Joanne Brings Thunder

Joanne Brings Thunder is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe located on the Wind River Indian Reservation, in central Wyoming. She started learning her traditional arts at the age of five from her maternal grandmother and respected international beadwork artist, Eva B. McAdams and her mother.

While raising her family, she attended the Colorado Institute of Art and received her undergraduate degree in Interior Design shortly followed by a graduate degree in Architecture from the University of Colorado. She has been an award winning and practicing architect and interior designer for over twenty-five years. During this time she has continued to experiment with various forms of art.

In 2012, she rediscovered her passion for traditional art and its healing properties. She couldn’t easily access beads and buckskin so she began painting and studying old photographs of regalia and other treasured family heirlooms. She started creating her own versions of patterns while sketching and beading. Her day to day work focuses on her traditional arts reflecting her love of culture and traditions mixed with a contemporary outlook.