Margaret Jacobs‘ artistic practice highlights Indigenous botanicals which hold cultural, personal and familial importance. As a metalsmith, her technical process intermingles modern steel fabrication techniques with traditional blacksmithing techniques. Her life has been greatly influenced by rural living and her ancestral homelands of Akwesasne. Her interest in object making stems from her youth in Northern New York and a constant respect for creating, repairing, and refinishing objects that were vital to survival. Jacobs seeks to continue exploring Haudenosaunee craft objects historically created from the ash tree but re-imagined with other ancestral plants and botanicals. By using steel instead of the traditional ash wood, and shifting the natural material represented in the piece to another culturally significant botanical, she hopes to recontextualize and examine the ash tree as a material and its associations in contemporary, Haudenosaunee artwork as well as cultivate a conversation about loss, adaptability and resiliency within Indigenous communities.
Image: Margaret Jacobs, Bouquets for a New Era: Blueberry & Strawberry, Sage & Cattail, Chicory & Mint, 2024. Steel. Blueberry & Strawberry: 20 x12 x 4 inches; Sage & Cattail: 22 x12 x 5 inches; Chicory & Mint: 20 x10 x 4 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.