Four Sisters Farmers Market Season Artist-in-Residence
2025 Four Sisters Farmers Market Artist-in-Residence
Wóokiye Wiŋ
Sisseton Wahpeton Dakhóta
Wóokiye Wiŋ
Four Sisters Farmers Market welcomes artist-in-residence Wóokiye Wiŋ for the 2025 market season. The artist will be hosting free art activites on the third Thursdays at the market.
The purpose and intent of the Four Sisters Farmers Market Artist is to promote and strengthen Native plant knowledge, food access and food sovereignty. The Market Artist will have a presence at the 2025 Four Sisters Farmers Market, as well as plan and create visual art pieces and art engagement activities that relate and promote the Four Sisters Farmers market, mission and vision.
Wóokiye Wiŋ will be working to design visual imagery and create community art activities all season-long which relate and promote the Four Sisters Farmers Market mission and vision — strengthening Native plant knowledge, food access and sovereignty, and knowledge sharing of healthy food, plant knowledge, recipes, and preservation.
Wóokiye wiŋ (Katie Jo Bendickson) is Sisseton Wahpeton Dakhóta. She received a Bachelor of Arts in American Indian Studies with a Language Track from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and an Early Childhood Education Diploma from Minnesota West Community and Technical College. As a Dakota language instructor, she taught pre-school and high school in Saint Paul, Minneapolis, and Granite Falls, MN. Her mentor for the Dakota language was the respected elder Caroline Schommer of Upper Sioux Community.
Currently, Wóokiye Wiŋ is the lead teacher at the Dakhóta Iápi Wahóȟpi (Dakota language nest) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a freelance artist. She blends her art and teaching the Dakota language by illustrating Dakota Language Children’s books. She is working on her first mural, which is located at the Child Development Lab School at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She has had art exhibits at Two Rivers Art Gallery and other galleries in the Twin Cities area. She uses both her Dakota and Ojibway backgrounds to influence her designs in her art.
Much of her young life was spent on her mother’s reservation, Fond du Lac Reservation in northern Minnesota, before her family moved to her father’s Reservation at Upper Sioux Community in southwest Minnesota.
Wóokiye wiŋ lives in Saint Paul with her husband and children. Both her parents are artists and teachers, and she continues that tradition. Follow her art on Instagram @wookiye_win and www.wookiyewin.com, and purchase her books at Dakhota.org.
2024 Four Sisters Farmers Market Artist-in-Residence
Natchez Beaulieu
White Earth Band of OjibweNatchez Beaulieu
All My Relations Arts and the Four Sisters Farmers Market welcome artist Natchez Beaulieu as our market Artist-in-Residence for the 2024 Four Sisters Farmers Market season!The purpose and intent of the Four Sisters Farmers Market Artist is to promote and strengthen Native plant knowledge, food access and food sovereignty. The Market Artist will have a presence at the 2024 Four Sisters Farmers Market, as well as plan and create visual art pieces and art engagement activities that relate and promote the Four Sisters Farmers market, mission and vision.
Natchez will be working to design visual imagery and create community art activities all season-long which relate and promote the Four Sisters Farmers Market mission and vision — strengthening Native plant knowledge, food access and sovereignty, and knowledge sharing of healthy food, plant knowledge, recipes, and preservation.
Natchez Beaulieu is an Anishinaabe woman born and raised in south Minneapolis and an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation. As a youth she was involved in mural making through the mural mentorship program Neighborhood Safe Art led by artist Marilyn Lindstrom. In her most recent work she has been exploring the translation of traditional Ojibwe floral design into mosaic. Natchez has had the opportunity to collaborate with various artists in the Twin Cities including Gustavo Lira on the exterior mural at the Seward Friendship store in Bryant neighborhood in 2016. In 2017, in collaboration with GoodSpace Murals, she designed The Zoongidewin mural in the Little Earth Community. This project continued over two summers directly engaging with the youth of Little Earth, Phillips and surrounding indigenous communities. Since that time she has worked with teachers in both Osseo and Minneapolis Public Schools Indian Education program, where she worked directly with students of all ages in creating meaningful and cultural identifying art. In summer of 2019, Natchez was hired by Minneapolis Institute of Arts to create a mural with 10 young women for The Hearts Of Our People exhibition. The young women designed and created a mural that spoke to the themes of the exhibit. This was a powerful project and brought her another step closer in her vision of creating a youth mentorship art program for my community. Currently, she is a teaching artist who works full time on commissioned public art projects in her community.
2023 Four Sisters Farmers Market Artist-in-Residence
Rory Wakemup
Minnesota Chippewa
All My Relations Arts and the Four Sisters Farmers Market welcome artist Rory Wakemup as our market Artist-in-Residence for the 2023 Four Sisters Farmers Market season!The purpose and intent of the Four Sisters Farmers Market Artist is to promote and strengthen Native plant knowledge, food access and food sovereignty. The Market Artist will have a presence at the 2023 Four Sisters Farmers Market, as well as plan and create visual art pieces and art engagement activities that relate and promote the Four Sisters Farmers market, mission and vision.
Wakemup will be working to design visual imagery and create community art activities all season-long which relate and promote the Four Sisters Farmers Market mission and vision — strengthening Native plant knowledge, food access and sovereignty, and knowledge sharing of healthy food, plant knowledge, recipes, and preservation.
Rory Wakemup is a multidisciplinary artist who works in sculpture, installation, glass, lighting, photography, printmaking, public art, and traditional Indigenous arts. He holds an M.A. and M.F.A. in Glass/Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. He has been awarded public art commissions and residencies as well as fellowships from the McKnight and Jerome Foundations. Wakemup works on Indigenous issues with a range of organizations and is former Arts Director at All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis. Rory has a major public artwork in the newly opened Minneapolis Public Services Building and is also working on public art for Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis.