Babe and Carla Hemlock facts for kids

Babe and Carla Hemlock are a husband-and-wife artist team from the Kahnawake Mohawk Nation Territory in Quebec, Canada. Babe is a talented woodcarver, while Carla is known for her textile art, especially quilts. They create art using many different materials. Carla's amazing quilt work has won awards and is even part of the collection at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

About the Artists

Carla was born in 1961 in Kahnawake, near Montreal, Quebec. Babe was also born in 1961, but he grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He comes from a family of Mohawk ironworkers, following in the footsteps of three generations before him.

Their Art Journey

Babe and Carla use their art to share stories about Mohawk culture and history. They often work together to create art that also talks about important social and political issues.

Honoring Mohawk Ironworkers

Babe carved and painted a piece called Walking in Two Worlds. Carla created a quilt titled Tribute to Mohawk Ironworkers. This quilt combines beadwork and fabric shapes inspired by a famous 1932 photograph by Charles Ebbets. That photo showed Mohawk men sitting high up on a steel beam during construction. These artworks honor the Mohawk construction workers from the late 1800s and 1900s. These brave workers helped build many tall buildings in New York City, including the famous Empire State Building.

Art About Important Issues

Carla's quilt, Haudenosaunee Passport, brings attention to the Haudenosaunee Nations. These nations existed long before Canada and the United States of America were formed, showing their right to govern themselves.

Babe creates wooden cradleboards, which are traditional baby carriers. He carves and paints them with his own unique designs. These designs often challenge common ideas about Native American identity. In 2013, Babe and Carla worked together on a cradleboard about the traditional Indigenous game of lacrosse. This artwork won a top award at the 2013 Santa Fe Indian Market.

Carla says her art is meant to "start conversations about issues that continue on her people's lands." For example, she uses her art to make people think about how certain activities might affect the land in the future. Her quilt Turtle Island Unraveling, made from cotton and glass beads, is an example of this. Carla has also used special "treaty cloth" in her art. This cloth dates back to the 1700s and has the original words of the Treaty of Canandaigua. By using this cloth, she highlights how her people have kept their promises in the treaty, even when the United States government did not always keep theirs.

In 2014, the couple won another top award at the Santa Fe Indian Market. Carla Hemlock's artwork, Our Destruction, was added to the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection.

While the Hemlocks often use their art to discuss important issues, they also include traditional Iroquois symbols. For instance, Carla often features images of turtles in her quilts.

Where Their Art Is Kept

You can find Babe and Carla Hemlock's artwork in these collections:

• National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC
• Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS

Major Art Shows

Their art has been shown in important exhibitions, including:

• Changing Hands III: Art Without Reservations, at the Museum of Arts and Design
• Iroquois Artistic Visions: From Sky World to Turtle Island, at the Iroquois Indian Museum
• Walking With Our Sisters, a traveling exhibit