Mexican-American altar maker, or Chicana altarista, whose work is informed by a deep spiritual belief in the traditional process, which pays homage and evokes memory of people, events, or places through multilevel structures embellished with photos, traditional foods, flowers, and handmade and found adornments.
Nora Dean Thompson was one of the last fluent speakers of the Unami dialect in the Lenape language. She grew up a traditionalist learning the culture of her people and began to spread the knowledge to the younger generations.
Yakama basket weaver
Ezell is a master of embroidery and appliqué, the process of fastening one piece of fabric to a ground fabric with tiny stitches.
Laotian-American weaver
“Her quilts are the visual equivalent of jazz or blues. She will take a basic pattern and then do variations on it just like a musician will do with a jazz piece.”
In Sioux culture, an accomplished traditional quiltmaker is measured not only by a mastery of needlework techniques, of the creative use of the star motif, and of traditional aesthetic principles, but also by her dedication to the community in the practice of her art. Over her lifetime, Menard produced scores of quilts for traditional family and community purposes.
A member of the Bitter Water Clan, she was raised in a community of traditional Navajo artists and religious practitioners. In the 1970s, encouraged by a burgeoning Native American art market and local traders, Black focused her creative work on basketweaving and introduced several innovations that proved critical to the tradition’s survival.
A descendent of the Gullah community of coastal South Carolina, Mary Jackson learned the art of making baskets at the age of four from her mother and grandmother.
Manigault’s baskets have attained widespread recognition because of the sculptural quality of the forms she created and the imaginative use of natural design and color. She often experimented with different forms, but never overdecorated, understanding the value of the plain, unadorned traditional designs.