Fond du Lac Arts

Textile artist Maggie Thompson shares the story behind her latest work, "The Hospital Gown Project," and how art works as a kind of therapy to help us process emotions and experiences.

When Joyce LaPorte was five, her grandma showed her how to sew and to make her first No Face Doll. Joyce continues to make No Face Dolls, which are now in museum collections around the world, and to teach others to make them.

Thomas Peacock was the kid with his ear to the door when older relatives were in the next room, talking family and Fond du Lac history. So, it was no surprise he grew up to be an author and historian. In 2018, together with wife Elizabeth Albert-Peacock, he started Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing, to promote Native authors and illustrators. 

Allie Tibbetts had already written two children's books drawn from Ojibwe culture and language. But now she wanted to write a story to remind her daughter and other Ojibwe children where they came from. That became her 2025 book Anangokaaning Wenjibaad: The One Who Comes from the Stars.

In 2019, Chi Ma'iingan stepped away from his job as police chief to create Round Lake Traditions, contemporary apparel with traditional Ojibwe floral designs.

Karen Savage-Blue decided to challenge herself as an artist. For one year, she made a painting every day, even on way-too-busy days and days when everything seemed to go wrong.

Multidisciplinary artist Moira Villiard loves the image of the hand. In the fabric piece, "Resist and Reclaim," she embroidered hands on a denim jacket stitched together with handwork made by the women in her family, past and present, evoking the invisible labor of women across the centuries.

Biidaasige Thomas Howes is a cradleboard and lacrosse stick maker. He uses the craft of steam bending wood to create his work, a skill taught him years ago by a Red Cliff birch bark canoe maker.

Janis Fairbanks talks about her new memoir Sugar Bush Babies: Stories of My Ojibwe Grandmother and the grandmother that inspired her love of storytelling.

Jeff Savage shares his experience of quarrying pipestone and making pipes from the red stone that has been used by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.