Lot 28

Marcy Friesen is a lens based artist of Swampy Cree and Welsh ancestry. Coming from a family of skilled beadworkers and makers, her practice is rooted in material knowledge, craft traditions, and an intuitive approach to image making.

In this body of work, Friesen invites the viewer to drift seamlessly between wakefulness and dreaming on a journey of the spirit captured through her camera. Scenes of the peaceful, endless prairie sky evoke the endless, lazy days of childhood summers. Here, thoughts can drift and consciousness ebbs and flows, offering a sensory evocation of breeze and grass that connects both land and body. Her lens-based works simultaneously emanate a sense of place and no place, of personal and universal.

Friesen describes her process as beginning with a prayer, followed by a directive to “bead your lips,” then her face, hands, and feet, extending into skin beading. She describes the process as soothing, emphasizing the feel, process, and visual outcome of the work.