Joel Hernández
Joel Hernández
Seeing the Potential in Us All
Photo of Joel Hernández’s grandmother. Courtesy of Hernández.
Born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, where he lives today, Joel Hernández (he/him) is a self-described “city boy.” As an artist, he has deep wells of inspiration to draw on from both his mother’s Navajo family and his father’s Lakota family. “I try to incorporate both sides of where I come from in my art,” he says, “sometimes I mesh them together. I might be working with those bone beads or brass beads that they [Lakotas] often use, and then different types of shells from my Navajo side, where we use a lot of shells and turquoise and silver.”
Hernández’s interest in art emerged at a young age when he visited his maternal grandmother in Arizona. “She’s the inspiration really, for me as far as art goes. I really started learning about color and art from watching her weave when I was growing up.” His grandmother’s artistic practice started with the sheep her family raised on their ranch. She sheared them, then carded and cleaned the wool (at times with help from Hernandez), spun it into yarn, developed designs, then wove them on her loom. Hernandez remembers watching her work, “I would sit there and just watch her come up with all kinds of crazy rugs with beautiful designs. I would sit there and just watch in awe.”
His love of process and color, especially, came from those early years watching and learning from his grandmother. One time, when his grandmother was stuck on a design, she asked him to help her. He reflected on the pivotal moment: “She was working on this diamond design, which in our culture are really mountains or hills, and she said ‘I need you to help me with the center. I want you to draw a center for me.’ Since then, that was it. I was always doing it every chance I got. I was coming up with all sorts of intricate designs of diamonds or other designs. She was always like ‘Well sit down and draw it for me.’ Then I started seeing my stuff in her rugs, and it was so cool.”
“She’s the inspiration really, for me as far as art goes. I really started learning about color and art from watching her weave when I was growing up.”
Photo of a rug by Hernández’s grandmother. Courtesy of Hernández.
Later in life, Hernández found out his great-grandmother had beaded, something he didn’t know until his mom showed him a necklace she had made. The beauty and materials of the piece inspired him: “I was like oh my goodness this is so beautiful. I saw the beads and the shells, and all different types of things on there. It was a necklace that had a piece that was made from a loom, and all the rest was turquoise stones and shells.” It wasn’t until college that Hernández learned to loom bead himself and began creating art with just those same materials his great-grandmother used in that necklace.
Hernández attended Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, the oldest tribal college in the country. There, he met Alice, a nontraditional, older student who was Eastern Shoshone from Wyoming. “She was this loud, crazy woman and she was kind of like your all-rezzed out type person, and she was just so silly, and we used to have so much fun. One day we had an art show and she brought all this beadwork, and she said, ‘Yeah, I bead, and, if you want, I can start teaching you guys.”
Image of Haskell Stadium at Haskell Indian Nations University.
Alice, Hernández, and a group of students started a beading group at Haskell, and each meeting Alice would teach the others a new technique from loom work to appliqué to lane stitch - Alice knew it all. And she was serious about sharing her knowledge: “She came from an idea that it’s really important to share that part of our culture, and it shouldn’t be just kept by a few people. She told us that, a lot of the times, some people that she would meet just kept that [knowledge] for themselves, if it was a stitch or a design, they were like ‘that’s mine!’ And that really angered her because she thought that we should always be trying to teach these things and pass them on to the next generation. That was her main goal.”
The students ran all sorts of fundraisers from Indian taco sales to breakfast burrito sales to buy materials. Their beading group flourished, Hernández said, “our fearless leader Alice just taught us everything. We acquired all types of knowledge from her. She’s the main person I have to think of when I think about who taught me everything. It was really her. At the time, me being a big guy, I was like ‘I can’t do this! I’ve got these big hands!’ And she was like ‘No no, it’s ok - you can bead just like anybody else.’ You know, she saw that potential in everybody. All of us were all different ages and all different people, and she just thought that we could do anything. She cheered us on and taught us everything she knew and passed that down to us.”
Necklace set by Hernández. Courtesy of the artist.
After the students graduated, Hernández and some others kept the group going. Hernández reflects on the group, which still exists, although the pandemic has disrupted meetings: “I help teach people how to bead now, and I’ve seen them go on to create all types of things. I’m sitting there in awe, and I feel good because I helped teach them how to bead or I helped them get started. It’s a really good feeling, and it’s something that Alice inadvertently passed on to me. And I passed it on to them just the way she passed it on to me. That spirit of sharing culture and making sure it continues to go on.”
From contributing to his grandmother’s weaving designs to learning from Alice then passing her knowledge on to others, to eventually joining Bead Night, Hernández’s practice has always flourished through collaboration with other Native artists. With each project he works on, he realizes the potential that his grandmother and Alice saw in him, and that the other artists on bead night continue to see in him. More importantly, he draws that potential out in others, patiently sharing his skill and experience, continuing his grandmother’s and Alice’s legacy.
Artist Biography
Joel Hernandez is an Indigenous artist whose work is the convergence of traditional and contemporary. Through bold color and thoughtful design, Joel makes art inspired by his tribes, the Navajo and Sicangu Lakota. From turquoise, shells, and silver to seed beads, bone beads, and brass, Joel continues the tradition of Native beadwork for the contemporary, ceremonial, and celebration.