Artist Statement

 I take photographs as a way to record evidence of my Indigenous Siletz identity. By working with these pictures I take from my iphone I use mapping technology to draw a gridded plan for beaded works that regenerate these images. Once the picture has been pixelated through the software’s filter, I hand-bead the resulting pattern. Beading from the digital patterns becomes a visual metaphor for how cultural knowledge travels across generations which is distorted, filtered and has shifted.

Through this process, my beadwork is coded to reveal and obscure my experiences of kinship within my family. Each bead is a meditative step toward reconnecting with my ancestors and myself. The resolution of the image created by the beads becomes a tool for questioning what is unseen—what has been erased or forgotten in the fabric of my Siletz identity. This creates space for protection and allows me to hold onto what is sacred and what is personal—my memories of family, cultural practices like hunting, and my great-great-great-grandmother’s basketry.

I blend traditional techniques with synthetic materials such as plastic beads and synthetic string, fusing the complexity of my mixed Indigenous and white identity. The fuse beads, petroleum-based and globally sourced, carry their own contradictions—connecting my work to extraction. I play with these tensions: What does it mean to be Native and make art from synthetic matter? What does it mean to use a material that has caused trauma to the land? 

My beadwork allows me to live within moments of connection to my Indigeneity, embodying personal memory while engaging with the gaps and silences that remain. I am investigating the images, objects, and places that shape my lineage, revealing how my identity is formed through kinship, and echoes from the past.