Creative Coastal Jewelry Design, with Elizabeth James Perry, 4/2
48 Professors Row
This coming Thursday, our Commons and Commoning gathering will be especially creative: We hope that you will be able to join us for a jewelry design workshop with Aquinnah Wampanoag artist Elizabeth James Perry — a visiting artist with the University Ecologies and the Question of the Commons until May. We will incorporate found shells, beads, and linen into necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, learning about the artists’ traditions and aesthetic choices while playing with materials to make objects ourselves. It will be a wonderful opportunity to learn by doing, listen, share stories and ideas, and just spend time together at an otherwise intense moment of the semester.
We meet at the Center for the Humanities at Tufts (48 Professors Row, Medford) on April 2 at 1PM.
2023 NEA Heritage award recipient Elizabeth James-Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag) engages with Northeastern Woodlands Native cultural expressions, primarily in sculptural forms of wampum shell-carving and bead-making with its connection to identity and sovereignty, maritime traditions and restorative Native gardening.
She is a culture bearer, lecturer, educator and plant walk leader in addition to textile, wampum and quill work.
Her newest work is a Sea Turtle Mound garden created with the Native students at Amherst College. Following Another Crossing, the artist collaborated on a bead film looks at beadmaking of Native shell carvers and industrialized glass bead factories.
