Lois Chichinoff Thadei is an Aleut born into a Tlingit and Haida community in Southeast Alaska. She is a 4^th generation artist displaced from Unga, a now unpopulated community on Unga Island of the Aleutian Chain.

Her father, Louis Thadei, Jr., was a self-taught artist born in Ketchikan. He embellished found objects focusing on multi media and collage. Her aunt, Johanna Chichinoff Paddock Snyder, was a designer and skin sewer. In Lois’ family, creativity was expected, and neither discouraged nor encouraged. Creativity was just a part of everyday life.

“Weaving is the core of my creative expression,” Lois said. “Guided by ancient hands and echoes of voices recently passed, I manipulate materials – the pieces determine their own dimension and form. I offer only the hands, while others are the heart and soul of my work.”

Lois makes diminutive baskets sweetly woven during early winter. Accompanied by friends, apprentices or fellow weavers, she gently harvests perennial grasses from an ecologically fragile series of bird resting sites between Cook Inlet in Alaska and California. Each site is part of the great Pacific coast migratory flyway and part of Lois’ migration as an Aleut woman harvesting grasses.  Weaving materials are harvested based upon how much can be taken, given the growing conditions each year. She carefully cures Scripus Americanus and Elymus Mollis in the ancient, Aleut method. The baskets honor her Aleut heritage while displaying appreciation of the indigenous wild beach grasses.

Lois has won numerous awards for her art, which was exhibited in Hitéemlkiliiksix, an exhibition of work from the Gathering of Indigenous Visual Artists of the Pacific Rim held at The Evergreen State College in June 2001. Other honors and awards include: 2nd in Woven Regalia (Cedar Rain Hat) 1998, Northwest Indian Art; 2nd in Basketry (Cedar Utility Basket) 1999, Northwest Indian Art; and Urban Indian Art Show Tacoma (Cedar Utility Basket) 2000.

She has studied and apprenticed with many notable artists, including Katherine Ross, an Aleut teacher, Joe Senengutuk, Cheryl Samuel, Holly Churchill, Evelyn Vanderhoop, Pete Peterson, Theresa Parker and Leliani Jones. She has a Masters Degree in Management from Marylhurst University and attended Oregon School of Arts & Crafts. She was a recipient of a Sealaska Heritage scholarship (regalia making) in 1999.