FRESH BEADS

Art By Brian Zepeda And Corinne Zepeda

By Ola Wlusek Keith D. and Linda L. Monda Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

The first major exhibition of contemporary Native American art at The Ringling, Reclaiming Home: Contemporary Seminole Art presents artwork produced by Seminole, Miccosukee, and mixedheritage artists from Florida, along with notable work by artists of Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole descent from Oklahoma, California, and beyond. The exhibition expands the conceptual framework of Native American art made in Florida today and provides a fuller understanding of the complexity of issues within art of the Seminole diaspora.

Reclaiming Home showcases examples of Indigenous beading, one of the defining mediums for contemporary Native art produced by southeastern tribes. Beadwork made from natural materials, such as shells and seeds, have been produced on this continent by Indigenous peoples for millennia. After the Seminole War (1816-1858), increased trade with Europe resulted in colorful glass beads being shipped from Italy and Czechoslovakia to bead distributors in the US, who then dispersed them to smaller trading posts in the Southeast.

Necklace beads became an important part of Seminole women’s daily attire in the nineteenth century, signifying independence and wealth. Today, many Seminole and Miccosukee women opt for a more minimal look, as seen in Corinne Zepeda’s intricate Blue Necklace (2022), as opposed to the heavy stacks of necklaces worn by their female ancestors. Zepeda learned this skill-based practice from her father Brian Zepeda, who is widely recognized as one of the most skilled artists in the art form of beaded bandolier bags.

Bandoliers were shoulders bags worn by European militias in the eighteenth century and popularized by US soldiers during the Seminole War. By the nineteenth century, bandoliers had the fraught history of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, which not only brought war and slavery, but also carried plagues of viruses that devastated millions of Indigenous peoples. become an essential part of the regalia of Seminole leaders. During wartime, Native bandoliers functioned as communication and identification devices, due to the varied motifs and colors on their surface and the number of tabs on the strap, which were easily recognizable to different tribes and clans.

Similarly, We the People (2020) merges traditional Seminole beadwork technique with a utilitarian object made ubiquitous at the beginning of 2020: a face mask. Two beaded visual motifs, a red open palm and a black clenched fist, occupy the mask’s finely beaded cloth surface. The red handprint, a symbol for silenced voices, indicates solidarity with missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people in North America. It is usually painted across the mouths of activists and campaigners to bring awareness to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. The black fist, also known as the Black Power fist, is a symbol most closely identified in the US with the Black struggle for civil rights, most recently with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Corinne Zepeda’s works present a radical dimension to a traditional art form.

Today, bandolier bags, such as Sugar Ants Zepeda, have small square pouches with triangular flaps and straps worn over one shoulder. Zepeda’s bags contain meticulously hand-sewn floral and geometric designs created in tiny glass beads. The curvilinear imagery on Zepeda’s bags, sashes, and moccasins is inspired by local flora and fauna, popular culture, and even sci-fi television series.

Corinne Zepeda champions current social issues in her beaded utilitarian and ornamental work. Created in response to the COVID-19 global health pandemic’s sweeping effect on tribal communities, For Your Trauma (2020), a beaded Band-Aid lapel pin, functions as a visual reminder to practice self-care. The intimate work resonates on a larger scale as well, pointing to the resilience and determination of the Native peoples who have been navigating ways of caring for their communities, families, and elders since time immemorial. The work also recalls

By Heidi Connor Chief Archivist

At The Ringling Archives, technology continues to transform how researchers gain access to our information and the ways that we, as reference professionals, provide information to our patrons. The Archives is using digitization (the creation of digital objects from physical originals using a camera, scanner, or other electronic device) to offer access to the museum’s wide range of cultural heritage materials for research, learning, and enjoyment. The goal of digitization is to advance understanding of the rich and diverse world we have inherited. It provides greater opportunities to share, and it can even “virtually return” cultural heritage that was displaced from communities as a result of a disaster or other factors.

The newest addition to The Ringling’s digital technologies is a Bookeye scanner. Its specifications allow us to safely digitize oversized and delicate objects such as press books, scrapbooks, and diaries. Once digitized, they will be accessible on the Archives’ portal at Florida State University’s public access catalog DigiNole. Many of these coveted cultural heritage materials have been eagerly awaited by researchers and can now be made accessible around the world.

The Archives has selected two performers’ scrapbooks and an elephant keeper’s diary to be the first items digitized on the new Bookeye scanner. One of those scrapbooks, known as the Zazel scrapbook, is fragile and bears scars of fire damage but has long been sought after by researchers. Its original owner, Rosa Richter, performed under the stage name of Zazel. She was a tightrope and aerial acrobat, the protégé of rope-walker William Leonard Hunt (also known as The Great Farini). In 1871, Hunt built and patented a mechanism for launching a human projectile through the air into a safety net. On April 2, 1877, at the age of 16, Zazel debuted in her aerial performance with a spectacular finale: she descended into a cannon and was shot out into the air and over the heads of the amazed audience. The explosion and simultaneous propulsion captured the attention of audiences everywhere. Her scrapbook holds clippings, photographs, sheet music, and correspondence.

Route books were published at the end of a show’s season and distributed to show personnel. These primary source documents capture the towns and dates where the circus performed, list circus personnel, and include anecdotal stories. They are an important resource that the Archives staff uses to respond to research requests. There were no route books published for the 1909 season of the Barnum and Bailey Show. However, the Tibbals Circus Collection holds a pocket diary that captures daily accounts of the 1909 show, written by the elephant keeper Fred M. Sonend. The diary is tightly bound, yet the Bookeye’s dual camera system can successfully digitize this volume with no damage to the diary. Technicians may need to hold the book open with their fingers; the scanner will erase the fingers from the scanned image.

Another unique treasure in the Archives is the scrapbook of Charles B. Tripp. Tripp was born in 1855 without arms but learned to use his feet and legs to carry out everyday tasks. He even became a carpenter and a calligrapher. In 1872, he joined P.T. Barnum’s Great Traveling World’s Fair and was billed as The Armless Wonder. The Tripp scrapbook in The Ringling’s collection is one he made for his mother on her sixty-first birthday (November 5, 1882). It holds family photographs, colorful floral scraps, family letters and greeting cards, printed poems, and verse.

These examples just skim the surface of the Archives’ digitization projects that will soon be available and easily accessible thanks to the Ringling’s acquisition of the Bookeye scanner.

Archives

OPPOSITE PAGE: Charles B. Tripp (1855-1930), Scrapbook, presented to his mother November 5, 1882 on her 61st birthday. Collection of the family of Charles B. Tripp.

THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM Fred M. Sonend, Diary, 1909. Tibbals Circus Collection of Diaries. Rosa Richter “Zazel” (1863-1937), Scrapbook, 1877-1879. Tibbals Circus Collection of Scrapbooks.