My piece is called "The Friendship Circle,"
The shoes in the circle actually
represent not only groups of people but
individuals as well.
I love shoemaking, I actually learned it
Guatemala.
It's really about the connection, about
learning about our own histories, about
things that connect us, about walking in
each other's shoes, but also taking the
bits and pieces of our everyday
histories and kind of seeing what those
symbols represent or how they're
represented.
A lot of our environment is really transcultural,
where we learn
about the different significance or
symbols in one culture that maybe
represent something different in another.
Culture is language and that's how I
feel about art, art is language.
And so when we look at shoes and shoemaking, it
becomes a language of not only culture but of individual identity.
So, for me that's what it's about.
My dad is Lenni Lenape, it's eastern Oklahoma Delaware.
He taught, you know, basically taught me how to bead.
He's very much a craftsman
as well as an artist, and really focuses
on indigenous craft. And so that really
has influenced me.
My mom, also, is Norwegian, so if you look at Native
American and you put Norwegian together,
definitely, you know, the styles are
totally different, but very unique to the cultures.
Sometimes growing up you don't
really know what you are.
You're kind of bicultural, but you're also American,
you know, you have all these influences.
So, that's part of why I come to the shoes
in the work, because if we look at shoes,
shoes represent individuals, but also
represent a form of making.
My practice, really, as an artist is about innovation and ingenuity.
I'm very intuitive when I work, so I don't always
have a perfect plan when I start, I have an idea,
and then I begin looking at the idea and
when I encounter roadblocks, I shift the
ideas and the ideas come back around.
And so, I feel like teaching is often
that way. Teaching is in the moment, it's
intuitive, you have a plan, but you also
want people to understand and learn
things.
Art is also that same way, you want it to communicate something.
You want people to walk away thinking, "what was that about?"
"What did I walk away with?
what did I learn from that, or did I learn
something or was it just interesting?"
You always want the deeper meaning, or you hope for people to garner that deeper meaning.
I always talk about following your passion.
Follow the things that you're
interested in in art. When you find one
thing and it just tweaks your interest,
or really whether it's art history or
talking about art whether it's making.
Whatever that thing is that
makes your soul, kind of, happy,
then to me that's what it's about.
It's about really learning to communicate with your craft.
