Robinson and her two sisters, Genevieve Tomey and Louise Red Corn, began to produce the old design of Osage ribbonwork, a form of needlework that they had learned from tribal elders. Soon they were researching additional designs, digging into neighbors’ trunks, and traveling to distant museums. In time, their trademark, “Ribbonwork a Specialty,” attracted customers nationwide.
Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim is an embroiderer whose journey as an artist started in her birthplace of Safad.
Em Bun was born January 1, 1916, in a small village in southern Cambodia. Her maternal ancestors had always been considered the village weavers. As a child, she watched her grandmother and mother weaving. Em Bun learned to weave from her mother when she was about 10 years old. She also learned to process the silk from cocoons raised on the family’s farmland.
In 1979, Em Bun, along with her four daughters and two sons, fled Cambodia because of the communist takeover. They escaped to refugee camps in Thailand, and finally arrived in the United States on June 4, 1981. They settled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, because one of her sons was already living there.
In the United States, it was difficult for Em Bun to continue her prestigious work as weaver, farmer, and merchant. The language barrier inhibited her ability to make new friends, and she lapsed into isolation and depression. Then a group of Pennsylvania women provided her with a loom and weaving materials. Em Bun was truly happy for the first time in nine years, according to her children.
Subsequently, Em Bun was recognized as a master weaver by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Grants from the council encouraged her daughters to study their mother’s art. All her family members now wear Em Bun’s bright pure silk hand-woven sarong skirts to Cambodian weddings and celebrations. Cambodians up and down the East Coast have placed their own orders for the two-meter lengths of silk. Em Bun uses leftover silk from a tie factory in central Pennsylvania, anointing the materials as she weaves with tapioca and coconut oil to provide the unparalleled luster and sheen of true Cambodian silk.
The subtlety of a master Cambodian weaver is expressed in the basic decisions of which colors enhance others. Although Em Bun’s work appears to be mostly solid colors, close examination reveals that the warp threads differ from the weft threads that cross, producing unusual and shimmering hues. Em Bun’s exquisite and sensitive work has helped her continue to serve as the village weaver, though her village is now nationwide. In addition to her children, she has taught others her art. She has given demonstrations at the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., and in her own community. She has helped fellow Cambodian immigrants maintain contact with their heritage and has been a catalyst for the preservation of Cambodian traditional arts in the United States.
Through the years, Littlefield applied the skills she learned as a child to make traditional Native costumes and other regalia. She adapted new materials and designs while maintaining the traditional Native art style. In making button robes, for example, she used wool blankets, felt beads, and buttons, sewn onto the blanket in a detailed design.
Eva Washakie McAdams was born in 1927 in Fort Washakie, Wyoming, on the Wind River Reservation, the great-granddaughter of the renowned nineteenth-century Shoshone leader Chief Washakie. As a child, she learned beadwork, an integral part of Shoshone life that is passed on through generations within families. “All of the women in the Washakie family are noted for their beadwork,” she said. “I was taught at home by my mother. It’s something that was handed down.”
In time, McAdams was able to do exquisite beadwork and buckskin sewing. The teachings of her mother were augmented by her grandmother Mary Washakie and her aunt Virginia Norseep.
Using a palette of fine seed or cut ceramic beads applied either to Indian smoked and tanned buckskin or to commercially available white buckskin, she crafts a wide variety of items — ceremonial vests, pants, dance dresses, belts, purses, pendants, and other traditional wares. Among her most prized creations are moccasins, both lowtop and hightop, with elaborately decorated leggings. She applies the beads with either a “lazy” or an overlay stitch. Some of her beads are extremely small, only a little larger than a pinhead. She prefers ceramic beads, but also makes extensive use of cut-glass beads, many of which are imported from the Czech Republic.
Floral patterns — especially the rose, long preferred among her Eastern Shoshone people — and traditional geometric designs shape most of her work. Although Plains moccasin designs and customs are often gender-specific and vary from tribe to tribe, many of McAdams’s popular designs are worn by both men and women.
Eva and her late husband, Alfred “Dutch” McAdams, operated a ranch near the Little Wind River in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains west of town. She raised six children and taught her daughter to sew and bead, but also continued to make ceremonial and dance regalia, which she often sold to other members of her tribe. As her reputation grew, so did the number of commissions she received. To supplement her regalia making and beadwork income, and to contribute to the betterment of her community, she has worked a number of jobs. For five years she managed the tribally owned Warm Valley Arts %26 Craft Store. Later, she started a small business supplying beads, buckskin, and other natural materials to other artists because she was dissatisfied with the quality of some commercially produced goods needed for traditional Shoshone crafts. In addition, she worked as a federal magistrate for the Law and Order Court System operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Wind River Indian Reservation. She was a counselor to Indian inmates at the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins, and served as an election judge for Fremont County and as a researcher for Title IV projects on traditional foods and medicines.
Beadwork remains central to her life. While working in these various jobs, she continued producing Shoshone regalia and beaded garments. Although her designs are based on older traditions, she does not do historic reproductions. If she is asked to reproduce old designs, she makes them subtly different. She believes that the old designs should not be duplicated if they have lost their meanings and personal associations. Her designs incorporate traditional Plains Indian aesthetics while embracing personal and contemporary concerns.
Sewing buckskin is referred to as a survival technique among the Shoshone. Buckskin was traditionally the primary material available for garments, and skilled buckskin sewers were essential to the tribe’s survival, especially during the long, cold Wyoming winters. Beaded clothing like that McAdams creates is now used mainly in Indian pageantry, but garments with minimal beadwork may be used for everyday wear.
Evalena Henry of Peridot, Arizona, is recognized as the master basketweaver among the San Carlos Apache.
Elizabeth James-Perry’s artwork is intimately tied to her Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal homeland. Highly regarded within her community and beyond for her woven wampum, twined basketry, quillwork and sashes, she is considered one of the most accomplished Native artists in New England.
Barry invented the term “autobiofictionalography” to describe the hybrid nature of her multilayered, multimedia approach that incorporates collage and drawing in ink and watercolor.
Regarded as the leading authority on African-American quilts and quiltmaking, Carolyn Mazloomi has fostered and promoted the perpetuation of this traditional art form through her organization the Women of Color Quilter’s Network (WCQN).
Although basketweaving was experiencing a decline in Maine in the 1950s, Keezer became involved in the revitalization of the basketweaving tradition. Not content to replicate old forms exclusively, she began building on the tradition of the strawberry basket.