Beadwork is like a letter I send and receive from the spirit world
My chicha (grandmother) was a master bead-worker. She was a perfectionist, and my dad remembers her unravelling hours of work just to replace an irregular bead. She passed away when I was young due to Alzheimers, so I didn’t get to hear her talk about her memories while we were on this planet together. I started beading because I wanted to understand her better, to reconnect to my heritage while living off reservation. It has been a meditation, a life line, and a past-time.
What began as me trying to somatically recover the memories of my chicha became me creating a patchwork of my own.
The following works are from a series I began at the end of 2023, when i finally moved back to the reservation where I grew up. They are glimpses of significant moments I have experienced since being back on my native land. From the meteor shower that rained across the sky the first night I slept in my new home, to the pattern of the tide-drenched sand on my first walk back on the beach, each of these moments is concentrated down to a 1 1/2” square.
