About Studio Henbane

About the Artist

Studio Henbane features the designs and creations of Northwest mixed-media artist Alicia Allard.

Alicia has been working with beads, fibers, and natural materials since the 1990s, drawn early to small, tactile objects and the stories they carry. A childhood spent searching beaches from Florida to Alaska for fragments of glass, shell, and stone treasures shaped her love of natural materials.

Her practice spans a wide range of techniques, including beadwork, textile and fiber work, paper-making and printmaking, embroidery, leatherwork, metal embossing, and sculptural forms. Studio Henbane brings these skills together through small-batch jewelry and seasonal objects that emphasize durability, texture, and meaning.

Alicia studies traditional Indigenous beadwork and related skills with the goal of ensuring her own children, Lakota and Tlingit, carry the knowledge and traditions of their tribal communities. It is important to note that Studio Henbane does not present work as Native American or Alaska Native–made or “inspired” and urges everyone to visit and support the many talented indigenous artists in our communities. 

Alicia is also passionate about history and archaeology. Her work is inspired by the material culture of everyday people across the world  as shown through jewelry, beads, stones, textiles, metalwork, and adornments found in archaeological finds and historical records. These objects reveal stories about culture, history, change and human connections across time.

Studio Henbane is where these threads meet: techniques and skills fading into distant memory, the value of simple natural materials, and a curiosity about how human adornment has evolved across time and cultures.