Jackie Larson Bread BIOGRAPHY

 

I consider my beadwork to be both traditional and contemporary. I bead traditional Amsakapi Pikunni (Blackfeet) geometric and floral designs to enhance my primary images, which are photorealistic portraits of Blackfeet people. I love to tell the story of my people and to speak of the beauty we emitted to the world through my art. I use the beadwork techniques that I have developed over the past four decades to produce painterly images of people and most recently wildlife onto utilitarian objects, such as bags, parasols, horse gear, and boxes. My work is deeply rooted in Blackfeet tradition and presented in 21st Century style.

Jackie Larson Bread, an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation, was born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation, located in Browning, Montana. It was here that her love of Blackfeet culture and the technical skill of beadwork became her focus. Jackie became a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1978. She was a two-dimensional and museology major. In 1983 after graduating from IAIA she enrolled at the College of Santa Fe to pursue a fine arts degree. Jackie’s art was a melding of drawing, painting, printmaking, and beadwork. Her two-dimensional work incorporated actual beadwork and beadwork designs. She gradually made a shift to beading exclusively. Jackie developed a style of beadwork where pictorial depth is achieved by using graduated shades of beads.

In 1983 this was a revolutionary style and was given the name of illusionary pictorial beadwork. Jackie was at the forefront in the development of this style. In 1986 she returned to Montana and began a career of being a full-time beadwork artist. Jackie has shown her art in museums, galleries, and art markets throughout the United States and Canada. Jackie has developed and brought the traditional art of beadwork into the 21st century with innovative technique and a color palette that is unique. She has been instrumental in the evolution of contemporary beadwork.

The Beauty That Surrounds Us, 2026, seed and cut glass beads, tanned buckskin, brass bells, beads, cotton.