Meet Anna Kate Cannon | Student and Beadwork Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anna Kate Cannon and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anna Kate, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I’m a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, but I grew up in east Texas away from my tribe’s land and didn’t know many Choctaw people in my home community. I tried to be involved, but there was only so much I could do due to where I was and the resources I had. I started learning to bead when I was 19, and it’s been a really great way to reconnect with an aspect of my culture that I haven’t previously been able to access much. When I went to college, I got really involved in the Native community and have been in leadership positions in our undergraduate Native student organization (Natives at Harvard College-NaHC) for most of the time I’ve been at college. I started gifting my beadwork to friends in my student organization, and even ran a few beading nights and was able to teach some people how to bead. Beadwork is incredibly important to a lot of Native communities, and it’s been really awesome to experience the different styles that are important to people from different communities and backgrounds.

I was always a pretty crafty kid, and my family often gifted me art supplies and crafting kits when I was younger. My family has always been incredibly supportive of my beading, and my mom actually insisted on buying some of my supplies for me when I first started learning to bead. The first time I ever sold my beadwork was through an auction on NaHC’s Instagram page. After George Floyd was murdered and Black Lives Matter protests began again in June 2020, a bunch of us in NaHC wanted to support BLM and protesters, but it was difficult because a lot of NaHC’s members come from low-income backgrounds and don’t have a lot of disposable income to donate. My co-president and I decided to begin auctioning jewelry and other art off of NaHC’s Instagram and send all the proceeds to bail funds and other organizations, and we were able to raise quite a bit of money that way. After the auction ended in August, I decided to start up my own beading page, and have been selling ever since. I still make regular donations to organizations that support racial justice with the profits from my sales, and I’ve really been overwhelmed by the support I’ve received on Instagram and from people in my life who are supportive of my work.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Selling beadwork is definitely a part-time gig for me, as I’m currently in college and plan to go to law school eventually. Beading is a very mindful practice for me, so it’s a great way to have a break from everything that’s going on in a week.

There’s a vibrant community of Indigenous artists who sell their work through Instagram, and I’ve been able to meet and connect with people from all over the world who create really stunning work. It’s also a very supportive community–a lot of artists repost each other’s work to their stories, and there’s a big emphasis on community and collaboration rather than competition. I’m still relatively new at this, so my Instagram still has a lot of growing to do, but things have been going well thus far and I’m proud of how much I’ve been able to sell even though this is just a side hustle for the time being.

The majority of my designs are more geometric in nature, but I’ve done a few graphic designs (my ghost fringe earrings and my heart hoops are some of my favorites!). I’m always coming up with new designs and creating variations of previous designs, as I don’t recreate old designs unless someone directly commissions a previous design. It’s a bit nerve-wracking debuting new designs all the time, as I worry that they won’t be well-received, but that’s something I’ve been working on overcoming.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If my best friend was coming to visit, there would probably be more things to do than time in the week! I really love museums, and Boston has a lot of really awesome ones: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, the Museum of Science, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts are some of my favorites, so we’d have to check out those. We’d have to go to Chinatown for phở and egg tarts, to my favorite Hawaiian food spot in Somerville, and the Mexican restaurant down the street from my old apartment. We’d also have to hit up the South End for some Italian food!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’m so grateful to all the people in my life and online who have supported me, both in my academics and in my art. My family has always been incredibly supportive, and my friends at school were some of the first people that I was able to gift beadwork to and always really appreciated it. My partner and his family actually encouraged me to start selling my work, and I don’t think I would have begun selling when I did without their encouragement.

Instagram: @redriverbeadwork

Other: Email: redriverbeadwork@gmail.com

Image Credits
The photo of myself was taken by Alex O’Gorman, and the photos of my beadwork were taken my me.