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Babe and Carla Hemlock

Babe and Carla Hemlock are a Kahnawake Mohawk husband-and-wife artisan team from Kahnawake Mohawk Nation Territory near Montreal. Babe specializes in woodcarving, and Carla focuses on textile arts; however, they work in a range of different artistic media. Carla has been recognized for her award-winning quilt work, which has been purchased by the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Background
Carla, born 1961, is from Kahnawake near Montreal, Quebec. Babe, also born in 1961, grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He is a fourth generation Mohawk ironworker. ==Art career==
Art career
Both of the Hemlocks relay Mohawk culture and history through their artwork. Babe and Carla collaborate with each other to create political art works, as well. Babe carved and painted Walking in Two Worlds, and Carla created a quilt Tribute to Mohawk Ironworkers, which combined beadwork and appliquéd figured inspired by Charles Ebbets' iconic 1932 photograph of Mohawk men perched on a suspended I-beam. Carla has also used treaty cloth in her works, the cloth dating back to the 1700s with the original language of the Treaty of Canandaigua. The use of this cloth is to draw attention to her people still upholding their end of the treaty, even when the United States government did not. Carla Hemlock's piece, Our Destruction, was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Renwick Gallery's 50th Anniversary Campaign. While the Hemlocks use political imagery in their artwork—for instance, questioning the long term effects of fracking—they also use aboriginal Iroquoian imagery. For instance, Carla uses images of turtles in her quilts. ==Collections==
Collections
National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC • Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS ==Major exhibitions==
Major exhibitions
Changing Hands III: Art Without Reservations, Museum of Arts and Design, curated by Ellen Taubman ==Notes==
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