A mother-daughter duo — a weaver and an engraver — won Best of Show at this Celebration’s juried arts show. Their winning entry was a spruce root hat called Dancing in the Summer Rain.
At her table at the Celebration Native artists’ market, Goosh-shu Haa Jennie Wheeler said she was surprised to win.
“I was totally shocked yesterday when we got the award, because I really was not expecting it,” she said. “They asked me to say something. I just lost it. I was too emotional.”
She wove the spruce root hat. Her daughter Káakaxaawulga Jennifer Younger wove light blue trade beads into the sides and engraved formline flowers on the hat’s copper top. Red beads line the crown and drip down the hat.
It’s not the first piece they’ve made together, but the copper crown was something Younger said she hadn’t seen in spruce root weaving before.
“I think we both just get super excited about doing something new that we hope is still honoring tradition,” Younger said. “By doing, hopefully, fine weaving, proper formline engrave design, yeah — so we just kind of just did it.”
The name of the piece — Dancing in the Summer Rain — comes from the way those new design elements come together musically.
“When I added those strings of beads on the hat, and I put it on my head, and just the sound it made — It wasn’t like a loud rattle, but it just sounded like the rain on a roof or something,” Younger said.
The hat also won the endangered arts category. Wheeler has been bringing new spruce root weavers into the practice for more than a decade now. She said she’s especially happy to teach students who come from the place that was known for the art two hundred years ago.
“I always wanted to bring spruce root weaving back to Yakutat, because Yakutat was known for the best spruce root weavers in the 1800s, and we lost it for many years,” Wheeler said. “And now I have five students born and raised in Yakutat, young adults, and they are doing really good.”
Dancing in the Summer Rain and the other winning pieces from the juried arts show will be on display in the Nathan Jackson Gallery at the Sealaska Heritage Institute Walter Soboleff building until December.
Disclaimer: KTOO 360TV is contracted to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.
