ANATOMY OF ART

Jamie Thompson’s Beadwork Raises Money for Grassy Narrows First Nation

In a heartfelt labour of love and learning, both delicate and detailed, Métis artist Jamie Thompson carefully recreates the tiny ventricles, valves, and arteries of an anatomically correct heart with tiny glass beads all hand-stitched one at a time.

She’s an artist and first-year medical student at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM). The work, she says, helps solidify the details of the anatomy she’s learning about. She beads during long hours of online course lectures and lessons. She also beads in the little moments of downtime she has, a practise she says that relaxes and refreshes her mind.

“I only started beading last August,” Thompson explains. “There was a Métis Nation of Ontario youth council gathering and it was online this year. They sent us beading kits and I took a workshop that introduced me to beading. It just seems to click with me.” So far, she’s beaded lungs, a pancreas, a brain, bones, an intestine, vertebrae, a kidney, an eyeball, a thyroid gland, a neuron, a placenta, a uterus, even an IUD. After posting photos of her beadwork on Instagram and Twitter, she started to receive questions about commission work. Rather than sell her works, she hosted an online auction on social media raising $3,335 in support of Grassy Narrows First Nation (Asabiinyashkosiwagong Nitam-Anishinaabeg).

“I was hoping to raise a few hundred dollars in bids,” Thompson says. “I didn’t know I would receive that many donations, it was amazing. I’ve sent the beadwork to the top bidders all across Canada and some doctors are wearing them as pins on their lanyards.”

“I do it because it’s fun and it’s starting to feel more like artwork lately,” she continues. “It's an awesome way for me to personally reconcile my ideas of academia, medicine, and Western medicine with traditional thoughts and teachings. It’s where these different worlds can interact in a good way. The work reflects my recent thought processes and being a part of both of those spheres.” Although Thompson isn’t currently taking commissions, she has created works for people who have approached her with compelling stories. Some are patients and some are physicians.

“They are my own personal projects and I want to create them out of inspiration,” she says. “Sometimes that’s based on a personal story that compels me to make them. For example, someone had reached out about their daughter going into cardiac surgery so they wanted an anatomical heart, and so of course stories like that always get me and I made one for them.”

Her largest anatomical beadworks include a palm-sized beaded heart and similar-sized coronal brain slice. She says she’s grateful for this creative outlet that she intends to build upon for her own personal wellness. “I enjoyed making bigger pieces and I’m trying to figure out where else I can go with it, so

I'm definitely still having fun with it.”