(bells) - [Nelda] That sound when you're praying helps to carry your prayers.

And it's a very soft emotion.

It's very sacred feeling within you when you pray.

And that beautiful sound is a sound that you just wanna share with your spiritual leader.

(calming guitar) Noise makers are a very primitive item.

The different tribes used different kind of rattles.

When the medicine men pray they'll pray to the four directions and they'll use their rattle while they're praying.

The sounds help carry the prayers to grandfather.

But women don't make rattles.

That's a man's birthright to make rattles if they so choose to.

I do rattles, but it's more for artistic interpretation.

Mine are very contemporary, very modern.

I try to stick as close to possible with the meanings of colors, materials but yet stay out the realm of the sacredness of making the traditional rattles that they use in ceremonial purposes like blessings and naming ceremonies.

(calming guitar) A lot of the jewelers their focal point is the stone, where mine is the metal.

When I buy my metal, I buy silver in different gauges.

My favorite gauge is 24 gauge.

That's sturdy enough to keep the hollow forms.

And I saw the two identical pieces together.

And that creates the hollow.

A lot of our Northern Plains designs are very geometric.

I'll cut 'em down into little pieces of their former selves and create little hollow forms.

And then I'll turn around and recreate a different image that does not even look like what they began.

And I use my melted down scrap silver and I make little beads and I put 'em on the inside.

And each rattle is so different.

They can be basically the same chamber, but depends on the size of the bead, and how many beads I put in 'em.

(rattles) Hear that one.

This is kind of a, kind of more clunky.

This is more ringing.

Some pieces are so intricate that I have to wire 'em together.

And I leave a little skirt around the image and that's where I'll put my solder.

After my last soldering, I'll cut off all the excess and then I drop 'em in the acid bath.

This is just pure citric acid.

It's nontoxic.

And it cleans just as well.

Then I put it in my other bowl over there and I soak all the acid off.

From there I'll go back and solder again.

That's the repetitiveness of the soldering process.

All solder, the acid cleans.

I rinse it out, go back to soldering and I'll do that until the piece that I've created is done.

And then I start the polishing.

(guitar) I call them audio aesthetics because it's hearing beauty.

Even the blind people can enjoy the the artwork because of the sound.

And they're so individualistic.

They're like little people and they're little voices.

I follow my intuition a lot.

I follow my spontaneous creativity a lot.

When I finish a piece it has no resemblance of what I started out with.

People don't realize how much inspiration is needed to create these pieces.

How much time, how much effort, how much of yourself gets into that piece?

I like for them to see the creativity that goes into these pieces.

What tickled me the best is when the Smithsonian wanted to buy a piece from me.

Not only in the National Museum of American Indian but the National Museum of American Art as well That kind of gave me the satisfaction of saying, yay, look at that.

I can do it.

It certifies that I am a true artist and other people recognize me as an artist.

I do tell my grand babies that when you have grandkids I says, take 'em to these museums and show.

This is what great, great grandma made.

I'm leaving a, I don't know if it's a legacy, but a history for them to enjoy.

I don't want 'em to follow in my footsteps but it's possible.

You can make anything for yourself.

You make yourself whatever you wanna be in this world.

(calming guitar) - Funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of Prairie Public.