Grandmother’s Starquilts
A reflection on winter can be as simple, and as layered, as recalling a grandmother's quilt. We asked Jaida Grey Eagle to tell us about her grandmother's designs, which have inspired her own work as an artist, and speak to season by way of life's broader cycles too.
"As long as you have beadwork, you'll never be hungry" was something my mother told me as she taught me beadwork from an early age. She was never really hands-on, but I learned by watching her. The way she could tie a knot in a moment and thread a needle as if it's never been a challenge for anyone. Her hands were small with long fingers, and we had the same freckle on our right pinky, but hers was on the inside of her hand, and mine was on the outside. I knew I learned a lot from those hands, which carried so many of our family stories and legacies.
My great grandparents raised my mother; when she was young, her grandmother would give her the task of beading so many daisy chains before she could play so that they could sell the pieces to tourists on our reservation. My mom never seemed incredulous about this; she knew what she had to do to help support her family from an early age. My great grandmother was apparently a prolific star quilt maker, but I've never seen one of her quilts. Coming from a family who found and created art as a form of survival, many of our past creations are not with us. I often think about this when I am around friends going through their own family histories that our family did not leave me with. I wonder where my grandmother's quilts are, if they are a part of other people's families' histories about the time they traveled through the west and bought art from Indians or if they're in collections somewhere far off folded in a corner collecting dust.
My mother and father raised their children off the reservation in a small town in Minnesota. They loved the water and the green here and wanted us to be able to run around barefoot. I remember my mother always spoke to me in color. One of the strongest memories I have as a child is her having me look at the sunflowers on her dress while we were at a park and showing me it wasn't just yellow, brown, and green, that sunflowers have red, maroon, orange, turquoise, navy blues, and lime greens. As I became an adult, our conversations were always circling colors as we beaded together, gossiped, and shaped our beadwork. Colors, coffee, and gossip. Her grandmother told her always to use six colors or more for the ultimate balance in all of our creations.
An uncle recently told me he remembers visiting our grandma and my mother sitting with her threading her needles in various colors as our grandma was losing her eyesight. She'd have them ready for her as she sewed her quilts. He said there were probably 20 different needles with 20 different colors, and he wondered how they worked so fast. I imagine their little hands with long fingers could work through an entire quilt quickly. I remember being taught to sew very early, and I had a knot that I undid without asking how. My mom gasped and said, "You're just like a grandma," although I may not know my grandmother's work, I like to believe I have her hands.
“I was brought up in color and intricacy. I’ve heard so many survival stories of how our family made it through rough times by using our family’s art.”
My journey with beading began as early as my family trusted me with a needle. I would make small pairs of earrings, and soon, I began to make fringed earrings with more than 6 colors using some of the smallest beads available. When I begin to make a large stock of my earrings I begin to see my history, I can see my grandmother’s relationship with color translated to today, I can see my mother’s eye for detail and my own eye for patience. I was brought up in color and intricacy. I've heard so many survival stories of how our family made it through rough times by using our family's art. Sometimes I joke that I am made of art as most of my meals have come from the work of the women in my life. While I may not know my grandmother’s work, nor have seen it, I can see it in everything I create with my hands, my mother’s hands, and our grandmother’s hands. I may not have access to my past but I certainly am shaping my own future with their legacy.
Jaida Grey Eagle is an Oglala Lakota artist, currently located in St. Paul, MN. Jaida is a photojournalist, producer, beadwork artist, and writer.
Jaida is a photojournalist living and working in St. Paul, MN. She is a Report for America Fellow with the Sahan Journal covering the immigrant and refugee stories of the Twin Cities. She is also researching Indigenous photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as an ongoing former Curatorial Fellow.
Jaida is a co-producer on the Sisters Rising Documentary, which is the story of six Native American women reclaiming personal and tribal sovereignty in the face of ongoing sexual violence against Indigenous women in the United States and has recently received an Honorable Mention at the Big Sky Doc Festival. She is passionate about bringing awareness to indigenous issues, especially those which impact indigenous women.
Jaida is a B.Yellowtail Collective artist which features her beaded earrings and be found here. Her work is inspired by her family's usage of color, passed down from a great grandmother’s star-quilt color-philosophy of using six colors or more in every piece. Jaida creates abstractions of her great grandmother's star quilts as fringed earrings with a blending of colors that are significant to her family's legacy as Lakota artists.
She holds her Bachelors of Fine Arts emphasizing in Fine Art Photography from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.