First American Art Magazine No. 09, Winter 2015/16

ANCESTRAL, HISTORICAL, and LIVING ARTS of INDIGENOUS PEOPLES of the AMERICAS

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

No. 9, Winter 2015/16

Lamb to Loom: Navajo-Churro Sheep Naturalistic Portrait Painting Native Street Art in Panama, Canada, and United States

Joan Hill George Neptune Wendy Ponca Diego Romero

THE CHICKASAW NATION PRESENTS

3RD ANNUAL

MAY 28, 2016 SULPHUR, OKLAHOMA

BILL ANOATUBBY GOVERNOR

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT MARK MILLIGAN AT (580) 272-5520 OR EMAIL ARTISTINFO@CHICKASAW.NET

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Edgar Heap of Birds Bill AntHES

95 illustrations (incl. 78 in color), paper, $24.95

DUKE UnivErSity PrESS

New from

“Compelling, thought-provoking, and urgently needed."

—Jane Blocker

In this first book-length study of contemporary Native American artist Edgar Heap of Birds, Bill Anthes analyzes Heap of Birds’s art and politics in relation to Native American history, spirituality, and culture, the international art scene, and how his art critiques the subjugation of Native Americans.

Also by Bill AntHES: native Moderns

American Indian Painting, 1940–1960 Objects/Histories 34 photos (incl. 28 in color), paper, $24.95 2006

“[A] superb and innovative contribution to Native American art history and modern art’s varied histories.”

—Janet Berlo

Bill Anthes is a Professor in the Art Field Group at Pitzer College.

REAd A Q&A wItH BIll ANtHEs oN ouR BloG:

DUKEUPrESS.worDPrESS.coM

Save 30% with coupon code P15FAA Follow us on Twitter! @DUKEpress 888-651-0122 dukeupress.edu WINT E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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SUPER INDIAN FRITZ SCHOLDER

1967–1980

Fritz Scholder, Super Indian No. 2, 1971. Oil on canvas. Promised gift of Vicki and Kent Logan to the Denver Art Museum. ©Estate of Fritz Scholder.

Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967-1980 is organized by the Denver Art Museum.

It is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. It is presented with generous support from Vicki and Kent Logan. Additional funding provided by John Brooks Incorporated, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the citizens who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine, CBS4, Comcast Spotlight, and The Denver Post.

Virgil Ortiz, Tahu, 2012. Clay, slip, leather and wild spinach paint. Promised gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the collection of the Denver Art Museum. © Virgil Ortiz.

Revolt 1680/2180: Virgil Ortiz is organized by the Denver Art Museum. It is presented with generous support from Vicki and Kent Logan, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the citizens who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine, CBS4, Comcast Spotlight, and The Denver Post.

ON VIEW UNTIL 5/1/16

Presented as part of the Denver Art Museum’s ongoing commitment to supporting and showcasing contemporary American Indian art.

, WOW.

Come say hello.

Osiyo is the traditional Cherokee greeting.

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Vis itCherokeeNation.com

Issue No. 9, Winter 2015/16 FEATURES

50

March of the Land Writers: Unsanctioned Indigenous Street Art Interventions Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

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Ologwagdi, El Kolectivo, and the Art of Protest in Panama Peter Szok, PhD

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From Lamb to Loom: The Navajo-Churro and Sheep Is Life Celebration Cathy Short (Citizen Potawatomi)

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56

Faithfully Rendered: Naturalism 40 in Contemporary Native American Painting America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

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George Neptune: Passamaquoddy Basket Weaver Jean Merz-Edwards

56

Wendy Ponca: Osage Fashion Designer and Textile Artist Alexandra Ponca Stock (Osage)

62

Diego Romero: Cochiti Potter RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara)

68

Recent Developments

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Seven Directions Tony A. Tiger (MuscogeeSeminole-Sac & Fox)

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Exploring Native Graphic Design Rico Worl (Tlingit-Athabascan) Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa)

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Advice A Practical Guide to Cleaning Silver Jewelry Andrew Krav Guest Column Fair Use: Content, Copyright, and Culture Kevin R. Kemper, PhD, LLM

ARTIST PROFILES Joan Hill: Muscogee-Cherokee Painter Daniel McCoy Jr. (Muscogee-Potawatomi)

DEPARTMENTS

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87

88

Calendar

92

In Memoriam Lloyd Oxendine (Lumbee) America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

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Johnny Tiger Jr. 91 (Muscogee-Seminole) America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

REVIEWS Art Exhibit Reviews

74

Book Reviews

82

Report 85

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COVER: Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Water Memory, 2015, color photograph, limited edition 1/5, 44 × 44 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

Water Memory is a dreamscape, an artistic exploration of place, memory, and multiple narratives. Here we have male and female Pueblo corn dancers, captured in both a terrifying and peaceful free fall into a mysterious deluge of natural water.

—Cara Romero

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WORKSHOPS AND FESTIVAL Issue No. 9, Winter 2015/16 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online) Owners: America Meredith and Mary Ellen Meredith (both Cherokee Nation) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD Marketing Director: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Circulation Manager: Melissa Dominguez Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana), Ronda Rawlins Proofreaders: Rosa Cays (Chicana), Jean Merz-Edwards, Ronda Rawlins Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Great Basin Representative: Melissa Melero (Fallon Paiute-Modoc) Great Lakes Representative: Kelly Church (Odawa-Ojibwe) Editorial Advisory Board: heather ahtone (Choctaw-Chickasaw) James Bialac, JD Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw) Maggie Ohnesorgen (Mestiza) Paula Rivera (Taos Pueblo) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole) Ken Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho-Seneca) Advertising Representative: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Contact: ads@firstamericanartmagazine.com Social Media: Jacquie Archambeau (Cherokee Nation), Melissa Dominguez, Staci Golar (Cornish-Welsh-American), Cathy Short (Citizen Potawatomi) International distribution by Disticor Magazine Distribution Services.

First American Art Magazine, LLC, is not responsible for the content of any article or for the statements of any advertiser. First American Art Magazine welcomes queries about editorial submissions. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or artwork.

Idyllwild Arts Summer Program - The summer tradition that began in 1950 to bring the best artists in their fields to teach under the pines continues today. Intensive hands-on workshops in Native American Arts such as Hopi Jewelry, Navajo Weaving, Cahuilla Pottery, and Native Plants; as well as music, dance, theater, visual arts, writing and filmmaking are offered to students from age 5 to 105. Each year more than 1,800 adults and children attend the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program.

Registration begins February 2016 www.idyllwildarts.org/nativearts summer@idyllwildarts.org 951.468.7265 Use the code FAAM16 by March 15, 2016 to take advantage of the 10% pay in full discount

Copyright ©2015 by First American Art Magazine, LLC. Cover and contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or part by any method without written permission, except those specific images listed with Creative Commons licenses. All reasonable efforts have been made to identify and contact copyright holders, but in some cases these could not be traced. If you hold or administer rights for materials published here, please contact us. Any errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

First American Art Magazine® is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

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58th Annual Heard Museum Guild 58th Annual Heard Museum Guild

n/a

Celebrating the Art of Pottery Celebrating the Art of5 Pottery March & 6, 2016 March 5 & 6, 2016

Media sponsors: Media sponsors: 2301 N. Central Ave. Phoenix, AZ | 602.252.8840 x2276 | heard.org/fair 2301 N. Central Ave. Phoenix, AZ | 602.252.8840 x2276 | heard.org/fair From the Heard Museum Collection, Clockwise from Lower Left: Noreen Simplicio (Zuni), jar, 2002. Diego Romero (Cochiti), miniature bowl, 1998. Jason Garcia (Santa Clara), ceramic tile, 2009. Al Qöyawayma (Hopi), canteen, 1989.

From the Heard Museum Collection, Clockwise from Lower Left: Noreen Simplicio (Zuni), jar,Aragon 2002. Diego Romero Karen Abeita (Tewa-Hopi/Isleta), jar, 1999.

Preston Duwyenie (Hopi), jar, late 1990s.

Wanda (Acoma), jar, 1989.

(Cochiti), miniature bowl, 1998. Jason Garcia (Santa Clara), ceramic tile, 2009. Al Qöyawayma (Hopi), canteen, 1989.

Karen Abeita (Tewa-Hopi/Isleta), jar, 1999. Preston Duwyenie (Hopi), jar, late 1990s. Wanda Aragon WINT (Acoma), E R 2jar, 0 1 51989. /1 6 | 9

Editor’s Greetings I have seen among the curiosities they have brought to the King from the new land of gold, a sun of gold of the size of a fathom, and a moon of silver of the same size. I have admired two chambers full of all kinds of curious things from the same land; arms, harness, engines of war, vests the most astonishing. I remark that nearly all these things are richer and more beautiful than the same kind of things to be seen at home. They are, it is said, worth a hundred thousand florins. I own that never any sight has excited and gratified me so much as these extraordinary products of that distant country. They show art-work of a subtilty [sic] and ingenia altogether new in its shape.1 —Albrecht Dürer August 27, 1520

T

HE HUNGARIAN-GERMAN ARTIST Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) penned these words after he witnessed the tribute that Nahua leader Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin of Tenochtitlan presented to the invader Hernán Cortés. Dürer, considered by some to be the greatest draftsman of the Northern Renaissance, stood in awe of Mesoamerican artistry.

Unfortunately, not everyone possessed the artist’s eye, and the items were destroyed—the silver and gold items melted down for their metals.

Developing an eye for art takes skill. Fully experiencing art takes time and dedication. Dürer, trained by his art practice to be a keen, open-minded observer, could appreciate the sophistication of the Mesoamerican artworks he beheld, when so many other Europeans could not. The power of art enabled him to span vast cultural differences.

Research shows that curiosity increases with knowledge.2 Having some knowledge about Native art whets the appetite for more. Knowledge about different cultures expands our ability to bridge cultural gaps.

The articles and information in this magazine provide pieces of a complex puzzle that I don’t believe any of us fully comprehend. As I compiled our first print calendar of events (pages 92–94), I kept envisioning a beating heart. The shows, fairs, and other art events are all part of the organ that drives the lifeblood of the Indigenous American art world.

Providing fascinating clues to this intricate whole, First American Art Magazine writers share diverse aspects of our art world. Matthew Ryan Smith explores perspectives shared by First Nations and Native American street artists with those of South Africa and Australia, while Peter Szok looks at street artists and collectives in Panama. Cathy Short examines an other-than-human collaborator in textile art: the Navajo-Churro sheep and its central role in Navajo weaving. I look at Native artists who draw inspiration from Renaissance Old Masters, including Dürer, to paint naturalistic portraits.

Our profiled artists are carefully selected to include diverse voices within the Native art world. Joan Hill has always lived on the Muscogee Creek Nation, but her artistic outlook was expanded by early museum trips and art

reproductions. George Neptune, who grew up on his home reservation, draws inspiration from Spanish surrealists in creating his sculptural ash basket designs. Diego Romero uses styles of classical Greek ceramics to tell the stories of the Spanish invasion of his Pueblo homelands. Wendy Ponca’s ambitions of cross-cultural communication extend beyond this planet.

Art is the window that allows us to begin to see each other, across our very real and valid cultural differences, and it sparks our curiosity to keep looking further.

—America Meredith

America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), ᎫᏇ ᎠᎾᏄᏣ (Guque Atanutsa), 2011, quail egg tempera on true gesso panel, 7 x 5 in.

1. William Bell Scott, Albrecht Dürer: His Life and Works (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1869), 125.

2. George Loewenstein, “The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation,” Psychological Bulletin 116, no. 1 (1994): 87–89.

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Letters to FAAM Dear First American Art Magazine, Just found your magazine in Toronto and wow!

Amazing articles and really good attention to new artists. My main focus is Northwest Coast art, and I collect it, too.

Thanks, Richard Roderick MacNeish Toronto, ON Just picked this up at the Spider Gallery in Tahlequah.

What a beautiful magazine! Just wanted to let you know how much I am enjoying it, and that you have a new subscriber. Hope all is well with you.

Rhonda Morenzoni Phoenix, AZ Thanks for sending me a copy. Very impressive, excellent presentation, beautiful.

Annemiek van den Berg Gatineau, QC We welcome your letters to the editor! If we print your letter, we will send you a free copy of that issue of the magazine. Please email your letters to us at: info@firstamericanartmagazine.com or­mail letters to: First American Art Magazine Attention: Editor 1000 Cordova Place, #843 Santa Fe, NM 87505

Errata In First American Art Magazine No. 8, page 86, Jacquie Archambeau (Cherokee Nation) took the photograph of dresses in Native Haute Couture, not the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian. On page 97, we mistakenly wrote that Postcommodity’s new album We Lost Half the Forest and the Rest Will Burn This Summer was produced by Light in the Attic Records in 2014.

The album was actually produced by Postcommodity in 2015.

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Contributing Writers MARTHA BERRY (Cherokee Nation) is a self-taught artist who creates beadwork in the early 19th-century Cherokee style and uses period-authentic materials. In 2013, she was designated a Cherokee National Treasure for her work to revive this art form and received the Cherokee National Historical Society’s SevenStar Tradition Bearer Award in 2015. She resides in Tyler, Texas.

KAREN BERRY (Cherokee Nation) works in the media of

gourd carving and fingerweaving. She incorporates pre-European contact and contemporary Cherokee designs into her carving and weaves in the style typical of Southeastern Woodland tribes in the 18th and 19th centuries.

ROSEMARY DIAZ (Santa Clara Pueblo) studied literature

and its respective arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University, and University of California, Santa Cruz.

Her feature articles have appeared in Beadwork, The Collector’s Guide, Native Peoples, New Mexico Magazine, and the Santa Fean. She is also an award-winning and anthologized poet and often works behind the scenes, writing text for greeting card companies, commercial brochures, museum exhibits, and artists’ websites. She presently lives in Santa Fe.

SUZANNE NEWMAN FRICKE, PhD (Ashkenazic-

American), wrote her dissertation in art history on 20th-century Native American pottery at the University of New Mexico. She teaches art history at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

In 2012, she, along with Beverly Morris (Aleut) and Charlie James, curated Octopus Dreams: Works on Paper by Contemporary Native American Artists, which traveled to six sites in Russia and to 516 Arts in Albuquerque. In 2014, two museums in Russia displayed another show, As We See It: Photography by Contemporary Native American Artists, curated by Dr. Fricke and India Young, who are currently preparing a catalogue. She is currently organizing a third show, which will also travel to Russia.

SCOTT W. HALE, ISA AM, is an art adviser and accredited appraiser for Native American Art Appraisals, Inc., with offices in Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Tulsa, and New York City. He pursued his master’s and doctoral studies at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught in the Native American studies program and lectured in the School of Art and Art History. Hale is a former curator of private, corporate, and nonprofit art collections and has written and lectured for several publications and museums.

KEVIN R. KEMPER, PhD, LLM, earned his doctoral

degree in journalism and juris doctorate from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and his master of laws degree from the University of Arizona’s Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program. Kemper is a lay advocate in the Pascua Yaqui Tribal Court. His business Kemper Consulting provides agency services for artists, writers, photographers, and other creators of intellectual property. He is not licensed to practice law.

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MICHELLE LANTERI is a freelance writer and master of arts student at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

She holds two bachelor of arts degrees in media studies and art history/museum studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For two years she served as a curatorial assistant at Greenhill, a contemporary art center in Greensboro.

She is currently working on a curatorial project with the New Mexico State University Museum focused on Hopi culture, and her thesis, which is centered on the musealization of Native American cultural arts.

DOYLE LOGAN JR. has collected rare books for more than 58 years since high school, and specializes in Western Americana, fur trade era, Southwest, and American Indian books. Doyle and his wife owned a rare book and coffee house in Dallas, Texas. He also reviewed books about the Southwest and American Indians for three years for Southwest Book Views of Santa Fe. Doyle has sold American Indian fine art for the last 20 years, has written a book-length history of American Indian painting, and judged at the American Indian Art Festival in Dallas for several years. He lives in Salina, Kansas.

DANIEL McCOY JR. (Muscogee-Potawatomi) is an award-winning painter. He earned his AFA degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is currently completing his BFA degree. Born in Tulsa, McCoy grew up in Bristow, Oklahoma, immersed in his Muscogee Creek culture. He studied commercial art under Chuck Osborne for eight years and currently lives in Santa Fe with his family.

JEAN MERZ-EDWARDS has studied art history since 2000, when she attended her first classes on the subject at Hunter College in New York. She recently earned her master’s degree in art history from the University of Oklahoma and was granted a certificate in women’s and gender studies and the Alice Mary Robertson Award for her scholarship on the life and art of Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw). Merz-Edwards teaches art history at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas.

JUANITA PAHDOPONY, MEd (Comanche), has been published in academic, poetic, local, state, and national storytelling journals. Her memoir of her grandfather, “Kwasinaboo Puha (Snake Medicine),” appeared in the inaugural issue of Indigenous Knowledge: Other Ways of Knowing (2015), a journal published by Pennsylvania State University. She edits the Star Day Foundation’s Texas Bison Student Study Group Journal and contributes Comanche short stories, including “Numukutsua Tubini: Where Is the Buffalo?”

CATHY SHORT (Citizen Potawatomi) is a professional photographer and textile designer. With her husband Hank and son Christopher, she owns Lizard Light Productions, specializing in fine art photography, video production, laser art, and Nativedesigned clothing and accessories. Short serves on the board of Wings of America. She exhibits throughout the Southwest and is based in Goodyear, Arizona.

MATTHEW RYAN SMITH, PhD, is a London,

Ontario-based writer, independent curator, and sessional instructor of curatorial studies in the Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto, Mississauga. He is currently the Canadian section editor of the Art Market Dictionary to be published by De Gruyter in 2017 and the literary editor of First American Art Magazine. His writings have been featured in several Canadian and international publications including Canadian Art, ESSE, Blackflash, and Afterimage. He has also published in several academic journals including TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, the Canadian Journal of Native Studies, and Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly.

He recently completed a chapter on unsanctioned graffiti interventions in Johannesburg for a forthcoming book on public art in South Africa to be published by the University of Indiana Press.

INUIT ART is LEGENDARY

NEEBINNAUKZHIK SOUTHALL (Chippewas of

Rama First Nation) is a graphic designer and artist working in a variety of media including photography, body painting, and three-dimensional art at Neebin Studios. She graduated magna cum laude from Oregon State University in 2011 and earned an honors BFA with a minor in fine arts through the University Honors College and OSU’s competitive graphic design program. Southall works at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, where she photographs, designs, and manages media.

ALEXANDRA PONCA STOCK (Osage Nation) is a

THE LEGEND OF KIVIOK Joanasie Faber, Greenland, 1999 14” H × 22” W × 9” D

P.O. Box 308, Sandwich, MA 02563 (508) 833-8250 www.inuitimages.com inuitimages@cs.com

painter and writer living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her focus largely explores questions and commentary concerning tribal identity, gender, the history of individuals, and art in general.

PETER SZOK, PhD, is a professor of Latin American

history at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. He has conducted research in Panama for nearly 25 years and is currently writing a book on Indigenous art in contemporary Panama.

CANDESSA TEHEE, PhD (Cherokee Nation), is the

executive director of the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma. She earned her doctoral degree in linguistics from the University of Oklahoma, where she also earned her bachelor of arts and master of education degrees. Tehee is dedicated to revitalizing the Cherokee language and has previously served as manager of the Cherokee Nation Language Program. She is also an award-winning fingerweaver.

EVA WILLIAMS (Kiowa-Irish), resides north of Lawton, Oklahoma, in rural bliss. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where she also taught art courses as an adjunct instructor from 1999 to 2001. She served as curator of the US Department of the Interior Indian Arts and Crafts Board’s Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, Oklahoma. She is currently exploring the mola making techniques of the Guna Indians of Panama to adapt to her artistic experience.

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Recent Developments MUSEUMS The Seneca Art and Culture Center on the Ganondogan State Historic Site in Victor, New York, opened its doors October 24. The cultural center will highlight Seneca and Haudenosaunee history and culture.

The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, appointed David M. Roche as its new director and chief executive. For the last 16 years, Roche has served as senior consultant for American Indian Art at Sotheby’s. He has a master’s degree in arts administration from New York University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois.

ALTERNATIVE SPACES The Oglala Lakota Arts and Business Incubator is planned to be built in Kyle, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. An estimated 80 percent of home-based businesses on Pine Ridge are focused on making Native art. Rolling Rez Arts, a mobile arts, business, and banking center, will serve the reservation while the incubator is being constructed.

COLLECTIONS Founder of the American football league and owner of the Tennessee Titans, the late Bud Adams (Cherokee Nation) willed his art collection to the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Collection highlights will be displayed from November 2016 to January 2017.

The Vancouver Art Gallery received a collection of 37 Northwest Coast and Arctic artworks from the estate of the late collector George Gund III. The collection, which includes prehistoric, historic, and modern artwork, is on display through January 31, 2016.

Peter Jacobs, professor emeritus of Colorado State University, donated a collection of 700 Native American art books to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe

in Southern Colorado. The tribe has a modest but growing tribal library in Cortez, Colorado.

ART FAIRS Carol Emarthle-Douglas (Northern Arapaho-Seminole) won Best of Show at SWAIA’s 94th Annual Santa Fe Indian Market. Classification winners were Ernest Benally (Navajo), jewelry; Nancy Youngblood (Santa Clara), pottery; David Dalasohya Jr. (Hopi-Laguna), paintings, drawings, graphics, and photography; Bryant Masayesva Honyouti (Hopi), wooden Pueblo carving/sculpture; Troy Sice (Zuni), sculpture; D. Y. Begay (Navajo), textiles; Jamie Okuma and Sandra Okuma (Luiseño-ShoshoneBannock), diverse arts; Jackie Larson Bread (Blackfeet), beadwork/quillwork; Camryn Growing Thunder (Fort Peck AssiniboineSioux), youth; Kyle Bell (Thlopthlocco Muscogee), moving images; and Carol Emarthle-Douglas, basketry.

Best of Show winners at the 10th Annual Cherokee Art Market were Jackie Larson Bread (Blackfeet) and Ken Williams (Northern Arapaho-Seneca). Other award winners include Joe L. Reano (Kewa), Culture Keeper Award, Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation), Innovator Award, and Karin Walkingstick (Cherokee Nation), Anna Mitchell Award. Classification winners were Linda Kukuk (Choctaw), painting/graphics; Troy Jackson, sculpture; Jackie Larson Bread and Ken Williams, beadwork/quillwork; Ronnie Leigh-Goeman (Onondaga), basketry; Alvina Yepa ( Jemez), pottery; Clarissa Rizal (Tlingit), textiles; Toneh Chuleewah (Cherokee Nation), jewelry; and Ryan Lee Smith (Cherokee-Choctaw), diverse art. More than 150 artists participated in this year’s Cherokee Art Market, hosted in Catoosa, Oklahoma, by the Cherokee Nation.

The Feira Mundial de Artesanato Indígena (World Fair of Indigenous Crafts), sponsored by Sebrae and the Tocantins state secretary of culture, took place concurrently with the World Indigenous Games in Palmas, Brazil. Artists

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from 20 Brazilian tribes sold handmade artworks and musical instruments. With 33,000 visitors, the fair provided broad exposure for Indigenous Brazilian art.

Sinte Gleska University hosted its 28th Annual Northern Plains Indian Art Market in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Best of Show winner was Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota). Best of Fine Arts was Charles Her Many Horses (Sicangu Lakota), and Best of Tribal Arts was James Star Comes Out (Oglala Lakota). Division winners were Charles Her Many Horses, oil and acrylic paintings; Arthur Short Bull (Oglala Lakota), watercolor, tempera, gouache, and casein paintings; Jim Yellowhawk (Itazipco Lakota-Onondaga), traditional paintings; Donald Montileaux (Oglala Lakota), drawing; Keith Brave Heart (Oglala Lakota), printmaking; Nelda Schrupp (Pheasant Rump Nakota), three-dimensional–additive process; Alfred DeCoteau (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), three-dimensional–subtractive process; Paul Szabo (Sicangu Lakota), jewelry and decorative metalwork; Randall Blaze (Oglala Lakota), pottery; Todd Bordeaux (Sicangu Lakota), traditional beadwork; Emil Her Many Horses, contemporary beadwork; Janyce Trask (Oglala Lakota), quilts; James Star Comes Out (Oglala Lakota), textiles; Emil Her Many Horses, dolls; Angela Babby (Oglala Lakota), mixed media—fine arts; and Todd Bordeaux, mixed media—tribal arts.

Brenna Ravenshead (Cheyenne River Sioux) took Best of Show at the 3rd Annual Gathering of People, Wind, and Water in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Beverly Bear King Moran (Standing Rock Lakota) won the People’s Choice award.

Division winners were Beverly Bear King Moran, adornment; Angela Babby (Oglala Lakota), two-dimensional; and Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota), three-dimensional. Best Emerging Artist was Tani Gordon (Sicangu Lakota). Gordon Coons (Lac Courte Oreilles) won the Innovation Award, and Roger Broer (Oglala Lakota) won the Publicity Award.

The Arizona State Museum announced that it will no longer host its Southwest Indian Art Fair and cited state budget cuts and reduced human resources in its decision. The fair took place in Tucson, Arizona, every March for the last 23 years.

ART SHOWS Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) won Best of Show in the 20th Annual Cherokee Homecoming juried art show, hosted by the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma. Seventy-three artists belonging to the three Cherokee tribes participated. Category winners were Brandon Morris, visual arts; Noel Grayson, traditional arts; Vivian Cottrell, traditional basketry; JoAnn RackliffRichmond, traditional pottery; Charlotte Coats, contemporary baskets; Carolyn Pallett, contemporary beadwork; Toneh Chuleewah, jewelry; Jane Osti, contemporary pottery; Mike Phillips, sculpture; and Mac Dean-Erb and Joseph Erb, textiles.

David Chaudoin won the Emerging Artist Award, Tonia Weavel won the Bill Rabbit Legacy Award, and Lila Killer won the Betty Scraper Garner Cherokee Elder Artist Award.

Toneh Chuleewah (Cherokee Nation) won Best of Show at the Cherokee Holiday Art Show, open to all federally recognized tribes and held in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Category winners included Jeff Edwards, drawing and graphics; Leslie Gates, diverse arts; J. Ross Davis, photography; Risi Thelander, contemporary basketry; Vivian Cottrell, traditional basketry; Jane Osti, pottery; Douglas Crowder, painting; Troy Jackson, sculpture; Candessa Tehee, textiles; and Toneh Chuleewah, jewelry.

AWARDS and HONORS This year’s BC Creative Achievement Awards for First Nations’ Art were awarded to Linda Bob (Tahltan-Tlingit), Rande Cook (Kwakwaka’wakw), Ya-Ya Heit (Gitxsan), Arlene Ness (Gitxsan), and Laura Wee Lay Laq (Sto:lo). The BC Achievement Foundation gave its 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award to Joe David (Nuu-chah-nulth).

The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation of Vancouver, Washington, chose its 2015 National Artist Fellows. In visual arts, they selected Frank Big Bear (White Earth Ojibwe), James Luna (Luiseño), and Anna Tsouhlarakis (Navajo-Muscogee). In traditional arts, they chose David A. Boxley (Tsimshian), Kelly Church (OdawaOjibwe), and Clarissa Rizal (Tlingit).

Arts will send Thomas Atencio (Ohkay Owingeh), and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture will send Joyce BegayFoss (Navajo) to participate in NMAI’s program.

ORGANIZATIONS

Carol Emarthle-Douglas (Northern ArapahoSeminole), Cultural Burdens, 2015, hemp, waxed linen thread. Photo: Daniel Nadelbach. Image courtesy of SWAIA.

The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation announced its 2015 Regional Arts Fellowship for the Upper Midwest.

Visual Arts fellows were Bennet Brien (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe), Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe), and Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota).

Traditional arts fellows were Amelia Cornelius (Wisconsin Oneida), Pat Kruse (Red Cliff Ojibwe), and April Stone Dahl (Bad River Ojibwe).

The Hnatyshun Foundation of Ottawa, Ontario, presented Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish) with its 2015 Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art. Hopkins is the chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe and will serve as curatorial advisor to documenta 14 to take place in Kassel, Germany, and Athens, Greece.

The George Kaiser Family Foundation sponsored Tulsa Artist Fellowships for 12 artists, including four Native American artists: Marlowe Katoney (Navajo), Monty Little (Navajo), Clarissa Rizal (Tlingit), and Nathan Young (Pawnee-Delaware-Kiowa).

The National Museum of the American Indian selected this year’s Artist Leadership Program fellows: Maura Garcia, Porfirio Gutiérrez (Zapotec), Linley B. Logan (Tonawanda Seneca), and Theresa Secord (Penobscot). NMAI also selected two museums to send a representative for staff consultation, professional development, and collections research.

The Museum of Contemporary Native

A dozen Indigenous artists from Ecuador formed the collective Kichwa Sumakruray. The group has already curated four exhibitions in Otavalo, Cotacachi, Ibarra, Imbabura, and Quito.

CRIME and LEGAL ISSUES Federal agents charged three New Mexicans, Christina Bowen of Los Lunas and Nael Ali and Mohammad Abed Manasra of Albuquerque, with violating the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act. They are accused of conspiring to import and sell Filipino-made jewelry as Native American jewelry. Agents issued 15 search warrants in New Mexico and one in California as part of their ongoing investigation of this international conspiracy.

The Philippines National Bureau of Investigations interviewed workers in Cebu City, Philippines.

The US Forest Service arrested Christopher James Harp for vandalizing prehistoric petroglyphs in Sequoia National Forest in Central California.

Aerosol asphalt sealer was sprayed 300 feet across a rock outcropping and damaged bighorn sheep petroglyphs, part of the Rabbit Island formation, once the site of a Tubatulabal village. Although Harp admitted to vandalizing the site, he pleaded not guilty to the charge of depredation of public land.

Stolen from Chiapas, Mexico, an Olmec stone carving dating from 900 BCE was discovered in France this September. The bas-relief was cut from the rock surface between 1968 and 1972 and smuggled into Europe. The heirs of a private collector tried to sell the stone carving through Binoche et Giquello, a Paris auction house.

The auction house contacted archaeologist Michelet Dominique, who identified it and contacted Mexican officials. The carving was returned to Mexico and is currently on display at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.

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Seven Directions: Tony A. Tiger

T

ONY A. TIGER is an artist, educator, and curator. He is an enrolled member of the Sac and Fox Nation, is also Muscogee Creek and Seminole, and often explores his diverse tribal heritage through his mixed-media artwork. Tiger is the vice president of the Southeastern Indian Artists Association, an artist-led, nonprofit advocacy group. He served as director of Bacone College’s art program and taught studio arts. He earned his AA degree from Seminole State College, BFA degree from Oklahoma State University, and MFA from the University of Oklahoma.

Tiger’s earlier works include photo collage with mixed-media textile designs from his tribes. His vividly colored and richly textural works are

moving toward pure abstraction. His solo exhibitions include those at the Southern Plains Indian Museum and Oklahoma State Capitol Building and the traveling exhibit Tony Tiger: Full Consciousness of Being.

Tiger recently co-curated a two-year traveling exhibit, Return from Exile: Contemporary Southeastern Indian Art, with Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee Creek) and Jace Weaver (Cherokee descent). For Return from Exile, Martin and Tiger collaborated on a multisensory installation, Mekusape Fullvnna’ (Muscogee Gravehouse).

He lives in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with his wife Brenda and their family.

As an avid sportsman, Tiger can often be found outdoors, fishing, kayaking, hiking, and camping.

Tony A. Tiger next to Allan Houser’s statue, created by Phillip Haozous (Chiricahua Apache).

SOUTH. The fine art print is an enigma to many, unless

they are aware of the labor-intensive process or have had the pleasure of studying in a print studio or art program. Enter the Matrix: Indigenous Printmakers, curated by heather ahtone (Chickasaw-Choctaw), the James T. Bialac assistant curator of Native American and non-Western art at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on the University of Oklahoma campus, gives insight to this process-driven art form. The exhibition covers the gamut of printing processes—intaglio, relief, serigraphy, and lithography—and showcases a who’s who of Native artists.

Works by Indigenous artists from Canada, New Zealand, South America, and the United States fill the third floor of the Ellen and Richard L. Sandor Photography Gallery. The informative and thrilling exhibit opened June 5, 2015, and will be on display until January 17, 2016, with continuous programming.

In conjunction with Enter the Matrix, the Fred Jones Museum created a free, online course through iTunes U. ou.edu/content/fjjma

WEST. As a young boy, I recall the first time I saw Edward

Sheriff Curtis’s photographs in The North American Indian.

A profound thought transformed my psyche about Native people: I realized the inherent beauty of the individual in a diverse society of cultures. The Portland Art Museum will present Zig Jackson (Mandan-Arikara-Hidatsa), Wendy Red Star (Crow), and Will Wilson (Navajo) in Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy. The project explores the continued impact of Curtis’s lasting impact on 21st-century Native society and photographers. The exhibition will feature contemporary Native photographers in dialogue 1 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

heather ahtone (Chickasaw-Choctaw), curator of Enter the Matrix: Indigenous Printmakers, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. Photo: Tony A. Tiger.

with Curtis’s images. Although controversial for romanticizing the American Indian in the early 20th century, Curtis’s photographs have also allowed Native peoples to contemplate their past. The exhibition will open February 6, 2016, and run through May 8, 2016. portlandartmuseum.org

ABOVE. “Doing more than the market wants” is a state-

ment I like to hear from Native artists. It’s the doorway to truly embodying the artist within. Revolt 1680/2180: Virgil Ortiz is a perfect example of this concept. This solo exhibit features ceramics and fashion design by the Cochiti artist Virgil Ortiz, who explores both the past and the future of Pueblo peoples through the lens of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt.

The exhibition will be on display until May 1, 2016, at the Denver Art Museum, Hamilton Building, fourth floor. denverartmuseum.org

EAST. Congratulations to Joy Harjo (Muscogee-Cherokee),

poet, writer, storyteller, activist, and musician, upon winning the Wallace Stevens Award for Poetry. The award is given annually to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry. Established in 1994, the award carries a $100,000 stipend. Recipients are chosen by the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors. If you travel much in Indian Country, turn around and there is Joy Harjo. I enjoyed the music she and her band offered at Indian Market in Santa Fe this summer. Mvto.

NORTH. I wish I had the time and means to travel to

every exhibition I’m interested in. There is a gem of a show of 14 Great Lakes artists exhibiting at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota, Arriving at Fresh Water: Contemporary Native Artists from Our Great Lakes. The exhibition asks the question: What is Native art today? The pieces in the show speak to history, current issues, and future hope for Native people and self. Frank Big Bear (White Earth Ojibwe), Jim Denomie (La Courte Oreilles Ojibwe), Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), the late Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Ojibwe, 1932–2007), and George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe, 1919–2000) are a few of the artists featured in the exhibition. The show will be on display through February 21, 2016. new.artsmia.org

CENTER. When asked how Native people help their

Joy Harjo (Muscogee-Cherokee), poet and musician. Image courtesy of Joy Harjo (CC BY-SA 3.0).

own, many things come to mind. I can drive down the street to the Cherokee Arts Center, where I just had a session with a beautiful Takach etching press. The Cherokee Arts Center is meeting the needs of the creative people in the local Northeastern Oklahoma community with classes in ceramics, silversmithing, and weaving. They provide fine art print equipment, artist studios, meeting rooms, and a tribal art gallery. Kudos to the Cherokee Arts Center and its staff for contributing to the community. cherokeeartscenter.com

BELOW. Whatever one might say about Fritz Scholder’s

art, I appreciated his honesty. Once, while at the University of Oklahoma School of Fine Art, Fritz said, “I will talk, you choose what you can use from my words, the rest is crap, and you know what to do with that.” His grotesque images of the American Indian challenge our vision of ourselves as Native people. He also commented on my undergraduate work and said, “You have something,” and that I should continue to work. The Denver Art Museum’s Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967–1980 will explore this iconic 20th-century artist’s colorful, controversial signature concept of the Native figure and Pop Art influences ending with his 1980 Indian Land paintings. Forty rarely seen, large-scale paintings and lithographs will be on display through January 17, 2016, in the Hamilton Building, third floor. denverartmuseum.org

Pulling prints at the Cherokee Arts Center, Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Photo: Tony A. Tiger.

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Exploring Native Graphic Design

Rico Worl

R

ICO LANÁAT´ WORL is a Tlingit-Athabascan designer and artist of the Lukaax.ádi (Sockeye) clan of the Raven moiety. He was born in Anchorage, grew up in Fairbanks, attended high school in Anchorage, and spent his summers in Juneau.

In July 2014, Rico opened a storefront in Juneau for Trickster Company.

Named for the trickster Raven, his company carries Native Northwest Coast art and design products, many of which are designed by Rico and his younger sister Crystal Worl. Trickster Company products are available all along the West Coast, as far away as Australia, and online.

Rico’s talents manifest in many forms: handmade jewelry in gold, silver, and other metals; laser-cut earrings; sunglasses; skateboard, longboard, and snowboard decks; playing cards, serigraphs, and art cards; apparel and more. Recently, two of his boards depicting the Raven and the Eagle exhibited in the Burke Museum’s Here & Now: Native Artists Inspired, and his four Chilkat Pattern Boards were displayed at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, now on loan to the Peabody Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology. Alaska Governor Bill Walker and Lt. Governor Byron Mallott gave basketballs designed by Rico to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry on their recent Alaskan visit.

How did Trickster Company come to be?

Trickster Company started about four years ago. The seed project was when I painted my own longboard. I wasn’t a huge boarder or anything, but I just wanted to represent my heritage in one of my day-to-day interests. Then I painted one for my cousin. And one

for another cousin. The interest in the boards grew steadily. However, the problem with the paintings was that none of my customers were comfortable using them in the way I used my longboard, so I started manufacturing them.

I designed skateboards not because I was big into boarding, but because I was big into designing as a means of representing. So, I continued designing various things that were a part of my life and I knew were part of other people’s lives.

The playing cards brought it up to the next level. I did a Kickstarter to fund the Trickster Company playing cards in 2013. It was about a five-month project designing the cards and then the campaign. It was very successful, reached the initial goal within days, and reached a stretch goal requiring double the funding for a second deck (the Tlingit Language Edition). We had about 500 backers and raised $17,000.

It wasn’t a huge moneymaker, but it validated my work. It gave me a solid product base to work from and expand outward. It was also a huge deal to be able to go to a bank afterward and say, “Look at how many people were so interested in my product [that] they put money down before the product was made.”

By Neebinnaukzhik Southall Whether it’s skate decks, card decks or jewelry, each piece is a bit of experimentation in the form and function of formline.

When did you start to design? Have you had formal training, or are you self-taught?

Art is integral to the culture. I couldn’t point out a moment when I suddenly started designing. I got more serious in 2003 when I started studying at the Native Arts Center at University of Alaska Fairbanks with Alvin Eli Amason [Sugpiaq]. That was a very eye-opening experience for me as an artist. I realized there was potential to actually make things that I envision into reality. I was at UAF for about a year before I left to get my anthropology degree from University of Pennsylvania. I’ve had bits of training here and there, but I am self-taught with the assistance of many experiences such as UAF, various workshops, working with the collections at the Museum at U. Penn, working with various artists in my life, etc. Lots of tying small, educational experiences together to build upon.

What are your tools of the trade?

When did you begin working digitally?

At the same time all this happened, my sister was at the Institute of American Indian Arts. So, it was good timing after my sister graduated with her BFA in 2014 to open a brick-and-mortar shop here in downtown Juneau.

The foundational tool, no matter what the end product might be, is a Paper Mate SharpWriter #2. I love these mechanical pencils. A sketch, then a drawing, is the designer’s blueprint for production.

What has been foundational to your direction as a designer and an artist?

I began learning digital design in high school. A friend showed me Macromedia Flash (a now dying platform!). I made a lot of crude animations for fun with friends. When I worked for the Sealaska Heritage Institute, I developed a series of interactive language learning games with Flash,

I would say learning formline design.

The traditional design system of the Northwest Coast has always been the goal. I make these products as a student of formline. Each piece is a study.

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as well as Photoshop. Then I learned Adobe Illustrator for various design projects. When I came home, I was still doing various small projects on my own using those same programs.

Do you have any particular creative heroes?

Robert Davidson (Haida) is my hero.

Every time I look at his work, I am blown away. Even a single painting gives incredible insights into his mastery of formline, which is incredibly inspiring.

Why do some designs imitative of formline miss the mark?

Imagine a person who looks at a piece of furniture—a gorgeous piece made by a master craftsman—and tries to imitate it. The imitation would have loose joints, and any carving work would be rough and lack any grace; drawers

wouldn’t slide out properly; it might not bear the load of a person sitting on it, etc. There’s a lot of things that make a piece of furniture successful, from being structurally sound, to being beautiful. The same thing can be said about formline. The formline needs to be built with the correct joints, the parts need to relate properly, and in the end it needs to be made beautifully.

Screen printing emerged among Native Northwest Coast artists in the 1960s. What was your introduction to screen printing?

Both my sister and my girlfriend are into screen printing. Screen printing is a natural fit with formline.

Traditionally, formline is created with a primary, secondary, and tertiary color. So working with layers to create a multicolored print was an easy fit to

the medium. It also allowed for reproduction with very nice, clean designs that formline is known for. They fit together well.

What’s it like working with your sister?

We live in the same house and work at the same shop. At any time, we’re double-checking each other’s work or offering alternative solutions to design problems. We get along well.

How is your practice guided by your cultures? How does your work relate to your community?

Culture and art are integral. I have a lot of work that speaks to issues I find important in our community. The “Town Meeting” sunglasses represent the idea that our people need to be involved in community government.

Rico Worl (Tlingit-Athabascan) behind the counter at Trickster Company. Photo: Glenn Aronwits.

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Trickster Company shop floor, Juneau, Alaska. Photo: Glenn Aronwits. Image courtesy of Trickster Company.

The lightsaber t-shirts represent the idea that, as Native people, we are active and inspired by stories we hear today. The playing cards and basketballs, like the skate decks, provide identity products for our people to use and represent their heritage in their daily lives. Our work is 100 percent influenced by the things happening to us and around us as living Native people.

I’ve read that you choose to not use certain imagery in your work. Could you tell us why?

The clan is the basic social unit in Tlingit society. Individuals are just parts of clans. Clans are the property holders. Among the things they own are crests, specific designs based on the clan history that represent that clan.

Trickster Company will do designs of Northwest Coast animals—many

designs are general animal designs—but we will not do specific clan crests.

Tlingit society has an intricate property law, but it’s a very clear property law as well. We simply do not break the law when making our designs.

What needs does your company address?

We provide identity products that Native people can use to represent themselves as Indigenous and carry with pride and which are made by their own people. It’s a gateway for youth to learn more about their culture. It can be intimidating to be told that you need to learn 10,000 years of history, language, and stories, but maybe it’s not so bad if you’re just interested in playing cards with Native designs for now. It’s so

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Native people can help develop a Native economy. Rural communities are struggling. I hire other artists who represent innovative Native design. I hope that Trickster Company acts as one more small opportunity for Native artists to add to their collection of opportunities.

For our non-Native visitors, friends, family, and neighbors, it’s a means of education. It allows people to appreciate the culture without appropriating.

What do you hope to explore in the future?

I recently received a grant from the Rasmuson Foundation to expand my design studies from 2D into 3D. Studying sculpting and 3D printing is the next major undertaking for me.

trickstercompany.com

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the zuni connection

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since 1981 FAAM winter 2015 Tsalabutie Lion.indd 1

fetishes

jewelry

pottery 9/24/15 3:45 PM

MARCH OF THE LAND WRITERS Unsanctioned Indigenous Street Art Interventions

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

I

N AUGUST 2014, a group of street artists converged on Montreal to participate in the first annual Decolonizing Street Art (DSA) program of unsanctioned art interventions, workshops, and panel discussions. DSA staunchly remains a grassroots initiative funded by crowdsourcing campaigns and individual sponsorship. Their principal mandate wholly opposes any form of governmental and corporate financial assistance so as to maintain the group’s “opposition to colonialism, capitalism, and all forms of oppression.”1 DSA’s objective marks two distinct but interrelated fronts: the first, to establish a structure of solidarity with other Indigenous street artists, and second, to execute a type of anticolonial resistance through unsanctioned street art interventions on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory known as the city of Montreal.

The works created during this period—many of which are now destroyed—are tantamount in execution and subject matter. They include, but are not limited to, Chris Bose’s (Nlaka’pamux-Secwepemc) rhythmic wall mural of swimming salmon, SWARM’s portraiture that pays homage to murdered or missing Aboriginal women and girls, ZOLA’s marching masked figures holding “NO PIPELINES” messages, and Cam’s craftivist, text-based sign Kauaueshtakanit (Justice). Each are, in a sense, “public” artworks in that they could be seen by anyone at anytime, yet they carry a bold challenge to official public art policies initiated by municipal governments.

1. “About,” Decolonizing Street Art, web, accessed August 11, 2015.

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ABOVE: Cam, Kauaueshtakanit (Justice), 2014, textile banner. In the background is a mural by Gord Hill (Kwakwaka’wakw). Image courtesy of Decolonizing Street Art. OPPOSITE: Baker attributed, title unknown, no date, aerosol mural, Vancouver. Image courtesy of Melanie Neilson.

These are not meant to beautify civic space but completely and utterly present a strategy for the reclamation of space itself. There exist unsanctioned street art practices by Indigenous artists that are a means of taking back the land by physically inscribing it with Indigenous signage, symbols, and iconography. Essentially, it upholds oppositional politics and the defiant spirit of activism. Used effectively, the brushstroke, the spray paint, the roll-up, the stencil, and the marker are weapons that disrupt status quo oversight and ignorance of Indigenous treaty rights, sovereignty, and cultural loss. These marks and inscriptions of Indigenous imagery—illegal or otherwise—on the dumb, grey walls of the city serve as a subtle yet cutting reminder of who was here first.

Contemporary Indigenous street artists working in Canada and the United States are not alone in their strategy for reclamation and decolonization. For instance, in Johannesburg, South Africa, political opposition to the racist and destructive histories of colonialism and apartheid by urban street artists takes fascinating lines of flight.

For art historian Sabine Marschall, urban art murals and urban wall decoration entail a fundamental resistance to the segregationist policies of exclusion, precisely because the physical body of the artist/activist must be present to execute the work on appropriated buildings and spaces.

In Canada and the United States, the situation is obviously different yet similar to Johannesburg. However, the process of reservization—the systematic segregation of Indigenous peoples to demarcated areas—finds similar racial, political, and social comparisons with South Africa under apartheid law.

In fact, as few Canadians are aware, the South African government modeled elements of apartheid after Canada’s own approach toward segregating Aboriginal peoples to reserves in order to achieve their racially motivated policy.2 That being said, presence, appearance, embodiment, or whatever you want to label it is the lifeblood of the decolonizing street art movement. Of course, this symbolizes the absolute reverse of a colonial history predicated on absence, segregation, and killing.

2. For more information on how South Africa modeled elements of apartheid after Canada’s approach to Aboriginal peoples, see Grace-Edward Galabuzi, Canada’s Economic Apartheid: The Social Exclusion of Radicalized Groups in the New Century (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2006); see also Joan G. Fairweather, A Common Hunger: Land Rights in Canada and South Africa (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2015).

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Warraba Weatherall (Gamilaraay Nation/Australian Aboriginal), Sovereignty, 2014, mural. Image courtesy of the artist.

The meat and flesh of the physical body is again thrust into the center of Indigenous political autonomy. Yet, it is the remains of the artwork that traces the physical presence of the body. It is these works and works similar to them that “celebrate cultural difference; they recover history and aspects of traditional heritage; they offer unpretentious, candid glimpses into the activities and environment of daily life.”3 At the very least, the creation of street art serves as a symbolic method of occupancy, one where the image stands in for the body, and the controversial “tag” (or signature) of the artist is but another means of visibly reoccupying tribal lands by embodying its spaces, a push toward decolonization.4

For Aboriginal street artist Warraba Weatherall, a member of the Gamilaraay Nation, the signage has become an important means of supporting land claim rights. He is also known as Land Writers; he hopes a group of street artists will form as a collective of street writers premised on the grouping of “land rights” and “graffiti writers,” hence their title as land writers. One of Weatherall’s central concerns is the fact that discussion about controversial topics such as land claims garners with it unsympathetic media and official censorship, so the street provides the only means of aesthetic freedom.

“I feel graffiti in the public domain,” he says, “is the best way of addressing these issues, and your voice isn’t

3. Sabine Marschall, “Sites of Identity and Resistance: Urban Community Murals and Rural Wall Decoration in South Africa,” African Arts 35, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 51.

4. See Matthew Ryan Smith, “Tell-Tale Signs: Unsanctioned Graffiti Interventions in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg,” Bronze Warriors and Plastic Presidents: Public Art in South Africa, 1999–2015 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming, 2017).

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Discussion about controversial topics such as land claims garners with it unsympathetic media and official censorship, so the street provides the only means of aesthetic freedom. censored.”5 The stickers Weatherall affixes to walls, street signs, postboxes, and other vernacular structures carry the slogan “HELLO my name is … LAND WRITER!” Indeed many of these pictures overlook unceded, rural landscapes and urban geographies as a way to call attention to the issue. The pieces are, nonetheless, a distinct form of stylized graffiti “tagging” that can be used as a political instrument to both occupy and define physical space.6 Tagging is often more complex for Indigenous writers than often thought, namely because the “tag” is a symbolic and visual embodiment of the individual used to reoccupy tribal lands.7 Tlingit-Unangax visual artist Nicholas Galanin continues to engage European colonialism as the weight of his subject matter. Similar to Weatherall’s interventions, Galanin photographed a simple yet cutting graffiti intervention he titled Indian Land in 2012. In the work,

the original green-and-white road sign “Indian River” has been painted over to read “Indian LAND” in bold, black lettering. The intervention itself is not uncommon. Similar imagery can be found almost everywhere in Canada and the United States—bridges, roads, streets, light posts, billboards, parks, and elsewhere feature texts such as “IDLE NO MORE!,” “THIS IS INDIAN LAND,” “WE WON’T DIE,” “HONOUR OUR SOVEREIGNTY,” and “OH CANADA, OUR HOME ON NATIVE LAND.” Are these interventions illegal? Yes, technically so. Yet, the very notion of graffiti’s illegality is thrown into question when considering Indigenous land claims, since a law cannot rightfully be enforced on another sovereign nation’s people or territory. The tension in this grey area between land claims and the illegality of graffiti makes the practice of unsanctioned interventions so consequential, so political.

Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit-Unangax), Indian Land, 2012, digital photograph. Image courtesy of the artist.

5. Warraba Weatherall, “Sovereign S P A C E x Street Art,” Sovereign Trax, August 26, 2014, web, accessed August 12, 2015.

6. Deirdre Heddon in Gillian Whitlock and Anna Poletti, “Self-Regarding Art,” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 31.1 (Winter 2008): xiii–xiv.

7. For more on the relationship between tagging and reoccupation of tribal lands, see Matthew Ryan Smith, “Tell-Tale Signs: Unsanctioned Graffiti Interventions in PostApartheid Johannesburg” (forthcoming, 2017).

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Elsewhere, on the streets of East Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa, Bulpitt throws up pieces based on traditional Haida iconography on walls, in bathrooms, alleyways, dumpsters, and parking lots. It’s a powerful example of embedding Indigenous iconography in the urban street environment as an act of defiance against the structural and systemic removal of Indigenous imagery (and culture) from Indigenous people since colonization. More specifically, it represents the reinsertion of Indigenous visual culture by Indigenous artists from Canada during the period following the closure of the residential school system, many of which methodically forbade and violently punished any use of language, spirituality, and iconography as part of their policy of assimilation to Christian dogma.

The work of other street artists, such as Larissa Healey (Peguis Ojibwe), known for her striking appropriations of traditional West Coast imagery, only reinforces the idea that the dissemination of Indigenous imagery on the streets and cities is also a head-on assault against the destruction of Indigenous visual culture in North America under colonialism. But it’s more than this. For artist Chris Bose, painting and drawing the land was and remains a sacred gesture that connects one to land, history, and spirit:

TOP: Corey Bulpitt (Haida), Hummingbird, 2014, mural, Montreal. Image courtesy of the artist.

BOTTOM: Corey Bulpitt (Haida), Salmonhead/LIFE, 2015, sticker, Washington. Image courtesy of the artist.

Somewhere in the State of Washington, artist Corey Bulpitt (Haida) affixed a black-and-white sticker to a standard gas pump. Its two-dimensional block design, rhythmic patterning, sharp line, and vibrancy of color make it easily recognizable as Haida. The piece is beautiful yet its implications are sinister: It’s a subtle reminder for those living in America that the gasoline one purchases, possibly derived from the oil sands of Alberta, incidentally harms the land, displaces its people, and complicates Indigenous land claims.

8. Chris Bose, Facebook correspondence with the author, September 10, 2015.

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I come from a nation where we wrote our dreams and visions on the rocks in sacred places. To me the land is sacred, all of it. We wrote pictographs before contact, and I’m doing my interpretation of pictographs after contact. Back then they painted about the animals, the seasons, ceremonies, and the people. I’m part of a continuation of that, and I paint about the land, the environment, the seasons, and the people as well, with or without permission. I still take paint with me when I go out in the bush, and when I find a good spot, I’ll paint pictographs or something new and fresh. I want to get … ochre and make my own pigments for projects on the land. I never tell anyone where I’ve done this. If someone finds it that’s cool; if not, that’s cool, too.8 Other street artists work to preserve local histories and encourage calls to action against contemporary social issues concerning Indigenous communities. Mixed Indigenous artist Red Bandit draws attention to recovering and revitalizing cultural and spiritual practices through a series of eclectic interventionist strategies. While much of her work focuses on the reassertion of Indigenous iconography into vernacular life, she is also concerned with the violence directed toward Indigenous women and girls. Pieces such as NO SILENCE WHILE MY SISTERS SUFFER and What About Our Girls speak to the more than one thousand missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls under Canada’s conservative government and former

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s failure to create a public inquiry as a symbolic first step in resolving the matter.

Similar to Rebecca Belmore’s seminal performance Vigil (2002) on the streets of Lower East Side Vancouver, Red Bandit also produces a voice for the ignored in public spaces. And while graffiti in particular is often dismissed as a criminal act of vandalism, its ability to call attention to itself is the essence of its power. It is as famed street artist Banksy cheekily writes in one wall piece, “If graffiti changed anything—it would be illegal.”

The collision of hip-hop culture—which gave birth to the graffiti and street art movements—and Indigenous culture is not an accident. Hip-hop began as a streetlevel scene among black urban youth in the Bronx, New York, during the 1960s and soon exploded within other American cities. Although its reputation was strained by the American crack cocaine epidemic of the early 1980s, hip-hop culture found global adoration in the early 1990s with acts like Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, and KRS One in a period before the transition to the violence, sexism, and homophobia of the gangsta rap subgenre.

Essentially, hip-hop is a fusion of music, dance, and, of course, street art.

Street art was—and still is—widely adopted by Indigenous street artists because, in many ways, it allows for adaptation, freedom of expression, and unbridled

ABOVE: Cam, We Are Not Invisible, 2014, stencil on commercial textile.

Image courtesy of Decolonizing Street Art. BELOW: Chris Bose (Nlaka’pamux-Secwepemc), Turtle and Raven, 2014, mural, Montreal. Image courtesy of the artist.

creativity, thus serving as a powerful instrument of empowerment and expression for Indigenous urban artists.9 The Literates, an alternative hip-hop group from Los Angeles, fleshed out these thoughts in lyrics: I never get sick of the smell of paint liquid, Graffiti’s been around since the days of hieroglyphics.

Forget about one time, Cover the land like sunshine.10

9. Tania Willard, “Curatorial Statements,” Beat Nation: Hip Hop as Indigenous Culture, web, accessed September 11, 2015.

10. The Literates, “Graff Life,” Unspoken (Los Angeles: Razor Fence Records, 2006).

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Ologwagdi,

EL KOLECTIVO, & the Art of Protest in Panama

By Peter Szok

P

ROTEST ART APPEARS on walls, signs, and banners, and serves to inspire and provide encouragement to protesters. In Latin America, the genre depends on iconic figures (saints, heroes, villains, and martyrs) whose captivating faces enthrall audiences and reduce the need for text and speeches. In Nicaragua during the 1970s, sober representations of the martyred nationalist leader Augusto César Sandino made their appearances on placards and buildings as a call to overthrow the oppressive Somoza regime. Panama’s most important protest painter is Ologwagdi, whose creations dot the country’s capital of Panama City and infuse it with beauty, leftist dissent, and Indigenous culture. Ologwagdi’s art reflects his Indigenous American identity and the broad social and political struggles of his time and country.

Ologwagdi belongs to the Guna (formerly Kuna) community, one of Panama’s eight Native American ethnicities and a group widely known for a 1925 rebellion that stemmed from the abuses of national authorities and led to the establishment of one of modern Latin America’s first

legally sanctioned and autonomous Indigenous comarcas, or Native administrative regions. Guna Yala, one such comarca, comprises a 140-mile land strip along the eastern Caribbean coast, where the majority of the population lives on littoral islands and uses the mainland primarily for agriculture.

The Guna are also city people.

Today roughly half of their 80,000 members find themselves in other parts of the republic. They primarily live in Colón, the capital, and the Atlantic and Pacific terminuses of the Panama Canal, which function as traditional poles of the national economy. The Guna began migrating there in the mid-20th century, enticed by employment possibilities on US military bases. Gradually they integrated themselves into broader society, such that it is now commonplace to encounter Guna people in many middle and working-class sectors.

Ologwagdi is a product of both contexts, splitting his time between the comarca and “zone of transit” and carrying with him their varied influences, from the wisdom of Guna neles and sailas—seers and chiefs—to the insights of jazz and rock ’n’ roll lyrics

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heard over the Canal Zone radio.

He represents the rise of Indigenous intellectuals, who in recent years have become evident across Latin America and who are penetrating once-exclusive circles and reshaping the region’s visual culture, music, architecture, film, dance, and many other artistic genres commonly associated with urban areas.

AN ARTIST’S JOURNEY

Ologwagdi was born in the port city of Colón and moved to Guna Yala when he was seven years old. He describes his “first childhood” as critical to the ties he later established with Afro-Panamanian colleagues, labor organizers, and the Communist Party.

Ologwagdi is a self-described progressive, who dresses in sandals and ruffled t-shirts, and who despite a long career at the Ministry of Education, ignores professional norms regarding personal appearance. Ologwagdi came of age in the early 1970s under the influence of the Cuban Revolution, and, like many others of his generation, he sympathized with counterculture and Marxist perspectives. Eventually he identified with the 1968–81

Ologwagdi standing in front of mural, 2015. Photo: El Kolectivo.

government of General Omar Torrijos and its efforts to recuperate the US Canal Zone and to implement a series of modest social reforms.

Departing Colón in 1960, Ologwagdi and his family traveled to the central part of the comarca and established themselves in Aggwanusadub, one of Guna Yala’s most westernized communities.

The twin islands of Aggwanusadub and Yandub-Narganá had been the center of earlier efforts to conquer and transform the Guna people.

Consequently they were saddled with an infrastructure of churches, police barracks, cantinas, and Western educational institutions. Guna-style clothing and housing had become less common as outside values had entered the villages. Ologwagdi’s family operated one of Aggwanusadub’s stores, which was decorated with colorful advertisements. Ologwagdi’s father painted signs, canoes, and murals, and did other occasional art work for the community, learning his craft through

correspondence courses. Ologwagdi’s maternal grandfather was a talented carpenter who constructed some of the comarca’s first French-style buildings. Ologwagdi studied in the local schools and became connected to the Panamanian student movement.

The student movement blossomed in January 1964 when Panamanian protesters clashed with US forces over the right to fly their flag in the Canal Zone. The bloody encounter and the resulting deaths of 21 Panamanians helped to underscore the necessity of national sovereignty. Ologwagdi, who came to despise colonialism in all forms, remained in Aggwanusadub until 1969, when he followed the inclinations of his elders and left for Panama City to become an artist.

Ologwagdi was a compulsive doodler, who had marked up his schoolbooks with sundry sketches and who had exasperated his teachers with his instinctive scribbling. He had earlier harbored hopes of entering the seminary, until one day he revealed

his erotic drawings to a surprised yet understanding priest. The good pastor avoided harsh criticisms of the adolescent but encouraged him to consider another career path. In the capital, Ologwagdi enrolled in the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, where he chafed under what he has described as incompetent instruction and quickly grew bored with his studies.

Ologwagdi was never a very good student. He was too free-spirited and bohemian and abandoned the program as he became distracted by the period’s political developments.

In 1972, just as General Torrijos was consolidating his position, Ologwagdi landed a job with Eduardo “Malanga” Meneses Núñez, who produced enormous billboards of the military officer and other ephemeral pieces for official gatherings and rallies. The Torrijos regime had come to power in 1968 via harsh and repressive measures; however, it now sought to establish its legitimacy with programs directed WIN T E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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toward rural and low-income people.

While denouncing the historic role of Panama’s oligarchy, the government also expressed the deep frustration felt by many toward the US Canal Zone. The zone was regarded as a foreign colony, and its return became a primary objective, culminating in the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties.

General Torrijos rejected left-wing categorizations. He denied that he stood with right or left; nevertheless, he defined himself as an anti-imperialist and revolutionary figure. He established a temporary alliance with the People’s Party of Panama (PPP), many of whose cadres had suffered abuse and exile at the hands of the Guardia Nacional, and who, in some cases, returned to contribute to the populist project.

Ologwagdi calculates that over the next years, he made dozens of depictions of Omar Torrijos, along with representations of Indigenous and Afro-Panamanian heroes. People of Indigenous and African descent had largely been ignored by Panamanian historians. These histories, according to Miriam Villanueva, thus became part of an effort to establish the government’s credibility among the popular classes. Olonigdi Pelusio Chiari, a fellow Guna painter who collaborated with Ologwagdi during this period, called it an opportune moment, a “chance to project something of our own.”

Among the most significant individuals to emerge in this historical reconfiguration was the cholo rebel Victoriano Lorenzo (1867–1903). He was an Indigenous leader who became prominent during the War of a Thousand Days (1899–1902), the final of several large-scale conflicts that the Panamanians had experienced under Colombia before their separation from Bogotá in 1903. In the province of Coclé, Victoriano organized peasants to fight alongside liberal forces in a failed attempt to overthrow the

ABOVE: Ologwagdi painting a mural on Martyrs’ Day, 2015. Photo: Peter Szok.

OPPOSITE: Kolectivo, Mural, in homage to Cheo Feliciano, 2014. Photo: Peter Szok.

conservative, central government. His mobilization challenged abusive landowners and promised to broaden the uprising’s agenda beyond the liberals’ narrow, political focus. Victoriano was a gifted military commander whose army provided several key victories; nevertheless, he was betrayed by former allies after peace negotiations and faced execution by the Colombian army. On banners and walls, Ologwagdi helped to perfect the countenance of Victoriano staring intently at the viewer with a penetrating look of defiance.

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LA BRIGADA FELICIA SANTIZO

In similar efforts, Ologwagdi became linked to the brothers Virgilio and Ignacio “Cáncer” Ortega Santizo, who, inspired by Chile’s Brigada Ramona Parra, had formed a comparable organization in Panama to recognize their aunt Felicia Santizo, a longtime activist in leftist politics.

The Brigada Felicia Santizo, sometimes referred to as “Trópico de Cáncer,” combined painting with

El Kolectivo’s motto is “La pelea es pintando” (The fight is painting). theater and musical performances and produced dozens of murals around the country in support of the efforts to retake the US Canal Zone. Toward the government the Brigada adopted an ambiguous attitude. It backed the campaign to secure the interoceanic waterway while never offering what the siblings termed as “blind surrender to the so-called revolutionary process.”

“We crossed the street …”

Ignacio conceded in an interview, “as it was easier than inviting the general to smoke marijuana with us.” The Brigada’s murals were nationalist and anti-imperialist and often embraced Marxist, pro-Palestinian, and pro-Sandinista positions. In 1979, the group ventured to Nicaragua and decorated walls in honor of its revolution.

Several times the Brigada traveled to Guna Yala, where Ologwagdi

had also become a founding member of the Movimiento de la Juventud Kuna (Kuna Youth Movement).

The movimiento had formed in the early 1970s as part of the military’s efforts to secure its position and to align the “people” against the United States and the oligarchy.

Independently, the organization pursued its own objectives, influenced by the American Indian Movement and the rise of Indigenous activists across Latin America. Transnational Indigenous American linkages had a profound impact in Panama. Priorities became the legal demarcation of the comarca and opposition to racism and marginalization in society. The group vociferously defended the Guna culture and organized numerous festivals across Guna Yala. As part of these efforts to encourage pride and renewal, Ologwagdi made portraits

of community leaders for the islands’ casas de congreso. Many of these canvases still hang from the rafters of the large, thatched meeting houses.

If the paintings of the era linger in these spaces, adding markedly to their solemnity, so too does the period’s rebellious spirit. Indeed, Ologwagdi and others continue to see art essentially as a form of politics, a means to protest and to voice solidarity.

EL KOLECTIVO

In recent years, Ologwagdi has become involved in El Kolectivo, whose motto is “La pelea es pintando” (The fight is painting), a slogan derived from a statement attributed to Victoriano Lorenzo: “La pelea es peleando” (The fight is fighting).

El Kolectivo is a collection of hipsters and older leftists who

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ABOVE: Kolectivo, Mural, commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Guna Revolution, 2015. Photo: Peter Szok.

OPPOSITE, TOP: Ologwagdi painting a banner honoring Victoriano Lorenzo, 2014, at La Negrita, Coclé, former headquarters of rebel leader. Photo: Orgun Wagua (Guna).

OPPOSITE, BOTTOM: Ologwagdi (Guna), Banner of Victoriano Lorenzo, 2014, painted in La Negrita, Coclé, former headquarters of rebel leader. Photo: Orgun Wagua (Guna).

meet regularly on the weekends to disrupt urban areas with theatrical performances, poetry, music, art, and laughter. Humor and joy are part of El Kolectivo’s activities, as are Ologwagdi’s absorbing portraits of leading political and cultural figures.

El Kolectivo takes control of public spaces to celebrate the lives of admirable people such as Salvador Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, Óscar Romero, and Nelson Mandela.

Panamanian footballer Rommel Fernández has been the subject of a similar homage, as has Puerto Rican

salsa singer Cheo Feliciano. The group loudly criticizes the abuses of authorities, homophobia, femicide, and the destruction of mangroves, and defends Panamanian sovereignty and the autonomy of Indigenous peoples.

El Kolectivo has played a visible role in opposing the mining and hydroelectric projects now impacting the Ngäbe-Buglé comarca, and has become particularly active in the debates surrounding Panama’s historical memory. Victoriano surfaces frequently in El Kolectivo’s creations,

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as do the leaders of the Gunas’ 1925 rebellion. Each year on Martyrs’ Day, January 9, the group designs a major project to honor the victims of the 1964 Flag Riots, while the 1989 US invasion has also received its attention. Indeed, El Kolectivo’s marches and eye-catching murals were among the first public events to mark this tragic episode, which, until recently, has been downplayed by Panamanian officials.

For Ologwagdi, art remains a call to consciousness—grounded in one’s time, place, and culture.

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From Lamb to Loom The Navajo-Churro and Sheep Is Life Celebration

By Cathy Short

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ORE THAN 250 PARTICIPANTS convened on the Diné College campus in Tsaile, Arizona, last summer for the 19th Annual Sheep Is Life Celebration. Located just east of Chinle and Canyon De Chelly National Monument in the Navajo Nation, the celebration honors weaving and shepherding culture with workshops, demonstrations, and exhibits of wool and Navajo-Churro sheep. Attendees learn and share. They try their hand at carding, spinning, weaving, vegetal-dyeing of wool, and sharpen their skills at judging wool fleeces and sheep.

Intertwined The Navajo Sheep Project, Recursos de Santa, and Diné be’ iiná, Inc. (DBI) created the Sheep Is Life Celebration to help preserve the longstanding cultural connection between Navajo people and the Navajo-Churro sheep or T’aa Dibei, its wool, weaving, the land, and self-sufficiency.1 The Navajo-managed DBI started its work in 1991 and supports anyone interested in raising sheep. Master fiber artist and former DBI director Roy Kady explains the importance of sheep to the Navajo:

Before we acquired the physical life of the sheep on this continent, we always held the idea of sheep in our genetic memory from thousands of years ago. We carried sheep fetishes in our pollen bags, and we sang the sheep lifeway songs for them. Our philosophy, spirituality, and sheep are intertwined like wool in the strongest

ABOVE: B. Henio (Navajo), Rug, 21st century, undyed and vegetal-dyed Navajo-Churro wool, Rama, New Mexico, collection of author.

OPPOSITE: Young Navajo woman holds a NavajoChurro lamb at the Sheep Is Life Celebration. All photos: Cathy Short (Citizen Potawatomi).

weaving. Sheep symbolize the good life, living in harmony, and balance on the land. When we say “I will always walk in beauty,” that’s what we are referencing.2 Aretta Begay, current DBI director, brings youth, dedication, hard work, and high energy to the celebration. Although it is the flagship event for DBI, Begay and the organization also hosts sheep-shearing schools; workshops on processing wool, felting, and spinning; range management

courses, and other educational opportunities. DBI distributes Navajo-Churro sheep across the reservation along with llamas trained to guard the sheep. Wool from the llamas is also used in weaving or mixed with sheep wool for added strength and luster.3 DBI also sponsors Spin Offs, informal community groups that meet regularly to share knowledge about fiber arts and shepherding.

Two important partners in the Sheep Is Life mission are the NavajoChurro Heritage Lamb Presidium and the Black Mesa Water Coalition. The presidium was formed with the help of Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity in 2007 to help create artisan markets among chefs and caterers for the lean and tasty Navajo-Churro lamb. The Black Mesa Water Coalition, Land Grant Office of Diné College, and DBI have sponsored annual wool buys over the last four years. Sales are held at several of the Navajo chapter houses in Arizona and New Mexico and at the Diné College campus. By attracting a number of wool and fiber buyers, they provide a market for wool produced on the reservation.

Sheep as a Way of Life Whether you come for the songs and stories, to learn new or old fiber art techniques, or for information on the shepherd’s way of life, you will witness the cross-generational interaction during the Sheep Is Life Celebration and the preceding week of workshops.

The celebration focuses on both cultural expression and self-sufficiency for herders and fiber artists.

1. “Yá’át’ééh—Welcome.” Diné be’ iiná: The Navajo Lifeway, 2014, web.

2. Roy Kady, Facebook message to author, August 2, 2015.

3. Ibid.

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This year, the team of judges (Dr. Don Bixby, Dr. Lyle McNeal, and Tara Roche) gave awards to Churro sheep that exemplify Navajo-Churro Sheep Association breed standards. The judges worked as a team to share with each owner their perspectives on the health and soundness of a particular sheep as breeding stock. Jay Begay, noted Navajo fiber artist, sheep shearer, and inspector for the Navajo-Churro Sheep Association, judged the wool show. As he examined samples from each entry of wool, Begay evaluated luster, softness, fineness, and cleanliness, and looked for standout fleeces ready to spin.

A seven-course awards dinner featured Navajo-Churro lamb and Southwest dishes and raised funds for the Navajo-Churro Heritage Lamb Presidium. The following 2015 award certificates were presented: • Goldtooth and Mary Begay Lifetime Achievement Award: Shima Sarah

Natani of Table Mesa, New Mexico, for her tireless dedication to herding sheep, teaching fiber arts, and passing on the flock and sheep pastoral lifeways to her children to carry on her legacy.

• Volunteer of the Year Award: Irene Naegle for being a cofounder of the Spin Offs and for hosting the Spin Off in her community of Ganado, Arizona, for the past 14 years.

• Dr. Annie Dodge Wauneka Elder Shepherdess Award: Dorothy Jake in recognition of a lifetime of service maintaining the Navajo sheep culture through her daily activities and teachings.

• Youth Horizon Award for Outstanding Community Service: Eliseo Curley for his work in the Northern Diné Youth Council, teaching others fiber arts and the continuing traditions of the Navajo sheep lifeways.

From Lamb to Loom Churros were the first domestic sheep in what is now the United States.4 Conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado brought Churros from Spain in 1540 to provide food and warmth for his men on expedition.5 In 1598, Juan de Oñate herded large flocks of Churros into the Rio Grande Valley from Mexico.6 Navajos traded with and raided the settlers for their sheep.7 Initially an important source of meat, Churro wool was soon valued for its warmth and incorporated into textile weaving.8 Nomadic Navajos became herders, and by the 19th century herding equaled farming in importance.

The Churro was the dominant breed in Navajo flocks. Highly utilitarian and adapted to its environment, over time it became known as the Navajo-Churro sheep. The breed had a central role in Navajo life for hundreds

Navajo-Churro sheep’s wool comes in a beautiful range of natural colors.

4. Committee on the Economic Development and Current Status of the Sheep Industry in the United States, Changes in the Sheep Industry in the United States: Making the Transition from Tradition (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2008), 16.

5. “Heritage Sheep: Navajo Churro Sheep,” The Livestock Conservancy, web.

6. “The History and Near Extinction of the Churro,” Navajo Sheep Project, web.

7. “Descendants of the Iberian Churra,” Navajo-Churro Sheep Association, web.

8. “Heritage Sheep: Navajo Churro Sheep,” The Livestock Conservancy, web.

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of years, providing the first sheep wool used in weaving.9 Spider Woman taught the songs and prayers and techniques for weaving, while Spider Man built the first looms.10 Navajo-Churros are small and hardy and well-suited to a Southwestern environment where food and water can be scarce.11 The fleece is double layered, with a fine, soft inner coat for insulation and a longer, coarser, protective outer coat. It is lustrous and naturally colorful—the Churro are found in white, silver, blue, brown, red, black, and even spotted. Low in lanolin, the wool requires less water to clean and is easier to card and felt. Churro wool is well-suited for working on a handloom.

Decline and Revival of the Churro The US government decided twice to get rid of the Navajo-Churro sheep on the reservation. First, Kit Carson and his 700 troops slaughtered thousands of sheep, mostly Churros, in the 1863 effort to starve out the last of the Navajos and move them to Bosque Redondo to clear the way for Western settlers.12 The federal government later distributed 15,000 head of sheep, mostly Churros, to the Navajos when they were allowed to return to their reservation in 1868. Starting in 1882, the government encouraged Navajos to increase their flocks, distributing breeds such as Merino and Rambouillet, considered better suited to the East Coast lamb and wool markets. By the 1930s, livestock on the reservation was increasing at an unsustainable rate. In response, the government implemented its plan to greatly reduce existing herds and flocks, targeting the undervalued Churro. Over one million sheep and goats were killed. By the 1970s, only about 430 head of the thousands of Churros survived on the reservation.

ABOVE: Dorothy Jake (Navajo) accepts the Dr. Annie Dodge Wauneka Elder Shepherdess Award from Dr. Lyle and Nancy McNeal. Her family included in the photo had to retrieve her from sheep camp for the award ceremony.

BELOW: Eliseo Curley (Navajo) discussing vegetal-dyed wool yarn.

The nearly complete loss of Navajo-Churro sheep on the reservation disrupted long-established weaving practices.13 Weavers turned to commercially produced and aniline-dyed yarn, and wool from the other breeds proved difficult to work with. The shorter fiber length and greasy fleece were hard to clean and hand weave by usual Navajo methods and did not take to vegetal dyes well. Trailing sheep to summer

pastures in the mountains nearly disappeared. Diets changed. Many young Navajos grew up without experiencing a pastoral way of life.

Enter Dr. Lyle McNeal, now Carnegie professor and sheep and wool specialist at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. “Doc,” as he is known, first encountered the Navajo-Churro breed in the 1970s during a chance visit to a game ranch in California.14

9. Roy Kady, in discussion with author, May 1, 2015.

10. “A Short History on Navajo-Churro Sheep,” Diné be’ iiná: The Navajo Lifeway, 2014, web.

11. “Heritage Sheep: Navajo Churro Sheep,” The Livestock Conservancy, web.

12. “The History and Near Extinction of the Churro,” Navajo Sheep Project, web.

13. “A Short History on Navajo-Churro Sheep,” Diné be’ iiná: The Navajo Lifeway, 2014, web.

14. “The History of the Navajo Sheep Project Organization,” Navajo Sheep Project, web.

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Hispanic communities and helped found the Navajo-Churro Sheep Association in 1986 to establish breed standards and a registry. His efforts have been instrumental in bringing back the nearly extinct Navajo-Churro sheep.

Diné Youth Fiber Artist Apprentice Program

ABOVE: Kevin Aspaas (Navajo) demonstrates hand-carding wool.

BELOW: Navajo and Hopi children greet a sheep.

The ranch owner had bought the last of the government-owned Churros at an auction at the Fort Wingate Range and Sheep Breeding Laboratory when it closed. At that time trophy hunts of the four-horned rams were being offered.

Intrigued by the breed and its history, alarmed by the low number of Churros still in existence, and inspired by his grandfather as a child to do something

important with his life, McNeal, along with his wife Nancy, founded the Navajo Sheep Project in 1977. With his Navajo-speaking college students, Doc explored the most remote canyons and isolated communities of the reservation to seek out the remaining Churros and bring them together as foundation breeding stock. He has reintroduced many sheep back into Navajo and

15. Lyle McNeal, in discussion with author, June 20, 2015.

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Roy Kady believes it is important for young Navajos to reconnect with the sheep lifeway. Living in Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, Kady has been weaving since he was nine years old. He teaches up to six apprentices at a time and encourages them to participate in the Sheep Is Life Celebration. Four apprentices—Zephren Anderson, Kevin Aspaas, Zachariah Ben, and Eliseo Curley—played a major role this year, setting up and dismantling, teaching and demonstrating, and serving and singing at the awards banquet.

Kady’s mother, grandmothers, and community freely taught him the traditional ways he was so curious about as a young man, with the understanding that he would pass on that gift of knowledge.15 His apprentices do more than learn; they constantly amaze Kady and each other with their individual contributions to the learning experience. Apprentices stay until they meet their goals and are ready to leave.

Many pastoral lifeways are incorporated into the program. This year Kady took a group of young Navajos with him to trail his herd of Navajo-Churros 22 miles up the mountain to their summer pasture.

Kady believes that Navajo weaving has evolved greatly, with many of today’s weavers pushing the limits, developing new dimensions using old techniques. His apprentices are expected to go on to teach others, understanding that “today’s contemporary is tomorrow’s traditional.”

Apprentice Zephren Anderson grew up in Rattlesnake, New Mexico, and now lives in Shiprock. His special interest is learning pre-Long Walk

Navajo weaving techniques. In addition to weaving, he is a woodworker, baker, farmer, and expert tailor. He re-creates older styles of Navajo clothing and even weaves his own fabrics. Echoing the sentiments of all of the current apprentices, Anderson described what the program means to young Navajos: The reconnection with my historical roots, whether by family, language, history, food, or land, is why I love the apprenticeship program. I’ve learned so much more than a chapter in a schoolbook. Some of these experiences fill in blanks of stories my grandparents told me. Many of the traditional utility items are interrelated disciplines that lead to other art forms—hunting, leatherwork, vegetal-dyeing, basket making, farming, pottery, and weaving.

of the diversity within my culture when I learn something new or different. I hope that others will take advantage of future apprenticeship opportunities with Roy Kady.16

Future of the NavajoChurro Lifeway About 5,000 Navajo-Churro sheep currently exist, it is too low a number for the breed to be considered safe.

The Livestock Conservancy lists the breed’s status as threatened.17 The mood is hopeful for eventual, enduring breed reestablishment and continued availability of Navajo-Churro wool for weaving and other fiber arts. However, it will take significantly greater participation and cooperation among

We all share our piece of knowledge to create a stronger, traditional knowledge.

Personally, I gain a greater appreciation

interested Navajo people and others to ensure the future of this vital link in the Navajo lifeway.

Meanwhile, growing interest in the time-honored pastoral art of sheepherding and weaving and other fiber art is promising. The Navajo-Churro breed will continue to thrive and attract the attention of young Navajo fiber artists, as long as the dedicated community of teachers brings generations together to celebrate the sheep culture.

Today, there is hope for the Navajo-Churro sheep again because of the combined efforts of Dr. Lyle McNeal, a grassroots organization named Diné be’ iiná and its partners, and the mentoring efforts of Diné master sheepherders and fiber artists like Roy Kady.

navajolifeway.org navajo-churrosheep.com navajosheepproject.com

Workshops associated with the Sheep Is Life Celebration included vegetal dying, complete with the recipe for each color.

16. Roy Kady, in discussion with author, May 1, 2015.

17. Zephren Anderson, Facebook message to author, August 2, 2015.

18. “Heritage Sheep: Navajo Churro Sheep,” The Livestock Conservancy, web.

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Faithfully Rendered

Naturalism in Contemporary Native American Portrait Painting

By America Meredith For centuries, Northern African and European artists painted illusionary likenesses of specific people. With the invention of photography, painting was freed from the need to mimic reality. Does naturalistic portraiture still hold relevance today? And in particular, does an American Indian portrait require overt Native subject matter?

B

RITISH ART HISTORIAN Rosemary Betterton once wrote, “Painting, as many commentators and critics have concluded—and bemoaned—over the last few years, has ceased to be central to current critical debates about contemporary art in the Western world.”1 Yet, painting remains ubiquitous today, not only in the mainstream but also in Indigenous art worlds. The overwhelming majority of Native painting in the Americas, past and present, has been stylized. Few Native painters strive for naturalism, that is, translating observed or inferred, three-dimensional reality onto a two-dimensional surface.2 Still fewer of these artists paint portraits.

To understand why some Native artists choose to paint naturalistic portraits and why this approach to painting is so uncommon in Indigenous art, I interviewed four contemporary American Indian painters and spoke with several more. This small, diverse group of artists defies expectations of both the Native and mainstream art worlds to pursue naturalistic portrait painting. I compared their experience to my own as a painter and contextualized them within the history of mimetic painting. Although a marginal practice, naturalistic portrait painting holds a

meaningful place in the contemporary Native art world.

Thousands of naturalistic portraits fill art museums, so we are well acquainted with the practice. Still, the urge to apply pigments and binders onto flat panels or textiles to mimic three-dimensions is not necessarily an obvious one. In pre-Columbian times, the concept was obscure outside of Northern Africa and Europe. Although naturalism was extremely rare in the precontact Americas, it did exist.

However, the three primary examples were all sculptural: ceramic Moche portrait vessels, Maya figures in different media, and Mississippian head pots.

Naturalistic portrait painting first came to the Americas in the 16th century with the Spanish, who brought artists, paintings, and prints from Europe. By teaching Indigenous artists how to paint in popular European styles of the time, the Spanish hoped to spread Roman Catholic theology.

Portraiture was slower to arrive in what is now the United States, where Native Americans only gained access to mainstream formal arts education in the 19th century. Angel De Cora (Ho-Chunk, 1871–1919) acquired an extensive art education.3 Narcissa Chisholm Owen (Cherokee, 1831–1911) majored in art and music

1. Rosemary Betterton, introduction to Unframed: Practices and Politics of Women’s Contemporary Painting, ed. Rosemary Betterton (London: I. B. Taurus, 2004), 1.

2. While realism can refer to highly representational depictions in art, it can also mean the opposite of idealism, and Realism refers to the art movement that embraced subjects drawn from daily life—as opposed to mythology, religion, or classical—often with sociopolitical implications.

3. Linda M. Waggoner, Fire Light: The Life of Angel De Cora, Winnebago Artist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 25, 55, 59.

at the College of Evansville in Indiana and taught at the Cherokee Female Seminary.4 Despite being born in Indian Territory, teaching at a tribal college, exhibiting and winning awards nationally, having work in public collections, and publishing a biography, Owen remains absent from Native art narratives.

The Rise and Fall of Naturalism Naturalism relies on the optical illusion of three dimensions created by modeling, or changes in hue and value to make the contour appear to have mass. The Greeks developed this technique, which was employed by Romans, Etruscans, and Romano-Egyptians.

A millennium later, naturalistic portraiture again flourished, thanks to Renaissance inventions of perspective and oil paint, which can mimic the complex colorations of human flesh through translucent layers. Naturalism reigned over the Western art world for centuries.

This reign ended with the invention of the photograph. “From today, painting is dead,” French painter Paul Delaroche reputedly said in 1839, after witnessing the daguerreotype.5 Painting remained ascendant in the modern era but increasingly focused on its own materiality. Representational and figurative painting fell out of favor.

During the late modern era, many influential Indigenous American art institutions were established: West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (1957), Heard Museum Fair (1958), Institute of American Indian Arts (1962), and the Native Art Center at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (1965).6 Founded in this aesthetic climate and with no precontact precursors to naturalistic painting, it is easy to see why these entities do not commonly foster highly representational portraiture.

ABOVE: Narcissa Chisholm Owen (Cherokee), Self-Portrait, 1896, oil on canvas, 54 × 42 in., collection of the Oklahoma Museum of History.

OPPOSITE, TOP: Unknown Moche Artist, Portrait Vessel, ca. 100 BCE–500 CE, clay, pigment, Peru, collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Photo: Daderot (CC-PD).

OPPOSITE, BOTTOM: Unknown Romano-Egyptian Artist, Female Portrait, ca. 98–117 CE, encaustic on wood panel, 17.3 × 7.4 in., collection of the Walters Art Museum (CC BY-SA 3.0).

A Contemporary Era of Freedom or Indifference?

Cue postmodernism—a bifurcation that ushered in the contemporary era, in which history is no longer a threat but raw material to be mined. Historical artistic styles are embraced, but painting has lost its central position. Cultural

theorists Alison Rowley and Griselda Pollack wrote, “No one could deny that the decisive postmodernist shift toward photography, video, installation, performance, the use of found materials and new digital media has left the practice of painting, that was once so hegemonic, in critical limbo.”7

4. Oscar B. Jacobson and Jeanne d’Ucel, “Art in Oklahoma,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 32, no. 3 (1954): 263–277.

5. Jonathan Gilmore, The Life of a Style: Beginnings and Endings in the Narrative History of Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 134.

6. “Timeline of Indigenous Art History of the Americas,” First American Art Magazine, February 20, 2015, www.firstamericanartmagazine.com/timeline.

7. Alison Rowley and Griselda Pollock, “Painting in a ‘Hybrid Moment,’ ” in Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Painting: Hybridity, Hegemony, Historicism, ed. Jonathan P. Harris (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), 38.

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In present times, representational portraiture is neither vilified nor exulted.

Several Native American artists paint naturalistic portraits today. Matthew Bearden (Potawatomi-Kickapoo) of Oklahoma paints large-scale acrylic paintings and murals. His paintings of historic subjects often contain surrealistic tinges. Jessica Clark (Lumbee) of North Carolina records friends, family, and landscapes in larger-than-life paintings.

Dan HorseChief (Cherokee-Pawnee), a painter and sculptor living in Eastern Oklahoma, has an uncanny ability to envision historical scenes. Luanne Redeye (Seneca), from New York and living in New Mexico, portrays members of her community in the Allegany Indian Reservation. Despite coming from different tribes and backgrounds, these painters share similar experiences and perspectives in their art careers.

Going Against the Flow: Motivations TOP: Matthew Bearden (Potawatomi-Kickapoo), Page 48, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 34 × 20 in.

BOTTOM: Matthew Bearden (Potawatomi-Kickapoo), Kind of Blue (Miles Davis), 2009, acrylic on canvas, 42 × 42 in., collection of the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. Both images courtesy of the artist.

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Why did these artists initially choose to paint figuratively and naturalistically?

Redeye says she turned to art out of necessity and as an opportunity. “My

family didn’t have much growing up, and art was something I could call my own. I saw that art would take me from the reservation to school and ultimately where I am now.”8 The challenge of naturalism appeals to the artists. College introduced Redeye to the Renaissance Old Masters, and she “envied their skill and dedication.” Bearden is fascinated with the human face and wide range of body types. For Clark, painting is meditative.

Portraying Native Americans accurately is another strong motivation.

“I choose to paint naturalistic portraits because I want to portray contemporary Native Americans, …” says Clark, “as they are, living in the 21st century, and dispel stereotypes about what some people think Native should look like.”9 As a child, Redeye drew characters from television, “but even as a kid I realized I wouldn’t see anyone who looked like me reflected on the screen, which is why I turned to drawing those around me.

“Often I struggle with the perception that my artwork does not look Native American, that I do not look Native American, or that the individuals that I am depicting do not look Native American,” Redeye writes.

“From contact to the present, the representations that have been produced create an assumption of a universal Indian stuck in the past,” she continues.

“I need to disprove those assumptions not by directly portraying the stereotype but by showing the diversity of people’s lives.”10 While photography is a widely used tool in painting, cameras cannot detect the full range of colors visible to the human eye. Painting offers a broader color range than any other media, especially with interference, phosphorescent, and pearlescent paints.

The time invested and deliberation of each brushstroke suggests

a dedication and intimacy between the artist and subject. In a world of ever-increasing mass reproduction, paintings reflect the artist’s hand.

Redeye treasures “the personal touch of seeing that it was painted by my hand and how oil paint can achieve a sense of the luminosity of flesh.”

“I’ve always liked to keep the slightly painterly aspect alive on the canvas,” says Bearden. Painting allows him to change the appearance of his subjects. “A beef I have is with people who say that representational painting excludes creativity,” he says. “That’s just wrong.”11

Education and Training Very few naturalistic painters are truly self-taught. Most of them study at college, workshops, ateliers, and museums, or with individual artists or groups. These four artists attended several colleges with varying experiences. Clark earned her BFA from the University of North Carolina, Pembroke, and her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design.12 She says, “There weren’t many realistic painters there when I finished the program but I did have some support.”

Bearden gained a good foundation in drawing and anatomy at

Jessica Clark (Lumbee), Indian Summer I, 2008, oil on canvas, 30 x 26 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

8. Unless otherwise noted, quotes from Luanne Redeye are from email messages to author, September 2015.

9. Quotes from Jessica Clark are from email messages to author, September 2015.

10. Luanne Redeye, Akso:d, we are here (Albuquerque: [AC]2 Gallery, 2011), no page number.

11. Quotes from Matthew Bearden are from email messages to author, September 2015.

12. Nancy Fields, “Jessica Clark: Lumbee Painter,” First American Art Magazine 5 (Winter 2014): 17.

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Northeastern State University. “I still didn’t really know how to paint, …” he says, referring to his time at IAIA. “Figurative work was frowned upon in my … painting class. It wasn’t until I returned home and locked myself in my room with my paints that I was able to gain any ground.”

HorseChief attended IAIA and Bacone College, but he says he “learned by observing and most of all by holding a brush and playing with paint for countless hours. That and from my mother, Mary Adair, who was a high school art teacher, and the beloved Mister Rogers, my actual high school art teacher.”13 Redeye had a positive college experience. She attended the State University of New York, Oswego, where naturalistic painting from observation was taught. This approach is common among universities and colleges according to Redeye, including Central New Mexico Community College where she teaches.

This surprised me, as I have taken art classes at eight colleges in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and California. I have seen successful life-drawing classes but not life-painting classes. Life painting was often frustrating for students because they were not taught requisite skills to successfully render the subject.

I only learned how to paint a live model from the now-defunct San Francisco School of Art, where the curriculum was based on the rigorous approach formulated in 19th-century academies.

Subject Matter The artists are keenly aware that portraits of contemporary Native people that confront stereotypes can be more difficult to sell than portraits of historical figures that conform to public expectations. Nonetheless, they feel compelled to challenge mainstream, romanticized perceptions of Native Americans.

Clark and Redeye both paint 21st-century subjects. They share a TOP: Luanne Redeye (Seneca), Steve, 2014, oil on panel, 30 × 24 in. Images courtesy of the artist.

BOTTOM: Luanne Redeye (Seneca), Tommy, 2011, oil on panel, 24 × 30 in.

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13. Quotes from Dan HorseChief are from email messages to author, October 2015.

similar approach in which they shoot many photographs until the subjects feel comfortable with them at the camera, and the resulting scenes are spontaneous rather than posed.

Clark says, “Sometimes I will add or subtract elements while I’m painting, but most of the time I leave everything as is … Most of the portraits I paint contain an element of the subject’s personality and tell a part of their story.” Redeye says, “How they have decorated their home or the clothes they wear [reflects] how they would be every day.”

HorseChief often paints historical figures who have no previous portraits and who predate photography. He reads written descriptions of the individuals.

“I completely immerse myself in their story as I begin,” he writes. “I try to link the character that I know with a face that I haven’t seen.”

Bearden paints living and historic people. He works from photos and live models, including his brother, who dresses in different tribal regalia. “One time I crafted a medicine shield out of cardboard and had him hold it for photos.” While primarily focused on a single individual, Bearden has posed his subjects on horseback, collapsed on government documents, holding shields or hatchets, or enclosed in the foreshortened bell of a trumpet.

As for the background in paintings, Bearden occasionally indicates landscapes with loosely painted color fields, but he says, “I always want to focus on one main subject in my work, in the forefront, and leave the background distraction to someone else.” Redeye tends to focus on interior scenes to enhance the psychological profiles of her subjects.

Clark, who lives in Fairmont, North Carolina, moves comfortably from interior spaces to landscapes.

HorseChief, of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, places his portraits in lush, arboreal landscapes. This begs the question: Are Native artists who live in their tribal homelands more inclined to place figures within landscapes?

Dan HorseChief (Cherokee-Pawnee), Tah si ki ya ki, Captain Shoe Boots, Cherokee Warrior, 2011, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.

The artists paint both Native and non-Native subjects. While Bearden paints a range of people, the majority are men from Plains tribes. HorseChief paints men and women from Cherokee, Pawnee, and other tribal backgrounds, as well as Europeans.

His mother used to say to him, “You are Native, so doesn’t that make whatever you create Native? Do whatever you want, Dan.”

Clark focuses on 21st-century Lumbee subjects. Some viewers have expressed disappointment in her lack of obvious Native signifiers. In graduate school, she says, “It was even suggested that I add objects or symbols that informed the viewer that my work was Native, instead of just presenting the portrait.”

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Jessica Clark (Lumbee), Lumbee Family Values II, 2014, oil on canvas, 50 × 36 in.

‘Indian’ signifiers … And that’s where I’ve had the most criticism—viewers who want the people in the paintings to look ‘Indian’ because without it they wouldn’t know they’re Native. To this I ask what exactly are they looking for and of course, it’s the usual stereotypes like dark reddish skin tone, feathers, silver/turquoise/beaded jewelry, dressed in traditional or dance clothes, no facial expression, etc. And because the paintings lack these signifiers, the work, like the people, is not Native” in the minds of the viewer.

Public and Critical Response Overall, naturalistic portrait painting has garnered the artists a favorable public response. Bearden says he does well in juried competitions and receives positive feedback from the public, but his work attracts a small collector base.

“The general public is very accepting of my work,” says Clark.

“My biggest critique while in graduate school, though, was to loosen up, omit some of the information, and not be so literal. I feel a lot of times that they

were secretly encouraging me to work toward abstraction or symbolism.”

That naturalistic portrait painting can be considered passé in the mainstream art world does not faze the artists. “It takes a lot of skill and discipline,” says Clark. “There is still a lot to be said about our world, and there are times when portraiture is the best avenue for that information.” Redeye feels that “as long as people are painting, it will always be relevant.”

“I believe if a person is honest and sincere in what they are doing and creating, that is the true meaning of relevancy,” says HorseChief. “A doctor can develop a cure for an illness that affects only a handful of people, but does that make it irrelevant to the world?”

The artists strongly disagreed with the suggestion that portrait painting was Western, not Native. “My work is Native American because I am Native American, and I created it,” says Clark.

“My work would be completely different if I was living in a precontact world. As an artist living in the 21st century, I feel some responsibility to use the training, materials, and techniques available to me at this time. Just because

I am Native, that doesn’t mean I should only paint in a certain style and use certain materials.”

Her views are echoed by Redeye.

“I think it is important to know art history and what artists have created before us. There’s this wealth of knowledge to pull from, so why not take advantage of that? To be familiar with the Western roots of portrait painting only helps make the work stronger because it allows a Native artist twice as much knowledge in their arsenal.”

In his 1928 Manifesto Antropófago, Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade advocated “cannibalizing the European colonizer ‘in order to appropriate his virtues and powers and transform the taboo into the totem.’ ”14 “We pick and choose the influences, and sometimes those choices are not even realized,” acknowledges HorseChief. The inspiration goes both ways, and he points out that “Western culture, in turn, hasn’t fully realized how much we have influenced them.”

Obstacles and Deterrents If these artists have found naturalistic portrait painting as personally rewarding and effective in sharing their aesthetic sensibilities and content across cultures, then why is it so rare in Native art today? Painting historical figures based on photography is increasingly common, but these works are often projected and flat. Drafting, modeling, color mixing, composition, and other skills required by mimetic portraiture are far more demanding. Technical difficulty may be a deterrent, especially since formal arts education can be cost prohibitive. Naturalism also takes considerable time. Artists spend weeks or months on their works.

Clark and Redeye both observed that another deterrent could be that stylized movements of 20th-century Native American painting sway artists today. Clark observes, “During the 1930s, when Native art was given a lot of attention, it was only acceptable to paint in a certain style—using limited

14. Katya Garcia Anton, “Beatriz Milhazes: Towards a Tropical Syntax,” in Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Painting: Hybridity, Hegemony, Historicism, ed. Jonathan P. Harris (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), 177.

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materials and subject matter. It can be hard to break out of the expectations of the art world when you’ve been put into a category for decades.”

Redeye suggests the dearth of naturalistic portraiture is due to “influences of early painters like Fritz Scholder, T. C. Cannon … I think students today see their success and follow their style of painting and imagery.” She also believes the influences of Native schools and art markets affect style. “What is juried into the art markets sets the tone in Native art for what work and imagery is accepted.” Collectors seek work “that looks ‘Indian,’ and often any artwork that doesn’t fit their perception is overlooked.”

(Southern Cheyenne-Kaw-Chumash), Brenda Kennedy Grummer (Citizen Potawatomi), Sharon Irla (Cherokee Nation), Hyrum Joe (Navajo-Ute-HopiApache-Zuni), David K. John (Navajo), David Kaskaske (Otoe-Missouria-Iowa), James King (Navajo), Mike Larsen (Chickasaw), David Martin (Pokagon Potawatomi), Monty Singer (Navajo), and Jerry Sutton (Cherokee Nation).

Because mainstream perceptions of art carry so much influence, I am deeply concerned about artistic provincialism. As art judges or critics, do we tremble in the face of our current

artistic freedom and cling to unacknowledged vestiges of the progressive art narrative? Do critics unconsciously see installation or video art as automatically more innovative or relevant than painting by nature of its media?

Painting is a human endeavor, and the needs of artists transcend stylistic trends.

As Arthur C. Danto wrote, “Artists after the end of art … adhere to no single avenue of creativity.”15 We need to expand our understanding of and narratives about contemporary Native art to accommodate the artists who do not conform to our expectations.

Conclusion Historical artists and the challenges posed by the genre inspire Indigenous, naturalistic portraitists. Today’s portraitists use painting as meditation.

Some wish to portray Native Americans as multifaceted, real people to dispel stereotypes. Deterrents include time constraints and lack access to technical knowledge, examples, or institutional support for the genre. Most surprising is the opposition some artists face when they leave overt Native iconography out of their art.

“A viewer’s attention is first drawn to the realistic quality of the work, then pulled in further by the subject matter,” observes Clark. While the public all too often wants their expectations of Native people confirmed, naturalism can be the hook that draws viewers in to challenging their own stereotypes.

As an immediately recognizable style worldwide, naturalism can facilitate cross-cultural communication.

Naturalistic portraiture also provides tribal communities with mirrors of themselves, so seldom encountered in mainstream media.

American Indian artists who successfully paint naturalistic portraits are few in number. In addition to Bearden, Clark, HorseChief, and Redeye, these include Nanibah Chacon (Navajo-Chicana), Michael Elizondo Jr.

Dan HorseChief (Cherokee-Pawnee), Napoleon, 2012, oil on panel. Image courtesy of the artist.

15. Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 127.

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Buying or Selling Indian Art? Know the Law! Under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, all American Indian and Alaska Native art and craft products must be marketed truthfully regarding the tribal enrollment and Indian heritage of the artist or craftsperson.

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For a free brochure on the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, including how to file a complaint, contact: Indian Arts and Crafts Board U.S. Department of the Interior 1849 C Street, NW, MS 2528-MIB Washington DC 20240 Toll Free: 1-888-ART-FAKE or 1-888-2783253 Email: iacb@ios.doi.gov Web: www.doi.gov/iacb Joan Hill, Muscogee Creek Nation, Sacred Ceremony of the Temple Mound, Painting, ©1989

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PROFILE

Muscogee-Cherokee Painter

Joan Hill

By Daniel McCoy Jr.

A

S A CHILD, I went on trips with my grandparents and my aunt to various museums throughout Northeastern Oklahoma. Among those we frequented were the Gilcrease Museum and Philbrook Museum of Art, both located in Tulsa, and the Five Civilized Tribes Museum of Muskogee. I enjoyed these trips so much; they were a treat. I was taught to be respectful of the establishment and to be quiet and patient while my family viewed the different exhibits.

After a while, I began gravitating toward the paintings hanging on the walls. I can only imagine the roster of artists that exhibited in those days. I began to study them to try to comprehend just what exactly I was looking at.

Among the works by master artists, I distinctly remember viewing Wars and Rumors of Wars (1971) by Joan Hill.

This painting was different from the rest. It wasn’t a cowboy painting full of gunfire and dust, nor did it look like the traditional Indian artwork resembling hieroglyphics from ancient Egypt. This painting conjured up a whole environment for the viewer; it transported me to the campfire under the moonlight painted by Hill.

This was the beginning of recording images with my eyes and storing them mentally for later use.

Several years later while I was in high school, I found a black-andwhite image of that same painting in the book The Indians of Oklahoma

by Rennard Strickland (OsageCherokee). Even though I felt the image did not do the painting justice, my memory of Hill’s painting rang

Joan Hill in her studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

with clarity. It was my first experience with the sustaining influence of Native American artwork. It was an important epiphany—I finally understood what my grandparents were trying to instill in me. Joan Hill

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was from Oklahoma and a member of the same tribe as me. This was very important to a young man trying to find his own place as he approached adulthood and attempted to hone his drawing skills at the same time. I made

JOAN HILL

reflects the artist’s unbreakable ties to her home and family. To interview Joan Hill for First American Art Magazine has been an absolute joy and honor.

War and Rumors of Wars, 1973, acrylic on canvas, collection of the Dr. J. W. Wiggins Native American Art Museum, University of Arkansas, Little Rock. All images of artwork courtesy of Dr. J. W. Wiggins.

a specific point to remember Joan Hill’s name.

Over the years, I would occasionally come across some of Hill’s paintings.

I uncovered these gems while visiting or working in galleries. One year I found a Muscogee king painted on top of a bright, chrome yellow background. The next year, a watercolor of a Baptism scene, and a few years later, a jazz quartet playing instruments in a cathedral. Every painting was an absolute treasure to view. Joan Hill grew as mysterious to me as her artwork.

After several phone conversations with Hill and eventually meeting with her for this interview, I found there was no mystery behind her work after all. Hill is speaking the truth with her artwork, more so than most.

Her paintings are a dedication to the teachings of her beloved parents, her historical ties to Muscogee Creek and Cherokee ancestry, and her homestead. I was able to see firsthand the thread that connected all of Hill’s paintings that I made such a point to memorize. Her artwork is a conduit through which her story is told and

Joan Hill is of Muscogee Creek and Cherokee heritage. Her Indigenous name is Chea-se-quah, a name that she took from her brother, William Cheasequah Hill. It means red bird in English. Hill lives northeast of Muskogee on her family’s allotment— land steeped in deep, historical roots dating back to the Civil War and Indian Territory days. The property is high above the Three Forks area of the Arkansas River. The Confederate Army used it during the Civil War as the site of Fort Davis. Just as fascinating is the pre-Columbian mound located on Hill’s property, which shows the importance of this area to Indigenous peoples centuries before colonization. This Muscogee Creek territory in its natural state must have been a beautiful sight to behold. To understand the importance of Hill’s rich family history and the significance this area had to the Creek and Cherokee Nations is to understand the paintings created by Joan Hill. These entities are closely related.

Hill studied at Bacone College in Muskogee under the direction of Dick West (Southern Cheyenne, 1912–1996). West encouraged Hill to push her paintings toward the realm of fine art. Joan Hill transferred to Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where she received a bachelor’s degree in education. After college, Hill taught art classes in Tulsa for the public school system. After four years of teaching many different grades and ages of students, Hill decided to leave teaching behind. She wanted to focus on being a full-time artist.

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PROFILE

Blessing the Harvest (Gathering Corn), 2008, watercolor and distemper on paper, collection of the Dr. J. W. Wiggins Native American Art Museum, University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

Joan Hill is the first female Native American painter from Oklahoma to attract serious attention from art collectors and museums not only in Oklahoma but also across America and abroad. Her outstanding abilities have taken her overseas to produce work in 36 countries. She was Lloyd Kiva New’s first choice for painting instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts when it was founded.

Through her dedication and hard work, Hill has received more than 250 awards, including a commemorative medal from Great Britain; the 1985 Oscar D’ Italia from Academia Italia, Cremona, Italy; and the Waite Phillips Special Artists Trophy from the Philbrook Museum of Art for lifetime achievement.

Many of Hill’s paintings are in public collections. These include some of the most prestigious collections in the United States: the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board in Washington, DC; National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, Smithsonian Institution, New York, New York; Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona; Cherokee Heritage Center, Park Hill, Oklahoma; and the Philbrook Museum of Art. Upon first sight, Hill’s paintings vibrate with brilliant hues. The second look is for content and subject matter. Joan Hill has produced artwork in a wide variety of styles such as tight, fine-line pieces with a Flatstyle quality. She also excels in oil

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painting with a horizontal dry-brush technique. To create such a range of artwork is a tribute to Hill’s curiosity, experimentation, and love of painting.

Her mastery of many techniques is a feat not many artists within the genre can achieve. This visual record is proof why Joan Hill is a master artist and an important figure for Oklahoman Native American art.

Let’s start with your beginnings.

Where you were born? Have you been in Oklahoma the majority of your life?

Right here in Muskogee at the Baptist Hospital. They brought me home, and I have lived here my entire life. Someone said to me, “Do you know how remarkable that is?” and I replied that I had never thought

JOAN HILL

That was my experience with different artists; they all tried to help me. … I want to help other artists, too. draw on the walls. Daddy would also draw figures on the windows when frost would form on them in the wintertime. He would have made a wonderful artist if they had art classes in those days. They sent him to St. Joseph’s School [an Indian boarding school] when he was seven years old, but he drew a lot. He would draw things in the dirt with a stick while we were waiting for something or someone.

My mother was an accomplished piano player. Mother majored in voice and piano while she was at Oklahoma College for Women. We had little bits of pottery that I liked. My daddy’s sisters also gave me reproductions from the Metropolitan Museum of Art—all kinds of paintings and subject matter. Almost everything you can think of. I guess I was always exposed to art. We didn’t go to a lot of museums when we were little, but we did in later years. We went to the Philbrook and went to the symphony in Oklahoma City once or twice.

The Rain Maker, 2007, distemper on paper, collection of the Dr. J. W. Wiggins Native American Art Museum, University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

much about it. I never got out of my tracks. [Laughs.]

So, you have seen the town of Muskogee, Oklahoma, really change over the years.

I told my brother one time several years ago … We were talking one day, and I said, “You should leave everything [on the property] just the way it is, so if Mother and Daddy came back—of course, that’s impossible—it would be just like they left it.” They

wouldn’t know the place; nobody would know the place. The town has changed so, but that’s one of those things—if you can’t accept change, you’re doomed [laughs] … especially in today’s society.

What were your influences on your artwork? Who or what inspired you to pick up the paintbrush?

I started in grade school. I started drawing on the walls. Daddy would buy paint and paper so I wouldn’t

I noticed after years of researching your work that you have various styles, from a Flatstyle technique to a dry-brush, horizontal technique with oils, among others. Do you have a preferred style?

No, I don’t have a preferred style.

Traditional [Flatstyle] work sells well.

People really like it because it’s fading.

Something is just very satisfying about very precise work. Then I love these really wild abstracts, too. They just evolve. Sometimes I start one type of painting and it will turn into another type. Sometimes I start a painting, and I don’t quite know what to do with it. So I don’t bother with it. Two or three months later, I look at it, and then I know what to do. I dream WIN T E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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PROFILE

paintings. But when I try to paint what I dream, it doesn’t reach [what I’ve dreamed]. Sometimes it turns out to be a good painting, but it’s hard to reach that.

As a female Native American artist that made major steps in a maledominated genre, did you face any challenges during those days that were solely yours?

Somebody asked me that one time, was it handicapping being a woman artist? I think it worked in my favor, because I was the only one here.

Solomon McCombs was a good friend, so were Fred Beaver and Dick West. There were several.

I can remember when they organized a group in Washington. Solomon says, “You know, we need to have a woman there. Joan, why don’t you join us?” So, they included me in their American Indian circle in Washington, DC. I was asked for an exhibition, and I did it, and I liked it [laughs].

With such a great lineup of talented artists, was there any creative competition among your group?

I never felt that I had to be competitive with them. I don’t know why I didn’t. I guess I looked at them more as teachers more than anything else. That was my experience with different artists; they all tried to help me. I have always felt that way. I want to help other artists, too. I don’t feel competitive, not even with women. I always did what I wanted to do, and that was it.

Butterfly Medicine Weed, 1972, oil on canvas, collection of the Dr. J. W. Wiggins Native American Art Museum, University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

Can you explain the painting War and Rumors of Wars for me? I have seen variations of this painting over the years. It seems it was a successful painting for you.

penguins that had a lot to do with that painting. [Mr. Forbrush and the Penguins came out in 1971 and dealt with penguins’ struggle for survival. The title of the painting comes from the Bible verse Matthew 24:6. Widely believed to be a statement on the war in Vietnam, the painting also deals with pre-removal Creeks concerned about warfare and loss of their lands.]

to do with that painting?” I said I was thinking of painting a yellow sky, because it was still white and black. Mother said, “No, don’t,” and Daddy said, “Leave it like it is. Leave it white.” So I did … And I could have gone ahead and put that yellow sky in, and it wouldn’t have worked.

A yellow sky just does not belong in that painting.

Like I said, the works just evolve.

I think there was a movie on

My mother and daddy came home and asked me, “What are you going

So, your parents had a lot of insight about your work?

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JOAN HILL

Spirit of the Suli Obanga (Buzzard Dance), 2007, watercolor on paper, collection of the Dr. J. W. Wiggins Native American Art Museum, University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

Oh, they had a lot of influence on what I did. In the evenings after working in the orchard and such, we would go and sit on the porch, and Daddy would tell us all these stories about the Indian Territory days. I think you absorb things without really thinking about it. If you like something really well, you absorb it, and it becomes part of you.

What is your process when it comes to creativity?

It just comes out of you. It’s like breathing, I guess. You just do it. You are not conscious of it. At least I’m not.

Say if I walk into the studio and think to myself, “Well, let’s go in today and paint a medicine man or something.”

I never do that.

What awards and achievements are you most proud?

The Waite Phillips Trophy is the one I am proud of the most. I’m not competitive; only with myself. I have read that Michelangelo had this divine discontent. He was never satisfied with anything he did. He thought he could do it better. I guess I do that, too.

Artist Statement

A

LL OF MY WORK … owes a debt to my Creek-Cherokee heritage, for the teachings of my beloved parents and grandparents give a base or sustenance to my artwork.

I was also blessed to have a deep, spiritual faith in God, a love and respect for the land, the elements and the powers of creation, with a feeling for the eternal and the monumental. Consequently, I am inexorably drawn to the beauty, illusion, and mystery of Native American legends and history, which serve as inspiration for the images I use to create a world, not as it is “seen,” but as it is “felt.”

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Passamaquoddy Basket Weaver

George Neptune

By Jean Merz-Edwards

G

ROWING UP ON HIS TRIBE’S RESERVATION off the coast of Maine, George Neptune discovered his passion for basket making at a very young age. His maternal grandmother Molly Neptune Parker, a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow, taught Neptune how to make his first basket at the age of four. By the time he was twelve years old, his work was being collected by the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine. His formal education includes a bachelor’s degree in theater from Dartmouth College. Today Neptune serves as museum educator at the Abbe while he pursues his master’s degree in Wabanaki studies1 and museum studies at the University of Maine.

Could you share a little bit about you background that led you to where you are today?

I grew up on the Passamaquoddy Reservation of Indian Township, which is in Washington County, Maine. I went to the elementary school there until eighth grade. After eighth grade, my mother decided that she wanted me to have more opportunities for higher education than were offered in the public schools near the reservation. So, she sent me to a boarding school in Western Maine. It was a college preparatory school called Gould Academy, which focused on the arts. I was excited about going there because I had many opportunities to explore my creativity in ways that I could not have on the reservation. I really loved my four years there—always going back to the reservation, making baskets with my grandmother whenever I could.

How did you end up at Dartmouth College?

I went to Dartmouth specifically because they asked me to participate in the Native Fly-In Program, where they fly in Native American high school seniors from all over the county as part of their charter. They set me up for several days in the dorm and let me check out classes in the Native American program. The whole trip really gave me a sense of the school and, by the end of my four days there, I was absolutely in love with the place and knew I wanted to go there. I applied to Dartmouth early and got in, so I was there for the next four years. One of the reasons I chose

George Neptune. All images courtesy of artist.

Dartmouth was I was not the only Native student. There was a strong, active Native community.

It is interesting that when you were at Dartmouth you studied abroad in both Spain and England. How do those experiences inform your art today?

I went to Barcelona first and was there from January through March of 2008. It was an amazing languageabroad program. I became fluent in the language and learned a lot in my art history class and about the culture of Barcelona. For instance, El Barrio Gótico (the Gothic quarter in Barcelona) is near the Surrealist construction.

Seeing all of those amazing works by Salvador Dalí and [Antoni] Gaudí and going to the Sagrada Familia was inspiring. I saw amazing artwork … houses that looked like dragons—created all because artists just could. It kind of shattered this idea that there were any rules to my baskets and inspired me to just say, “I don’t have to follow all these rules. I know them, but my baskets can really be whatever representation of my spirit I want them to be.”

I went to London, England, from September through November of 2008 as part of Dartmouth’s Theater Foreign Study Program. Living in London, I saw a lot of different art and people just loving and living their craft; it really

1. Wabanaki is the confederacy of the Abenaki, Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot peoples that is primarily based in Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec.

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GEORGE NEPTUNE

Extraordi-berries, 2015, brown ash splints, sweetgrass, commercial dyes, 3 × 2.5 in. each.

inspired me. Just being there and seeing other people being themselves and making a living at art gave me the strength to do so as well.

What did you do after graduating with your theater degree in 2010?

After Dartmouth, I decided I wanted to move home and be on the reservation for a while, because I had not been home for longer than a month and a half in the eight years since I left for boarding school. I definitely felt disconnected.

I moved home and took the time to focus on my basket weaving. I started to make things that I had ideas about but did not have the time to bring to fruition when I was in school. I had made my first basket that had twigs and branches on it while I was still at Dartmouth, but I made a much larger one just after I graduated. That is when I

started to explore my baskets in a way that gave me more freedom …

I did some other work as well. I contracted with an after-school program and a summer camp program on the reservation, where I was both a cultural activities coordinator and a drama instructor. Eventually, I became a Zumba instructor, and I was the unit director of the Boys and Girls Club on the reservation.

I did that for a year before I heard about the museum educator position at the Abbe. I have been at the Abbe for three years now. As museum educator, I lead any tours that come to the museum. I also lead school programs and provide outreach educational programs to both children and adults. I hire Native people to come and demonstrate WIN T E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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or give lectures for educational talks in whatever capacity, and I help write and design exhibits.

What inspired your first basket with twigs and branches that you made in college?

My grandmother always makes these baskets called “flower top baskets.”

They are a signature shape that was given to her by her mother. We believe they originate from my grandmother’s grandmother. I was making a basket like that. I had already experimented with putting my own weave on the side—something that I developed to look like old designs I had seen on baskets, even Southwestern baskets. The ash and sweetgrass going back and forth … I was excited to figure out that I may have come up with something new.

The lids of the flower top baskets always had woven ash flowers, and my grandmother would typically add a braid of sweetgrass that she formed into a ring and a row of carved ash leaves. I always liked how realistic and pretty the flowers looked but I wanted something to make it look more natural. The night before a basket show, I went out, found some different branches, brought them back, and attached a twig to my basket. I put it on top, and the next day it sold to a private collector.

People generally look at our baskets as if we can go to the store and buy the materials and just make them. In reality, each of these materials is hand processed. The basket used to be a tree in the woods, quite literally. So, I had the idea that the basket, in some ways, was a tree from the woods, and I wanted to blur that line between the processed material and the more natural [state of the] material. This has given birth to a lot more tree-covered baskets or baskets that look like they have trees growing out of them.

Chocolate Wedding Cake, 2011, brown ash splints, sweetgrass, commercial dyes. 18 × 10 in. Featured in Abbe Museum exhibit Twisted Path II, 2011–12.

The following year I made a second one, and my grandmother bought it for my mother. That was the first basket I made that had flowers and the twig and one of my woven birds on it. I had already developed the woven bird as my signature. You can definitely see earlier incarnations of it and how much it has evolved. Today, Mom still has the first basket that has twigs, the flowers, and the bird on it.

Your passion for basket making is clearly something present throughout your life. Could you speak a little about the performative aspect of your practice, specifically the integration of your

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theater training, and how that affects your work today?

I got into the theater at Gould. My freshman fall I signed up for drama because I did not want to have to run in any of the sports. I actually really enjoyed it. The second time I took drama was my sophomore fall, and I loved it even more then.

I decided that spring I was going to try my first musical. In the course of the musical, I decided what I wanted to do: I wanted to be an actor and study theater. So, I continued to do theater my sophomore and junior years … and then I did drama for all three

GEORGE NEPTUNE

Feast of the Hummingbirds, 2013, brown ash splints, sweetgrass, birch twigs, commercial dyes. 22 × 10 in. Featured in 2015 Portland Museum of Art Biennial You Can’t Get There From Here.

trimesters my senior year and went on to Dartmouth to study theater.

One way that I think it affected my work—it really encouraged me to think about my baskets in a view from 360-degrees. When I first started making baskets, they looked best from a certain side; there was a back and a front. Theater encouraged me to look at a basket from all sides.

I also learned a lot in terms of the technical aspect of theater—things like making props, painting, and being able to change the color of something

just based on the type of light showing on it. Theater encouraged me to focus on the drama of my baskets.

For example, I went from my birds just being decorative aspects on the surface to making the birds look as alive as possible. They were no longer part of the basket; they just landed on it.

did not notice with their first viewing.

Quite simply, each one of my baskets attempts to tell a story.

My baskets are so difficult to photograph because of their 360-degree, theater-in-the-round aspect. I like the idea of having them on display, and people walking all the way around to view all sides of the basket and be able to see the different details they

I would say that is probably accurate.

I thought theater was my passion for a very long time, and I still love it. I still participate in a local community theater, but I am a basket maker. I do not even remember how I first made a basket because I was so young. Basket

So, theater is an accessory to what really matters to you. It is not the focus because basket making is really your passion.

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Alewife Barrel, 2013, undyed brown ash splints, sweetgrass. 19 × 10 in. This basket features flowers and Neptune’s signature bird on the lid and three rows of alewife curls. Honorable mention in traditional basketry at the 2013 Santa Fe Indian Market, featured in 2015 Portland Museum of Art Biennial You Can’t Get There From Here.

making is just something I have always done. I was quite literally raised a basket maker. It has always been who I am.

Speaking of making baskets at a young age, what role do you see mentoring play in the field of contemporary Native American art?

I think it is important for me to pass on skills and techniques that were passed on to me. My ancestors have fought for thousands of generations for me to even have these traditions, so it is my duty to pass them on and preserve them as best I can for the future generations.

At the same time, I think it is important for me to encourage future generations to break the rules in the

way that I did. Learn the rules well, master them, and then explore as an artist. Master those techniques so that when you break them, you break them well. That is something I really have always believed … do not be halfassed when you break the rules, really break them!

Mentoring is especially relevant today, because now many Native youth grow up with absolutely no idea what it means to be a “contemporary” Indian.

We are rarely exposed to what it means to be an Indian in the 21st century.

For example, whenever we see representations of ourselves—when roles are being played by us and projects collaborated with us—99.9 percent of the time Native people are represented as in the past.

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There is this idea that we are not Native if we are not in buckskin and feathers or living out in the woods. If we are living in an apartment in Bar Harbor with a television and sometimes we like to knit instead of making baskets, then we are not really Indians.

I think it is important for me to be able to show the next generation, even if it’s just specifically through my youngest sister Emma [Soctomah, whom George is mentoring in basket weaving]. In turn, she is encouraging all her friends.

They all know she goes to Santa Fe and wins competitions every year. I believe it is important to show what can happen when you take pride in your culture and in yourself.

When did you start mentoring Emma in basket weaving?

GEORGE NEPTUNE

She made her first basket with me when she was five. There was a big workshop that was open to people in our community up at the reservation school. Emma had come up, and my grandma said, “She’s probably old enough, but she’s going to need a lot of help, so you’ll have to help her.” I was fine with that, so I started weaving with Emma. I noticed right away she had an amazing knack for it. She really needed very little help.

She chose her own colors. At first, when she was choosing her colors, I thought, “I don’t know how it’s going to work.” Gran had always worked with me and helped me choose the colors. She would say, “Not too many colors, keep it simple.” But I let Emma try it. I thought, “She wants these three colors instead of just one or two, I’ll let her do it.” I realized halfway up the basket, she had a knack for it. She made a very intricate, repeating pattern that she had not messed up the entire length of the basket. She came up with her own very bright, very complex pattern that she was able to follow and keep repeating. I knew then she was going to be really good at it. As time went on she made more baskets. By the time she was seven, we submitted an application through the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance for her to be my apprentice.

I have gone to Santa Fe Indian Market four years in a row—three years of those with Emma, who is now eleven years old. She has won both first and second place in the youth competition all three years. I am very proud of her for that.

How many brothers and sisters do you have in your family?

I have nine sisters and two brothers.

I have two other sisters that make baskets. They apprentice under my grandmother. They are between Emma and me in age. I am the oldest of my mother’s children, and Emma is the youngest. We all know how to make baskets, but we are not all basket makers.

Micro-strawberry, 2014, brown ash splints, sweetgrass, commercial dyes, 1 × 1 in.

In closing, I recently read a quote where you state, “As I got older, I developed this philosophy that I will make waves. I will not sit by and not say anything.” What is it that you think needs to be said?

We as Native people and Indigenous people all over the world are still connected to our homelands, and

we will always be connected to our homelands. As long as we are living and breathing and as long as our children know our stories, we will always fight to preserve our homelands and to preserve our traditions for future generations. I would like to say we have survived one apocalypse, and we can survive many more.

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Osage Fashion Designer and Textile Artist

Wendy Ponca

By Alexandra Ponca Stock

W

ENDY PONCA HAS THE ENERGY and drive of a freight train and the talent requisite of all the greats. Her accomplishments have been many: a Pendleton blanket designer for the American Indian College Fund series; an eight-time, first-place award winner at the Santa Fe Indian Market; and winner of their award for Most Creative Design in Any Category in 1987. She is a Kellogg Foundation grantee, master of customary techniques and fashion design, and has been a valued educator and education proponent for more than 30 years. And Ponca has produced a prolific amount of exceptional artwork throughout her career. She inspires the same high standards in those with whom she has interacted, collaborated, and instructed. Her works are part of abounding private collections as well as the collections of the Philbrook Museum of Art, National Museum of the American Indian, National Collection of Contemporary Native American Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.

At first glance, the artist, much like her designs, exhibits a proud, bold, sometimes flamboyant edge—a dynamism that can just as quickly cradle and praise as carve and critique. Her joie de vivre is notorious, and her reputation for autonomy can be summed up nicely in a tagline, which those who know her, know it well: “I don’t give a flying f— in hell!” On closer inspection, this sentiment is countered and complemented by the qualities of the artist and her work that exhibit beautiful moments of calm, exquisite skill, vulnerability, sensitivity to tradition, and reverence for ceremony. It is these attributes that have garnered Ponca the respect and love of her peers, students, colleagues, and collectors—and make for great conversation.

I was honored to sit with such an artist, who I am lucky enough to call my mother, and talk about art’s role in society, extraterrestrials, and her current exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum.

The Peabody will include designs from your recent work, The Marriage of the Earth and Sky People, in their exhibition Native Fashion Now. For that piece, you received a grant from the Osage Nation and took a group of Osages up to the Cahokia Mounds near St. Louis to have a performance and a photoshoot. Can you talk a little bit about that work?

My whole inspiration for that piece was based on our belief that to be Osage you have to be half Earth Person and half

Kimberly Wendy Ponca in Oklahoma.

Sky Person. The Sky People are the Tzi-zho; the Earth People are the Hunkah. The photoshoot was based on when the Sky People came down to Earth and met the people who were living here, and intermarried with them. That’s how we came to be Osages. So, the work represents that marriage of the Earth and Sky Peoples.

The Earth People were all in clothing that would have been made without any trade beads or materials. All materials were ones that we had on this continent, pre-European contact, let’s say 50 thousand years ago. Then, with the Sky People, I got to just take total artistic license. I thought well, if they did come from the sky, they would have been traveling from another planet or dimension, so the technology would have been really advanced, and I wanted to show that with the Mylar and crystals.1 People use crystal technology in computers

1. Mylar is a form of polyester resin used by NASA to make heat-resistant plastic films and sheets.

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Couples from Below. Central figure is an Earth Man with shell necklaces, otter pelt armbands, and otter pelt hat with abalone and eagle feather detail. He wears mica earrings and an abalone choker. All Cahokia photos: Sarah Stock (Osage).

(they hold a lot of power), so I used crystals to represent technology. The silver in the head pieces and jewelry act as a kind of conduit for the power, a functioning apparatus— again, technology. The Mylar would have come from their structure that they came here on from the stars. And the Earth People, who painted their bodies, would have painted the Sky People with the blue paints of the earth for the ceremony, and they would all have been barefoot. That’s how all the materials came together for those clothing designs.

In your artistic process, what are the building blocks or catalysts that inspire your larger pieces or performances, like the Marriage Ceremony at Cahokia?

It has been a long time coming. It was just a matter of getting the funding for one thing and deciding, “Okay, this whole amount of money is going to go into this one thought.” I also looked around and saw young, good-looking Osages, and I could see them in the clothing, because you gotta have models for my art form. It’d be like if a sculptor went to a quarry that they hadn’t seen before and were like “Whoa! I’ve had this idea for a while, and now I’ve got the stone for it.”

I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got these beautiful young Osages, I’ve

got this material here. Cahokia Mounds are pertinent to our culture, our history, and take them up there …” It’s just a puzzle coming together.

Do you think about art as ceremony?

Oh yeah, a fashion show? I mean, that’s a ceremony. I’d say yes, or why would you even do it? Because you have to physically do it, and that is ceremonious. And if you have respect for it, and other people have respect for it, well, that’s even more ceremonious. The symbolism in it can be ceremonious. Choosing and paying for materials is ceremonious. As an Osage … we pay to dance.2 The place where you produce it is ceremonious. That’s very important to me, too, having my studio as a ceremony space, having my grandchildren there with me, you know? Eating while I’m there working … It’s all ceremonious and it’s all part of my existence. And of course [creating art] is not something I have to do, but something I choose to do. A lot of times when I’m doing my art, especially if I’m making it for someone in particular, I think about that person and say prayers while I’m doing it. I’m making wedding clothes right now, and while I’m doing it, I’ll be thinking positive thoughts and wishing [the bride] well.

And when it’s done, they feel it, and it looks good on them.

2. At the traditional Ilonska Osage dances, tribal members give away money and other gifts for honored songs.

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ABOVE: Earth Woman at Cahokia, eagle plumes and beetle-shell headpiece, seashell necklace, otter pelt and buckskin dress with abalone shell and charcoal detail, Monks Mound, Collinsville, Illinois.

RIGHT: Couples atop Monk’s Mound. Foremost Earth Man wears abalone and buckskin armbands, buckskin leggings, and breechcloth with abalone and charcoal detail. His necklace is otter pelt and bear claw. Osage tattoo designs are painted on his face.

And you sense it’s because they can feel that care?

Hmm … well, for instance, a friend of ours just bought a t-shirt of mine with a print on it, and he gave it to his friend who was sick with cancer. He writes and tells me that his friend went into remission, and that my shirt cured him [laughs]. I mean, I know that sounds really hokey and everything, I still doubt it to this day, but if people think that, well, good! More power to them! You know what I mean? I’m not putting that out there, but if they feel that strongly about it—woohoo! That’s good.

Is it a given that beauty and/or art has a function? I tend to think that’s a no-brainer, but then public schools lose money, and the arts programs are usually the first to go.

[That’s] a hard one. There’s a lot of grey there. People say human beings are the most evolved species on the planet.

Well, I don’t necessarily adhere to that, but art is one thing that does separate us from other species, and maybe that’s why we think we are dominant or have a responsibility of protecting other species. We are biological beings here, part of this planet, and though we have this corrupted idea of wastefulness, if we could curb that with art, maybe we could be more one with this place. Art can function as respect, our show of respect for this existence.

Do you feel that the most important role of the artist is to inspire other people?

If you’re truly an artist or a strong, original thinker—even though nothing is new—you lead the masses. Poets, writers, thinkers—they put the ideas out there, and then the politicians and everybody else pick those ideas up and run with them. The public runs with them, but [the artist] starts a seed 6 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

of knowledge that blooms into the beautiful flower—our existence that we live by every day. Say, putting together the spices and ingredients, and then voilà! We go and spend our time and money on a plate of food.

Same way with fashion designers: There’s nothing new in clothing design—from starting off naked then painting your body. There’s nothing new there. It’s just that artists take an idea that someone hasn’t used in a while and water it and nurture it back to life, and boom! Someone’s going to wear it and be impressed by it, and they’re going to start spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to put it on their bodies, you know? So, I think of artists as the leaders of our material, basic, spiritual, everything—our existence that we have on this planet. We renew ideas so that we can all just be entertained, while we’re here on this plane [laughs]. Because it gets cold and it gets stagnant and we need to just keep the ball rollin’.

So, are there any ideas being watered in fashion right now that are turning you on?

There are a lot of things I’m really impressed by. I really like the use of plastics, clear things.

WENDY PONCA

LEFT: Sky Woman at Cahokia, white eagle feathers and sterling silver headpiece, fox fur and Mylar dress, and fox fur cuff.

RIGHT: Sky Man with Blue Paint, quartz roach and sterling silver headpiece with a white eagle feather, buckskin ties, and pyrite choker; glass and sterling silver bead necklaces; and Mylar train. The blue color was inspired by archaeological findings of blue body paint in Northern American mound cities, which was also used in Mesoamerican civilizations.

You can see that in your enjoyment of the use of Mylar.

Yeah, and things like an Issey Miyake purse I saw the other day: just basic, new, clean, bright colors. I love the new Valentino designs. I like romantic, old-European looks where they recognize the beautiful embroidery of another time. Personally, I like clothing made out of silks, linens, soft cottons, and really fine wools. I would prefer those be worn instead of synthetic fabrics because I don’t like the way [synthetics] feel or drape on the body.

I’m also really impressed by the new fibers where they are using technology derived derived from spider webs and also the things that are coming out that, unfortunately, have to do with production for warfare but that deal with invisibility.

That’s in its infancy, but when it becomes more accessible, I may be using some of that in my designs so I can hide certain body parts and showcase other parts and have them painted with a symbol, or something along those lines.

It’s an interesting dichotomy: your precontact, raw, organic pieces and then your attraction to and use of plastics and these newly engineered materials.

I am definitely building a relationship between the two. It’s a play with the natural and the synthetic. It’s very difficult to work with those really strong ideas and design elements to make a piece come out successfully clean and surprisingly powerful in its symbolism. It’s sort of like when you’re writing music, and maybe you already have the instrumental part to the piece, but you don’t have the words. You can feel them inside and they’re going to come out, but they haven’t quite yet. Or vice versa. Maybe you have the poetry, but you don’t have the music yet. When you finally get those two together it’s a timeless piece of music. That’s where I’m working right now … And you know, I had the opportunity to be around astronomers and high technology growing up.3 I’ve realized that historical references combined with technical advancements have structured my whole life—my thinking, anyway.

3. Ponca lived at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas, until she was 16 years old.

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Wah-Sha-She Water People, silkscreen-printed linen. Ponca is from the Wah-Sha-She, the water group of the Hunkah, Earth People, and much of her work is influenced by her homelands in Oklahoma that are abundant with water sources: ponds, lakes, and rivers. This print shows those influences and a subtle nod to eroticism and fertility in her symbolism.

You were able to design a Pendleton blanket for the American Indian College Fund, and I’ve heard you say that it was one of your great accomplishments. What are your future aspirations?

That was one of my goals when I was younger. Another goal that I haven’t realized is to be in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I personally don’t think I’m good enough to be there yet.

With works in such prestigious museum collections already, that seems overly humble.

Well, I’m still striving to make something that will really impress me.

And I’m actually glad I haven’t shown

there already, because I don’t think I have evolved enough as an artist to be in there yet. It’s cliché to think about trying to make “modern” art, and I don’t give a sh— what anybody else thinks about it, but I’m trying to make something that stands on its own. It’s like the material I was talking about that’s using new technology for invisibility. Ideas I have for that might get me into the MoMA. You know, there is work in that museum that I think some of my older pieces have already surpassed, and I think I could have gotten in there if I had really been promoting myself, but I wouldn’t have been as proud of anything I’ve done yet, or I wouldn’t have actually liked those pieces enough. I’m still working up to that point.

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Another thing that is important to me is if there ever is open disclosure about aliens interacting with the earth, that I could do a ceremony with those Mylar designs as part of a welcome party on the White House steps or something like that. Maybe I could offer gifts to them: a gesture of good will and beauty, honoring them. The coming-out party of the aliens! I wouldn’t want to be political in any way, just an ambassador of peace. I’d like to chill the environment with the feeling of good will and peace.

So many times Indian artists can be pigeonholed in their ideas and art and are made to feel that they’ve got to make Southwestern-centric work. It’s cool to hear you’re thinking on a much larger scale,

WENDY PONCA

an intergalactic scale—a global ambassador of art?

[Laughs] I’d much rather have this interaction between our peoples and some new peoples coming in—and I don’t want to use the negative word invader—but I would like to make it much better than what happened in the last incident. I don’t want us to have to go through that bad history again.

That was my intention with those designs from the start, but disclosure still has not happened, so … my art is still there. I’d be honored if someone, whoever is setting it up, would say, “This one person, this artist, has been planning part of this.” They’re going to have a lot of stuff going on, dinners and things like people do, and I, if I’m still alive, could be a part of that. I don’t have to be a big part, just a little part, but I’ve been working on it for over 20 years now …

If there ever is open disclosure about aliens interacting with the earth … I could do a ceremony with those Mylar designs as part of a welcome party on the White House steps.

This idea seems to speak to your resilience and optimism as an artist and an Indian. Despite all the trials Indigenous people go through, for many, there is a solid undercurrent of openness and of looking ahead.

You’re looking ahead to not only visitors from another country, but visitors from other planets and you are planning to welcome them! It strikes me as a powerful concept for art.

Well, you know, our last name is Ponca-Wah-Staghe. We’re the gentle leaders. It’s just naturally ingrained in me to want to be a leader in a peaceful way. I do not want to promote war. My thing is to promote dialogue. And perhaps that is the only way we can communicate, by visuals and symbolism.

Wendy Ponca lives on the Osage Nation Reservation, producing work out of the Thunderbird Studio. Her art can be seen in the exhibition Native Fashion Now at the Peabody Essex Museum, November 21, 2015 to March 6, 2016.

Dress, hand-dyed and silkscreen-printed silk organza. The symbol printed in white is the Maya symbol for heaven. The influence of the ancient civilizations of Mexico and South America on Ponca began when she traveled with her father Carl Ponca (Osage, 1938–2013), a renowned artist, museum director, and Osage historian, and the American Association of Museums on an expedition to Machu Picchu, the Nazca Lines, and Tiwanaku in 1978. This interest has been furthered by archaeological studies exploring potential cultural diffusion between Mesoamerican societies and those of the Moundbuilders in the Eastern Woodlands.

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Cochiti Potter

Diego Romero

I

T IS CERTAINLY AN UNDERSTANDABLE MISUNDERSTANDING, that one might consider Clay Lady to be the most agreeable of all creative collaborators.

Given her generally responsive nature, her high tolerance for harsh conditions, and her generous availability the planet over, it would be a reasonable assumption. But even in light of all of these attributes, working with her is a challenge.

She can be stubborn, temperamental even, and makes no concessions for either novice or master. What begins in her partner’s head and hands as one idea may come to fruition as something entirely different, for without exception, Clay Lady always has the final word. And talk about unpredictable! This partner is full of surprises. She has been known to leave the most experienced potters in hair-pulling predicaments when things don’t go according to the formula. This is especially true during the firing phase, when the stakes are highest and months of work can be reduced to its original state of dust if the wind blows the wrong way.

In recent years, many potters, preferring not to bet on the weather where their time- and energy-costly investments are concerned, have turned increasingly to kiln firing, which has also posited their leading lady at the center of an epic cultural-political debate. But that’s a whole other story.

Though contending with this personality can be trying even for the most patient of souls, loyalty is not without reward. Clay Lady is very good to those whose unwavering commitment withstands the test of time. Few are better acquainted with this multifaceted character or better suited to take on the challenges of her complex and dynamic personality than celebrated Cochiti Pueblo ceramicist Diego Romero. After a 31-year, full-time collaboration with Clay Lady, he still holds title as a chief contender in the field.

Certainly no unremarkable feat considering the stature of his contemporaries and the constant influx of new talent eager to make their own mark.

Romero’s work is in a category of its own: a catchme-if-you-can place where object is signature. His instantly recognizable style is delivered through a combination of customary Cochiti Pueblo pottery techniques (hand-coiling vessels from hand-gathered and hand-processed clay) and design aesthetics (elegant, understated forms).

Romero’s iconography includes Ancestral Pueblo, Mimbres, and Mesoamerican decorative motifs (kiva step, cloud, wave, and water patterns; trademark checkerboard borders; Chac Mool imagery, respectively). He depicts 6 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

By RoseMary Diaz

Diego Romero. Image courtesy of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

animated representations of iconic, Western pop culture (superhero figures and dialogue and punctuation in cartoon bubbles to convey the sentiment and tone of a scene); and various characters from Indian life, legend, and lore (Coyote, Indi’n Girl, and the Chongo Brothers—stars of Romero’s American Highway Series). Less than idyllic, emotionally provocative subject lines include the hostile subjugation and religious conversion of the Pueblo people by agents of the church of New Spain, the ensuing Pueblo Revolt in 1680, and the universal, soul-wracking “eternal soldier story.” Romero has incorporated these subjects in works such as Knot Bearers, a flat, earthenware plate; A True Tale, an ink-on-paper drawing; and Rio Grande Purging, a shallow, polychrome bowl.

“Native history can’t be all pretty colors,” Romero said on a recent afternoon between turns at the kiddie basketball hoop with youngest son Paris, almost three years old, in the yard adjacent to Romero’s lively studio in Santa Fe. “I feel I have an obligation to tell some of the stories of the struggle— to express the narrative of the American Indian experience.

There’s definitely no shortage of subject matter.”

Born in Berkeley, California, Romero spent the first two decades of his life there, traveling to New Mexico each summer to visit relatives at Cochiti Pueblo. Eventually one of those summers turned into an extended stay for the young artist when he enrolled at the Institute of American

DIEGO ROMERO

In the Beginning, 2011, earthenware, pigment, gold luster, 5.5 × 14.5 × 14.5 in. All images of Romero’s artwork courtesy of Robert Nichols Gallery.

Indian Arts in Santa Fe, where he initially intended to study painting in the school’s two-dimensional arts program.

But when a colleague suggested Romero try a traditional pottery class, the creative compass pointed him in a new direction. Studying under renowned Hopi potter Otellie Loloma, Romero discovered his natural inclination for clay.

He graduated in 1986 with an associate of fine arts degree.

Next, he was on to Otis Parsons Art Institute in Los Angeles, California, where his dedicated scholarship earned Romero a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1990. In 1993, a tertiary college experience yielded a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of California, Los Angeles.

At UCLA, his ceramics professor advised him to up the ante of his art. Before this, Romero’s bravest departure from the dictates of Pueblo aesthetics was in his application of gold luster—gold reduced to its liquid form—onto the burnished surfaces of his bowls. But in the interest of a timely graduation, his response to the challenge was swiftly forthcoming. Under the thumb of time and pressure, an entirely new repertoire of influence sprang to the forefront: the Greek effect, soon

to become one of Romero’s personal trademarks. He began incorporating painting styles from Ancient Greek ceramics into his artwork.

Romero’s move into this more expressive modus operandi earned him his scholarly credentials and was in perfect sync with contemporary Pueblo pottery’s high-octane rise to the apex of the Native American art market. Around this time, potters moved away from the over-sentimentalized work that had dominated the market for so long and increasingly toward exploring sociopolitical themes. They used clay as a canvas to confront some of the harsh realities of contemporary Indian life: poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, endemic diabetes rates, the loss of cultural and religious traditions, and disintegration of respective tribal bases. A prime example is Romero’s melancholy, self-destructing, descending angel in Fallen.

Pueblo artists, speaking through the ancient voice of the clay, reclaimed and redirected the narrative of the their peoples’ history. Collectively known as the Free Spirit Potters, they pushed through rugged terrain of an unromanticized creative estate, where choosing one method over another is not WIN T E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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Terms of Endearment, 2001, ceramic bowl with gold luster, 10.5 in. diameter × 5 in. deep.

a measure of character or conviction, or of Indian-ness itself, and where decisions beyond what Diego describes as “honesty in materials and techniques” are of peripheral concern. ( Just for the record, Romero’s kiln is an electric Skutt LT-3K.) Fellow Free Spirit potter Autumn Borts-Medlock (Santa Clara) recalls being immediately charmed by Romero’s work. “My first thought was, ‘Whoa! Who’s this guy?’ I was immediately impressed by Diego’s use of color and design composition.… That’s what drew me to the work right away. Then, when I saw the graphic scenes inside, the stories unfolding right in the middle of the bowl, I knew I was looking at something really special.

“Diego has truly taken Pueblo pottery into a completely different

realm,” continues Borts-Medlock. “The super-innovative qualities of the work … the graphics, the gold-lamé effect … combined with the traditional elements are pretty mind-blowing! I really respect him for stepping out of the happy box and confronting the dark and rocky side of Pueblo history. He definitely thinks outside the bowl—pun intended—and gets you to think about things on a much deeper level, too.”

“Diego is really thoughtful about his individuality as a Cochiti potter,” explains Romero’s wife Cara (Chemehuevi), whose own dramatic and sensory-rich images are quickly gaining the lead in Native photography. “He works in a lesser-known headspace of contemporary Pueblo potters who are tirelessly making sure they honor Pueblo traditions and laws of what is culturally

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appropriate while at the same time exerting individuality and using new materials and techniques.

“They are freer in some ways, but also have intimate knowledge of potential taboos in imagery,” Cara continues.

“Diego never crosses the line and always errs on the side of being conservative.”

This accountability to one’s community is fundamental to Native art. She says, “Each piece pays great tribute to his Pueblo pride and yet is very truthful to his mixed-race upbringing. I find his honesty moving and brave. I imagine his bravery has opened a pathway for others.”

Whether translating his vision to clay or paper, Romero’s work most often uses the customary Cochiti Pueblo color palette of cream, brown, yellow, and white, with variations in black and

DIEGO ROMERO

the cliffs of Frijoles Canyon in northern New Mexico. The artist explains, “I’m using iconic images within the paradigms of Pop Art.” I once described Romero’s approach to that piece: The artist’s satirical rendering of the … masterpiece draws a parallel between the Native and non-Native worlds and imaginatively confronts the issue of the objectification of the female.… The artist’s work explores the age-old issues of exploitation of beauty and sexuality and demonstrates his masterful capturing of the universal tensions between the sexes.1

Don’t Shoot, Diego, lithograph on paper, trial proof, 27 × 24 in., Landfall Press.

terracotta. The subdued color scheme belies the narrative’s temperament but makes for an inviting passage into the stories, which are anything but placid.

Long engaged in documenting an alternative historical narrative—one that takes Indigenous perspectives into account—Romero deconstructs Western ethnologic, cultural, and socioeconomic assumptions. His narrative unfolds in his strong and angular, graphic style.

Case in point, Terms of Endearment, a polychrome bowl painted with natural pigments, documents Chongo’s hopeful presentation of a gift-wrapped box to Indi’n Girl, suggesting a pledge of commitment. Her surprised expression, straight from a comic book, finds us wanting and waiting for an answer along with her (hopefully) soon-to-be

betrothed. The Tiffany blue box— prized symbol of wealth, social status, and idyllic love—is within reach. Time stops. Suspense builds. What will be Indi’n Girl’s answer?

Diego also gives tongue-incheek nods to 1950s sci-fi (Return of the Saucer Man) and to celestial neighbors (Coyote with Spaceships). The archetypal, superhero figure, whose principles Romero believes align with those of the bad-deed stoppers in Native American oral histories (the Monster Slayers of the Navajo and evil-fighting Ogre of the Hopi, for instance), is oft-seen as well, as is reference to the canvases of the European masters, including Luncheon in the Canyon, Romero’s parody of Edouard Manet’s proto-modernist Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Luncheon is back-dropped by

Hope and despair, the Ariel and Caliban of artistic themes, are explored on the surfaces of Romero’s bowls and plates. In one example, Woman in the Anthropo Scene, we are confronted with both aspiration and dejection: the unmarried and pregnant young woman looks worried, frightened, unsure of what lies ahead; the child within her “represents the ability of the Indian people to survive in the face of adversity,” and assures us that future generations will endure.

Don’t Shoot, Diego is a lithograph depicting a Spanish soldier dissuading Conquistador Diego de Vargas from firing at Pueblo women huddled in the doorway of a church. This is one of Romero’s most powerful compositions.

To the viewer steady enough to look into the faces of the women—their eyes wide with fear—the thickness of terror and torment evident in the image becomes nearly tangible. We can almost detect the faint scent of smoke trailing from the soldiers’ rifles, almost hear the horses that surely stomp about in the background.

As in many of Romero’s works, the print feels like a frame of celluloid film, in its instant, high-impact delivery and frozen-in-time effects. It’s easy to visualize the image in between the frames of a much longer strip, those preceding it being a record of so many lived moments; the footage of those following yet to be shot.

1. RoseMary Diaz, “Send in the Clowns,” Santa Fean (August 2003).

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Romero delved into lithography at Landfall Press of Santa Fe, and these editions have met with great support and enthusiasm. Director Steve Campbell describes the process of collaboration, “which is really what lithography is about,” as a kind of call-and-response arrangement. Unless everyone is working toward the same refrain, the song may never get sung.

The lithographic process, which has changed little since its earliest days in the late 18th century, is physically and intellectually demanding and requires the artist, printer, and anyone else on board (design consultants, color mixers, etc.) to stay the course even when challenges surface and things don’t come together as anticipated. For instance, the artist’s first choice for color arrangement may not yield the desired effect once the proof is run through the plates, and an alternate approach must be pursued. “Being a collaborative process, it really has to work on all levels for everyone involved,” explains Campbell.

“When it’s a hit, everything just works.

Working with Diego has been a hit from the start.”

As creator of Chronicles of the Absurd, Romero makes room for humor and its sassy sidekick, satire, which have been part of the Cochiti Pueblo ceramics since the late 19th century, when potters sculpted caricature figurines called monos for tourists riding the rails of the Southwest Chief that snakes along the eastern border of the pueblo. Romero’s paternal grandmother, Teresita Chavez Romero, crafted the original Singing Mother mono, widely considered to be the predecessor of the famed storyteller figure that epitomized Cochiti pottery in the late 20th century.

“Humor is medicine!” exclaims Romero from across his table laden with art books and vessels in various stages of completion, while taking a break to play with his son. “To be able to look at these hard things and still have the ability to laugh—that’s the base for healing.”

Romero’s eldest son, Santiago, aged 27 and named after the artist’s father, walks through the studio just in time to nod in agreement. As an

Urban Landscape, clay, pigment, featuring the Chongo Brothers.

emerging artist himself, he already gets the important things.

Romero’s new work carries notably lighter influences. Consider his Chia Head series, a collection of double-spouted vessels inspired by pre-Columbian Moche portrait head jars made primarily for ceremonial use among the elite. In Romero’s renditions, the vessels’ spouts extend not from the hand-coiled likenesses of illustrious Mochica but from readymade, terracotta Chia Pets of Sponge Bob, Shrek, and Uncle Sy of Duck Dynasty. The jars are fun and playful but still carry the undertones of history and serious thought that are common denominators of Romero’s work.

After 20 years of showing and competing at Native America’s most celebrated arts events, Romero has taken top honors many times at Santa Fe Indian Market and the Heard Fair.

His work resides in collections both private and public across the globe, including the Denver Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Native Art,

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Nelson Atkins Museum, Hallmark Art Collection Gallery, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Weissman Museum, and the British Museum. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions and has taught and lectured at IAIA, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of New Mexico.

When queried about where he hopes his work will stand in future annals of Native art, Romero reflects on his contributions: “I hope to get as much of it as possible into museums, to represent Indian art at the highest level—to be considered among the greats.” From this side of the frame, it appears he is heading down the homestretch of reaching his aspirations.

Longtime representative and friend Robert Nichols of the eponymous Canyon Road gallery has described the artist’s work as “bold, innovative, technically perfect, and culturally significant.”

Says the artist of the decades-long partnership, “Robert’s support has given me the freedom to do what I want—to

DIEGO ROMERO

Knot Bearers, 2009, earthenware, pigment, gold luster, 5.25 × 14.25 × 14.25 in.

follow my own creative path. That’s a gift I’ll always be grateful for.”

Romero has long nurtured close ties to his Pueblo community and culture and regularly commits to ceremony and dance. For him, that connection must remain strong; it is the center from which so much else is borne.

As with all things that fruit in the desert, coaxing a livelihood from the sandy hillsides and shadow-covered mesas that define the borders of New Mexico’s Southern Pueblos is an art in itself—one that requires diligent adherence to time-honored methods yet makes room for new innovations and individual artistic vision. This is, after all, where it all began, this connection to one of Mother Earth’s most sustaining gifts, in this place where clay is life.

Granted, reinterpreting and “revitalizing something old” is nothing new, although Romero’s interpretations of Cochiti pottery certainly are. Although imitation will always be the biggest form of flattery, he may never know, for there isn’t an imposter who can get close enough to pay the compliment. Besides, come who may, there will only be one true, inimitable original. And we know his work when we see it.

As Romero deliberates on what issues he will explore in his future artworks, he says, “The impact on the environment and the atmosphere in the post-industrial age will be huge.

Everything will change.”

After another busy Indian Market, where Romero—following the practice

that earned him the nickname “One-Pot Romero”—sold this year’s sole offering within hours of the market’s opening, the artist relaxes with his family. As Cara prepares the ice chests for their weekly drive to Albuquerque to watch a baseball game, Paris runs back into the yard. He grabs the ball and shoots, just missing the basket. “Good shot!” we all cheer. He claps and chases the ball as it rebounds onto the grass, stopping midroll at last, and runs toward his dad’s waiting high five. It’s a good day to relax. Tomorrow is on the horizon, and the clay never stops calling.

Diego Romero is represented by Garth Clark Gallery and Robert Nichols Gallery, both in Santa Fe. WIN T E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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Athens, Georgia

Return from Exile: Contemporary Southeastern Indian Art Lyndon House Arts Center

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HE ARTISTS in this traveling exhibit stand together through this collection of pieces to confront the history of exclusion of Southeastern Indigenous peoples. The historically and culturally significant materials and imagery derive meaning from deeply held experiences within, or reaching for, Indigenous communities. In this exhibition, these 32 artists powerfully announce their presence in their ancestral homeland.

The Lyndon House Arts Center is bright, open, and airy with plenty of space for the exhibition’s 44 pieces. This is the first stop in a two-year journey that will take the art show to five venues in four states. Not every venue will have the full show. However, the work of nine featured artists will be at every venue. Curators Tony A. Tiger (Muscogee-Seminole-Sac & Fox), Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee Creek), and Dr.

Jace Weaver (Cherokee descent) have gathered a collection of artwork that represents a clear and diverse vision of contemporary Southeastern Indian art.

The works in the show represent several media: sculpture, jewelry, painting, drawing, mixed media, basketry, and textiles. Immediately upon ascending the stairs, the viewer is met with a lithe, graceful ceramic and steel sculpture. Return from Exile: From East to West by Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation) is representative of his body of work and abilities as a highly skilled sculptor. It features a figure with arms raised in supplication, holding an E in his right hand and a W in his left, and appears to rise from the angular base.

While the figure’s emergence symbolizes the shedding of the past, the hands that grasp literal symbols of east and west carry elements of that past through this emergence. The angular base, branded with the word RETURN in bold, block letters, also suggests the past is being shed, although incompletely through this return. This deeply powerful piece is featured on the cover of the exhibit catalogue. Standing 53 inches tall, it is a commanding work of art and serves well as the face of the exhibition.

Erin Shaw (Chickasaw-Choctaw), Illit Fallamat Taani, 2015, acrylic on panel. Image courtesy of the artist.

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Mekusape Fullvnna (Muscogee Gravehouse), the collaborative installation piece by curators Martin and Tiger, uses wood, steel, etching and screen printing on paper, Plexiglas, encaustic wax, light, and sound to create a distinct and immersive experience. Located in a room with purposefully dimmed lights, one is met with the lilting sound of a single female voice singing a Muscogee hymn.

The grave house is lit from within and contains photographs and enrollment information for each collaborator’s ancestors. The installation also serves as an elegy to a champion of the Muscogee language, the late Margaret Mauldin (Muscogee Creek). A recording of her clear, vibrant singing of a Muscogee hymn plays continuously. This collaborative installation honors ancestors and may seem centered on loss. However, the interior of the piece is illuminated and that light shines through the Plexiglas top. The artists state in the exhibit catalogue that this light represents the Christian belief in the salvation and the afterlife. Although loss is most certainly invoked, Martin and Tiger cannily use the grave house practice in Muscogee culture to show how loss also informs legacy. Mekusape Fullvnna is an artistic statement of resilience that blends

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Muscogee Christian and cultural traditions into a deeply affecting experience.

Erin Shaw’s (Chickasaw-Choctaw) triptych Illit Fallamat Taani hung in the opposite end of the gallery, seeming to bookend Jackson’s piece. Shaw uses acrylic on round panels to depict a Carolina parakeet, an extinct bird of the Southeast. The bird, wrapped in multicolored string, is featured across two panels, each 36 inches in diameter. However, the third panel, also the smallest at 24 inches in diameter, features a ball of the same type of string wrapped around an unknown object.

The colors are vibrant and richly hued while the surface shows that string was embedded and removed to create an absence in the texture. The bird could be seen as escaping, or emerging, from the string. Yet, a different perspective might read the string as binding the bird just as it is binding the unknown object in the smallest panel of the triptych.

In addition, the absence of the string in the texture has the same duality in meaning. Shaw displays clever insight by presenting a sumptuously detailed image that implies multiple layers of meaning.

The exhibition is a moment of resistance to stereotypes and tropes about Southeastern Indian peoples. It categorically rejects the imaginary Indian that is pervasive in popular culture.

Instead, this collection of artwork provides explicit themes of resilience, inclusion, and community as reminders of the triumph of Southeastern Indian peoples over the destructive removal from homelands. Removal happened, a damaging force that did colossal harm to Southeastern Indian nations. The legacy of that force remains today and is evident in each tribe’s American diaspora.

However, despite the historical trauma, Southeastern Indian peoples remain. We continue as Indigenous people whether in ancestral homelands or adopted ones.

The collected works in this exhibition attest to that sense of perseverance.

Ultimately, these works also communicate triumph over assimilation, proving that we continue to carry forth our heritage in new and dynamic ways. To follow the journey of the exhibition, visit returnfromexile.org.

—Candessa Tehee, PhD

Denver

Revolt 1680/2180: Virgil Ortiz Denver Art Museum History is written by the survivors.

—Max Lerner

W

HAT LITTLE Native history is taught in public schools is generally limited to courses in American history in which Native peoples are typically cast as tragic victims of an inevitable end.

And despite the encouragement of Alvin Toffler in Futureshock, courses in future studies have yet to find stable footing in most classrooms. But Virgil Ortiz doesn’t focus on either of these things. And if he does, he refuses to accept them.

For Toffler, the future warrants its own discourse. Just as the study of the past enriches our knowledge, so too does the study of the imminent. But unlike history, with multiple records in various media and forms, Toffler suggests that only science fiction affords us the documents by which we anticipate what is yet to be. Virgil Ortiz does know this and is busy creating these instruments.

In Revolt 1680/2180, currently on display at the Denver Art Museum, the events of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 provide the matrix for an exhibition of Ortiz’s ceramics, fashion, and photo/ graphics. The Cochiti ceramicist-cumdesigner-cum-filmmaker, artist, poet, and playwright rewrites history and reimagines the past and the future.

Revolt is noteworthy in that, while select works have been previously exhibited, this is the first time all the works from the series have been presented in toto, piecing together a previously fragmented narrative.

It is only through such fragments that we know about the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Only one of the parties had a written language, and because of this, it is their accounts (de Oñate, de Otermin, de Vargas, de Peralta) that are taught in most schools. In fact, the Pueblos were the victors, yet only the name Popé (Po’pay) is chronicled in writing. But much more is remembered through stories. In his retelling history, Ortiz

constructs an elaborate narrative with a cast of characters in which their victory is transmuted 500 years into the future.

Ortiz’s exhibit/story is divided into eight sections/chapters, each with its own set of hand-coiled, black (wild spinach) on white (Puebloan clay), stone polished, traditionally fired (outdoor pit) ceramic figurines, set against digitally constructed, computer enlarged, photo-based murals. The Vertigo section begins by acknowledging the role pottery figurines play in Cochiti history. Two hundred years after the Pueblo Revolt, traders arrived with the railroads and began to buy and sell Cochiti pottery—pottery made

by Ortiz’s family. In response to such commercialization, potters begin to create pottery figures with exaggerated features and expressions mocking the traders (and another 120 years later, Ortiz himself would create a series of figurines representing the elite pottery dealers of the time: Robert Andrews, Rick Dillingham, Alexander Anthony, Dick Howard, Robert Gallegos, and later, Andrea Fisher). Ortiz reconstructs such hyperbole with the two-headed and four-armed Siamese Twins figure set against a Gothic European skyline.

Saints and Sinners explores the atrocities of Spanish rule, in particular the destruction of Pueblo pottery and the forced adoption of metalwares. But by depicting Catholic saints in pottery figurines, such as the winged archangel St. Michael dressed for battle before a full moon, Ortiz ironically asks: who’s the saint and who’s the sinner?

Blind Archers introduces the character Tahu, who represents the role and strength of women in the revolt. She is blinded by a conquistador yet continues to battle as she hangs, bow drawn, on the side of a wall adorned with her arrow.

She is presented in front of an oversized figure looming above in Ortiz’s now highly recognizable body paint, drawn from his pottery and fashion designs.

Similarly painted figures underneath an electric sky are the backdrop for Aeronauts and Evolution. Aeronauts are the conduits between the past and the future, and Stu | Aeronaut™ | Pilot of the Survivorship Armada is an emergent figure, changing form and shedding the confines of time and space, while the winged WIN T E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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What Ortiz does declare, through red-stenciled letters on a black, didactic partition is: “It is of utmost importance to tell the story of the Pueblo Revolt. It’s a story of freedom, self-determination, and empowerment.”

John Lukavic, PhD, associate curator of Native arts at the Denver Art Museum, explains: Recognizing that the events of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt were largely unknown to non-Natives … Virgil set out to situate this history in a compelling, visual story… . This resulted in a fusion of the past, present, and future—both in the narrative and the physical creation of his art. Visitors to his exhibition at the Denver Art Museum are drawn in by the bold, graphic nature of his art; they are captivated by the story he tells; and they are amazed by the mastery of technique used in the creation of his figures.

Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti), Survivorship Figure (detail), 2013, clay, clay slip, 20 × 14 × 8 in.

figurine in Evolution springs from its base and alludes to the metamorphosis involved in any revolution, particularly one spanning centuries.

Velocity marks the return of the character of Translator, previously introduced in Regarding Curtis last spring at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson.

Translator, Captain of the Spirit World Army, is an androgynous Pueblo female warrior. Her ceramic counterpart represents a figure in motion, with vertical lines extending across a ceramic horizon that suggests forward movement. The same technique affects the bust portrait mural with its black eyes, face paint, and floating white lines—light moving between worlds.

Like the Spanish rule before (and after) 1680, the revolt in 2180 is dystopic: Ortiz’s Venutian Soldiers are superhuman

warriors who cope with a polluted world.

The Tracker and Tracker | Mapoowana figurines both wear gas masks with breathing tubes. But much of Ortiz’s story is told through the designs on ceramic jars: Lootz and Mopez Jar shows both figures in conversation with their anthropomorphic forms. The clay surface also relates to the mural of a Spanish conquistador gazing at the cyborg shebot across from him. He envisions the future while she recounts the past.

The final chapter Revolt provides an ambiguous conclusion, with the Spanish and Pueblos still standing opposed. Po’pay and Tahu are in one vitrine across a chasm with Castilian and Virgin of Guadalupe in the other.

Are they facing off, poised for battle, or coming together in peace—a wedding of adversaries across space and time? Ortiz doesn’t provide a clear answer.

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Part of the captivation is the ingenuity of the exhibit staff at the museum. The Daniel Libeskind-designed Hamilton Wing creates some exhibition challenges with its hard angles and slanted walls. Yet, just as they did for Red, White & Bold: Masterworks of Navajo Design, 1840–1870, with text projected on diagonal surfaces and blankets floated above, the preparators found innovative, economical, and aesthetically pleasing solutions, with murals tucked around corners in spaces that would otherwise prevent object display and wasted exhibition space.

Revolt 1680/2180 is exhibited in the gallery named for Vicki and Kent Logan (generous donors to the museum and lenders for the exhibit) and is a section of the larger exhibit Showing Off: Recent Modern and Contemporary Acquisitions. By presenting Ortiz alongside works by Agnes Martin, Eric Fischl, Ben Jackel, and Nick Cave in the Hamilton Wing, as opposed to the American Indian Galleries in the Gio Ponti-designed North Building, the Denver Art Museum is helping reshape the conversation about contemporary Native art and attracting a much larger audience. Revolt 1680/2180 is on exhibit through May 1, 2016, and an 80-page color catalogue with essays by Charles King, Peter Held, and Herman Agoyo is available from the Denver Art Museum shop.

—Scott W. Hale

REVIEWS

Fort Worth, Texas

Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection Amon Carter Museum of American Art

T

HE EXHIBIT WAS BROKEN UP by region, flowing west to east, atypical of most Native American art exhibits. This helps tell a story incongruent with colonization.

Toward the end of the show, European trade goods start to show up in the artwork, which enhances the idea that art was here and being created with much diversity before European trade took place.

“Touch” boards provided for visitors allowed them to feel a variety of materials—shell, ermine fur, hide, dyed porcupine quills, tin tinklers, and beads—used in the pieces on display as they walk through the exhibit. I thought this was a great way to get a tactile experience of the art.

Artwork was displayed together based on theme instead of time. Pieces created by living artists were displayed next to ones from over a century ago.

Preston Singletary’s (Tlingit) blown-glass Oystercatcher Rattle was displayed with actual rattles, while not attributed to a particular artist but in the same Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian styles. The beadwork of Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Lakota) titled Maternal Journey was next to historic pieces from the Northern Plains. Seeing them side by side demonstrated how contemporary artists continue to use the style of their tribe and region in new and interesting ways.

I was fascinated by the works labeled “purpose unknown”; in particular, a figure carved from antler attributed to the ancient Columbia River people. This suggested that the purpose was perhaps solely the appreciation of beauty. There is a common perception that has always bothered me: that Native art has to have a purpose (i.e., clothing, bowls, tools, etc.). This is not the expectation for any other culture in antiquity. I was pleased Valerie and Charles Diker had an eye for

this. Many pieces in the collection only function as art, but conversely, utilitarian objects were exquisitely decorated, like the grease dishes from British Columbia.

A Yup’ik mask (1916–18) representing a theme I use prevalently in my own work especially caught my attention.

The mask integrated a seal, fish, and loon to represent land, sea, and air. In Cherokee mythology, this is a very important threeworld concept. I love seeing this thread of similarity in art by groups geographically separated but ideologically connected.

—Karen Berry

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HE DIKER COLLECTION consists of approximately 120 masterworks by Indigenous artists from Canada and the United States, dating from the second through the 21st centuries. All of the works are on loan for this exhibit. Sadly, no work from the Indigenous cultures of Mexico, Central, or South America was included in the exhibit.

As a Native artist, I am grateful to Charles and Valerie Diker for their good taste, their intelligent and sensitive approach to collecting, and to their generosity in allowing these precious works to be viewed by the public. The Dikers say that in their collecting, simplicity and refinement are of premier importance.

This is apparent when viewing the exhibit.

The variety of objects makes a clear point. The beauty and painstaking detail of Indigenous art comes through in objects as diverse as a grease dish, a weapon, a ceremonial mask, a comb, a hat, and a bandolier bag. The objects chosen communicate the stories, traditions, and beliefs of the artists and their tribes.

The well-curated exhibit begins with maps at the entrance. Using color to illustrate the geographical areas inhabited by the tribes increases understanding of materials used and tribal worldview described in the art, as well as the relationships between tribes. Painting the walls of the exhibit rooms to coordinate with the map colors is a smart idea. This illustrates both the differences and the similarities between the art of tribes separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles.

As much as I love this exhibit, I have one bone to pick. The placard beside a Muscogee Creek bandolier bag states that

Unknown Yup’ik artist, Mask, 1916–18, wood, pigment, vegetal fiber, 20.5 × 14 × 8 in., Diker Collection, no. 788.

the beaded designs “derive from ancient Muscogee patterns and from motifs such as paisleys borrowed from printed European cloth.” The exhibit catalogue goes on to say that the “ammunition pouches of the European military gave rise to bandoliers.…”

These are not new scholarly observations; I have run into them for years. However, I believe them to be biased. Although ideas flowed freely between Natives and Europeans, evidence reveals similar pouches were a common Mississippian accessory, and many Eastern Woodlands beaders believe the floral motifs represent medicinal plants important to their tribes. To attribute so much of the beauty and construction of these beaded pieces to outsiders robs our ancestors of credit. This may seem like a small detail, but it is symptomatic of long-held beliefs that our people were not capable of creating such breathtaking beauty with deep meaning without outside help.

That said, do not miss this exhibit.

It is currently showing at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, through January 3, 2016, and will travel to the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio. Track it down; you will be glad you did.

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London, Ontario

Reading the Talk Museum London

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EADING THE TALK brings together artists Michael Belmore (Ojibwe), Hannah Claus (Mohawk), Patricia Deadman (Tuscarora-Mohawk), Vanessa Dion Fletcher (Potawatomi-Lenape), Keesic Douglas (Mnjikaning Ojibwe), and Melissa General (Oneida), whose works engage with the land now known as Canada in different and often divergent ways. Part of their engagement with the land directly relates to how Indigenous peoples approach treaty rights, hunting grounds, trade policy, and tribal sovereignty.

Curators Rachelle Dickenson (Cree) and Lisa Myers (Beausoleil Ojibwe) explain that the project is strongly influenced by conversations with artist Bonnie Devine (Serpent River Ojibwe) and Elder Jan Longboat (Mohawk), who passed down the history of the Dish with One Spoon Treaty and the significance of wampum in the negotiation of treaty rights. These histories and objects reveal new trajectories for exploring what the land means to Indigenous artists today and how their interpretations continue to form ways in which the land is approached as both a physical and conceptual territory.

As Dickenson and Myers make clear, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe nations negotiated disputes from the 17th to the 19th centuries involving hunting grounds in the area around the Great Lakes using the Dish with One Spoon Treaty. The dish (or bowl) and spoon are instrumental in resolving intertribal conflict over resources because they symbolize the idea that all nations will take from a single bowl and eat from a single spoon, which essentially points to the unification of both nations and an understanding that food, including fish and beaver, will be shared. Moreover, the inclusion of the spoon rather than a knife further indicates a commitment to the equal distribution of resources instead

of warring over resources through the spilling of blood.1 A number of works in the exhibition respond to the land using a variety of media and clever visual devices.

Hannah Claus’s our mind are one (2014) is one such work. Here she presents a large cylindrical canopy featuring circular photographs of leaves, trees, and stone strung on acetate hung from the ceiling with monofilament thread. Though it first evokes the quality of a wigwam (specifically a shaking tent), it’s much more spiritual than ceremonial. The work envelops viewers invited to stand underneath the canopy and become, quite literally, clouded by the land.

All the while, reflections of light from Claus’s discs dance on a nearby wall.

Similarly, Patricia Deadman’s Giardino dei Semplici (2013) approaches the concept of land by displaying photographic prints of a forest in a grid on the wall. In a way, these individual images combine in the eye to create a lush textile of color and pattern. While the photographs are somewhat foggy, the overall effect is that of gazing through (and among) the trees into a hidden distance.

Keesic Douglas also employs the grid structure and use of photography in his work Trade Language (2013) to demonstrate how trading practices among Indigenous peoples have relied

upon gesturing through the lip, chin, and head for communication. For Douglas, “in many First Nations communities, this is still practiced, subconsciously and consciously, when people communicate with each other even while using English as their common language.” This poses a question: Is this learned behavior or is it embedded in [Indigenous peoples’] DNA? Presented here are 28 black-andwhite portraits of Indigenous men and women bare from the shoulders up.

Their faces gesture at communications such as “acknowledgment” and “directional heading” while, taken as a whole, representing a breadth of Indigenous lexicons. The result is a fascinating conceptualization of Indigenous language beyond the verbal dimension.

Melissa General’s Satahónhsatat (2014) boasts the only video work in the exhibition whereby two women cover a pile of split logs with a tanned hide. The gentle sound of a running brook accompany the work and even trickles into the rest of the gallery space, serving to reinforce the exhibition’s close relationship to the land.

Of course wampum played a critical role in the Dish with One Spoon Treaty. More specifically, these beaded belts allowed for tribal historians and others to read of the treaty talks, accords, and concessions produced between

Vanessa Dion Fletcher (Potawatomi-Lenape), Relationship or Transaction (detail), 2014, five-dollar bills and replica five-dollar bills, jute.

1. See “Governing Laws,” Anishinabek Confederacy to Invoke Our Nationhood, web.

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different nations. Both Fletcher and Belmore appropriate the wampum for their own purposes. Fletcher’s Relationship or Transaction (2014) takes the Western Great Lakes Covenant Chain Confederacy Wampum Belt, given to 24 First Nations leaders by Sir William Johnson, as its starting point. In effect, settlers began to exchange wampum as financial currency rather than its intended use as a bearer of diplomatic agreements and a strengthener of intertribal relationships. By doing so, they not only transformed its usage but also disrespected the wampum belts’ original purpose. Using five-dollar bills as purple beads and replica five-dollar bills as white beads, Fletcher deconstructs traditional wampum to reflect the monetary value settlers attributed to it. Ultimately, it’s a powerful statement on cultural hybridity.

Belmore’s Investment (2011) is a profound example of his signature stone carvings. In these works, he carves out stones so that they sinuously rest with each other. Belmore covers the hollowed-out spaces of the stones with copper, making a kind of connective tissue that appears as if embers from a fire. While Investment reads as more of a direct reference to the value of land, Dickenson and Myers have also included the work Bridge (2014), a wampum belt featuring colored and copper beading.

It’s a beautiful and strangely delicate appropriation of traditional wampum.

Though the exhibition has moved through several Southern Ontario art galleries and museums, including the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, and the MacLaren Art Centre, its recent iteration is perhaps one of the strongest. Reading the Talk provides evidence of Indigenous artists and their sustained—and expanding—relationships to the land.

It also represents a deep commitment to understanding the ways in which historical events such as the Dish with One Spoon Treaty remain relevant and topical to contemporary art making, curating, museology, and, more generally, Indigenous ways of life.

—Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

Norman, Oklahoma

Enter the Matrix: Indigenous Printmakers Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

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OCATED ON THE CORNER of Elm and Boyd, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is part of the bustling campus of the University of Oklahoma. Parking, always scarce on a campus, is available in the parking garage on Elm. Bring enough quarters to feed the meter for at least two hours.

Once we entered the Matrix exhibit, we were overwhelmed by the space and the large collection of art produced through all possible printmaking techniques. This one-of-a-kind-exhibit brings together Indigenous artists from across the North American continent and beyond.

As you approach the west entrance to the museum, you are greeted by a rotund, winged sculpture, Fernando Botero’s Sphinx. Pass through the doors and see the glowing red eyes of Luis Jiménez’s Mustang, reared up, beckoning you to the stairs that grants access to the exhibition. Climb the first set of 30 stairs to enter the second-floor gallery of pottery and extraordinary jewelry that leads to the last set of 17 stairs, where bold black-on-white letters announce the exhibit: Enter the Matrix: Indigenous Printmakers. While there is an option to take the east-side elevator, it is not as dramatic to begin the show from the present day to the past.

If you begin your journey through the matrix from the stairs, you will encounter early early-20th-century artists Lois Smoky (Kiowa, 1907–1981); Stephen Mopope (Kiowa 1898–1974); Fred Beaver (Muscogee-Seminole, 1911–1980); Archie Blackowl (Southern Cheyenne, 1911–1992); Leonard (Black Moon) Riddles (Comanche, 1918–2003); and Woody Crumbo (Potawatomi, 1912–1989). For those familiar with the iconic artwork and the history of Native American art, these pieces feel like a welcomed visit with old friends.

This beginning exposure to early printed images will certainly prepare the viewer for the rich and expansive journey ahead.

The curators left no stone unturned in a comprehensive matrix of 86 prints by 67 artists–from the 1920s to today’s contemporary, visual narratives. The exhibit is organized in a matrical array of rows and walls of chronological and geographical information about diverse Indigenous cultures. The curators selected themes of Gender Roles, Ceremonial Practice, Sustainability, Politics/Governance, and Landscape and Place, which can be explored in-depth through an online short course and a scheduled lecture series throughout the duration of the exhibit.

The prints selected for display are from the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art’s permanent collections, including the James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection, and on loan from Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Pendleton, Oregon; National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Melanie Yazzie’s private collection, Boulder, Colorado.

The prints are a complete catalogue of printmaking matrices; pochoir, serigraphy, monotype, etching, intaglio, collography, lithography, and others that capture the interest of the viewer and appeal to patrons familiar with the processes and who appreciate the skill required to produce fine art prints.

The process of printmaking demands adherence to strict rules of process: clean ink, plates, felt blankets, brushes, barons, brayers, rollers, and properly dampened stones and paper! It is a labor-intensive process, and a print can easily be ruined by carelessness with the materials.

Though it is technically demanding, the rich textures, tonal quality, and the clean, defining lines that result from the time invested is a reward for not only the artist but also the viewer.

For those with limited knowledge of printmaking processes, the wall text provides information about each process that will enhance the viewer’s overall experience. For instance, the production of multicolored prints can take several hours for each color per print pulled.

Joe Feddersen’s (Okanagan-Sinixt) Wyit View (2003) is a six-color lithograph of a subdivision project on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeastern Oregon, built over an area where the WIN T E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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Joe Feddersen (Okanagan-Sinixt), Wyit View, 2003, lithograph, 140 × 30 in.

remains of a man and woman were found. In the print are Plateau basket patterns and lines of an urban cul-de-sac.

Construction was halted until the community worked to resolve the need for housing and the honoring of the burials. An excerpt from the statement on the memorial at the site states, “For as long as we remain upon this temporal world/Our footsteps cannot fade away/ We can never forget our ancestors…”

It expresses the sentiment found in the printed imagery of the exhibition and reflects sustainability of the community.

A large 1981 rubbing titled Landscape: Impression by George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe, 1919–2000) is an abstract composition of woodblocks of varying shape, size, and texture.

Woodgrain and the annual rings of a tree are visible in the rubbed image. The extraordinary appeal of this piece is the simplicity of technique and the directness of the artist’s hand to produce not only the surface rubbed but also the resulting print. One reviewer counted seven rings in one woodblock and described it as a “piece of time and existence.”

Collaborations among artists are significant to the development of printmaking among Indigenous artists.

An illustrated wall panel describes the blind stamps (printmakers’ chops) for several of the firmly established historic cooperatives. These chops are used to

authenticate printed editions. Through these collaborations and organizations artists find encouragement and technical support to tell their stories and share their culture with current and future generations. Indigenous art is a matrix from which a people continue to grow and exist. It is about their survival.

The Triple K Cooperative produced high-quality serigraphs. The Triple K refers to three Kakegamic brothers, Joshim, Goyce, and Henry (all Sandy Lake Ojibwe-Swampy Cree).

Robert Kakegamic’s (Sandy Lake Ojibwe-Swampy Cree), Beaver in the Pond (1979) is a serigraph produced

by Triple K. However, he was not part of the Triple K. He was a cousin with access to the family printmaking studio. Kakegamic’s print is displayed with others produced by the Triple K Cooperative. The establishment of the cooperative was about artistic control and self-determination to produce their own limited editions and work by other artists.

It is appropriate that the last exhibit wall features ten prints of the beginning of all our stories: the creation stories. What better place to end than at the beginning? Two works by different artists depict the story of How Man Got Fire. What a treat to compare and contrast two artists’ prints of the same story! These prints provide a glimpse into the deep culture of tribal people.

Touchscreen kiosks further enrich the visual experience by giving access to the stories that match the prints.

Enter the Matrix: Indigenous Printmakers is on display through January 17, 2016. We advise you to plan a couple of visits to spend the time to absorb the depth of the technical skill, the context and content of the images, and to thoughtfully experience the artistic offerings made by each of the artists.

This is an exhibit whose subject matter and imagery is engaging to school-aged children and challenging to seasoned art viewers. Enter the Matrix.

—Juanita Pahdopony and Eva Williams A free course about Indigenous printmaking is available via iTunes. Search “Enter the Matrix: Indigenous Printmakers” in iTunes.

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Santa Fe

Unsuspected Possibilities: Marie Watt SITE Santa Fe

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F COLLABORATION plus creativity equals collective conversation, then two of Marie Watt’s (Seneca) blanket works in Unsuspected Possibilities materially embody a polyphonic, visual dialogue woven together by both the artist and the hundreds of members of her sewing circles. Watt’s participants in Santa Fe took part in a third round of sewing circles for First Teachers Balance the Universe, Part I: Things That Fly (Predator) and First Teachers Balance the Universe, Part II: Things That Fly (Prey). The first two sewing circles were held in 2015 at the University of Washington and the National Gallery of Canada.1 Using printed guides of Watt’s winged animal and aircraft designs, local students from the Santa Fe Indian School, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, Tierra Encantada High School, and Institute of American Indian Arts, as well as the Santa Fe community at large stitched some of the sky-based iconography. These first teachers, like the eagle, heron, hawk, snipe, and hummingbird, are featured in tandem with 747s, drones, UFOs, and space shuttles. The 747 references Watt’s father, who was a Boeing engineer.

Watt’s sewing circles and process of collecting blankets from second-hand stores and as gifts from individuals yield a symbolic and physical convergence of community. The artist takes the role of narrator and creates a complex, multivocal story of known and unknown histories.2 In effect, Watt’s blanket artworks exist in an unending state of

1. Many of my statements about Marie Watt’s practice are based on a telephone interview with the artist on August 25, 2015, and a video produced by SITE Santa Fe, accessible on mariewattstudio.com.

2. Janet Dees, in-person interview with the author, August 7, 2015. As of August 2015, Dees is a former curator at SITE Santa Fe; she has accepted a position to work on the curatorial program at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwest University.

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flux, evade conclusion, and remain open to all viewers who connect with these visual stories.

Built in the near 50-foot long gallery space at SITE Santa Fe and made up of eleven “walls,” the installation of the artist’s embroidered, fabric collages alludes to a neighborly dynamic: the width of a Haudenosaunee longhouse and a sideways-tilted Manhattan skyscraper that references Mohawk workers from the early 20th century.

I also saw this work as a reflection of the East-West geographic space of the Haudenosaunee tribes.3 The stories shared in each of Watt’s blanket artworks provide numerous visual contrasts. The effect of this diversity is a sharpening of the stories found in each individual work.

The physicality of the panel Generous Ones: Chair, Observer, Ancestor (2015) communicates a continuum between ancestors and descendants, with a cascading mountain of blanket strips that ranges from an inch thickness at the top to at least four inches at the base. The multicolored wool strips are occasionally interrupted by nylon, ruffles, or blanket labels. I read the curvilinear, fabric form as evoking a sense of falling and landing, as well as recalling the descending motion of Sky Woman prior to the creation of North America. Watt contributed that she thought of the mountain of fabric strips as a turtle’s back. As the cascade continues downward over the army blanket ground, the stacks of fabric strips become a landscape of overlapping square forms with hollowed centers and strips of fringe that lend themselves to an implication of the present day. The base demonstrates a sense of support, like chairs, as Watt has noted in the title of this work, if the deepest layers are interpreted as ancestors.

Trek (Pleiades) (2014) provides comic relief to the viewer, as she or he moves through Watt’s installation. Its ground is filled with repeating Star Trek symbols; each one, except for a stray icon on the right edge, hinges on a satin center in a shade of pink, and grows outward with outlines of wool in a palette of

blues, pinks, and reds. In this work, patches of army blankets don the top left, almost bottom center, and right edge of the panel. In light-blue floss, Watt embroidered the Star Trek spacecraft in monumental scale. The juxtaposition of the army-green blanket areas with the Star Trek iconography creates an air of ironic tension. To consider the phrase “where no man has gone before” in this context dialectically brought both a fleeting smile and lingering feeling of remorse to my mind’s eye.

Watt deftly weaves together histories and memories of different times and locales with familial, Aboriginal, national, and global knowledge. In Witness (2015), a stitched and sparse line drawing, Watt intertwines a portrait of herself with her two daughters with a scene of a 1913 Quamichan potlatch held in the Pacific Northwest region, during the years when potlatches were outlawed in Canada and the United States. The imagery is appropriated from a photograph, and the backing for this scene is an off-white, striped blanket that Watt procured from eBay. The blanket is unusual in that it remained in its double length form rather than being cut after receipt from export from England. The wool panel features four banks of solid, vertical stripes, in groups of black, yellow, red, and teal, with the two blanket labels incorporated into the overall composition. This work evokes senses of strength and community, as a stitched record of this moment of gathering. Watt also made note of a waving blanket in the top of both the

photograph and blanket compositions.

Watt understands her blanket artworks to be transportation objects, and this sentiment is apparent in Butterfly (2015), nicknamed “Powwow” by the artist. This panel of triangular, abstracted butterflies in a palette of reds, purples, and blues successfully supports a large, near-center section of tin jingles. While the artist sought to create a literal place of reflection with these ornaments, to me, the closeness and density of the jingles also evoked community, movement in all things and beings, and suggested the personal yet collective experiences of dancing.

This work was collaboratively created in sewing circles at the Denver Art Museum, the Fulbright Center in Cyprus, and the Tacoma Art Museum.

Its origins lie in Watt’s meeting of two girls in Denver, one who is a jingle dress dancer and one who is a fancy dancer.

Butterfly, as a more direct reference to the fancy dancer, reads as a frozen moment of motion; each abstracted butterfly seems to be stopped in a flutter this way and that way, evoking a “school” of butterflies.

Unsuspected Possibilities, which curator Janet Dees calls a “collaborative” exhibition, relied on a series of installation planning sessions between the three featured artists, Watt, Leonardo Drew, and Sarah Oppenheimer. Dees commented that a strong dynamic of trust was built among the artists. Watt was honored to develop the exhibition design with artists of her generation.

—Michelle Lanteri

Marie Watt (Seneca), Witness, 2015, reclaimed wool blanket, embroidery floss, thread, 71 × 180.5 in.

Photo: Aaron Johanson. Image courtesy of Marie Watt.

3. Christian F. Feest and Sylvia S. Kasprycki, “The Longhouse and Its Inhabitants,” in Lifeworlds, Artscapes: Contemporary Iroquois Art, ed. Sylvia S. Kasprycki and Doris I. Stambrau (Frankfurt am Main: Galerie 37 and Museum der Weltkulturen, 2003), 7–9. Influenced by these authors’ description of the East-West space of the Iroquois tribes as a metaphorical longhouse, I applied their line of thinking to Watt’s installation.

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Book Reviews Monograph

Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain Jill Hartz and Danielle M. Knapp, editors Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, 2014

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N 1979, WIYOT-YUROK artist Rick Bartow drew a graphite work on paper titled Things You Know But Cannot Explain. The drawing’s single figure stands against a black void. With eyes closed and mouth agape, this figure appears to scream in gut-wrenching agony encapsulating the dark aspect of what it means to be human. Decades after the creation of this work, Bartow continues to wrestle with what it means to be human through his multilayered artworks.

Earlier this year, a major retrospective chronicling Bartow’s journey opened at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, Eugene. The show and its accompanying catalogue are titled Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain.

Co-curator and coeditor Jill Hartz states, “The title of this exhibition … affirms the mindfulness and intuitive practice with which this particular artist creates art.” The show features more than 120 paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, and mixed media works from the late 1970s through the present. The

catalogue is largely written by co-curators Jill Hartz, executive director, and Danielle M. Knapp, associate curator, both of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Lawrence Fong, who formerly served as the museum’s curator of American and regional art, wrote the introductory article, “Truth Behind the Mask.”

The catalogue mostly follows the format of the show but fills in a narrative that obviously cannot be fully expressed in wall texts. Organized through the themes of Gesture, Self, Dialogue, Tradition, and Transformation, the text provides rich context for contemplating Bartow’s life and art career. In addition to these five lenses that make up the bulk of the book, Jill Hartz focuses on Bartow’s work since his stroke in the chapter, “Old Dog, New Work.”

This section is the most groundbreaking of all as it illustrates the freedom Bartow discovers after the “clicking-like erasure of potentially all he knew” as a result of his major stroke in August 2013. While these post-stroke works still express the vulnerability and darkness of humanity, they now contain another layer—this time of lightness—that comes with Bartow’s gratitude for the ability to learn new things and continue to create art.

This catalogue’s strength is its ability to make visible the significance of Bartow’s art career in a way that echoes his approach to art: directly and profoundly.

Hartz writes, “This exhibition and catalog[ue] are offered in gratitude to Rick Bartow for allowing us to investigate his life and work and for supporting this presentation of our selections and interpretations to the public. Rick’s work is deeply layered and supremely honest. It operates in different worlds, perhaps even different temporalities. It offers endless fascination.”

Written by established art scholars who thoughtfully collaborated with experts on Bartow’s work—such as Bartow’s close friend and agent, gallery owner Charles Froelick—the catalogue serves as an historical and visual record of Bartow’s contribution to the world of contemporary art. The writers position Bartow in the larger field of art today, while not focusing solely on, nor completely discounting, Bartow’s heritage as a member of the Wiyot and Yurok tribes in Northern California and his close

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ties with the Siletz community in Oregon, where the artist has lived most of his life.

Understanding that one book and one exhibition do not fully encompass the complexity of Bartow, Hartz invites readers to “sort [them] out differently or add other frames of reference aimed at deepening your own looking and understanding of Rick’s visual world.”

A wise statement, it formally invites future scholars to research themes not fully covered, such as healing and Native American identity, which this retrospective monograph treats more as subthemes rather than a focus. Much more remains to explore in the art of a master who successfully expresses through his work those things that we know but cannot explain.

—Jean Merz-Edwards

Monograph

Super Indian: Fritz Scholder 1967–1980 John P. Lukavic, Jessica Horton, Eric Berkemeyer, and Kent Logan, eds.

Prestel Publishing, 2015

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EFORE FRITZ AND AFTER FRITZ.” This quote from Super Indian by art historian/curator Aleta M. Ringlero offers the simple division of before and after for 20th-century Native American art. This monograph traces the overwhelming explosion Fritz Scholder (Luiseño, 1937–2005) made upon the art world.

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Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967– 1980 spearheaded by John P. Lukavic, PhD, associate curator of Native arts at the Denver Art Museum, is the catalogue for the major exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. Lukavic and nine other contributors interpret different aspects of Scholder’s career. The exhibit begins with the artist’s controversial Indian Series, begun in 1967, and ends with his 1980 Indian Land paintings. After this period, Scholder gradually changed his palette and subject matter. He did not entirely abandon painting Indians but they were not his sole focus.

“One winter evening, early in 1967, I decided to paint an Indian,” recalled Fritz Scholder. By 1969, the series elicited explicit criticism from a prominent “Indian art trader,” who wrote, “Scholder has singlehandedly destroyed Indian painting in the Southwest.” Scholder’s art and life are filled with controversy—not only in his artistic depiction of the contemporary Native American, but in his personal lifestyle and commentary. This controversy makes for interesting and enlightened reading in the catalogue.

The catalogue also offers a chance to see Scholder’s history-changing paintings and lithographs. Thanks to loans from private collectors and the Denver Art Museum’s own collection, we are able to see a full range of many of his seldom seen works created during the 13-year period.

To see his body of work in one room shows its importance and growth and what Scholder’s creations did for Native American art.

Scholder taught painting at the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA) from 1964 to 1969. Both he and his struggling students became frustrated when their efforts to break away from what was considered traditional/historical “Native American art” was thwarted by the status quo.

In 1967, Scholder broke his wellknown vow to never paint an Indian.

He felt that in order to break away from acceptable “Indian art,” he had to address both the positive and negative history of Native Americans. “The positive does not exist without the negative.” He argued that it “is probably the most artificial art movement ever known in this country.”

Scholder sought to refine this image of

native peoples through his Indian Series (1967–1980) by exploring what he considered a more “real” reality. He challenged the stereotype of the romantic, noble Indian by showing us another side of the Indian condition in all its pain, triumph, hurt, and glory. He battled against the Studio Style of American Indian art championed by Dorothy Dunn and the Santa Fe Indian School. There was a time when accepted “Indian art” was what the white patron would purchase. The era’s revisionist and rebellious spirit in the United States was ingrained in Scholder.

His early works in this series were experiments in figuration, Pop Art, and surprising color combinations. Scholder’s figurative art includes representations of human and animal figures, not nonobjective abstraction. In many cases, the most important aspect of his paintings is the colors and their combinations, which generate a connection to the viewer. This may best be seen in the paintings American Portrait with One Eye (1975) and Monster Indian (1968). Above all, Scholder is a colorist. Scholder studied under Wayne Thiebaud in California during the late 1950s. He credits him as a key influence for his innovative color palette. An example of Thiebaud’s influence can be seen in Indian at Gallup Bus Depot (1969) and Super Indian No. 2 (1971), featured on the cover.

During his Indian Series period, Scholder complemented his paintings with numerous lithographs. These fine prints address the same themes and, in many cases, the use of color, such as Portrait of a Massacred Indian No. 3 (1973) and Indian at the Bar (1971). Much to his delight, the lithographs enabled him to extend additional thoughts derived from his paintings. He became a technical master of fine art printing, which allowed him to achieve techniques not possible with the paintbrush.

Artists are often inspired by other artists. Besides Thiebaud, Abstract Expressionists such as Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning influenced Scholder, as did other renowned painters like Francisco de Goya and Paul Gauguin.

And Scholder influenced many of his talented students—and in turn, they influenced him. A core of these influential students went on to be the leaders in

late-20th-century Native American art.

They all had their own recognizable styles. Like Scholder’s work, their art is highly collectable.

In 1972, Fritz Scholder and T. C. Cannon (Kiowa-Caddo, 1946–1978) joined forces for an international, two-man exhibit (and supposed Cold War strategy) entitled Two American Painters.

Scholder traveled with the exhibit and lectured on art and American values to many Communist countries. Cannon, once a student of Scholder’s, went on to become a leading contemporary artist. As a special treat, the Denver exhibit includes seven of Scholder’s original works from Two American Painters.

The image reproduction quality of the catalogue is well done with vivid color that will delight readers. It will make the readers long for an exhibit visit or conjure pleasant memories of the intense color and texture provided by the in-person experience.

Lukavic points out that Scholder claimed he was not a Native American, but he was one-quarter Luiseño. Scholder said his art was not political, yet it certainly polarized the art world. For every position he took, he seemed to have explored the other side of the proverbial coin. The curator reminds us that Scholder first and foremost is a colorist, who used figurative art to test the limits of what paint can express.

The subject matter is not the most important aspect to his paintings, instead the exploration of paint and color is paramount. What happens when the second color is put next to the first is when magic begins to happen, as in Indian in Taos Pueblo (1970). As David Bradley (White Earth Ojibwe) so aptly stated, “It was the art itself that deserved all the attention.”

Super Indian provides an opportunity for longitme admirers and those who are discovering Scholder’s art for the first time to see an amazing collection by a master artist. How frequently does a person get the chance to see a body of work that changed everything? It may be reasonable to say that the 42 paintings and lithographs are the finest representation of Scholder’s work available for public viewing.

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REVIEWS

Poetry

The Thunderbird Poems Armand Garnet Ruffo Harbour Publishing, 2015

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N A VOICE that is at once mysterious and inherently familiar, Armand Garnet Ruffo (Sagamok Ojibwe-Cree) pushes through the colors of language the way tiny, glistening drops of sacred, heaven-sent rain might push through the rainbow as it stretches itself across the sky. Once beyond the arch, the real journey begins.

The Thunderbird Poems, a collection of 53 compositions, was inspired by the lifework of painter Norval Morrisseau, or Copper Thunderbird (Bingwi Neyaashi Ojibwe, 1932–2007), whom the French press once dubbed the “Picasso of the North.” Originally from Sand Point in Northwestern Ontario, Morrisseau was a self-taught painter whose work relied heavily on Anishinaabe iconography from birchbark scrolls and ancient petroglyphs.

Morrisseau received numerous honors, including induction into the Order of Canada and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation. Followers of his style, employing the same X-ray lines and mind-expanding arrangements of color and shape that were Morrisseau’s hallmarks, became collectively known as the Woodlands School. Finding

inspiration in the thousands of images Morrisseau painted, his scholars have kept the artist’s vision moving forward in spite of his earthly absence. But then again, tangible presence has never been a requirement for devotees of things grand and resplendent; the guardians of Native America’s most colorful artistic legacies have long navigated the towardtomorrow path without their visionary leaders at the bow.

Ruffo is one of those scholars. As one of the most dedicated guardians of Morrisseau’s legacy, Ruffo has taken creative inspiration to a higher, perhaps even divine level, building on what Morrisseau referred to as “transcending barriers of … language and … fortifying the greatness of the spirit that has always been the foundation of the Ojibwa people.” Born in Chapleau, Ontario, Ruffo likely shared similar childhood experiences with his literary muse, specifically those that defined the cultural and tribal environments of their common heritage. Visual references— the colors in the physical landscape, the elegant shapes of traditional Ojibwe art forms such as the rock art and sacred scrolls that likewise inspired Morrisseau—were also undoubtedly among Ruffo’s primary influences.

From cover to cover, The Thunderbird Poems spans 102 pages, of which 87 are dedicated to the delivery of 53 poems, after dedications, table of contents, introduction, chapter headers, and biographical notes and acknowledgments on Morrisseau and Ruffo on the last few leaves. The book itself is beautifully presented; the poems reside within sturdy but giving covers, and the dramatic cover photo by Helena Wilson adds to the life-in-constant-motion effect of Ruffo’s highly sensorial, poetic distillations. Each poem is prefaced with notes on the painting(s) that inspired it, which offer sturdy support for Ruffo’s translations but do not define the work.

Certainly, translating poetry from any language would seem a daunting undertaking for any writer. But when Ruffo set to task on translating Morrisseau’s vividly painted narratives from the canvas to the page, it appears

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he tapped into some pressurized, ancient wellspring of voice and verse. The poems hold a sense of spontaneity and intuition, as if they were written in one, long, fluid stroke of the pen rather than in overthought lines obsessively reworked again and again. This observation, of course, belies the fact that countless hours of deliberation were invested in the choosing of words and in the sculpting of those words into exquisite, flowing, poetic forms.

The stanzas of carefully constructed and well-broken lines give the sensation of gaining momentum with each stop and start. And although many technical features and formalities of poetry writing are observed in the body of work, they do not resonate as compulsory elements or authorial dictations, but instead allow for precision in detail and delivery.

Metaphor “Life Scroll, n.d.,” an eight-couplet title poem, nurtures a strong use of nature and dream imagery and diachronically based, high-level metaphor. It winds out in lines such as those that compose the poem’s first couplet: “Where your dreams find you in the blue lake of your mind/and vibrate to the surface like a speckled trout.” And again, in the fourth and sixth couplets, the poet reveals an affinity for the metaphorical: Where there is no one but you and the echoes of ancestors in the halls of your loneliest night. …

Where you learn the art of listening and the old words drip into the stone bowl of your deafness.

Structure and Form In the book’s second section, “Shaman Rider,” Ruffo continues the journey into increasingly sophisticated poetic constructions and engages advanced structural arrangements including the use of caesura, which observes pauses in a line of verse dictated by sense or natural speech rhythm rather than by metrics; and the more quick-tempered enjambment, which employs a more

REPORT

free-flowing, run-on quality, in which a sentence continues without pause beyond the end of a line. Mastery of these forms is evident in couplets three and four of “Angry Thunderbird, 1975”: This flat image of what seems a bird with a small sack of something. Electric eyes. Divided circles.

This is your mind on the mid-day road when the sky turns black and you are suddenly no longer secure or certain.

Meter and Rhythm (The Drum Factor) From the third section, “Mother of All Things,” the reader may confirm Ruffo’s aptitude for composing minimal but strong, rhythmic lines whose quick and off-centered meter forces a deliberate and measured breath. Consider this as you exhale your way through the first stanza of “Spirit Helpers, 1988”: Off the street.

Eating regularly.

Drinking irregularly.

Regaining his health.

The press announces “The Shaman’s Return.”

Shortly into the second stanza, we again find our breath to be measured out in quick, drum-like beats, what the author calls “the drum factor,” as seen in “bear & bird & fish,” and “And they become a quick fix/for ready cash.” This calm-and-crescendo construct of poetic interpretation does indeed recall the songs of ancient drums and tethers the work back to one of the original sources of rhythm and timing.

avoid it; we can row right up to the bank with Ruffo and remain within earshot of the swishing currents, even as we hear the canoe skirt the shore: Mishipesheu/water Manitou, spirit guide/swims the underworld/spiraling out of a whirlpool/Sign of medicine power/ and presence/a prayer/for calm water.

Subtle indulgences in wordplay and semantic viscosity are also seen in the poem, as evidenced in Ruffo’s thoughtful placement of the word “presence,” which simultaneously assumes several literal identities.

Ruffo’s inspired translations are both earthly and ethereal—mined from places far beyond mere intellectual observation, superficial emotional response, or aesthetic contrition. Any temptation to assume the collection’s merit rests solely on its close acquaintanceship with Morrisseau’s work should be quickly discarded. The poems hold weight on their own.

The Thunderbird Poems is perhaps Ruffo’s most dynamic collection thus far, a sort of retroactive user’s manual for anyone wishing to better understand this gifted poet’s proficiency for unraveling the complexities of language and linguistics.

—RoseMary Diaz

Izhevsk, Udmurtia, Russia

Migration Municipal Art Gallery

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N JUNE 13, 2015, the city of Izhevsk unveiled a mural by the Navajo-Chicana artist Nanibah Chacon. Sponsored by the United States Consulate in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and the city gallery of Izhevsk, Migration features a beautiful young woman, her head wrapped in a floral embroidered scarf.

Chacon used the term migration to convey movement, not only physically and geographically but also in a cultural sense, where ideas move through place and time.

Located in the Ural Mountains, Izhevsk is home to the Udmurt people, a group native to the area predating the arrival of the Russians. Although in Soviet times Native populations like the Udmurt were persecuted, now they have more autonomy. The Udmurt govern in concert with Russian government; the two flags fly side by side.

Chacon observed that the “Udmurt are empowered as a people”1 and are accorded respect for their unique culture. Photos Chacon received from the consulate of the Udmurt people and

Legends and Layers The only composition from the like-titled fourth section, “Indian Canoe, n.d.,” contains clear reference to the powerful and revered Water Manitou, and, through a gentle, almost meditative cadence, guides the reader through the slow-moving stream of carefully crafted, woodlands imagery and toward a place of spiritual reflection. The poem never forces us into the water nor strives to

Nanibah Chacon (Navajo-Chicana), preliminary sketch for Migration, 2015.

1. All quotes in this article are from an interview with the artist in August 2015.

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REPORT

Nanibah Chacon (Navajo-Chicana), Migration, 2015, mural, 20 × 60 feet, Municipal Art Gallery, Izhevsk, Udmurtia, Russia. Image courtesy of the artist.

their festivals inspired the mural. How the women wore scarves struck her. The style is worn in the Udmurt region as well as in Russia, South and Central America, and in Dinétah. For the artist, the “concept of this piece centers around this scarf and its migration though Indigenous cultures.”

The artist chose images that are common, identifiable, and meaningful. In addition to the scarf, the woman’s face is intentionally ambiguous in terms of age and nationality. She is a universal woman, though several visitors observed that her hair color was too dark to be Russian.

The woman’s arm extends out along the wall—elegant, not ordering or pointing—with a small, brown bird on her outstretched finger, a symbol of flight and migration. The artist noted, “You can tell volumes just from the face and the hands” and that hands add meaning and emotion to the figure. The arm also fills the irregular space. Chacon was given a wall leading up the side of a staircase, 19 meters (60 feet) across and varying in height from 20 to 5 feet. Painting it was a challenge. She had to work on the stairs and around the railing, either standing

on it or painting upside down. Yet, she was able to fill the space successfully. She began with a layout of the wall, then drew images onto the wall with tracing paper, and let the site inform the design.

While in Izhevsk, Chacon attended a Gerber festival and met with Udmurt families who identified by clan and wore pins with a whirling log, or fylfot, design.

The whirling log motif is also a clan symbol for Diné. Chacon observed that art and cultural ideas are not limited by boundaries but move across the world.

The artist described working in the middle of this foreign city while people were walking by as an “incredible experience.” It became an “ambassadorial piece” where people brought food, gifts, and hugs. Scholars and artists stopped by to discuss her technique. The citizens of Izhevsk expressed “humble gratitude” for bringing her work to the area. While in Russia, Chacon gave an interview for television and three artist talks, including one for college students, one for art students, and one for middle school students. They asked questions about her art but also about the political situation

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back home. In Russia, art training starts at age eight, when they learn to be skilled in technique though limited in style, usually to Socialist Realism. The students appreciated Chacon’s willingness to try unusual techniques and styles, something not common in Russia.

For Chacon, the experience of painting the mural made her reflect on the conflict between cultural preservation and modernization and the creation of dialogue from a Native perspective.

Russians disdain the treatment of Native Americans by the United States government. The artist stated that the work “was a reflection on how beauty and aesthetics can transcend borders, language, and culture, that something so simple can unite people from opposite sides of the world [to] engage in visual dialogue.”

More than just a painted mural, it was a shared cultural experience for both Chacon and the people of Izhevsk. “I was honored to be given such an opportunity,” said Chacon. “Udmurtia has left a lasting memory on my heart.”

—Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

ADVICE

A Practical Guide to

Cleaning Silver Jewelry

S

By Andrew Krav Southwest Silver Gallery

ILVER—and specifically sterling silver—has been used to create jewelry for centuries. At one time it symbolized wealth and prosperity, and even today it remains an important symbol of luxury and style. If you own genuine silver jewelry, such as Native American jewelry with sterling silver touches, of course you want to keep it in the best possible shape for generations to come. But how can you clean it without robbing the mineral of its luster? Maintaining your silver jewelry is easier than you think, as long as you follow the optimal procedures.

Ion Exchange: The Secret to Cleaning Silver You don’t want to bleach your silver jewelry or subject it to other harsh cleansers. The secret to cleaning silver is a chemical process known as ion exchange. You don’t need to be a chemist to understand how the process works. You just need a bit of aluminum foil and laundry detergent. Even Reader’s Digest sings the praises of ion exchange. Just line a small bowl with foil, fill the bowl with hot water, and add a single tablespoon of your favorite bleach-free, powdered laundry detergent. Then soak your silver inside the solution for one minute, rinse, and let it dry. You’ll be amazed by the difference.

Ion exchange is a natural purification process that removes impurities from chemical compounds (like silver). It’s an optimal approach because it achieves and maintains a natural

Weaver Selina (Hopi), Lizard Bolo, sterling silver overlay. Photo: Christopher Short (Citizen Potawatomi). Image courtesy of Lizard Light Productions.

shine without drowning your silver in harsh chemicals that alter the composition of the material. The goal is to make your silver jewelry last for generations, and so it’s important to clean your jewelry in a way that thoroughly protects it without introducing foreign chemicals that alter or chip away the color.

Other solutions, of course, can clean and preserve your jewelry without compromising the delicate nature of the silver. For instance, diluted ammonia will remove impurities, ensuring that your jewelry remains vibrant and unblemished.

If you aren’t satisfied with the aluminum foil approach, just mix one part ammonia with two parts water and soak your jewelry for ten minutes. Alternately, Southwest Silver Gallery recommends soaking your silver in club soda overnight to restore any lost shine.

How Often Should I Clean My Silver?

Weaver Selina (Hopi), Quail Ring, sterling silver overlay. Photo: Christopher Short (Citizen Potawatomi). Image courtesy of Lizard Light Productions.

Cleaning your silver is the easy part. The challenge is understanding how often to subject your jewelry to the often invasive cleaning process. Native American jewelry and other silver pieces tell an important story, and so you want to ensure that your pieces effectively maintain their original sheen for as long as possible. When it comes to cleaning, don’t adhere to a schedule. Simply reserve the cleaning process for when it’s needed. Depending on how often you wear your jewelry, you may need to clean it once a month or once a year. Use your best judgment, but remember that the less often you subject your silver to cleaning, the more vibrant it will look in the long run.

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Fair Use: Content, Copyright, and Culture

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S A FIRST AMERICAN ARTIST, Misty knows that her art grows from her people and their histories. That is, she builds upon the foundation of a tribal culture.

She intuitively creates images that contain other images.

Her most recent piece includes a montage of photographs.

Everyone at her tribe’s art show had loved it—well, almost everyone.

A photographer had seen his work in her montage and had his attorney send a demand letter insisting that she cease from displaying that photograph, and that she give him any profits she has received.

It’s time to have coffee with Ima, her friend and attorney.

“This makes absolutely no sense to me!” Misty exclaims as she tosses the letter on Ima’s desk.

Ima reads the letter as Misty plops herself into a

By Kevin R. Kemper, PhD, LLM comfortable chair in Ima’s office. Ima pours coffee for both of them.

“You may have a good defense here, in case he sues for copyright infringement,” Ima says.

“Sues?! Are you kidding me?” Misty exclaims.

“I wish I were kidding you,” Ima says. “Copyright infringement is a cause of action in federal court. And it can be expensive, whether you win or lose.”

Ima moves from her desk to the grease board hanging in her office. Misty knows what comes next. Ima loves to teach as well as practice law.

“I’m going to explain to you the basics of something called ‘fair use,’ ” Ima says as she erases an earlier lesson and starts writing FAIR USE across the top of the grease board.

She writes down the following four factors of using content without permission that she had found online and which cites Section 107 of the US Copyright Act:1 1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether it is for commercial use or for nonprofit educational purposes.

2. The nature of the copyrighted work.

3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyright-protected work as a whole.

4. The effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyright-protected work.

Both illustrations by Roy Bony Jr. (Cherokee Nation). © 2015 Roy Boney Jr. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

“Let’s discuss each one of these as they relate to this situation,” Ima says. “First, were you intending to make money from this art?”

Misty rolls her eyes, like Ima knows the answer already.

“Of course,” she says. She had hoped to sell the piece after winning a blue ribbon at her tribe’s annual art show. It was priced at $3,000, though the highest offer had been $2,500.

She stuck to her original price, so the piece had not sold. But the art show had been a benefit to the local school. Does that make this situation “nonprofit,” Misty wonders. Misty knows the answer is no, but before she asks to be certain, Ima had more thoughts to share.

“Of course it’s commercial, because you intend to make money with your art, even at a nonprofit educational event,” Ima says. “This wasn’t a donated mural for a school or just a display during a free lecture.”

Ima goes on to explain the second point about the nature of the work and that it really is about the intent of the work.

“This gets to something I’ll explain in a minute,” the lawyer says.

Ima points to the third point—the amount used. The

1. These can be found on the Copyright Clearance Center’s “Copy Right Basics: Fair Use,” at copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/basics/fairuse_rules.html.

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entire photograph had been in the montage, but Misty had combined it with other photographs and her painted images.

So, Misty’s art piece is not primarily the photograph, but the entire photograph is in the art piece. Ima said this could be a problem, but she was not too worried because of a bigger issue on her mind. Misty hears this and becomes restless.

“Let’s think next about the effect of your work upon the value of the photograph,” Ima says. “I would argue that your work brings the photograph to light so that someone wanting the photograph could buy it from the photographer. A court might think that’s a stretch, and the photographer and his attorney would disagree. But it’s worth arguing.”

Ima tells Misty about a recent decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Lenz vs. Universal Music Corp. et al., that places more of a burden on copyright owners to think about fair use online before getting tough with enforcing that copyright. “Some courts do have empathy toward this idea of fair use,” Ima says.

Misty understands the four points, but she’s upset. She does not see how transforming the images into a new piece of art would get her in trouble for copyright infringement. She feels threatened, despite Ima’s assurances.

“All I did is take various pieces of art and make a new piece of art!” Misty exclaims as she slaps her hand on the end table next to her, spilling some of her coffee.

“And that is my precise, legal argument,” Ima says with a knowing look. “That was your intent.”

Misty has been friends with Ima for years, so she should have seen that coming. She always leads her to the central point of it all.

“It’s called the transformation doctrine,” Ima says. “You take various images, even if they are protected by copyright, and you transform them into new art. Without that legal doctrine, we would discourage artists from creating. We build upon the foundation of other art. It’s at the heart of the entire system of intellectual property law. We want to encourage and not discourage creativity.”

Ima grabs her mobile phone to text a URL to Misty: fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors.

“Check out this resource, too,” Ima says. Misty’s phone soon chirps an alert.

The idea of building upon a foundation of art provokes a quizzical look from Misty. “This notion about transformation makes me think about our tribe’s culture,” she says.

“Yeah, how so?” asks Ima. “For centuries we have created images with cultural

consistencies, yet our art evolves and grows,” Misty says.

Ima nods in agreement. “And if you cannot build upon your culture, then the culture fades. Isn’t it cool how copyright law can be used to encourage cultural survival?”

Misty finally smiles and relaxes. Ima sits down to write out a short but powerful answer to the photographer’s demand letter. Neither Ima nor Misty is concerned about a lawsuit. Misty gets up to leave, as she has to return to her studio and finish a commissioned piece.

“The more you of a transformation you make of other art when incorporating it into new art, the less likely you are in legal trouble,” Ima says. “But be sure you think through these four factors if you incorporate the work of others, and ask me as your attorney for a final opinion.”

Misty, ever the pragmatist and philosopher, is still pondering how transforming culture protects traditional culture or whether these four factors account for tribal expectations of not using cultural images without permission.

But all of that is a conversation for another day.

Editor’s Note This column provides important information to educate readers about the laws of copyright and other intellectual property, art, media, and more. The fictional character of Misty as a Native American artist will encounter and overcome unique challenges with federal, state, and tribal law. Her fictional Native attorney, Ima, will guide and educate Misty. Along the way, we hope you learn the basics of copyright law, business law, art law, privacy, and more. Nothing in any of these columns should be construed as legal advice. You are encouraged to seek the advice of an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction if you have a specific legal question. Any resemblance to these fictional characters is merely coincidental.

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IN MEMORIAM

Lloyd Earl Oxendine June 8, 1942–August 5, 2015 The new Indian has demanded to be reckoned with as a whole man, both politically and artistically. Suddenly he has emerged in all media, demanding attention and action.1

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O WROTE LLOYD OXENDINE in his seminal article, “23 Contemporary Indian Artists,” that ran in the JulyAugust1972 issue of Art in America.

Oxendine (Lumbee), born in Pembroke, North Carolina, devoted his career to raising the profile of Native American arts and fought for its rightful place within the American art canon. His artistic talents earned him an Ivy League arts education, taking him from rural Robeson County to Manhattan. He could have easily launched a spectacular art career for himself.

Instead, he worked for and on behalf of all Native artists by researching, writing, curating, lecturing, and organizing. He also went back to Pembroke to teach art to Lumbee youth. His generosity of spirit exemplifies the best in Native values.

Oxendine first attended University of North Carolina, Willington, on an arts scholarship. Columbia University offered him an arts education that would change the course of his life. He loved New York and studied at the Arts Students League as well as Columbia. After earning his bachelor’s degree in art history, he continued on to earn his master’s degree in painting. “I was overjoyed on being accepted into the MFA program at Columbia’s School of the Arts in 1969,” Oxendine wrote.

It was an exceptional time. The campus was electrifying. It was charged with political and social activism. It was the era of the Vietnam War, student protest, and SDS [Students for a Democrat Society].

There could not have been a more fertile, stimulating, and inspiring environment in which to study and create art.2 He had to drive a taxi to help support both his wife Ursula Oxendine-Kalberer and young son Marc

Lloyd Oxendine (Lumbee), Right Hand, 1986, painting. Image courtesy of the Museum of the Southeast American Indian, University of North Carolina, Pembroke.

Ray Oxendine. At Columbia, Minimalist Donald Judd was one of his teachers, and performance artist and experimental musician Laurie Anderson was among his accomplished cohort of students. In the midst of the heady excitement and flux of the late 1960s New York art scene, Oxendine knew something wasn’t right.

1. Oxendine, Lloyd E. “23 Contemporary Indian Artists.” Art in America 60, no. 4 ( July–August 1972): 58–69.

2. Lloyd Oxendine, “Visual Arts Alumni Archive: Lloyd Oxendine (1971),” Columbia University School of the Arts, web.

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When he researched Native American art, he had difficultly finding any material on Native artists. What he could find focused on historic art. Discovering this information gap, Oxendine determined to educate the art world about what contemporary Native art had to offer.

“Lloyd came to NYC and soon

IN MEMORIAM

became a valued member of the NYC Indian community,” shared Mary Helen Deer, RN (Kiowa-Muscogee), a cofounder of the American Indian House. “He was generous of his time and talent to support the founding of the American Indian Community House back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.”

“Through the strong network of contacts I developed during my student days at Columbia, I opened one of the first art galleries in SoHo in 1972,” wrote Oxendine. “It was American Art, the first gallery in New York City devoted exclusively to showing contemporary American Indian art.”3 The name was carefully chosen to position Native art as the true American art. The gallery gave many prominent Indian artists of the era, such as George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe) and Frank LaPena (Nomtipom Maidu-Wintu), their first shows in New York.

Oxendine became the director of Native North American Artists, a national advocacy organization. The mainstream attention he garnered back in the early 1970s remains impressive today. Art in America dedicated its entire July–August 1972 issue to covering American Indian art. Barbara Walters interviewed Oxendine on NBC-TV’s Today Show.4 Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater ranked among Oxendine’s avid art collectors. In 1973, the London School of Design bestowed an honorary doctorate upon Oxendine. That same year, he helped curate In Beauty It Is Begun: Native American Children’s Art, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and traveled nationwide for two years. His essay “Great American Indian Art,” published by the US Information Agency, was translated into 15 languages.5 His wife Ursula also worked tirelessly to promote Native arts.

Oxendine left New York and traveled to Germany, Italy, and Switzerland—where he lived for four years—and then moved to San Francisco. He returned to Manhattan in 1985. He became the curator for the American Indian Community House (AICH) gallery during two different periods, where he would curate more than 40 art shows. His friend and colleague G. Peter Jemison (Seneca) was the AICH curator after him.

Oxendine was multifaceted and made other intriguing contributions to the arts. He designed men’s shirts. He illustrated Marion E. Gridley’s juvenile nonfiction biography Osceola (Putnam, 1972). He served as vice president of the Native American Theater Ensemble. He worked with Amerinda, a New York nonprofit, to create the Native American Art Roster (NAAR), a database of Indigenous American artists in New York. As evidence of his daring and humor, he even played an elder in the 2001 horror movie Wendigo.

It’s impossible to calculate what impact Oxendine’s efforts have made today in the visibility and viability of Native American art. “You dream big and get what you want,” he told the Massachusetts art journalist Charles Giuliano.6 Lloyd Oxendine dreamed big for all of us.

—America Meredith 3. Lloyd Oxendine, “Visual Arts Alumni Archive: Lloyd Oxendine (1971),” Columbia University School of the Arts, web.

4. “Lumbee Artist Is Featured on NBC-TV,” The Robesonian (August 1, 1972), 2.

5. “Art Activity on the Increase for Students at PSHS,” The Robesonian (May 30, 1974), 8.

6. Giuliano, Charles. “Lloyd Oxendine: Native New Yorker,” Maverick Magazine 248 ( June 14, 2006), web.

Johnny Tiger Jr. February 13, 1940–August 5, 2015

Johnny Tiger Jr. Image courtesy of Yvonne Tiger (Cherokee-MuscogeeSeminole).

J

OHN MOORE TIGER JR. was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to Rev. John M. Tiger and Loucinda Lewis Tiger. His extended family knew him as “Tony” and remembers his powerful bear hugs. Johnny Tiger was a fullblood Muscogee-Seminole, who spoke his language fluently.

His brother was the respected painter Jerome Tiger (1941–1967).

Tiger attended Chilocco Indian School and studied art under Dick West (Southern Cheyenne) at Bacone College from 1959 to 1960 and lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Tiger was a champion boxer and served in the US Air Force. As a young man, he worked at an auto shop and painted pinstripes on hot rods, but after the tragic loss of his younger brother, Tiger decided to become a full time artist.

Like Jerome, Johnny Tiger took Oklahoma Flatstyle painting to another level by using modeling and shading to give his subjects depth while he maintained Flatstyle’s characteristic Art Deco influences and monochromatic backgrounds. As a sculptor, he built figurative works in bronze. Much of his subject matter came from the Muscogee Creek history told to him by his maternal grandfather Coleman Lewis.

Tiger’s niece Dana Tiger (Muscogee-Seminole-Cherokee) is a well-known painter today. He served as her artistic mentor after her father passed on. Johnny Tiger also mentored the painter Raymond Nordwall (Pawnee-Ojibwe-Cherokee).

Tiger’s artwork can still be seen in public collections such as the Togliatti Art Museum in Russia and the Cherokee Heritage Center, Gilcrease Museum, and Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Oklahoma. The latter designated Tiger as a master artist in 1982.

His funeral was held at the West Eufaula Indian Baptist Church, and he was interred in Greenwood Cemetery in Eufaula, in the Muscogee Creek Nation..

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CALENDAR

NATIVE AMERICAN ART APPRAISALS, INC. SINCE 1936

Calendar November 2–February 15: Flagstaff, AZ

You Are on Indian Land at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 3101 N. Ft. Valley Rd. | (928) 774-5213 | musnaz.org

November 4–December 19: Minneapolis, MN Meryl McMaster: Ancestral at Bockley Gallery, 2123 W. 21st St. Opening reception Saturday, November 14, 5:00 pm–8:00 pm (612) 377-4669 | bockleygallery.com

November 4–January 22: Reno, NV

Emily Arthur: Endangered and Joe Allen: Duck Decoy Maker at Sheppard Contemporary Gallery at the University of Nevada, Reno, 1664 N. Virginia St. | (775) 784-6658 | unr.edu/arts

November 5–28: Seattle, WA

Moving Forward: Alano Edzerza at Stonington Gallery, 125 S. Jackson St. Reception Thursday, November 5, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm (206) 405-4040 | stoningtongallery.com

November 7 & 8: Los Angeles, CA (855) NAAA-INC EMAIL INFO@NAAAINC.COM VISIT WWW.NAAAINC.COM CALL

Autry American Indian Arts Marketplace at the Autry National Center, 4700 Western Heritage Way, with 200 artists (323) 667-2000 | theautry.org

November 7–September 18: Washington, DC Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist at the National Museum of the American Indian, 4th St. and Independence Ave. SW (202) 633-1000 | nmai.si.edu

November 14–TBA: Park Hill, OK

Cherokee Syllabary: From Talking Leaves to Pixels at the Cherokee Heritage Center, 21192 S. Keeler Dr. (918) 456-6007 | cherokeeheritage.org

November 14–TBA: Albuquerque, NM

5th Annual Pueblo Fiber Arts Show at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, 2401 12th St. NW | (505) 843-7270 indianpueblo.org

November 14: Albuquerque, NM

Sheldon Harvey: After Paris at Grey Dog Trading, 400 San Felipe St. NW #8, Old Town. | (505) 243-0414 | greydogtrading.com

November 14 & 15: Montevideo, Uruguay

El Festival de Música de la Tierra con el Taller de Cocina Indígena at Jacksonville Park, hosted by the Museo de Arte Precolombino e Indígena, free | +598 (598) 2916 9360 | mapi.uy

November 14–February 28: Indianapolis, IN

Contemporary Art Fellowship Exhibition at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 W. Washington | (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org

November 16 & 17: Sulphur, OK

Indigenous International Repatriation Conference, hosted by the Chickasaw Nation, at the Artesian Hotel, 1001 W. 1st St. (401) 727-1400 | internationalrepatriation.wordpress.com 9 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

CALENDAR

November 18: Ottawa, ON, and online Inuit and First Nations Art Auction hosted by Walker’s Fine Art and Estate Auctioneer. Auction is at Tudor Hall, 3750 North Bowesville Rd. beginning Wednesday, November 18th, at 6:00 pm | (866) 224-5814 | walkersauctions.com

November 21–March 6: Salem, MA Native Fashion Now at the Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square | (978) 745-9500 | pem.org

November 26–June 6: Santiago, Chile Mantos Funerarios de Paracas: Ofrendas Para la Vida at the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, Bandera 361 +56 2 2928 1500 | precolombino.cl

November 27–29: Santa Fe, NM SWAIA Winter Market at the Santa Fe Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy St. Preview Friday, November 27, 6:00 pm– 9:00 pm. $15 for all three days | (505) 983-5220 | swaia.org

BAHTI INDIAN ARTS fine Indian art for over 60 years St. Phillip’s Plaza 4330 N. Campbell #73 Tucson, AZ 520.577.0290 119 E. Palace Ave. Santa Fe, NM 505.983.4542

December 1–January 16: Portland, OR Canoe Journeys: Joe Feddersen at Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis St. | (503) 222-1142 | froelickgallery.com

December 3 & 4: Santa Fe, NM Acting OUT: Symposium on Indigenous Performance Art • Thursday, December 3, 10:00 am–5:00 pm, symposium and workshops at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 710 Camino Lejo.

• Friday, December 4, 9:00 am–4:00 pm, symposium at the New Mexico Museum of Art 107 W. Palace Ave. • Friday, December 4, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm, performances by James Luna, Sheila Tishla Skinner, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Rebecca Belmore at Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St. $25 admission/$10 for students.

(505) 428-5907 | iaia.edu/museum

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Kelly Church woodlandarts.com artcove@hotmail.com

December 3–March 6: Barrie, ON Reading the Talk at MacLaren Art Centre, 37 Mulcaster St. $5 suggested donation. Opening reception Thursday, December 3, 7:00 pm–9:00 pm. Curatorial talk Friday, December 4, 10:30 am at the Georgian College Campus Gallery | +1 (705) 721-9696 | maclarenart.com

distinctively innovative and

December 3–March 13: Barrie, ON

traditional

Robert Houle: Obscured Horizons at MacLaren Art Centre, 37 Mulcaster St. $5 suggested donation. Opening reception Thursday, December 3, 7:00 pm–9:00 pm +1 (705) 721-9696 | maclarenart.com

black ash basketry

December 3–January TBA: Seattle, WA Resurgence: Rivers of the Pacific Northwest, group show, at Stonington Gallery, 125 S. Jackson St. Opening reception Thursday, December 3, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm | (206) 405-4040 stoningtongallery.com WI NT E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

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CALENDAR

December 4–6: Mérida, Yucatán, MX

January 20–May 8: Brantford, ON

13th Annual Arte a Mano Market at Avenida Itzeas and Calle 31, with 80 artists, free. Sponsored by the Amigos de los Artistas/Artesanos Nuevos de Yucatán, AC (AANY) | aany.org

No Word for Art, solo exhibit of Santee Smith, at the Woodland Cultural Centre, 184 Mohawk St. | (519) 759-2650 woodland-centre.on.ca

December 4–6: Washington, DC, and New York, NY

January 22–24: Carefree, AZ

National Museum of the American Indian Native Art Market at NMAI and NMAI George Gustav Heye Center DC (202) 633-1000, NY (212) 514-3700 | nmai.si.edu

December 11 & 12: Window Rock, AZ 18th Annual Keshmish Festival at the Navajo Nation Museum, with 40 artists. Friday, 9:00 am–7:00 pm, Saturday, 9:00 am–5:00 pm | (928) 871-7941 | navajonationmuseum.org

December 12: Orono, ME 21st Annual Maine Indian Basketmakers Sale and Demonstration at the Hudson Museum, Collins Center for the Arts at the University of Maine, 9:00 am–3:00 pm (207) 581-1904 | umaine.edu/hudsonmuseum

January 15–April 30: Tulsa, OK Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain at the Gilcrease Museum | (918) 596-2700 | gilcrease.utulsa.edu

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5th Annual Carefree Indian Market and Cultural Festival at the Carefree Desert Gardens, 101 Easy St., 10:00 am–5:00 pm, with 100 artists | (480) 488-2014 | magicbirdfestivals.com

January 22–June 13: Santa Fe, NM Akunnittinni: A Kinngait Family Portrait—Pitseolak Ashoona, Napachie Pootoogook, Annie Pootoogook at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 108 Cathedral Place (505) 983-1666 | iaia.edu/museum

January 22–July 31, 2016: Santa Fe, NM Lloyd Kiva New: Art, Design, & Influence at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 108 Cathedral Place (505) 983-1666 | iaia.edu/museumasu.edu For more events, visit our online calendar at

firstamericanartmagazine.com/calendar.

benjam in harjo jr. american indian artist Running with Scissors, 2015, gouache, 6 × 10 inches

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Advertiser Index Alaska on Madison | alaskaonmadison.com

1

Bahti Indian Arts | bahti.com

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Cherokee Heritage Center | cherokeeheritage.org

interior back cover

Cherokee Heritage Press | cherokeeheritage.org

94

Cherokee Nation Tourism | visitcherokeenation.com

6

Chickasaw Nation Artesian Arts Festival chickasaw.net

interior front cover

Kelly Church | woodlandarts.com

93

Denver Art Museum | denverartmuseum.org

5

Orlando Dugi | orlandodugi.com

95

Duke University Press | dukeupress.edu

3

Grey Dog Trading | greydogtrading.com

13

Benjamin Harjo Jr. | benjaminharjojr.com

95

Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair | heard.org/fair

9

Home & Away Gallery | homeandawaygallery.com

49

Indian Arts and Crafts Board | www.doi.gov/iacb

48

Idyllwild Arts | idyllwildarts.org

8

information, visit firstamericanartmagazine.com/advertise.

Inuit Images | inuitimages.com/nativeart

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ORGANIZATIONS

Keshi the Zuni Connection | keshi.com

21

The Southeastern Indian Artists Association is a Native American-run,

Melissa Melero | melissamelero.com

48

Native American Art Appraisals, Inc. | naaainc.com

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Classified Ads Advertise in First American Art Magazine! Classifieds provide affordable advertising solutions for art professionals and service providers. For more

nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote and educate about the arts and artists of tribal peoples. SEIAA, while a network of primarily Southeastern tribal artists, is supportive of all federally recognized Native artists. Visit www.seiaa.org for more info.

Great Basin Native Artists, collective of Native American professional artists in Nevada and Eastern Sierra Nevada range, provides support through our online directory, image gallery, exhibiting opportunities, art business workshops, forum for Native artists, interested community members to connect and interact, and an online presence for rural Native artists. For more information, contact Melissa Melero at (775) 424-3159 or gbnativeartists@gmail.com and visit www.greatbasinnativeartists.com.

INTERN/VOLUNTEER Internships at First American Art Magazine, LLC, available through IAIA or independently. Writing, graphics, or business focus. Volunteers needed for tabling/events. Contact us at: info@firstamericanartmagazine.com.

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Noksi Press | noksi.com 96 Ralph T. Coe Foundation | ralphtcoefoundation.org

49

Jack Sabon | sabonart.com

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Sheppard Galleries, UNR | unr.edu/art

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Southwest Traditions | southwesttraditions.com

21

Treasures of the Southwest | treasuresofthesouthwest.com 11 Walker’s Fine Art & Estate Auctions | walkersauctions.com Wheelwright Museum | wheelwright.org

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exterior back cover

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Wheelwright Museum

OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

www.wheelwright.org 704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505-982- 4636 or 1- 800 -607- 4636

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Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry An Essential New Mexico Experience

The most important exhibition on Native American jewelry anywhere

The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, in collaboration with the Ralph T. Coe Foundation, presents:

Connoisseurship and Good Pie: Ted Coe and Collecting Native Art Through April 17, 2016 Support for these projects is provided in part by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers’ Tax; New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts; Eugene V. Thaw; Richard and Willa Sisson; and many private donors nationwide. Photos by Jonathan Batkin and Addison Doty. Photo at left © Ralph T. Coe Foundation for the Arts, Inc.