Email
PrintKen Williams, Shan Goshorn and Susan Folwell: What Sets These 3 Groundbreaking Artists Apart
A beadwork artist, potter and basketry mastermind discuss developing their styles and pushing the limits of their work. All three will show March 7 and 8 at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market in Phoenix.
The award-winning tobacco bag "He Was Iconic" by Ken Williams.
Courtesy of Heard Museum
(page 1 of 2)
Ken Williams
Bold colors, rare materials, details that pop at the viewer and an eye for storytelling are what set beadwork artist Ken Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho/Seneca) apart from other contemporaries.
Williams won the coveted Best of Show award at the 2014 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market for “He Was Iconic,” a tobacco bag beaded in tribute to Hopi jewelry artist Charles Loloma, which awed audiences with its use of pearls, beads of gold and high-grade coral, and real hair to braid, among other surprise details.
He’s won numerous other awards, but some of Williams’ favorite beading memories come from his boyhood days, when he taught himself to bead by watching his elders do the one-needle spot stitch, the two-needle tack, the lazy stitch and the peyote stitch, among others, and by sitting by his aunts and uncles as they hosted beading parties where folks sat around drinking coffee and eating chokecherry gravy with frybread and stew as they practiced age-old traditional beadwork.
“With my Indian culture, you don’t learn by asking, ‘How do you do this stitch?’ You sit next to them and follow along on your own piece. You’ll be told if you do something wrong, but that’s about it,” Williams explains, adding that his family—the Spoonhunters, noted beadwork masters—encouraged a teenage Williams to pursue beadwork as a serious life endeavor. “I resolved to focus on refining my work, not only as a potential future for myself, but also to reflect well upon my family’s reputation.”
With the limited time he has to devote to beading projects, Williams, the manager of Case Trading Post at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, focuses his beadwork on making fancy bags of all shapes and sizes, including handbags, shoulder pouches and delicate pictorial purses.
“For me, beadwork is both familiar and comforting,” Williams says. “I do beadwork because I love it.”
Features on Shan Goshorn and Susan Folwell will appear online the week of Feb. 16. Find them in the print edition of Native Peoples magazine on newsstands now.
