‘I don’t make art in a bubble’

Judy Anderson was teaching art history at First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv) when she decided she needed to know more about the traditional Indigenous art form of beading. 

“Every time I talked about beading, I’d say: ‘This was beaded, and this was beaded,’ but I didn’t understand it," she says. "I could look into the why and the how, but I couldn’t really understand it unless I did it. 

“So, I learned how.”

In the last year, Anderson, a professor in the Department of Art and Art History in Faculty of Arts, has shown her work in Radical Stitch, a group exhibition in the National Gallery in Ottawa; co-edited the book, Bead Talk: Indigenous Knowledge and Aesthetics from the Flatlands; and is part of mâmawohkamâtowak, an exhibition opening at the Nickle Galleries Sept. 19 featuring Anderson and Métis artist and scholar, Katherine Boyer. 

From a colleague at FNUniv who first “taught me how to do a few stitches,” to a beading symposium panel that became the writing collective behind the book, to the studio mate who suggested she “go big” on an early project beading her son’s graffiti, Anderson credits her family, community, colleagues and peers for encouraging her art.

“I've been saying to people quite a bit these days, that I don't make art in a bubble. Some people can, but I can't,” she says. “I need to talk things out with people. And you never know who's going to be the one to give you the answer.”

Anderson, who is from Gordon First Nation, Sask., Treaty 4, focuses her work on spirituality, family, colonialism and nêhiyaw — Cree — ways of knowing and being. One of her pieces in the National Gallery, Every time I think of you I cry, is a vast 9-by-7-ft. piece that is a small reflection of the emotion around her brother, who was taken from her family as a toddler in the Sixties Scoop.

“Somebody asked me once, ‘How come you work so big?’” says Anderson. “Specifically for that piece, it’s representative of the tears I cried, but that's not even close. If we really talked about the grief, it would fill the entire gallery and more.”

As Radical Stitch wraps up at the end of September, Anderson is pleased so many people have seen the work. With 56 artists, the National Gallery says it’s “the largest contemporary beadwork exhibition” to date. “I think it's most artists’ dream to be in an important exhibition at a gallery like the NGC,” Anderson says. Radical Stitch travels to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, N.B., and the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Ind., before ending its North American tour in 2025. 

“One of the things that happened as part of colonization for Indigenous art is women were silenced — the artwork was thought of as less important, and the maker was not attached to the work. For example, the title would be Beadwork by Cree Woman,” says Anderson. 

But with years of “significant work” by many Indigenous scholars, artists and curators, artists' names are now attached to their work. “Since the introduction of beads, beading has always been important,” Anderson says. “Beading has exploded because beadworkers have radically taken their rightful place in the art world.”