‘Look at all the different things that we have to say’: Terrain’s ‘Connective Strands of Spirit’ honors past, present, future of Plateau tribal artists

When Britt Rynearson was around 11 years old, she had her first art entrepreneurial experience selling handmade beaded jewelry at a local farmers market. Putting each set of earrings on their own backing card and bagging up purchases for customers was “the coolest thing” for the young artist.

A continued interest in creating led to Rynearson, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, spending practically all of high school in the art room. It got to the point that administrators let her spend her detentions (earned by protesting unskilled teachers – not by skipping class just to skip class, Rynearson clarified) in the art room.

After high school, Rynearson earned degrees in studio art from Scripps College in Claremont, California, and arts leadership from Seattle University. While in college, she traveled and studied textiles around the world, learning about techniques like weaving silk and batik.

With the goal of working as a fiber artist, Rynearson rented out office space in industrial buildings to use as her studio. Rynearson would secretly live in her studio space, trading a shower (she would shower at the gym) and a kitchen (she mainly cooked with a toaster oven) for more space to house big tables, rolls of fabric, sewing machines and other tools.

“When I finally lived in a place that had formal amenities, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really nice!’ ” Rynearson said.

Throughout her career, Rynearson’s fiber work has been part of markets and exhibits around the country, including the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, D.C., and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show. But for her work in “Connective Strands of Spirit,” the current exhibit at the Terrain Gallery, Rynearson returned to beadwork.

For her pieces, “Story Circle,” Rynearson created more than 200 interlocking wire circles all of which are covered with small beads. One set of circles features beads in earth tones and extends farther out from the wall, reaching about 4 feet in length. The other set, which features dark, shadowy beads, comes in at around 5 feet and is set closer to the wall.

“The concept is the circle is some sort of story that we tell ourselves,” she said. “Because really, our concept of self is just made up of stories that we tell ourselves. And then if you want to get more granular, each bead is a moment that contributes to the story.”

The earth tone piece tells stories of renewal and growth, things like “I’m totally going to go to the gym tomorrow,” or “I’m going to make a flower garden on my deck” or “I just had a baby.” The colors also made Rynearson think of the plateau, the land and the sun.

The darker-colored piece, Rynearson said, was more about pain and darkness. Not emptiness, but “a rich darkness.”

“Those stories are equally important and also define who we are and what we are,” she said. “Then coming out of that is when you tell your stories, then they change, so I was thinking about a story circle, people sitting around a circle telling a story and how that changes us.”

Rynearson’s pieces join work by Joe Feddersen, RYAN! Feddersen, Carly Feddersen, William Passmore, Michael Holloman, Emma Noyes, Michelle Jack, Frank Andrews and Spencer Keeton Cunningham, all of whom are from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

Cunningham is Rynearson’s brother. He recently sold two pieces to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and currently has a solo show, “Decolonization,” at the Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento, California.

The Terrain show, which opened Jan. 3 and runs through March 1, was the brainchild of Joe Feddersen. While an exhibit of his work was on display at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Feddersen didn’t want all the attention to be on him, so he reached out to Rynearson to help craft an exhibition featuring Colville artists.

“We kept jokingly calling it the ‘Joe Invitational’ because we threw a group of people together that knew each other,” she said. “I think in the future, if we had more time, I would have loved to have more of an open call to make it more inclusive for the tribal members.”

During artist meetings, the group decided “Connective Strands of Spirit” would only feature work that was created in the past five years. The show features a variety of mediums, including painting, weaving, fiber work and bead work.

The group also talked about how when people think of Washington State Native artists, they often think of Coast Salish artists, not the Plateau tribes. This exhibit, therefore, was a chance to celebrate the past, present and future of Plateau tribal artists.

“All of us have a different lens on our families and our cultural and artistic traditions within our families and our ancestors, and so we bring that together,” Rynearson said. “We say, ‘This is us today. We are all different. We all work in different mediums. We all approach things with a different perspective, but we are in conversation with each other, and we are connected and we are contemporary Plateau artists. Look at all the different things that we have to say, and look at all the different ways we say it.’ ”