REPLAY:Wendie Wilson, artist, teacher, vexillographer

Celebrating African Heritage Month in Nova Scotia through the eyes of an artist

I first met Wendie Wilson in 2016. I was working on a self-directed project interviewing local artists for a channel I ran at the time called ArtsHalifax

¹

.

Wendie is an artist, local elementary school teacher and vexillographer — the creator of the African Nova Scotian Flag.

Vexillographer is a new word to me but it’s a term for a person who creates flags. Often when we hear about people who create flags, it’s in the context of history, something distant, something that evokes an image with a lot of dust. But in the case of the African Nova Scotian flag, its creator is very much alive as she gathers missing parts of history with ancient Adinkra symbols from West Africa and connects them to Nova Scotia.

I hope you enjoy this video as Wendie guides us through her studio in Dartmouth and explains the symbols and feelings that drive her work that continues to this day.

So here she is, seven years later.

²

And while this video runs today to celebrate African Heritage Month in Nova Scotia, clearly her work is worthy of celebration any time of year.

1. My ArtsHalifax channel began and ran before the municipal organization “Arts Halifax” came into existence and the two are not affiliated. I continued the series up until my computer crashed and was no longer able to create videos on it.

2. When I originally created this series of videos in 2015 and 2016, one of my goals was to create timeless videos, something to capture the essence of an artist, something with a lasting quality.

This series of videos explores the inspiration that drives artists to create a body of work.

I have been tinkering with the idea or revising more of these videos and thought it would be nice to start with this one of Wendie.