Sharing Honors and Burdens

Celebrates the groundbreaking work of six contemporary craft artists from Indigenous Nations across the US

This volume features the work of six Indigenous artists whose craft speaks to the responsibility of honoring cultural traditions while shaping the future. Joe Feddersen (Arrow Lakes/Okanagan) is a printmaker, glass artist, and basket maker who creates geometric patterns sourced from everyday life. Multimedia artist Erica Lord (Athabascan/Iñupiat) crafts beaded burden straps and sled dog blankets with abstracted representations of diseases that disproportionately affect Native and other marginalized communities. Geo Neptune (Passamaquoddy) is a master basket maker, activist, and educator who uses colorful narrative to emphasize the honor and burden of keeping tradition alive. Sisters Lily Hope and Ursala Hudson (Tlingit) weave labor-intensive textiles that convey Tlingit values of reciprocity and balance, maintaining cultural integrity while experimenting with new forms and materials. Textile artist Maggie Thompson (Fond du Luc Ojibwe) creates large-scale works that explore the intersections of grief and trauma with honor, beauty, and healing.

Exhibition dates: Renwick Gallery, May 26, 2023 — March 31, 2024

Lara M. Evans (Cherokee) is director of the Research Center for Contemporary Native Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Miranda Belarde-Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit) is an independent curator and the Jill and Joe McKinstry Endowed Faculty Fellow of Native North American Indigenous Knowledge at the University of Washington's Information School. Anya Montiel (Mexican/Tohono O'odham descent) is curator at the National Museum of the American Indian and former curator of American and Native American women's art and craft at the Renwick Gallery.