LAYERS OF MEANING: Anishinaabe artist adds personal stories, modern touch to traditional look

Leah Yellowbird wants you to touch her paintings. In fact, she isn’t sure how you could look at them and not.

“I want you to touch the squirrel,” she said during a recent visit to American Indian Community Housing, where much of her work hangs, dangles, pokes and, oddly enough, stands humanlike.

The squirrel was made from a series of brush-point dots. Its eyeballs are layers upon layers of acrylic paint, three-dimensional, like glassy beads. It took Yellowbird four or five days to create the aesthetic, she said, just a small part of a painting created in her signature style. Rows of dots that create patterns of nature imagery, the night sky and portraits. And they all look like scenes sewn in beadwork, an urban approach to a traditional craft.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/features/ae/4050485-layers-meaning-anishinaabe-artist-adds-personal-stories-modern-touch-traditional