Beaded detail and drawing for Give Away Horses, a dress created in 2006 by Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty to honour

her grandparents Ben and Josephine Gray Hawk

In her work, Juanita Growing Thunder-Fogarty favors both abstract and realistic designs focused on nature, mythology, and daily life that are interpretations of historical imagery and sometimes come to her in dreams.

Growing Thunder-Fogarty’s great-grandmother made 17 women’s outfits in her lifetime, all by kerosene lantern, and her mother, Joyce, has completed a woman’s outfit commissioned by the Smithsonian that is exhibited this year in New York.

Partly quoted from Southwest Art

Details of antique dresses from around 1850 showing porcupine quills and beadwork

Juanita is especially skilled at quillwork, which she characterizes as one of the first authentic Native art forms.

Quillwork has a deeply spiritual history: Legend has it that Blackfeet artists learn to quill in their dreams. The Dakota Sioux tell of an old lady making a quilled robe which, when finished, would signal the end of the world. As she sleeps each night, the dog at her feet tears out her day’s work. Each morning she must begin anew.

Quills must be pulled from a freshly killed porcupine, washed to remove the oil, and dyed using a combination of synthetic and natural coloring from wolf moss, bloodroot, and blackberries. “What takes so long is the sorting,” the artist explains. “The quills are all different sizes. I sort by size and color, a little at a time. It would take a month if I picked them all at once for a single piece.” She softens the quills in warm water and flattens them using her teeth, then attaches them to deer or moose hide with applique or zigzag stitches. Often her bags are finished with quills wrapped around slatted rawhide to create complex patterns.

Joyce, Juanita and Jessica Growing Thunder

In this picture you see Joyce Growing Thunder wearing a traditional Assiniboine-style dress that she made. Grass Valley, California 1986

For this special occasion we have the opportunity to work together with native beadwork and quill artists Joyce, Juanita and Jessica Growing Thunder.
They are 3 generations continuing the longtime tradition within their family to make beautiful beaded dresses.

Currently they have been making new work for August’s Santa Fe Indian Market..
This time they made 3 painted dolls.

Juanita Growing Thunder-Fogarty, 40, began beading simple belts at age 10 and soon graduated to dolls, cradle boards, knife cases and medicine bags adorned with beads, tassels, and quills modeled on those her nomadic Sioux and Assiniboine ancestors packed and carried across the Plains.

A house is a house is a house

A House is a house is a house:
A house can be seen as a human body.
We will make couture doilies on the spots where the human body touches the house.
This is for healing, protecting and ornamenting it.
Little treasures as a gift from us to the house.

A few pictures of ways the body contacts the house in a regular way.

Magi's work

Preview of Magdalina's work straight from Bulgaria.