This past year has been extremely challenging for me in many ways, as I suppose it is for most other recent college graduates. School becomes your entire world in a way. When you’re in it, sometimes you forget to look out. Then all of a sudden, your graduation date draws near and it hits you like a giant needle, popping your bubble of safety. Right when you think your school has provided you with a bright fluffy pillow to land on, with your elite, Ivy Leaague education, the real world hits you right in the face. Like your dad getting diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Right now, I’m working at Caribou Coffee for one day a week. For two other days of the week, I weave for a Minneapolis-based designer who runs Custom Woven Interiors Ltd., which sells pieces that are handwoven with cotton and linen fibers. The work is very beautiful and engaging, and the ever-changing patterns and palettes keep me fixated and interested in the work that I do. It is a truly great working environment.

For the past year, I was running between Caribou and my part-time job for Custom, all the while taking care of my dad, spending time with him every day and making sure that his bills get paid. Now that my dad has moved into a nursing facility in Duluth, I have had a little more time to focus on my studio practice.

I have collected equipment for my studio in the Northeast Minneapolis arts district, which now includes a knitting machine, an 8 harness floor loom, a light table, yarn and other sorts of material. I work mostly on knitwear products like hats and scarves to earn some extra income during the winter months. 

The inspiration for my knits mainly come from Native American, skateboarding, and surf culture. I work with an intuitive hand to bridge cultures and traditions gathered from firsthand experiences as a Native American woman of mixed blood. I use textiles as a way to contain memory, and to reflect and tell a difficult story, to rebuild my textured past and to learn the history of my people through making. I am trying to start my own knitting company with the name, MakwaKnitwear. Makwa means “bear” in Ojiibwe. 

While attending the Rhode Island School of Design, I dug deeper into what little I had explored of my heritage and further developed my identity. My degree project focused on issues of cultural appropriation and native authenticity through the rigid ideas of blood quantum and stereotyping. I also looked upon my own relationship with my father as another source of inspiration. It would be my hope to continue with this work in the near future. I still have many more things to say. 

see more of Maggie's work

maggie-thompson.com