Stained Glass: Angela Babby

---

"Earth Mother", 20"x 24", art glass mosaic with enamel and fired to over 1000 degrees, details (i.e. the face, hands and animals) on tile board. 1st place award in Diverse Arts Category, non-traditional, Santa Fe Indian Art Market.

---

Angela Babby was born in Everett, Washington where her father was employed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The family is from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where Angela is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux tribe. By the time she was in high school in Oregon Angela was committed to a career in art. After earning her degree in art at Montana State University-Billings in 1990 she returned to the Seattle area where she was featured in her first single artist show, an exhibit of watercolor paintings at the Virginia Inn. In 1993, while living in Portland, Oregon, she began pursuing a different medium -stained glass.

This medium soon became here "true passion". In 1995 she visited Arizona while on vacation and decided to move there within a month. An Arizona resident since then, she claims the driving force behind her work is the use of available raw materials combined with her personal skills and insights to inspire and influence others. In her own words:

"We are all connected if we choose to notice. What we think and create makes a great deal of difference in the big picture. We each affect our world in a tangible way."

While taking an art class in 2002, a fellow student urged her to enter the Heard Indian Art Market in Phoenix. Angela applied and was accepted on her first application. At the Heard show she learned of SWAIA (Southwestern Association for Indian Arts) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, considered to be the best Indian art forum in the world. She applied and was accepted on her first try. Both of these experiences gave Angela further encouragement to pursue the development of her interests in Native American art forms.

At her first Santa Fe Indian Art Market in 2003, she was not allowed to compete her stained glass mosaic pieces, despite the fact that she was juried into the show with photos and accurate descriptions of the work. Her art had been mistaken for painting and there was no category for judging this new medium. The following year she succeeded in getting a category for her mosaics and she won third place in her division.

Early in 2006, Angela was awarded a prestigious SWAIA fellowship. This award truly meant the world to the artist and, in August of 2006, she won both 1st and 2nd place in her division at the Santa Fe Indian Art Market.

---