This essay explores Serena Steel’s evolving relationship with beadwork, highlighting the meticulous, experimental nature of her craft, and the personal symbolism behind recurring motifs like daisies and strawberries, which enrich her creative practice.
q̓emxwéqsem (to tie a knot at the end of your thread) will be on view in our gallery until September 26, 2024.
Processes & Experiments
Over the years I have tried various forms of craft, and I am continually drawn back to the practices that require slow, tactile, movements. Beadwork often moves at a glacial pace, but that has become what I enjoy so much about it. The slow, meticulous, work has made me learn to become more considerate and intentional with the objects that I create. The process lends itself to many ways of working, allowing the maker room to plan ahead and design with precision, or to work intuitively without a plan. I often prefer the latter. Practising beadwork has taught me how to problem-solve and trust my intuition.
Many of the objects that I make are experimental in one way or another. Whether it’s trying out a new pattern, working with different colours, or playing with the scale of the work, the process is just as important as the finished product. I think that beadwork has the opportunity to be so expansive and I’m always interested in finding new ways to use these materials.
My most recent experiment was with sewing giant three-dimensional beads to create a soft sculpture daisy chain. This began with patterning out the pieces that I would need to create a functional bead shape, then tracing these patterns out on melton wool backed with interfacing. I sewed together the inner “tube” of the bead, then attached the “top” and “bottom” pieces by sewing in a circle to connect the two to the centre piece. Finally, I sewed on the outer piece to complete the bead shape, stuffed it with polyfil, and seamed up the last edge. I hand-stitched seven beads in total in order to create the daisy shape, and it took me approximately a month of continuous work. To complete the installation, I bought a thick rope to “thread” together the beads. It was important to get the scale of each object right to make it convincing. This project really helped me to push my ideas further and try something outside my regular scope of work.
“I think that beadwork has the opportunity to be so expansive and I’m always interested in finding new ways to use these materials.“
Symbols & Imagery
I have a handful of recurring images in my work. As mentioned above, the daisy often makes an appearance in my work. The daisy chain is one of the fun stitches I remember learning at the beginning of my beading journey, and it holds so much nostalgia and joy for me. It is a symbol that lends itself really well to my work. I often use it on the fringes of earrings, or to decorate the surfaces of baskets and prints. I find it is something that I keep returning to because despite its simplicity it can be used in so many different ways.
Another symbol that is repeated in my work is the strawberry. Berries in general are a visual that I find myself always coming back to, but strawberries hold a special place in my life because they are the first berry that I learned how to confidently identify in the wild. Wild strawberries seem to grow everywhere back home, and are always identified by their accompanying white floral blossoms. Berries also relate back to the act of berrypicking, which is often done together as a social activity. My great grandparents used to go berry picking together, and they would come home with ice cream buckets full of their labour that they would later turn into jam. So whenever I bead berries I often think about them.
Both of these symbols are relatively simple but they can be personalised in so many different ways. Each artist seems to have their own signature style, and I like to think that I’ve found a “strawberry formula” to call my own. I keep the shape of the berry very round to resemble a wild berry, and have two simple leaves arced upwards towards the sky. When I am stuck in a beading slump and can’t think of anything new to create I always turn back to these patterns to get my hands moving again.
artist bio
Serena Steel is a Secwépemc interdisciplinary artist and curator from Simpcw First Nation whose practice takes the form of beadwork, sculpture, and storytelling. Her work revolves around acts of care, reciprocity, and belonging.
Steel currently works on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She holds a BFA in Critical and Cultural Practice from Emily Carr University with a minor in Social Practice and Community Engagement.