Nikara Bekolay was driving around B.C. in the summer of 2015 sleeping in the back of her car and deciding where she wanted to live.
It was while hiking in Lake Louise that she asked herself ‘it’s almost winter, where do I want to snowboard this season?’ The answer was Revelstoke.
“I like it here because you get the total contrast,” Bekolay said. “You get the hot summers, the rainy season in between and the winters.”
Though her car broke down along the way, Bekolay poured in some stop leak and kept on driving. She made it here before disaster struck and the car spent the winter parked in the garage.
Along with a car that was slowly dying, Bekolay brought her penchant for creating dream catchers with her to Revelstoke.
She most recently showed her creations at the Garden Art Tour.
READ MORE: Revelstoke Garden Art Tour showcases talent from your backyard
Though the dream catchers are meant to be over a bed, Bekolay loved seeing them in a garden, back to where they came from, she said.
Every time Bekolay travels she stops at second hand stores and thrift malls, looking for things she can use to make dream catchers. She takes apart jewelry and collects pine cones from the forest. Sometimes she takes down a dream catcher she has had up for years and takes it apart to reuse the pieces.
Lately Bekolay has been making more and more triangle dream catchers. When she finds a stick that she likes on her walks or bike rides, she breaks it into three pieces and ties them together. In order to make a circle dream catcher out of wood, Bekolay needs live cut branches, which she collects when they prune the trees in her backyard.
She shapes them and then allows them to dry, before starting decorating.
Other times she uses bracelets and other nik knaks to create the circular frame.
Bekolay remembers learning to make dream catchers as a kid, it was a next step after macramé friendship bracelets. She rediscovered them in high school and created a dream catcher for an art show she and her friends put together.
“I made a huge, out of a hulahoop, silver dream catcher with a disco ball in the middle of it and it was so much fun at this show that I think it just kind of sparked something where I started making them all the time again after that,” she said.
One of the things that she likes about dream catchers, is that she can do them in stages. One day she will wrap a few of the pieces, the next she will weave the insides. And when she is feeling ready to make a mess she will pull out the feathers.
She said the whole process keeps her hands busy.
“I think I might be a lot fidegtier if I didn’t do them,” she said with a laugh.
Bekolay said it is much easier to stay inspired in Revelstoke than it was when she was living in Edmonton.
“I grew up in the city but never really felt like I belonged in the city,” she said. “I’m a small town girl at heart.”
Now if she is feeling uninspired she takes her bike out for a spin, but the only time she really has creation blocks these days is when she is working a lot and physically exhausted.
To combat that she doodles to get in the zone before moving on to dream catchers, or jewelry, or candles.
At the moment the best way to contact Bekolay is on Instagram @niks_knacks. She said she hopes to drop in at the market this summer and the plan is to be there full time next year.
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