted a tiny little bit more than the generations, but the original electricity behind them flows by way of. We just set our personal taste on it and hand it forward. It is all component of a continuation of this 13,000-yr-previous circle of creativity.”
Nevertheless Brown and his spouse and innovative spouse Decontie Brown had located a fantastic offer of results in making fine jewelry, when the pandemic struck, it modified every little thing for them. All the art exhibits they typically traveled to in the spring, summertime and fall had been canceled.
Bored and restless, Brown started hosting live streams showcasing himself singing and drumming above those people beats, putting on some of the clothing designs he and Decontie Brown designed, and placing up evocative lighting in deep purples, blues, reds and greens — colors encouraged by the gentle of fireflies, the aurora, and the night sky in typical.
His are living streams were well known appropriate off the bat, and Brown dubbed the undertaking Firefly. Following a couple months, it became extremely clear to him that this was the route he essential to go in creatively. In 2021, he and Decontie Brown built the determination to get started refocusing Decontie & Brown absent from exclusively jewelry and fashion, and towards becoming a “house of creativity” — a partnership that encompasses the layout, music, and video aspects of their do the job.
“COVID was a tragedy, but it also was a wonderful reset for so quite a few people today. It built so quite a few persons reevaluate the issues in their lives,” he said. “I know it did for me.”
Considering the fact that then, Brown has released a amount of music as Firefly, releasing his debut album, “Sacred Fire,” final 12 months. He has executed live shows across Maine and the nation, such as a number of demonstrates in Portland more than the winter. In his stay demonstrates, he transforms venues into shimmering nighttime wonderlands, and he encourages audiences to participate in the singing and rhythmic elements.
Before this yr Brown also concluded function as Firefly on a piece of digital video clip artwork called “WABANAVIA,” that explores not just his Wabanaki heritage, but also Scandinavian roots, as he has ancestors from Sweden. The Portland Museum of Artwork purchased “WABANAVIA” in February as element of its lasting assortment.
While Brown will make his audio and visible components, Donna Decontie Brown is effective with him to craft and complete the stay shows and manage their enterprise, although functioning as director of the Wabanaki Women’s Coalition. They’ve also been active reworking their Bangor house and studio into a hub of multimedia action, and absent from being a jewellery studio.
Not that Brown intends to give up jewelry building permanently. It’s what received him commenced as an artist, and what place him on the route to Firefly.
“Just the other working day I experienced to get my equipment out so I could do a minor restore on a piece I manufactured a couple yrs back,” he said. “It’s nice to try to remember that I haven’t lost my contact, even if my creative imagination is in a different place now.”
Firefly will following execute on Saturday, June 18 at the Bangor Arts Trade, as element of WERU-FM’s summer live performance sequence. For additional information, visit fireflythehybrid.com.