Native American Beadwork

I love almost all Native American beadwork. It was what drew me toward beads in the first place. I've been thinking about why I like it so much. Perhaps it's because it offers honest simplicity, down-to-earth practicality, and intent stemming from the heart rather than the intellect. Maybe it's the colors and the repetitiveness of design. The excellence of craftsmanship is part of it too. When I touch a bag, belt, moccasins, doll or other significant item made by a Native American, it seems to voice the essence of the artist, emitting a feeling of energy and life.

Emphasizing different colors, motifs and techniques, each tribe has its own recognized style. The barrette above and the ones following were made by Northern Alaskan Natives, beaded on hide. They are part of a collection owned by Kathy Hinkle, whose beadwork dolls and improvisational bead embroidery were featured in my previous post here.

An often overlooked, but fantastic place to see and buy Native Alaskan beadwork (and baskets) is at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. The current facility, built in the late 1990's, replaces a much older hospital. The gift shop offers very high quality Native arts and crafts. The auxilliary volunteers who ran the shop in the old (and now in the new) facility purchased the best work that came through the shop, establishing a hospital collection, which is displayed in large, beautifully designed cases on each floor of the hospital and in small cases along the grand spiral staircases between the levels. In my opinion, the work in these cases, equals or exceeds any I've seen in a museum; and the work in the gift shop is better than most Anchorage or Sitka galleries or shops offer.

Here is something I bought at this wonderful gift shop.

Made by Thelma Claffey of Huslia AK, this amulet bag of moosehide features caribou tufting, quill work and beads of ivory and amber. It's one of my most prised treasures!

Since I'm on a roll, here are a few sketches from my note book, and a little information about places to see Native American beadwork on the East Coast.

Above is a sketch of the head of a Northern Plains Indian doll from around 1900 seen at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich CT. She has a leather face, bits of leather couched on for ears, a triangle of leather folded and sewn into the shaping seam for her nose. Her cheeks and mouth are painted, but her eyes are glass seed beads.

This is a sketch of another doll I saw and loved, but couldn't afford to buy in the gift shop of the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. Although she was modern, she had an old-world look and feel. The designs were painted on coarse cloth, and then accented with the traditional colors of opaque and white-heart seed beads. The seams of the doll were embellished with a stitch I'd never seen before and haven't seen since. Made with very tiny seed beads (perhaps size 16), it was dense, like a wrapped seam, but appeared to be woven in a cross-hatch pattern. I spent a whole day in this museum, and wished I had time to return the next day. The exhibitions were supurb.

Here is one other sketch I made while there. It's a Lakota turtle amulet, approximately 7 inches long by 6 inches wide, all done in lazy stitch on hide.

Notes about sketching

I totally admire artists who keep sketch books, many of which are works of art in themselves. Cynthia Toops is a polymer clay artist, who is always sketching her ideas in little hand-bound books, later to be realized as miniature masterpieces. Inspired by Cynthia, I made a book and vowed to sketch every time something pleased me or caught my eye. That was in April of 1998, and there are still many blank pages in the book. The filled pages infuse my heart with joy and inspiration. What happened? Why haven't I kept it up? This doesn't make sense at all. Do I need to make a blogmittment?

By the way, here is a fun book about art journaling and sketching by Lynne Perrella.

Improvisational Bead Embroidery
and Beaded Dolls
by Kathy Hinkle

Kathy Hinkle doesn't have a website and isn't known in the beading community. She's a PA (physician's assistant) in a small medical clinic in the northern outpost town of Nome, Alaska. Previously she served as the only source of medical help in remote Alaskan Native American villages.

Kathy also happens to be the sister of one of my quilting/beading "sisters" here on San Juan Island, WA. That's how I've gotten to know her. The first time we met, she was instantly curious about my bead embroidery, telling me she has a collection of beaded barrettes made by Native Alaskans, which she loves and frequently wears. She wanted to learn to sew beads on cloth. We only had time for one very brief lesson, but she bought my books, One Bead at a Time and Spirit Dolls, to serve as guides when she returned home.

A year later, visiting her sister over Christmas, Kathy brought some of her work to show me. I'm so proud of her! She made beaded Christmas presents for everyone in her family. Here are some of them:

She made the top doll for her sister, the middle one for her young niece, and the bottom one for her nephew, who favors the color orange above all others.

For her Dad, brother-in-law, and other members of the family, Kathy created a star pattern, which she stuffed and beaded in a similar way as the dolls.

During the long, dark hours of fall and early winter in Nome, Kathy began a piece of improvisational bead embroidery. She told me she started with the flower form in the lower right side of the piece. Without any clear plan for the piece, yet recognizing her emotional state which longed for summer sun and bright colors, she continued to add beads. As the piece increased in size, she was warmed by the garden-like quality she saw in it. Finishing it just before her trip south, she decided to showcase it on black velvet in a shadow box frame. This was Kathy's gift for her lucky Mom!

Be sure to click on the above image of Kathy's bead embroidery, as the details and colors are lovely in the full sized version. The same is true for the dolls.

In case you didn't already figure this out, Kathy is solidly hooked on beading. Before returning to Alaska, she bought many more beads, storage containers, zip-lock bags, needles, and even some beads for a friend. I can't wait to see what she brings to show me next Christmas!

For my next post, you can look forward to pictures of some of the barrettes made by Native Alaskans in Kathy's collection!

Update on Storm Damage

If you have followed my November and December posts, you know that we've had some unusually harsh weather, with lots of trees and branches downed by heavy snow accumulations and high winds. Two days ago we had our third huge burn pile. At 8 AM, our burn area looked like this.


Actually, this is only about a third of what we had to burn, as the piled circled the burn pit and my camera doesn't take 360s. All of it was wet - mighty wet, as we've had record rain fall. Since Robert has nearly 20 years of experience with burn piles, he had no trouble getting it started.


This is how it looked at 5 PM, after constantly adding branches all day long. Today it is snowing again, but I bet there are still glowing embers in the fire pit. Amazing how fire continues to burn once started.

Lichens as Inspiration
for Art

This morning another big wind passed over our island, blowing more branches to the ground, including one from a Madrona tree that had six or more different varieties of lichen growing on it. I picked it up, thinking to throw it off the trail. But on closer inspection realized it was a treasure - inspiration for beading or painting - with supurb colors and form!

Although the weather was drizzling, cold and dismal, I did my best with my camera to record these beauties.

The final image, below, shows that all the different types of lichen can mingle together on the same small twig.

I encourage you to go to this website to see more pictures of lichen and learn a little about it. I had no idea it was such a fascinating organism.

Six Word Stories

Browsing blogland, I found two wonderful (new to me) blogs: Juju Loves Polkadots, which is as fun and artful as its name, and Tounge in Cheek, which is where I got the idea for this post. Between the two of them, three and a half hours passed in pure bliss.

The idea of six word stories is explained here. It's based on Ernest Hemmingway's story:

"For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."

Think about it... that's quite a story for just six words! Corey Amaro added to the idea, making it "snapshots and stories in six words".

Accepting the challenge, I decided to call it "my art assignment" for the day... here are the results:

My photographer husband says this is cheating... that these are one thousand and six word stories. He has a point. Who cares... it's been a fun afternoon. I'd love to see your interpretations of snapshots and stories in six words (or 1000 + 6 words, if you prefer)!

Merry Christmas
& Have a Beady New Year!

While visiting my nearly-90-year-old Mom in Minnesota a few weeks ago, we occupied the craft room in her assisted living home for a few days and painted a bunch of papers. Later, we cut up the papers and pasted them on blank cards, which we rubber stamped with our Christmas greetings. It was great fun to play with her like that, and she enjoyed it too! Wish I had pictures of us working to show you, but we were too covered with paint and having too much fun for picture taking. Below are a few of the ones I did... I'm just showing the painted part, not the whole card.

This last one isn't a card. It's actually a full sized painting, which I've since framed. It reminds me of the nicer aspects of our recent snow storm (here and here).

I have two favorite pairs of Christmas earrings. I made these stars (origami - folding strips of paper - here are instructions) into earrings, and have a necklace to match as well.

These are my other favorite Christmas earrings. I'm sorry that I can't recall the name of the woman in Edmonds, WA who made these lampwork beads years ago. I don't know if she's still making beads or not. Anybody recognize them? She didn't have two Santas, so I made them different. I love that they don't match, and always enjoy wearing them.

Note added on 1-30-07: The beads in these earrings and the fibula pin below were made by Marjorie Burr and she's still making beads! When I knew her (around 1994), she was still teaching school, but looking forward to retirement and a new career making beads. Seems she's done it!

Here is a Christmas fibula pin I made years ago with beads by the same person as the earrings above. I mostly wear it on a black fleece coat, but sometimes move it onto a sweater.

Over the years, some of my beady friends have made me some really wonderful beaded gifts. This is a woven (peyote stitch) panel, which is mounted on a black leather box. My bead sister, Anna Feher in Hungary made it for me.

Here is my favorite beady gift from this year... an ornament featuring my totem animal (rabbit), made by Janet. This is really special for many reasons. First, I LOVE it... and second, it blows me away that a blogging friend whom I've never met would know me well enough to send such a totally me gift!

My brother, Thom, and I often exchange hand-made gifts. This year, in addition to sending a gorgeous wreath, he and his wife made us three snowflake ornaments, which I've hung in our kitchen window.

My Christmas wish for you:

May your holiday season be filled with the spirit of play,
and may the new year bring you many blessings of
peace, love, friendship, family, health,
creativity and more play!

Bead Embroidery & Cloisonne ~
Pin/Wall Hanging Combination

by Karen Cohen

If you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember seeing bead embroidery (here and here) by Karen Cohen, who is primarily an enamel artist. In the last year, Karen has added bead embroidery to her considerable skills and is now combining the two. Here is a bead embroidered wall hanging, which serves as a "frame" for her triangular cloisonne pin. (The pin is removable when you want to wear it rather than see it on the wall). Don't you think she's done a grand job of blending the two art forms? Here you can see a larger image of this piece.

Storms Keeping Us Busy

I wanted to start this post on an up note, turning the attention from our weather-related hardships back to beads and art. However, it feels important to explain my long silence. Since our snow storm three weeks ago (see here and here) and more recent extreme high wind storms, we've been focused on repairs and fixes around our 5-acre property (on San Juan Island, WA). This has been very unusual weather for us with temps well below freezing, very high winds, record precipitation. Here is some of what we've been dealing with.

Trees and branches down... all over the place, some caused by the weight of the snow, others by the wind. Much chainsaw work is needed.

Fortunately, no trees fell on our house, but one nailed our garbage storage shed.

One of my favorite trees, a huge, mostly prone fir, along the trail to the studio, lost it's only upright limb. I guess the good news is that we have lots of firewood for the next year or so.

Once the useable parts of fallen trees get bucked-up for firewood, we have to haul the remainder to an open area where we can burn it. This is the first burn getting started.

Here is Robert feeding our first all-day burn. We roasted hot dogs in the coals later that night! We'll probably need at least three more burns like this before things begin to look normal around here.

The other thing that happened is damage to our plumbing. Our property is on rock and at an elevation of about 500 feet, making a well expensive, if we could even find water. So we collect rain from the roof of the garage, house and studio in large cisterns. From the cisterns it is pumped to the house. The pump and outside plumbing are very vulnerable to freezing temperatures. Normally they are protected by heat lamps (in the pump houses) and heat tape (on the pipes). But with the temperatures 8-12 degrees F. and our power out for 48 hours during the snow storm, there was unavoidable damage. This picture shows one of the shattered pipe connections for the studio.

The pump for the house cracked. Robert ordered and installed a new pump, but unfortunately, the replacemet pump had a defective impeller. For 5 days he experimented with it, trying to get the system working. And, of course, we had no running water during this time. Finally he took apart the new pump and the cracked pump, and using parts from both made one that works! Running water is SUCH a blessing!!!

There you have it. I intent to return to beading and more frequent blogging soon. In the meantime, please don't give up on me, and thanks for your moral support!