Carrie Allison

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Carrie Allison, “To Honour,” 2019

beaded animation over video, 1:56 min. (courtesy the artist)

Carrie Allison’s stop-motion videos depict beadworks being built bead by bead. The beadworks themselves, mounted and framed, are placed by the videos in her exhibition, connections of gestures, on view at the ODD Gallery in Dawson City, Yukon, until Oct. 6.

Using beads as her main medium strengthens Allison’s connection to her heritage. Each bead – each detail of the natural world that she stitches and films – binds her past, present and future. Allison has Indigenous matrilineage in northern Alberta and gives much consideration to the complex history of beading, as well as the subject matter she explores. 

Working with natural imagery honours the land but is also a way to navigate her experiences. A measurement of time begins with the outline of an organic shape that’s gradually filled with an unpredictable pattern. The finished image shows a tree’s ringed cross-section, based on a tree that once grew in an urban forest in Halifax, a place of respite that Allison grieved when it was razed for development. The work commemorates a lost sanctuary while honouring such enclaves as healing spaces.

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Carrie Allison, “a life of a prairie crocus” (detail), 2020

Miyuki beads on linen, 36” x 19” (courtesy the artist)

Another work depicts a cluster of prairie crocuses. Allison grew up in Vancouver and now lives in Halifax, where winters are harsher. When crocuses appear each year in her yard, it signifies a respite from cold weather. The video of her beading resembles time-lapse footage of a growing plant.

The Pull of the Moon uses a divided screen. On the left, daylight fades over water, while, on the right, the sun has already slipped behind the ocean’s horizon. Dusk, the time between day and night, symbolizes change. In the work, a silvery beaded orb hovers low over the water. Just as the moon pulls water irresistibly to it, Allison feels drawn towards beading. While waiting for her unborn child to enter our world, she pondered the pull of motherhood and beaded to ease anxieties and express the momentous change coming to her life.

It’s difficult to ignore the relationship between the exhibition and its current location in Dawson City, a living gold rush museum. Before gold seekers came more than a century ago, the Tr’ondëk Hwëchin thrived here. As in many other places, they were displaced, their way of life disrupted as more and more newcomers arrived. The presence of beadwork in the community testifies to the beauty of a people amidst the many harms of colonialism.

Allison’s exhibition feels unified with its gentle rhythm of video monitors interspersed with beadworks. Audio of the wind in trees emphasizes the quietude. The works are small, but large in meaning. Solace can be felt in the repetitive motion of making them – and in the reinvigoration of a tradition. ■

Carrie Allison, connections of gestures, at the ODD Gallery in Dawson City, Yukon, from Aug. 18 to Oct. 6, 2022.

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