In 2018, Carrie Moran McCleary, the owner and artist of Plains Soul founded “Rock Your Beads Night” to offer a weekly virtual space for artists across North America to connect and create together. Now, in 2023, Moran McCleary hosts Bead Night two times a week on Wednesday and Saturday evenings. You can find out more about Rock Your Beads Night including dates, times, and Zoom information on Plains Soul Instagram and Facebook. 

Bead Night really took off and began to grow into a community of artists at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The shut-down created unprecedented challenges for small Indigenous business owners and Indigenous communities across the globe have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Social isolation pushed many artists to seek out virtual spaces to find community and to create and exhibit their art. Today, as the world continues to feel the ripple effects of the pandemic, Bead Night remains a space for Indigenous artists to connect with one another. 

One Bead Night, while the artists chatted away, Burlington Tooshkenig, sketched a design that he later quilled on the lid of the sweetgrass basket that is featured in this exhibit. As he sketched, he thought about how special it was to have the opportunity to be in a virtual space with all of the artists. He thought, “wouldn’t it be cool if we could have our art in one place.” And so planning for this exhibition began.

Organized into four themes – Care, Balance, Voice, and Home – the Spring 2023 Stories From Bead Night Exhibit highlights the work of 16 of the Indigenous artists who came together on Bead Night to support one another during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

In 2022, curators K.N. McCleary (Little Shell Chippewa Tribe of Montana) and Leah Tamar Shrestinian began interviewing the artists in the Spring 2023 Exhibit to learn about their artistic practices and their artwork. McCleary is a third year student at Yale Law School and pursuing a career in Native American Law. Shrestinian is the Program Manager for the NYU-Yale American Indian Sovereignty Project. Together, McCleary and Shrestinian previously curated the first major exhibition of Indigenous North American art at the Yale University Art Gallery, Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art. Website design and technical support provided by Anna Shrestinian.

In 2024, the artists decided to come together again to showcase their work in a Spring 2024 Stories From Bead Night Exhibit.

For press and other inquiries:
plainssoul@gmail.com

The Spring 2023 Exhibit was supported in part by a grant from the Montana Art Council, an agency of the Montana State Government