In early August, artist Dyani White Hawk and her team tested the construction of her new sculpture, bound for New York City. To make the piece, her studio crew, which includes relatives and friends, hand-loomed strips of glass beads. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Before the beads clad artist Dyani White Hawk’s sculpture, before they caught curators’ eyes, they were held in her bead workers’ hands.
Her relatives’ hands.
If White Hawk, one of Minnesota’s most in-demand artists, were to bead one of her works alone, it would take years. So to create the big, intricately beaded pieces that are becoming her signature, the Sičáŋǧu Lakota artist has enlisted family members to work in her northeast Minneapolis studio. They include her mother-in-law, her cousin, her daughter. A sister-in-law, recruited while in town for a powwow. Friends who have become family, too.
They pluck the glass bugle beads from bags, thread them onto needles and weave them between strands of sinew pulled taut across looms. They think good thoughts. They take deep breaths. They razz each other a little.
On past paintings, including the massive, mesmerizing “Wopila | Lineage” a star of the 2022 Whitney Biennial, White Hawk outlined with detailed diagrams where each bead would go. “Beading-by-number,” as she put it.
But with this new sculpture, inspired by two Native American artists who came before her, White Hawk gave her crew only basic parameters. The designs were up to them.
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