Cultural Confluence: Part IV
Weaving memories of the past, mindfulness of the present, and meditations on the future
Megan Driving Hawk works like a busy spider in Cultural Confluence: Part IV, quilting potential meeting points for two beloved cultures still entangled in historic conflict. Through inherited, vintage, and manipulated fabrics, accompanied by her original poems, she explores traditional emblems of cultural identity, embracing diversity as regenerative of communities, achieving harmony though different but complimentary iconic designs. The artist pays healing homage to her Celtic ancestors and her husband's Lakota people, dreaming of the future children of the two as hopeful ambassadors of forgiveness, and thus, change.
Ernesto Pujol, Faculty
New York, Summer, 2018
Ernesto Pujol, Faculty
New York, Summer, 2018
As above, so below; as within, so without is a knitted blanket with “wrong and right” side knits featured on both sides of the blanket. With both sides showing, it drapes over a wooden chair similar to the one my grandmother had when I was a little girl. The blanket features the Lakota creation symbol in traditional red, black, yellow, and white colors, a Celtic knot in a tweed yarn, and smaller textured triangles in the open grey space, representing my unknown DNA. All the linear designs are visually reminiscent of DNA patterns, as I contemplate the social struggle to reconcile opposed cultural identities.
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In the middle of the blue is a quilt that includes radiating circles of my grandmother’s fabric, fabric with my poetry embroidered on it, fabric from my collection, and hand-dyed fabric in Lakota medicine wheel colors. Quilting is the craft of my father’s mother and her mother. I first learned quilting from my paternal grandmother and great-grandmother when I was a little girl. Although I don’t remember it, my father has told me how I worked on a white quilt with them. After my great-grandmother died, I decided to create a quilt out of her clothes and transferred photographs of her to it. I started this with my grandmother but did not finish it before she died, four years later. Traditionally, the Lakota used buffalo hide to make blankets, but after the Europeans exterminated the buffalo, there were no more hides. It is said that Christian missionary women taught Lakota women how to quilt, and they incorporated the symbols used on hide blankets. These include the morning star, which is a circle with triangles reaching out in four directions. Star quilts are representations of the quilter reaching out from the center. In this particular star quilt, I am reaching out to my father, to his family and ancestors, and to my husband’s family and ancestors, while meditating on the family we are currently creating. The eight outermost tips of the quilt are Lakota medicine wheel colors: white represents the north and the wind; red represents the east and where the light of the morning star and spring come from; yellow represents summer and growth; and black represents the south and water. This quilt is displayed on a wooden rack that evokes racks for tanning hide.
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A place of shadows is a web of beaded thread. The spider and the web represent both my impulse to fix and repair people and things, as well as my anxiety about familial betrayal and abandonment. In some species, the female spider protects her unborn and young using the web. In other species, potential mates will tap the web to announce their presence. In return, the female spider decides if she wants to mate with or kill the male spider. The backside of the web represents my anxieties and fears, whereas the front side contains the products of the healing process. I work like a spider.
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Whispers are multiple pieces of beaded designs based on Celtic symbolism that has been reconstructed within the configuration of a Native American beading form. The time-consuming making process for each of these pieces provides me with the opportunity of working through my buried cultural anxieties.
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Through the weaving of cultures that are close to me, I wish to explore how cultures can be woven together with their differences so as to create a diverse world. At a time when this is not valued, it is important for me to represent and embody it. I also create this work for my unborn children.
All Cultural Confluence pieces are Not For Sale. If you wish to buy Native textiles, beadwork, or needlework please support any of the following artists and organizations.
https://arizonaindiantourism.org/azindianfestival/
http://shop.beyondbuckskin.com
https://www.creationsforcontinuity.com
https://www.nativeartmarket.org
https://byellowtail.com/
https://www.bluhummingbirdbeadwork.com/
https://www.makaearthterra.com/
https://squareup.com/store/molinas-lakota-beadwork
https://eighthgeneration.com/collections/jamie-okuma
https://arizonaindiantourism.org/azindianfestival/
http://shop.beyondbuckskin.com
https://www.creationsforcontinuity.com
https://www.nativeartmarket.org
https://byellowtail.com/
https://www.bluhummingbirdbeadwork.com/
https://www.makaearthterra.com/
https://squareup.com/store/molinas-lakota-beadwork
https://eighthgeneration.com/collections/jamie-okuma