Artist shares Anishinaabe traditions and quillwork with Birmingham, Southfield

BIRMINGHAM/SOUTHFIELD — Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians elder and quillwork artist Yvonne Walker Keshick will be visiting Birmingham and Southfield to share traditions. At both events, Keshick will be joined by her daughter and fellow quillwork artist Odeimin Walker Keshick.

Their medium uses birchbark and porcupine quills to create detailed designs with personal and cultural significance to the Odawa and other Anishinaabe people. Keshick’s work can be found at museums in the U.S. and Europe, including the Smithsonian and the Welt Museum in Vienna.

Yvonne Walker Keshick was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 2014. She was also honored with the Michigan Heritage Award by the Michigan Traditional Arts Program “for the excellence of her artwork and her commitment to perpetuating her art to future generations,” said Masha MacDowell, the director of the Michigan Traditional Arts Program.

MacDowell has known Keshick for nearly 40 years through the Michigan Traditional Arts Program. She explained that in order to be able to create this medium, an artist has to be out in nature to harvest materials. Oftentimes, artists will find recently deceased porcupines on the side of the road, and people who know artists will pick them up as well for an artist to use.

“It shows even more of a community appreciation of how you source these materials and how they’re needed to perpetuate the art,” MacDowell said.

The Southfield Public Library program

First, they will be featured at a free event 6 p.m. April 8 at the Southfield Public Library. This event will focus on Keshick’s work in birchbark and porcupine quill box design. Throughout the lecture, visitors will learn the traditions and cultural importance of the art to the Odawa and other Anishinaabe people.

Darla Van Hoey, president of the Southfield Historical Society, said, “I’m really excited about having the two of them here to share the storytelling there. It’s such a rich history.”

To register for this event, visit southfieldlibrary.org/calendar-of-events.

The Birmingham Museum event

The next day, April 9, the Keshicks will hold an immersive workshop 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Birmingham Museum.

“It helps us at the Birmingham Museum connect some of these amazing works in our collection to the cultural tradition that created those objects,” Birmingham Museum Director Leslie Pielack said.

She said that one of the most interesting aspects of these baskets is their origin and what they mean, culturally and traditionally, to the Indigenous people who make them.

The Keshicks’ work is included in the Birmingham Museum’s current exhibit, “Our Indigenous Heritage: The Living Art of Anishinaabe Basketry,” among other Indigenous artists.

The six-hour workshop April 9 costs $180 per person. Since registration is very limited, anyone interested in participating is encouraged to reach out to Pielack as soon as possible at (248) 530-1682 or lpielack@bhamgov.org.