Florence Maple

1922–2000

Marie Florence Maple (nee Perreault) was a Métis woman who initially made hooked rugs in the traditional Métis style.

After moving with her family to Standing Buffalo First Nation, one of the few First Nations to accept citizens without treaty status, Maple helped manage the Sioux Handcraft Co-operative and taught rug-making skills to the young women of the community. Later in life, she moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba.Sun Ascending, her largest work and most important architectural commission, is a modular, geometric landscape that recalls in abstracted form the sun rising above an aspen grove, a landscape typical of both her native Finland and her adopted home. The two sets of panels create the sense of a clearing within a thicket—an ancient place of worship in Finnish culture.