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Wearable art created by Gitxsan artist from Prince George

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Gitxsan artist Carrie Davis of Prince George creates wearable art.

Her intricate beadwork is her newly learned skill, which she has embraced with great enthusiasm.

Shalane Pauls, of the Tahltan nation, got Davis started.

“We grew up together and she sat with me and I told her I wanted to make a pair of earrings,” Davis said.

“Our first session was six hours and she would not touch my needle, she would not touch my beads, she guided me with her words and I sat in her kitchen and finished my first pair of earrings,” Davis recalled.

“The next day I went back, we made another pair and then she told me to bead every single day for two hours until I was comfortable with whatever pattern that I was doing and I did that for a year,” Davis said.

She’s been beading for about two years now.

“I don’t bead nearly as often but when I do I always challenge myself to learn a new technique,” Davis said.

“Beading for me has really been about reclamation and exploring my culture. It’s about visibility and allyship. Indigenous beadwork is not just for Indigenous people, it is for our allies to be part of our reclamation and reconciliation.”

When creating her artwork, Davis will access other Indigenous artists’ supplies if she can’t use or harvest her own, she said.

The backing on some of her earrings come from a Haida artist and her wooden stands she hangs her jewelry from come from an artist in Alberta.

“My brother is a hunter and he brought me antlers and I sat with a friend who owns a saw and we learned how to saw antlers together,” Davis explained. “It’s been a learning process. Beading is definitely endless and the more I learn, the more I touch animals and use hides and furs, bones, shells and quills – I use them all and I feel connected to them and the more I bead the more I learn about myself and the more I can teach my children.”

Davis has lived in Prince George for the last 14 years.

“I am a social worker helping mostly Indigenous clients who are at risk of having their children removed from their care,” Davis said. “So I advocate for reunification and keeping those kids at home. And I raise my own four kids and I bead.”

Davis is a member of the Gitxsan Wolf Clan, born and raised in Prince Rupert.

“I’m a hybrid kind of Indian,” Davis laughed. “My maternal grandmother is from Kitimaat village, grandfather from Fort Simpson, BC, mom Gitxsan, maternal grandfather is from Switzerland – so I have quite a blend of culture and background.”

When Davis beads, she puts a little bit of herself into each piece of artwork and it’s very personal, she said.

“The messages in the beadwork are creator driven, they are spiritual and I really have to pay attention to what thoughts are coming to me as I am doing my beadwork,” Davis added. “I feel that everything carries an energy within itself, so I encourage people to touch my work. It should feel good in your hand. Transferring positive energy is what it’s all about.”

 

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate – Cracked.com

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate  Cracked.com



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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 – CBC.ca

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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96  CBC.ca



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A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last

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LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.

More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.

The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.

They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.

“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”

It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.

Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”

Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.

“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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