Artist-in-Residence: Karen Ann Hoffman 

About

Karen Ann Hoffman

Oneida Nation of Wisconsin

Karen Ann Hoffman is a Haudenosaunee raised beadwork artist and citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Raised by her first teachers—parents Robert and Betty Ann Messner—as a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Hoffman grew up in Oshkosh, south of the Oneida reservation. She now lives, hunts, and gardens in a rural area of central Wisconsin.

Raised beadwork is a rare and elegant style whose forms and designs reach back over fourteen thousand years. The history of Haudenosaunee Raised Beadwork derives from 19th-century tourism at Niagara Falls. Around 1850, Mohawk and Tuscarora beaders developed ornately decorative items to appeal to Victorian tastes, selling them as souvenirs, or “whimseys.” The aesthetic endured and expanded onto objects for internal community use.

Hoffman’s beading combines these two ways of beading to create a third: objects that arise from traditional forms and are infused with Haudenosaunee understandings but that otherwise are new. Her work is in Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Field Museum, the Iroquois Indian Museum, and the Oneida Nation Museum.

Visitors can meet Karen Ann Hoffman, watch her demonstrate her craft, and engage in a hands-on bead work activity here at the park from July 7th - 16th.