Gail Tremblay

Gail Tremblay (December 15, 1945 – May 3, 2023 ) was an American writer and artist from Washington State. She is known for weaving baskets from film footage that depicts Native American people, such as Western movies and anthropological documentaries. She received a Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 2001.

Background Tremblay was born on December 15, 1945, in Buffalo, New York. and that her great-grandfather once lived in Kahnawake near Montreal. She never offered any documentation of this and the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Indian Arts and Crafts Board determined that she was not Indigenous after a thorough investigation of her claims. Her father was Roland G. Tremblay (1917–2013), who was born in Somersworth, New Hampshire, to Peter Tremblay and Bernadette Demers Tremblay.

Gail Tremblay received her BA in theater in 1967 from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Oregon, Eugene in 1969. and taught her last class in 2018 in the newly finished fiber studio at the Longhouse. She was recognized by the Poetry Foundation. Tremblay also wrote exhibition catalog essays about other artists, including, "Speaking in a Language of Vital Signs," for the 2008 exhibition catalogue, Joe Feddersen: Vital Signs at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University.

Visual art

Tremblay described her work as combining historical Native American techniques and materials with mainstream artistic expression. Her poetry and art were inspired by the cultures of Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. The film influence on her baskets also includes When will the Red Leader Overshadow Images of the 19th Century Noble Savage in Hollywood Films that Some Think are Sympathetic to American Indians (2018), a basket woven using 35mm movie film from the movie Windwalker (1981), which was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2021.

Artweek reviewer Marcia Morse writes, “And Then There is The Hollywood Indian Princess (2002). Using the Northeastern Woodlands fancy-stick basket weaving, Tremblay wove with, not brown ash and sweetgrass used by Northeastern tribes, but recycled 16 mm leader and film on sexually transmitted diseases, elegantly subverting multiple stereotypes.”

Exhibitions Tremblay'sy solo exhibitions and group shows include Gail Tremblay: Fiber, Metal, Wood (1988), Museum of the Plains Indian, Browning, Montana; The Empty Fish Trap Installation (2004), Evergreen State College Gallery, Olympia, Washington;

Works in public collections Basket ( 1990), Portland Art Museum, Oregon Strawberry and Chocolate (2000), National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. In the World of White Line Fever... (2001), Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon And Then There is the Hollywood Indian Princess (2002), Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon Waiting for the Return: 5 Fish Traps (2002-2003), Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law, Seattle (Washington State Arts Commission) A Note to Lewis and Clark's Ghosts (2004), Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon; and National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. The Ghost of Salmon (2004), from Canopy End Structures (with Rick Bartow, Ken Mackintosh, and Lillian Pitt), Rosa Parks Station, TriMet, Portland, Oregon Hunting for the Red Queen on the Big Night Out (2008), Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington (Washington State Arts Commission) An Iroquois Dreams That the Tribes of the Middle East Will Take the Message of Deganawida to Heart and Make Peace (2009), Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington And Then There's the Business of Fancy Dancing... (2011), Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock In Great Expectations, There is no Red Leader (2011), Portland Art Museum, Oregon It Was Never About Playing Cowboys and Indians (2012), Denver Art Museum When Ice Stretched on for Miles (2017), Brooklyn Museum, New York When will the Red Leader Overshadow Images of the 19th Century Noble Savage in Hollywood Films that Some Think are Sympathetic to American Indians (2018), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Publications Night Gives Women the Word (Omaha Printing Company, 1979) Close to Home (University of Nebraska, 1981) Indian Singing in 20th Century America (CALYX Books, 1990) Farther From and Too Close to Home (CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2013)