When Jeni Presley sat on her grandmother’s lap, passively learning how to sew, she had no realization these moments would lead her to one of her true passions: beadwork.
“I don’t remember learning how to sew,” Presley said. “I would sit in my grandmother’s lap while she would sew, and as a 3- or 4-year-old I would want to hold the fabric. And then I would want to do more. It just built up slowly over time until I could sew.”
Presley, a Chickasaw citizen, can sew just about anything. She loves to quilt and make ribbon skirts and ribbon vests. But sewing and quilting can be isolating. The sewing machine is loud and stationary. She wanted to be around her family while she was creating something.
She took up baking and loved to bake just about everything, including cakes and breads she could share with her family and friends. But, she said, for her health and her family’s health, she needed to switch hobbies, especially because a part of her job is encouraging children to make healthy living choices.
Presley is the licensed professional counselor for the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center’s Empowered Living Clinic.
“We are a pediatric healthy lifestyles clinic,” Presley explained. “I work with patients on things like behavior change, mind-body connection and figuring out what their motivation for being healthy is.”
She is part of a larger team that includes a dietitian, physical therapist, doctor and nurse.
As an employee of the Chickasaw Nation, Presley is encouraged to participate in the Individual Development Plan (IDP), which is an incentive-based program for employees to engage in a wide range of professional development. In Presley’s case, it was life-changing.
Presley took an IDP class in beading, and it just clicked with her. Her background in sewing made a needle and thread feel natural in her hands, and her background in quilting helped her see the puzzle aspect and how different pieces can fit together to make a whole — though in this case it was beads instead of pieces of fabric.
The timing was perfect because she was just starting to want to move beyond baking, and this would give her a different creative outlet for her hands. In addition to this, beading was portable. She could sit in the living room and watch a movie with her family. She could take it in the car with her. It could even go with her to the stands at a soccer game.
Presley gradually replaced baking with beading, but eventually had produced more earrings than she could sell. She wanted to challenge herself to a more ambitious project and found inspiration at the 2024 Southeastern Art Show and Market (SEASAM) when she saw a picture another artist had beaded. When she realized this was a possibility, she knew the picture she would recreate.
When Presley was growing up, she spent more time with her grandmother than she did at home. Her grandmother, Lahoma Presley, would keep her on school breaks and watch her after school. However, in addition to watching her grandchildren, Lahoma Presley would also take care of her own mother, Bygimie (Perry) Parker. Three generations would be together under one roof. Even when Parker had to move to an assisted living facility, Lahoma and Jeni Presley would visit every day. For the first eight years of her life, Jeni Presley had the chance to learn from, and love, her great-grandmother Parker.
When spending time at her grandmother’s house, Presley always admired a picture that sat in her grandmother’s bedroom. It was a photo from the 1920s of Parker. In the sienna-colored photo, Parker is about 16 years old and wearing a fur coat.
“I felt like the picture had its own story,” Presley said. “I just would always think about what it was like for her, living in the 1920s and being a 16-year-old who had this gorgeous fur coat. And the picture felt like it was alive in a way.”
Presley wanted to find a way to preserve the photo in a technique that went beyond digitization, and she was also looking for a new beading challenge. The two goals aligned perfectly, and Presley took on her new project, a portrait in beadwork, “Bygimie Mae.”
“I thought, mistakenly, that it would be easier because it was black and white,” Presley said. “But no. When I got into it, I realized there’s a lot more that goes into the shades of the picture like green, blues, purples and all other colors to make it look like it from a distance.”
While she originally thought she would need two colors of beads, she ended up with more than 50 different varieties.
In the end, the portrait of her great-grandmother was about the size of a regular sheet of paper and felt like a piece of fabric because it was brick-stitched, which means each bead is individually stitched together as opposed to stitched to a backing like fabric or felt.
It took Presley quite a while to complete. She began January 2024 and completed it October 2024. She said at several points she thought about quitting because it felt like too big a project. However, when her grandmother passed away at the end of summer 2024, Presley had worked her way from the bottom of the picture up to Parker’s eyes. She said that it was special to her that her grandmother was able to see that much of the project before she died. At that moment, Presley was filled with the resolve she needed to continue and pushed forward.
While the work was a love letter to Presley’s cherished family, it also was well received within the art community.
She entered it into the Hushtola Art Market in 2024 and received Best in Beadwork. Then she entered it into the Te Ata Fisher Chickasaw Nation Employee Art Show and won Best in Show. Her next stop was the Artesian Arts Festival where she once again received Best in Beadwork. Her final stop was 2025 SEASAM where she was awarded Best in Culture.
This year, Presley will return to Hushtola Art Market, Dec. 13-14 at OKANA Resort & Indoor Waterpark, Oklahoma City, with a butterfly inspired piece.
“Butterflies represent the ability to adapt, change and persevere,” Presley said. “I’m really captivated by their inherent beauty.”
Through the process of creating “Bygimie Mae,” beadwork has become an intense passion for Presley. When she and her family went on family vacation, she was always looking for the beadwork at museums. She said she was amazed at all the things that can be beaded. She saw rugs, chairs, shoes, as well as regalia from other tribes.
“You can literally bead anything,” Presley said.
“I enjoyed thinking about all beadwork that was showing up all over the globe,” Presley said. “We’re all so connected despite our differences. Cultures all have that need to create art and push the boundaries and limits of what they know. People want to exercise their creativity, and that’s really good for mental health.”
While Presley enjoys beading on her own, she has also incorporated it into her work with the Chickasaw Nation Empowered Living Clinic. She teaches the children and teenagers she sees in therapy how to bead as well.
“It takes a little bit of the pressure off the conversation we’re having,” Presley said. “They are working on pieces, and it’s like an art project while we are talking, and a lot of times, they open up more.”
Beadwork allows Presley to create art while also honoring her Chickasaw heritage and traditions. However, by incorporating it into her therapeutic practices, she is also passing along the knowledge to future generations, just as knowledge was passed to her as a child.
In the future, Presley would like to take her passion and knowledge of beadwork even further, starting an art therapy beading community.
“Community is healing,” Presley said. “Having a place and knowing that you have a safe space and that you have people who have common shared interests together — that is healing and nurturing to our souls.”
You can bead anything but also, as Presley illustrates through her work and life, you can use beading as a way to accomplish anything as well.
OKANA is located at 639 First American Blvd in Oklahoma City.