100 Years Intergenerational Collaboration (2020)

It started with a scrap of melton left over from the convocation stoles that I cut into a collar shape. I was waiting on feedback on what would ultimately be the final draft of my thesis and had turned my mind to what I would wear to my defence. I was missing community, not only because normally when I bead, I work with pattern makers. I consult with Learners and beaders and people in the hallway on colours and stitches and technique. But this was a time in between Before and Someday, the time Since.

So, I had this piece of melton in a funny shape, from scraps from the 2020 stole project. One night I had a dream about all of my favourite beadwork artists waking up from naps they had apparently taken in the atrium of the Shaw Centre in downtown Ottawa. 

In July of 1885 Riel is quoted as saying that his people would sleep for 100 years, and when they woke up it would be the artists who gave them their spirits back. It wasn’t a long walk to interpret the dream at that particular moment in time: the Shaw Centre is where my university hosted convocation ceremonies in Before times.

I was compelled to bead something to honour the dream... but I cannot draw. At all.

Lucky for me I created a few artists. I asked the children to create elements for me to include on a piece I would bead - whatever they wished, in whatever colours they wished. 

Thought this intergenerational collaboration, over the course of which we would discuss big questions, debate the merits of opaque vs metallic finishes, and learn the limitations of beads vis-à-vis pattern requirements together, we would make a thing. The hope was that even if I needed to close the circle of my doctoral studies via zoom, I would be able to carry their comfort into the room (Lindberg, 1997; Monture, 1999) with me.

First were Miss O’s “little people” - the first things she ever drew when she started drawing and not simply scribbling. Complete with the arms that come right out the sides of the heads. She drew the family - as you all know, a recurring theme in my work (link to honour shawl and first shawl). I am the green one.

H, ever the thoughtful soul, drew a combination Polaris/sun to, in his eight-year-old words, “both light the way and guide you.” He is an old soul.

R was very preoccupied with colour and chose “the colours of her heart,” drawing hearts and a rainbow using a sharpie directly on the piece. She selected the beads for her elements and the elements of her siblings. She has a great eye and no fear.

And that is only the half of it.

The front includes a 5 petal flower surrounded by three hearts, collaborative designed by Hugo, Rosie, and me. The 5 petal flower is a recognizable symbol of the Flower Beadwork People - one in purple and one in pink. Those are for me. The flowers are beaded in the round using a single continuous piece of thread, and several different kinds of beads. Spirit beads abound.

The hearts are beaded as something of a stitch sampler, with various beadwork techniques incorporated within each one. Each child chose the colours to represent themselves in a heart on each side of the ties. Tiny 7 bead flowers surround the whole using beads gifted to me by my niece and nephew.

Above these clusters of love are the words “The Artists Are Rising” embroidered in yellow thread by the children and reinforced by a helper. This is a nod to the Riel quote. I had thought to embroider “have awoken” or something similar, but I wasn’t convinced of the grammar. I consulted Dr. Tracey Lindberg who suggested “are rising” in the context of this piece.

The writing is in my mother’s hand. She wrote out the quote from isolation in her apartment 3 blocks away. I photographed it and made a pattern tracing her words on to Glad Press n Seal with a sharpie.

The entire piece is backed in suns, clouds with rain, and rainbows as selected by the children because, as they often remind me, more in actions than in word: no rain, no rainbows.