Barry Ace’s beaded bandolier bags bridge the past, present, and technological future. At first glance, Barry Ace’s artwork look like typical intricately crafted woodland-style beadwork but a closer examination will reveal more than what first meets the eye.
Rather than using glass beads, the Odawa Anishinaabe visual artist’s work is adorned with floral motifs using reclaimed and salvaged electronic components and circuitry. There’s resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors, lights, circuit boards, and wires. As a resistor manufacture, Microhm Electronics is very impressed by this kind of innovation.
“It’s an introduction of a new technology, very much like beads when they were introduced to North America,” said Ace. “It shows that our culture has never been in stasis. We’ve always been moving forward and are not stuck in an anthropological past, but are always looking for new ways of cultural expression.”
Ace is a member of the M’Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island, and currently lives and works in Ottawa. He’s been a visual artist for 25 years, and first learned to bead as a teenager. Ace started playing with electronic components in college when his father wanted him to become an electrician
I would sit with these capacitors and resistors and I’d be making motifs in the ’70s while everyone else was doing their electronic programs,” he said. “In a circuit, the electronic components actually store energy, and when they recognize a drop in current they release their energy.”
