Beading community comes together in Thunder Bay
By Rick Garrick
THUNDER BAY — The Thunder Bay Art Gallery’s Aanikoobijiganag: Beading Symposium featured six workshops as well as a Curatorial Panel moderated by Netmizaaggamig Nishnaabeg’s Melissa Twance and an Artist Talk by Aamjiwnaang’s Nico Williams. The symposium was held Feb. 8-11 at the Baggage Building Arts Centre, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Confederation College, and Co. Lab Gallery in Thunder Bay.
“The whole symposium went really great, it’s been three days of getting to know really great folks involved in the beading community,” says Twance, emcee at the symposium. “We’ve had workshops, we’ve had presentations from artists, and it’s just been really great to come together and to talk about the work that we do.”
Twance says she enjoyed the workshops, including the Birchbark Basketry workshop by Fort William’s Gail Bannon, the Edge Beading workshop by Shannon Gustafson, and the Fish Skin Tanning workshop by Leanna Marshall.
“I really enjoyed learning different skills from the workshop facilitators,” Twance says. “We had work from Shannon Gustafson, from Gail Bannon, from Leanna Marshall, all these people that are in Thunder Bay that are doing really cool work.”
Twance adds that she is currently doing a PhD dissertation on beadwork.
“I’m looking at it as a space of learning that already occurs within our communities and how we can detach the idea of learning from schools,” Twance says, noting that beading has been healing for her. “It’s been a way to make sense of a lot of things in my life and as a PhD student it’s a nice way to get away from some of that academic thinking. I started beading way back when I was like 13-years-old and I learned from my nanny Florena Brown. She was a really resourceful woman and she used beading and craftwork as a way to support herself as she got older and I really value the skills she passed on to me.”
Twance moderated the Curatorial Panel Gathering Threads: Conversations Inside Radical Stitch at the Dibaajimogamig Lecture Theatre at Confederation College on the first day of the symposium and she also organized a Public Reception for the Aanikoobidoon: Stringing Together Past, Present and Future exhibition at the Co. Lab Gallery, which she curated, on the second day of the symposium.
Williams delivered his Artist Talk at the Baggage Building Arts Centre on the second day of the symposium.
“Being able to talk about beads and to share that with all these bead workers was just a great experience,” Williams says. “Everybody was able to really understand all the hard work and emotion that goes behind the work because when we create things, we breathe life into them. Definitely I want to see more events like this happening all over.”
Williams was also one of 25 artists whose work was featured in the Thunder Bay Art Gallery’s Radical Stitch exhibition, which runs until March 3.
“I have a couple of pieces, some of the very early works that I had beaded,” Williams says. “I’ve only been beading for about 10 years now, but there’s early geometric works in there. And then you have the more experimental work, which is sort of a beaded bandolier bag that has a bubble wrap texture and an Amazon sort of iconographic image on the face of it.”
Fort William Chief Michele Solomon highlighted how the beadwork in the Radical Stitch exhibition impacted her during the symposium’s Opening Night Public Reception at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.
“It’s hard to actually even have the words to describe the beauty and impact of the beadwork that is here,” Solomon says. “I feel like even saying beadwork is not adequate because there are profound statements and profound identity in all of the pieces of art that are here and I’m just really amazed by the power of statement that is in each and every piece.”