Hold Your Circle Close, 2021

Hold Your Circle Close is an AR artwork inspired by Sherry Farrell Racette. Exhibited in “Tout-Terrain: Régale | Regal” in 2021.

“Reach deep. Stand tall. Take a breath and tighten that circle around the little and not-so-little ones. It’s all we can do.”  –Sherry Farrell Racette, June 24, 2021.

“Allison’s work, ‘Hold Your Circle Close’ is in response to the above quote by Sherry Farrell Racette following the 215 bodies of children buried at Kamloops Residential school entering the Canadian public consciousness. Lisa Myers wrote on the 2019 exhibition “Beads they’re sewn so tight” at the Textile Museum of Canada : “beading requires a balance of tension in the thread.[1] It’s what keeps the beadwork flat and tight”. Allison’s work is a single circle of beads suspended within space, holding tension but also the focus of the viewers. Circles are associated with all the wonderful ways many Indigenous communities gather, relate and observe time – but a tight circle is also a strategy for weathering multiple, repeated attempts of assimilation and cultural genocide. These attempts have been made through policy targeted at Indigenous children by the Canadian government – residential schools, seizure of children through Child Family Services, and gendered policies around status. Farrell Racette’s statement, “hold your little ones and not-so-little ones close” speaks to the strength and love that weaves itself through our community, even in the face of extreme grief. 

One of the first shapes to be taught when learning to do single-needle or double needle beading is a circle; it begins with a single bead in the middle and rings build outwards. The single bead in the middle is what holds the shape and tension of the outer rings – and in beading, a balance of tension in the thread is what keeps the beadwork flat and tight.  In the same way that the centre of the circle is seminal to the integrity of the beadwork, children make up the heart of our communities.” – Franchesca Hebert-Spence” 

[1]  Myers, Lisa “Beads they’re sewn so tight” Textile Museum of Canada