Carl Gawboy (born: 1942)​

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Carl Gawboy, a member of the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Ojibwe, was born in Cloquet, MN to a Finnish mother and an Ojibwe father, raised in Ely, MN, and has lived off and on in the Duluth area for the past twenty years.  

Carl graduated in 1965 from the University of Minnesota Duluth with a B.A. Arts and received a master’s degree in American Indian arts from the University of Montana, Missoula in 1972.  

Carl taught for six years at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and twelve years at the College of St. Scholastica teaching American Indian studies and watercolor painting.  He is now retired and devotes much of his time to painting and writing. 
 
Carl’s work primarily concerns defining the Ojibwe culture between 1850 and 1950, an era that best synthesizes Ojibwe lifestyles with European technology. He focuses on the spirit of everyday life as depicted in rituals such as harvesting, ricing, hunting, canoeing, and storytelling.  His work celebrates healthy, peaceful, and sustainable living.

He now shares a studio with his wife, Cindy, in an old barn, on Lake Superior’s north shore.  Gawboy’s mural work ranges from single wall pieces, such as those installed in Cloquet, Bemidji, and Ely to a massive 33-panel series at the Superior Public Library, tracing Superior’s history and taking 10 years to complete.  In the summer of 2007, he completed a mural for the new Grand Portage National Monument Interpretive Center.  In 2008 The Depot Foundation (Duluth, Minnesota) recognized Carl Gawboy with the Arts and Culture Lifetime Artist Award.  

Carl’s works are in permanent collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, the Department of Interior, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, and the Fond du Lac Reservation.  His artwork gives life to the Ojibwe cultural systems reflected in everyday life, work, and rituals in the context of their historical environment and traditions.