Mouth // Jaida Grey Eagle + Delaney Keshena
Photos and Cyanotypes by Jaida Grey Eagle
Poem by Menomini artist Delaney Keshena
Mouth
A storm to draw jagged horizon
drains south and
still. Harbor
in the impression.
Runny stream underneath
pockets, puddlings of air pluck and
meet as teeth and tongue.
Take your still, warm bitten cheeks.
You're always thinning
and thicken in turn
The privilege of winter
solid, moving, constant
drumming
even when the adults are scared
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.
Delaney Keshena (they/them) is a moccasin maker and fine artist born to a train-bound border town in sleepy, north-central Wisconsin.
Keshena uses hair, skin and glass in their practice of crafting objects in relation with the body. Their work has shown in Italy, Belgium and throughout the US. Delaney is a current participant of the Artisan Development Program, a two year artist residency through North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN