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Fond du Lac Arts is a series exploring the stories, creative expression, and craftsmanship of Fond du Lac artists from a range of disciplines.
This project is produced by AMPERS, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities in partnership with WGZS, the Radio Voice of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
INTRO: You are listening to Fond du Lac Arts: Community through the Creative Arts.
WENDY SAVAGE: The Ojibwes have always embraced new materials, like during the fruit trade. Of course, they embrace the beads, of course. They embrace the needles, and the thread, and the velvet, and the wool, and satin. Of course, you would do that to make your life easier.
HOST: Wendy Savage carries on that tradition of innovation in her bead work and other art forms. She blends new materials and designs with old, whether it's a ribbon skirt, jingle dress, strap dress, or birch board painting. Recently, she let her curiosity lead her into her ancestors' fur trade past.
WENDY SAVAGE: I started researching some historical clothing that the Ojibwe women wore.
HOST: That gave rise to the idea of making a beaded purse.
WENDY SAVAGE: And I had to make up the pattern myself.
HOST: She adapted a bead design for the floral applique. Decades of experience made relatively quick work early on, but then she hit a block, as always, at color selection.
WENDY SAVAGE: It takes me two to three hours, literally, just to decide the colors.
HOST: The payoff is the beads, an eye-popping rainbow of sizes, types, finishes, colors.
WENDY SAVAGE: If I'm going to spend many, many hours beading, I'm going to use the best beads I can. So I bead with actual gold beads, silver beads, green but they had a copper lining. And then I had to add a lot of fringe designs along the edge. You're using an old beadwork design, but you're incorporating what they have available today.
HOST: Wendy Savage debuted her beaded floral purse at the 2026 Fur Trade Nation and Ojibwe Adornment exhibit at the Duluth Art Institute.
OUTRO: Fond du Lac Arts is produced by AMPERS and WGZS, the radio voice of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.