Lauren Good Day is an esteemed visual artist creating vibrant and culturally relevant ledger art drawings. She is equally well known for her inclusive fashion line based on her two-dimensional visual artworks. She often depicts horses, parade riders, and geometric patterning. Her fabrics match the warm earth tones she has derived from her drawings on ledger paper. She describes both of her art forms by saying, “All of my designs are based within my culture and our teachings. It’s made with the stories I want to communicate.”
Lauren Good Day (“Good Day Woman”) is an Arikara, Hidatsa, Blackfeet and Plains Cree artist. She is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation) of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. She is also a registered Treaty Indian with the Sweet Grass Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada. Good Day gathers all of her cultural knowledge from her dynamic lineage, and then expresses them through her different mediums. According to her website, “Lauren has passion for promoting and revitalizing the arts of her people while developing new methods and incorporating new trendsetting ideas in both the art and designs communities. Being a sought-after artist and designer, her work is in numerous public and private collections.”
============================
“This is the only way we’re able to live, we’re not stagnant. We’re continually adding to our culture, we are alive.” —Lauren Good Day
============================
Good Day was raised within her matriarchal culture that included her mother, grandmothers and her aunties. She began beading with them at the very young age of 5 years old. She recalls them having ongoing beading and sewing projects in different spaces throughout their homes. She shared that her family instilled how important creating, sewing, beading and making cultural wear for others impacted the recipient. They said, “This is what you do as women. We create things for those to show them we love them.” Good Day continues to show love to both her family when she creates for them, and then for all of our communities as she shares her work with the world. She is inspired by and looks up to the matriarchs of her family.
Sewing Growing up within the pow-wow circle, Good Day and her family needed dresses, moccasins and beadwork made. Her mom and grandma would sew for her when she was younger. Her grandmother was their moccasin maker, and she made fully beaded pairs. One summer, she needed a new dress for a dance, but her mother was traveling. Her mother asked her to wait until she returned home, but then offered that she could try to sew her own. Good Day had spent her life around the women in her family sewing, but she hadn’t done it all herself yet. She decided to try. She laughed a bit saying, “It wasn’t the best sewing, but I worked really hard. I had made myself a new dress for the summer dances.” From there she kept practicing and learning.
When she was 13 years old, she served as the Denver March Pow-wow Princess, and soon realized she wanted to be a fashion designer when she grew up. Her teenage self put into motion the goals for what was to come next. “I always felt I was good at styling and putting together pow-wow outfits and orders, jingle dresses, grass dance,” she says. “As a teen I worked along the powwow trail sewing for my family and community.” In college she would create and draw her ledger pieces to create an income for herself while she was also creating regalia for her family and community. Stretched thin in her new ventures, she soon felt the limitations of only being one person that couldn’t make enough for everyone. She began researching, learning and investing in her cultural art to create a fashion line. Eventually those two parts of her life—fashion and ledger art—came together to create her career today. Though it took time and ingenuity, Good Day can now create enough art for everyone. This includes her own family, especially her children. In her summer collection, she shows the butterfly iconography that came from her daughter’s cradleboard. Her daughter’s name means “Sacred Butterfly Woman” and she incorporated it into the collection. All of her clothing designs are created in the same conceptual manner. The designer creates an original piece of art, regalia, beadwork and then uses its imagery to create patterned fabrics to become clothing.
Representation and Inclusion Good Day describes her clothing lines as, “authentic Indigenous wearable art for the culturally confident, the fashionista, the collector and the Native arts appreciator.” Inclusion is an important cultural concept to her, whether it be through a large range of sizing from extra-small to plus size, or to create pieces that are non-gender based. She intentionally creates clothing that is for everyone, but she does put focus on creating for her Native communities. “We need representation in the fashion industry,” she says. “We need authenticity. I started researching how to get my designs produced. I’m still learning to this day. Native Artists are continually learning.”
Currently in her studio are new ledger drawings, which will start appearing at shows in 2022. She wants to reinforce that she’s a visual artist, and not only a fashion designer, which is why the ledger pieces still motivate her. She started as a visual artist before she became a fashion designer, and she wants to give honor to that. Her body of work, Ledger Love, is full of designs with pinks and purples, and geometric patterning. She’s working on a new line of athleisure pieces, which she expects to come out in May. She has many opportunities coming up with the different art markets starting with the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market. She’s also been invited back to the fashion show at the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market in August.
Good Day has personal goals of creating a larger photoshoot than what she has done in the past. When she’s shooting her own line at home in her community, she doesn’t hire professional models. “All of the models I use are my close friends and family,” she adds. “I’m using actual Native people from my community. They’re authentic and not necessarily professional models, they’re just regular Native people.” This again aligns with her art and fashion being for everyone. You can find her work and mentions in publications such as Vogue, InStyle, the New York Times, Fashion, Cowboys & Indians, Cosmopolitan and numerous national and international publications.
“I want to represent my people and who I come from in the best way possible,” Good Day says. “Don’t let other people hinder you within in your work. Don’t give up.” She encourages other artists and designers to be authentic and unique, and wants artists to work from their own perspective of who they are as a Native person. “This is my life’s work and life’s passion. I’m really grateful. We’re still wearing our designs today. This is my regalia. Our work is not only beautiful, but it holds our teachings, our stories, our culture. I want to continue on my lifeways of my people.”
Powered by Froala Editor
