Growing up near Tsiigehtchic, a Gwich’in settlement in the Northwest Territories, Margaret Nazon was trained in the strict art of beading, where she was taught that there are certain combinations that are acceptable, and some that are not.
In the community, she would watch her older sister and her friends’ mothers stitch beads into floral designs on velvet, stroud, and moose hide after their chores were finished for the day. At their invitation, she began learning how to decorate bracelets, headbands, and moccasins.
… She remembers experienced beaders requiring their students to tear out and redo any work that did not meet their standards of neatness and precision...
Unfortunately, her love wasn’t on the art of beading, but rather on the cosmos…
The local priest, Jean Colas, taught her and other children about the constellations above. In a part of the world where winters bring long nights, the skies can be particularly vivid.
… and her love for it would soon appear in her beadwork in her sixties.
She remembers the day, over a decade ago, when her partner, Bob Mumford, showed her some Hubble Space Telescope images online. The swirling nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies reminded him of beadwork. Nazon agreed; she was particularly attracted to the whirl of colours and ocular shape of the Cat’s Eye Nebula. In the tradition that had characterized her beading experiences, she tried to create a precise replica of the image. This left her frustrated, and she eventually disassembled the piece.
When she read in more detail about phenomena photographed by the Hubble telescope, however, Nazon learned that many, including the Cat’s Eye Nebula, were composed of gases and other moving particles. This meant the colours and shapes captured would long have shifted by the time she saw them. That realization, she says, freed her to “go wild” with her designs. “If I make a wrong stitch, so what? I’m not a perfectionist. I don’t care if this colour doesn’t match with that one. It looks good to me.”
And the result of the freedom that she attained? These gorgeous masterpieces.
Awesome.
(Image Credit: Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre/ The Walrus)