Kelly Church facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kelly Church
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Church in 2023
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Kelly Jean Church
1967 (age 57–58) Michigan, U.S.
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| Nationality | Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians of Michigan, American |
| Education | Family, self-taught AFA Institute of American Indian Arts BFA University of Michigan |
| Known for | Basket making, painting, birchbark biting |
| Movement | Woodlands style |
| Awards | NEA National Heritage Fellowship (2018), Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Award, Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Fellowship |
Kelly Jean Church is a talented artist from Michigan. She is known for making beautiful baskets from black ash trees. She also creates unique paintings and a special art called "birchbark biting." Kelly is a member of the Match-e-benash-she-wish Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe tribes.
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About Kelly Church
Kelly Jean Church was born in 1967. She grew up in southwestern Michigan. Her family has been making baskets for five generations! Kelly learned how to make black ash baskets from her father, Bill Church, and her cousin, John Pigeon. She also learned the Odawa language from her grandmother.
Kelly has continued this family tradition. She has even taught her own daughter, Cherish Parrish, how to make baskets. Kelly also went to college, earning degrees from the Institute of American Indian Studies and the University of Michigan.
Kelly's Amazing Artwork
Kelly Church creates many different kinds of art. She is especially famous for her baskets, but she also paints and does a unique art form called birchbark biting.
Basket Making
Kelly and her family work hard to gather the materials for their baskets. They go into swampy areas in Michigan to find and harvest black ash trees. Getting the wood ready takes much longer than the weaving itself! They remove the bark and then carefully split the wood into thin strips called splints. These splints are then dyed and soaked before Kelly begins to weave.
Kelly makes many types of baskets. Some are useful for everyday life, like fishing baskets or market baskets. She also creates special wedding baskets and fun strawberry baskets. Kelly also makes unique, experimental baskets. She sometimes adds interesting materials like copper, photos, or even plastic window blinds to her designs. These special baskets often carry an important message. They warn people about the possible loss of black ash trees. Tiny bugs called emerald ash borers are unfortunately killing many of these trees.
Birchbark Biting
Kelly is also skilled in an ancient art form called birchbark biting. This art comes from the Great Lakes region. To do it, artists use their eyeteeth to bite designs into a folded piece of young paper birch bark. The bitten areas turn a dark brown, which stands out against the light bark.
Kelly's designs can be abstract, meaning they are patterns, or they can show real things like turtles and dragonflies. These pieces often tell stories. They can also be used as patterns for other crafts, like quillwork or beadwork.
Woodlands Style Painting
Kelly Church is inspired by the Woodlands style of painting. This style is also known as Legend or Medicine painting. A famous artist named Norval Morrisseau helped create this style.
Kelly paints figures from her tribes' old stories, like Nanabozho. She also paints animals that live in Michigan, such as sandhill cranes. She usually uses bright acrylic paints on canvas. She chooses colors that contrast strongly to make her paintings look vibrant and exciting.
Awards and Special Projects
Kelly Church has won many awards for her amazing basketry. She received the Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Award. In 2008, she won the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Fellowship.
Kelly has also worked to protect the black ash tree. In 2006 and 2008, she helped organize meetings to discuss ways to save these trees from the emerald ash borer bug. The National Museum of the American Indian helped support these efforts. Kelly also received the National Museum of the American Indian Artist Leadership Program Award in 2010. She won the Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Award again in 2011.
In 2016, Kelly was honored at the Santa Fe Indian Market. She won the best of basketry award from the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts. The Smithsonian Institution also gave her a Native Scholars Fellowship in 2016. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Eiteljorg Museum. She also received a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.
The National Endowment for the Arts named Kelly Church one of its 2018 National Heritage Fellows. This award recognized her teaching and mentoring work. The award noted that her teaching goes beyond art. It includes talks about science, forest care, controlling pests, traditional languages, and personal family stories.
One of her artworks, Sustaining Traditions–Digital Memories, is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It was added as part of the Renwick Gallery's 50th Anniversary celebration.
Exhibitions
Kelly Church's artwork has been shown in many important art exhibitions:
- 7 Artists, 7 Teachings (2009) at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian. Kelly was both an artist and a curator for this show.
- Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes (2014) at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City.
- Gifts of Art (2015) at the Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan. She exhibited with fellow artist Nancy Bulkley.
- Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists (2019–21). This large exhibition traveled to several museums, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Renwick Gallery.
- An Interwoven Legacy: The Black Ash Basketry of Kelly Church and Cherish Parrish (2021–22) at the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
See also
- List of Indigenous artists of the Americas
- Visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas
