Native Arts

Wolf Schneider

Molly Murphy, an award-winning Montana beadworker furthers a Lakota tradition

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Out of the Clear Blue Sky, wool/beads, 34 x 76

Molly Murphy has taken it upon herself to expand the definition of contemporary fiber arts—and to broaden the traditions of Lakota beadwork. She specializes in creating boxes, sculptural pieces, wall hangings, and purses whose beadwork is inspired by designs on parfleche (rawhide) containers and ledger art. But the traditional inspiration goes only so far. “I was taught [that] you never mix sizes, you don’t do things other than vertical or horizontal, you don’t do angles. I’ve broken all those rules,” Murphy says. “What I bring to market is very contemporary—that’s what my audience and customer base sees.”

Of Oglala Lakota heritage, Murphy grew up sewing beadwork designs onto hides for her powwow outfits. These days she still works with hides for the outfits, but she applies the beadwork to wool for her artwork. “The hide is not as practical to work with, partly because of the expense,” she explains. “The fabric offers a more contemporary feel, and in the case of the boxes, the fabric gets mounted on a lightweight plywood.”

She sources her beads from shops where she lives in Missoula, MT, as well as online and at an old bead store in Blackfoot, ID, where she goes on periodic spending sprees, acquiring specialty and vintage beads. Her pieces take from 50 hours to months to complete, and her work sells for $300 to $5,000.

Murphy’s beaded purses and “possibles bags” (traditional, all-purpose, shallow rectangular bags decorated with beadwork) are functional, but most of her work is decorative. “And that was a hard leap to make, because you’re supposed to make things that have a purpose,” says Murphy. “But art school taught me I could make anything I wanted. The boxes have an illusion of function, but the wall hangings are purely decoration.”

Her standout purple horse purse, beaded for the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market in 2006, features a stylized horse motif. “It’s ledger art but a little more modern in that I put shapes inside the horses, like triangles and patterns. And I incorporated a shield. And a random rolled edge along the bottom,” she points out.

Murphy, 30, has won ribbons at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market in Phoenix, AZ, been showcased at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, NM, and been accepted into the C.M. Russell Art Auction in Great Falls, MT. But she wasn’t always certain that beadworking would be her career.

Born in Great Falls, MT, to an Irish Catholic father and an Oglala Lakota mother, Murphy moved to the Missoula area with her mother when she was 8. She learned beadwork growing up on the Flathead Reservation, which is mainly populated by the Salish-Kootenai. Her mom worked as a carpenter, pipe fitter, bartender, and beadworker. One major influence was her mother’s friend, Blackfeet beadworker Jackie Larson Bread. Another was the powwow dance outfits she saw on the reservation.

How to Find Home: Lat and Long From Missoula to Pine Ridge, wool/beads, 12 x 8 x 8

Still, when she enrolled at the University of Montana in Missoula, it was as a pre-med student. She soon missed beadworking, though, and switched majors to graduate in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. Her senior thesis show of four beaded boxes “went over fabulously,” she says, and she decided to devote herself to her art.

She married a firefighter with the Forest Service, and they had a daughter and bought an A-frame house in Missoula. “Missoula is gorgeous, it’s incredibly liberal, and it’s still pretty small. It’s a very bike-able, livable, farmers market kind of town,” describes Murphy, who has a solo show coming up there in March, then a museum show in the works for two years hence. Why not sooner? “I can’t ever just hurry up. It’s just stitch by stitch by stitch. There’s no other way to do it,” she explains.

She’s currently doing a series called “Triple-Size Me” using XXX-Large t-shirts mounted on sturdy fabric. “I’m doing strips of beadwork down the front and down the arms to look like war shirts,” she describes. The series is a commentary on the problems of obesity and diabetes on Indian reservations.

“Now that I’m more established, my work has gotten possibly more political,” Murphy muses. “I now have moved into more animal images and the ledger drawings.” Besides her heritage, she’s influenced by her environment. “A lot of my stuff is pretty landscape-based,” Murphy reflects. “Even if it looks like triangles, it has an idea of place and time and water and rivers.”

Murphy is represented by Home and Away Gallery, Kennebunkport, ME, and Ancient Nations, Salt Lake City, UT.