SOLD OUT
This workshop is also offered on April 22.
Presented by Melanie Bender
Cost: $60 members; $75 not-yet-members (all supplies including loom kit, gallery admission, and parking validation included)
Join Melanie Bender for this studio workshop inspired by the exhibition Jeffrey Gibson: The Body Electric. Participants will be introduced to basic techniques of loom beading and will create an original design. Each participant will receive a bead loom to use during the workshop and to take home afterward.
About Melanie Bender
Melanie Bender was born in Pensacola, Florida, and raised in Parker, Arizona on the Colorado River Indian Tribe Reservation with her mother’s tribe the Mohave. Her father was Chata from the Jena Band of Choctaw, Jena, Louisiana. Early in Bender’s life, her oldest sister, who encouraged her to teach herself Native beadwork, was a major influence. Bender has now been beading and weaving for over thirty years.
Bender has lived in Nashville for over twenty-five years. She was invited to work with the Vanderbilt Indigenous Scholars Organization and currently collaborates with the organization. She is also a freelance news photojournalist for a Chicago-based newspaper. She is married and has a son and two grandsons.
Find out more about Bender’s work.