A decade ago, Kaylyn Baker hated beading. Now it's helped win her Yukon's biggest art prize
Leah Collins | CBC Arts | Posted: October 6, 2023 4:15 PM | Last Updated: October 6, 2023
The $20,000 award will be invested into her next big project, a collection of wearable art
Not long before Kaylyn Baker was named the winner of the 2023 Yukon Prize for Visual Arts, the Whitehorse-based artist was sitting in the Yukon Arts Centre parking lot, blasting her car stereo as loud as it would go.
Her song of choice: More Than Love by Trevor Hall. "I was just letting the music pump through me," says Baker, 34. In that moment, she needed something that would completely shake up her headspace — a song that would carry her into the auditorium with confidence.
"I felt really, really nervous," says Baker, thinking back to that night in September. She couldn't believe that she'd made it this far.
Boasting a purse of $20,000, the Yukon Prize celebrates the top artists in the territory, a region of Canada with a superlative number of creatives per capita. It's still a relatively new competition; the prize, which is awarded every other year, named its first winner in 2021 (Joseph Tisiga), and it aims to support artists from the region while connecting the Yukon arts community with the art world beyond its borders.
According to the organizers, 64 artists applied for the 2023 competition, and from that pool, Baker was selected by the jury for the finals, joining fellow shortlisters Jeffrey Langille, Rebekah Miller, Cole Pauls, Omar Reyna and Alainnah Whachell.
'Beaded storytelling'
Whitehorse has a tight artistic community, says Baker. For her part, she's earned acclaim through a practice she describes as "beaded storytelling." A Northern Tutchone and Tlingit artist, much of Baker's work employs traditional beading and tufting techniques, designs that often reference personal stories and observations.
She's been featured in the touring exhibition, Radical Stitch, a group show organized by the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina that arrives at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery Oct. 13; but Baker is just as likely to show her work on a red carpet or runway.
Most of the pieces that are installed at the Yukon Arts Centre for the finalists' exhibition, for example, appeared at Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week last fall, and her jewelry has been name-checked in Vogue by the Indigenous model-activist Quannah Chasinghorse.
Still, when the Yukon Prize shortlist was announced in June, Baker kept the good news to herself. The mother of three didn't want to make a big deal about it. She figured she'd attend the gala alone, so she was surprised — and touched — when friends and family began telling her they'd bought tickets to the show.
"For a while, I didn't even realize I should dress up," says Baker — a shocking statement from an artist known for her dazzling wearable art. But on the night of the gala — while she was psyching herself up in the parking lot — Baker wanted to ignore her imposter syndrome for once, and focus on the gravity of the moment.
"I was thinking to myself that I love what I do, and it means a lot to be able to say that's how I make my living," she says.
As the winner of the Yukon Prize, that still holds true. But now Baker has the encouragement — and the financial means — to dream even bigger.
Her plans for the $20,000
Baker says she's already invested some of the $20,000 prize into her next project: an all-new collection for Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week this November. The collection will capture scenes from four times of day: "sunrise, a hot day out on the land — then the sunset and a deep night," says Baker. It's a cycle that was "heavily influenced by a break up," she explains, and "the hope that something new is happening."
Two garments from that upcoming project are currently on view at the Yukon Arts Centre. "They're sort of like a sneak peek," says Baker. But most of her Yukon Prize installation highlights the fashions she created for her 2022 collection, Dintth'in: Firestarter.
She describes that body of work as her "dream collection." Among the pieces: a winged harness made of caribou antlers (an elaborate beaded tribute to Baker's memories of hunting and gathering with her grandfather and mother); and a beaded electric guitar inspired by a badass elder woman from Pelly Crossing (The Legend of the Giant Greyling).
That 2022 collection, which was funded by a Canada Council grant, marked a shift in Baker's career. Like the accessories and garments she'd made in the past, the works are meant to be worn — and they were inspired by Baker's memories of family and home. But she wasn't constrained by form.
"I want to do these bigger things, bigger pieces. I want to be able to explore," she says. "That was why it was important to at least try for the Yukon Prize. It now allows me to do a bit of that exploration — or a bit more of it."
The year that changed everything
Like many members of her family, Baker has been beading for years. She hasn't always loved the painstaking care and attention it requires. But in 2017, that all changed.
Baker was facing a perfect storm of personal crises. After the death of a close family member, her cousin Raine, Baker struggled to reckon with the loss. "I was grieving really heavily," she says. "I was kind of spiraling." Soon after, she learned she was pregnant. And amid it all, she decided to step back from school. (She was studying business administration.)
The stress was impacting her health, she says. "I needed to busy my hands and steady my mind, and one of the only times I can do that properly is while I'm beading." Baker was already making and selling beadwork, but as she beaded through her grief, the work she produced was coming from a new creative place.
"I started thinking about [Raine] as a person: like, if I was to assign colours to his different characteristics, and assign those colours to pattern. What would that look like?"
"It ended up making a really beautiful design. Having that design attached to such a powerful meaning, I started thinking of other things," she says.
Now, Baker's process usually begins with a story, and many of the pieces appearing at the Yukon Art Centre are accompanied by poems she's written that have inspired the artwork. They're stories about her family, stories about the North — stories about her life.
"Everything changed. I started thinking: If I could do this for a person, what about a story? What about a memory? It all fell into place."
Yukon Prize 2023 Exhibit. Kaylyn Baker, Jeffrey Langille, Rebekah Miller, Cole Pauls, Omar Reyna. To Nov. 18. Yukon Arts Centre, Whitehorse. www.yukonartscentre.com