First American Art Magazine No. 11, Summer 2016

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

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

No. 11, Summer 2016

Marwin Begaye Kansuet Marianne Nicolson Jane Osti

Iroquois Whimsies Mata Ortiz Pottery Great Plains Horse Painting Maya Roots in Yucatecan Art

FROELick GALLERY

Rick BARTOW Things You Know BuT CannoT Explain A retrospective exhibition and fully illustrated monograph examines his work since 1979. Exhibition tour dates include

Froelick Gallery represents contemporary artists including: Rick Bartow, Wiyot Solo exhibit September 2016 Joe Feddersen, Colville

August 19 to December 31, 2016, iAiA Museum of contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe.

Victor Maldonado, Purépecha lineage Solo exhibit August 2016

Book available from gallery or at Heydaybooks.com Organized by the Jordan Schintzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon.

Gail Tremblay, Mi’kmaq and Onondaga

Rick Bartow, Voices II, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 36˝x 36˝ photo: Rebekah Johnson

714 NW Davis, Portland, OR 97209 503.222.1142 FroelickGallery.com

SUMMER 2016

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CELEBRATION 2016

Time-honored customs made new The Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian celebrate the perpetuation of their traditional culture and arts through the biennial Celebration. It is the largest gathering of Southeast Alaska Native peoples in the world. I hope you join us at Celebration 2016. Come witness our traditional songs and dances. See the winning Northwest Coast art at our juried art competition and visit our Native art market. Make Juneau, Alaska, a destination this year. Come celebrate with us.

— Rosita Kaaháni Worl, President, Sealaska Heritage Institute

WWW.SEALASKAHERITAGE.ORG

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GIT-HOAN DANCERS, LEAD DANCE GROUP FOR CELEBRATION 2016 / PHOTO BY BRIAN WALLACE

JUNE 8-11 • JUNEAU, ALASKA

ISSUE NO. 11, SUMMER 2016 FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Iroquois Whimsies Wandeyu Estrada-Goeman (Onondaga)

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Mata Ortiz Pottery Cathy Short (Citizen otawatomi)

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The Art of Horse Painting by the Plains Nations Kim Mariette

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Hatsutsil Uchben: Maya Art Inspires a New Generation in the Yucatán Geoffrey E. Aronson

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Recent Developments

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Seven Directions Ashley Pourier (Oglala Lakota)

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xploring ative Graphic esign Eunique Yazzie (Navajo) eebinnaukzhik Southall ( ama Chippewa)

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Art + Literature Santee Frazier (Cherokee Nation) Matthew yan Smith, h

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In Memoriam Rick Bartow (Wiyot-Yurok) America Meredith (Cherokee ation)

ARTIST PROFILES Marwin Begaye: Navajo Printmaker Suzanne ewman Fricke, h

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Kansuet (Lucio López Cansuet): Guna Painter eter Szok, h

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Marianne Nicolson, PhD: Dzawada’enuxw Interdisciplinary Artist and Educator Matthew yan Smith, h

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Jane Osti: Cherokee Ceramic Artist America Meredith (Cherokee

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Guest Column Copyright Protection and the Arts evin . emper, h , LLM 52

Guest Column Authentic American Treasures: Native American Art & Crafts Lars rutak, h Calendar

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REVIEWS

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Art Exhibit Reviews

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Book Review

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COVER: Kansuet (Guna), detail of Simbiosis, 2013, mixed media on canvas, 59 × 55 ¹/₈ in. Image courtesy of Allegro Galer a.

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Issue No. 11, Summer 2016 ISS

FESTIVAL of

Woodland Indian Art & Culture JULY 1, 2 & 3 2016 RADISSON HOTEL & CONFERENCE CENTER 2040 Airport Dr., Green Bay, WI Across from the Airport

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Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee ation) Literary Editor: Matthew yan Smith, h Marketing Director: arbara ar o (Cherokee descent) Circulation Manager: Melissa ominguez Copy Editor: osa Cays (Chicana) Proofreaders: osa Cays (Chicana), Staci Golar (Cornish- elshAmerican), and onda awlins Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee ation) Design Consultant: eebinnaukzhik Southall ( ama Chippewa) Great Basin Representative: Melissa Melero-Moose ( aiute-Modoc) Great Lakes Representative: elly Church (Odawa-O ibwe) Editorial Advisory Board: heather ahtone (Choctaw-Chickasaw) mily aozous, h , (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa ( opi-Choctaw) Maggie Ohnesorgen (Mestiza) aula ivera ( aos ueblo) Mary Jo atson, h (Seminole) en illiams Jr. ( orthern Arapaho-Seneca) Advertising Representatives: arbara ar o (Cherokee descent) Laura alkingstick ( astern and Cherokee) Contact: ads@firstamericanartmagazine.com Social Media: Jacquie Archambeau (Cherokee ation), Staci Golar (Cornish- elsh-American), and America Meredith (Cherokee ation) International distribution by isticor Magazine istribution Services.

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Editor’s Greetings

and the experience it generated in audiences rather than the quality of what was fashioned.3

Shiner, the philosophy and visual arts professor, writes: FRIEND RECENTLY WROTE, “How is there To elevate some genres to the spiritual status of fine art and still a craft-versus-fine-art debate going on?” their producers to heroic creators while relegating other After she asked this, the terms kept coming up genres to the status of mere utility and their producers to in conversations, often with Native artists. Like fabricators is more than a conceptual transformation … The so many art terms, these words are simultaneously vague genres and activities chosen for elevation and those chosen and loaded with unspoken implications. Why would we use for demotion reinforce race, class, and gender lines …4 language that cast our own Berger explains, “Since creations in a dim light? cultures outside of the Fine art has historically West had never divorced referred to nonutilitarian aesthetics from utility, it was art, and craft has referred to easy for European Americans functional art. However, the to devalue even visually implication has been that craft alluring objects nonwhite is less than fine art. Fine art is peoples produced, given that pure and driven by content, such objects always served a while craft focuses solely on practical function.”5 materials and technique.

Women’s artwork in This conceptual divide particular has been singled began in the late 18th century. out as craft. In the late 1960s “Art for art’s sake”—that visual and 1970s, Feminist and Pop art should have no utilitarian artists directly confronted and purpose—was proposed overturned these prejudices.

by Prussian philosopher The most exalted art Immanuel Kant in his 1790 forms within Indigenous 1 Critique of Judgment and communities are those that echoed by many others in have been labeled craft by the following century. “ ‘The historical Western writers. fine arts’ were those that fit In the Andes, textiles have the aestheticist criteria of been the highest regarded art art for the sake of art and medium for centuries, while for the sake of nothing else,” on the Northern Plains, quillwrites David E. W. Fenner.2 work was so highly regarded, While the art world has America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Gunsmoke, 2011, fumage ( alo the practice of the art form opened up considerably in Santo smoke) and acrylic on poplar panel, 14 × 11 in., private collection. the last four decades, this required membership to his work pays homage to om hreepersons (Cherokee, 1889 19 9) and Enlightenment-era philosophy his invention of the om hreepersons holster, still in use today. exclusive societies and quilling lingers in mainstream culture. itself was carefully governed Art historian Dr. Martin A. Berger sums up the situaby ceremonies. Tribes, such as the Kiowa Indian Tribe, tion when he refers to philosopher/art theorist Larry Shiner’s United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and Cherokee point in The Invention of Art: Nation, all designate their own master artists and promote the art forms they most value. These include beadwork, [Trace] our modern conception of art back to the basketry, and other functional art forms. eighteenth-century separation of the fine arts from crafts, Conceptual meaning can be expressed in any art media, of artists from artisans, and of aesthetic pleasure from whether functional or not. If much of the global art world has entertainment. These divisions broke a two-thousandmoved on from using these short-lived Western divisions, let year-old Western convention that art was any activity us do the same. Let us define our own art on our own terms. practiced with skill and grace. In the modern West, art came —America Meredith to be defined by the product created, the person making it,

A

1. David E. W. Fenner, Art in Context: Understanding Aesthetic Value (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 7.

2. Ibid.

3. Martin A. Berger, A Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 99.

4. Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 7.

5. Martin A. Berger, A Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture, 100.

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Letters to FAAM Subscribing

R

ECENTLY I was at Shan Goshorn’s house, and she gave me a copy of your magazine. It’s great!

Very well laid-out and written. I subscribed! Hope you’re well.

Sterlin Harjo (Seminole-Muscogee) Tulsa, OK

Mvto! Likepvs cē! Thank you so much for subscribing, since that is what helps our publication grow.

Terminology

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ADMIRE YOUR WORK, but please stop perpetuating the racist label of Native Americans or, just as awful, tribal peoples or Indigenous peoples, since they all have that same disgusting connotation of our being unwashed and uncultured and savage on the American continent … before the great civilizing nations of Europe took over.

Leave those terms out of your magazine.

It’s demeaning and disgusting, just as the word Indian is continentally incorrect … and thus ridiculous. The actual term for the people who populated the Americas for ten thousand years before anyone else is, as you suggest, First Americans! It is not Native Americans. It is not American Indians. It is not tribal peoples or Indigenous Americans but simply First Americans!

Please respect. Call us by our rightful name of First Americans throughout your beautiful art magazine, with all the grandeur and historical significance that the name implies.

Respectfully submitted, John LaChance Carson, CA Thank you for sharing your views. However, we Indigenous peoples across the Americas do not all agree upon how we wish to be called. Aboriginal peoples of Canada use the terms Inuit, Métis, and First Nations, and some Canadians define Native American as “being from the United States.” Native Americans often refers to Indigenous peoples of the United States, while American Indian refers to all Indigenous peoples of the Americas that are not Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, Métis, or Mestizo. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples of Guyana prefer the term Amerind.

In 1995, the US Census Bureau conducted a survey and discovered that a greater percentage of American Indians in the United States prefer the term American Indian to other terms. Quite a few Native nations use the terms Indian and tribe in their legal names today, for example, the Coquille Indian Tribe, Hoh Indian Tribe, Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Tejon Indian Tribe, Tunica-Biloxi Indian Tribe, Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe, and many others.

Many different perspectives exist on the subject of terminology, and we honor the diversity of these perspectives.

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HAVE RECEIVED A COPY of your beautiful First American Art Magazine and am so impressed. Lovely story you wrote of your journey exploring the mounds of southern Wisconsin and beyond [Issue No. 10, Spring 2016]. I am thrilled and proud to have a photo selected to help tell your story, and I must say it looks beautiful in print. Your magazine looks amazing from cover to cover, and I wish you continued success.

Craig Wilson Madison, WI Thank you so much for allowing us to use your extraordinary kite photography of the effigy mounds on Frank’s Hill in Muscoda, Wisconsin. Your aerial views helped bring the effigy mounds alive.

e welcome your letters to the editor! If we print your letter, we will send you a free copy of that issue of the magazine. lease email your letters to us at: info@firstamericanartmagazine.com or mail letters to: First American Art Magazine Attention: Editor 1000 Cordova lace, 843 Santa Fe, NM 87505.

ERRATA In FAAM No. 10, Spring 2016, page 74, we mistakenly spelled the first name of Eric Berkemeyer, curatorial assistant at Denver Art Museum, with a k.

SUMMER 2016

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4TH ANNUAL NATIVE AMERICAN ART MARKET AND CULTURAL CELEBRATION

Roger Broer (Oglala Lakota)

PEOPLE OF THE PLAINS A Gathering of Arts and Culture

“July at Crazy Horse Memorial”

JULY 15-16, 2016 Main Street Square, Rapid City, South Dakota Art, Performance, Culture, Community

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ME MO R MA IAL D Y 27 AY W –29 EE , 20 KEN 16 D MUSEUM-QUALITY NATIVE AMERICAN

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ART SHOW & SALE • OVER 200 ARTISTS

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SUMMER 2016

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Contributing Writers GEOFFREY ELLIS ARONSON, former adjunct

photography professor at the American InterContinental University in Atlanta, has maintained his lifetime tradition of teaching at institutions with ridiculously long names and is currently an English instructor at Centro de Idiomas de Sureste in Mérida, Mexico. He has abandoned the land of frigid winters for warmer climes, the taste of tamales, and sunnier days. For the past six years, he has lived in the heart of the Maya community, an hour away from Chichén Itzá.

MICHOLE ELDRED (Catawba Nation-Eastern Band

Cherokee) is a writer, curator, and educator. She received her bachelor’s degree in art and museum studies at University of South Florida and her master’s in education from Berry College. Much of her work is focused on curating Indigenous art and historical exhibitions. She believes that the process of art making and enjoyment of the arts should be accessible to all peoples. Her work in writing art curriculum and teaching the arts to people with disabilities is reflected in the interpretive planning she creates when presenting exhibitions.

WANDEYU ESTRADA-GOEMAN (Onondaga)

grew up on the Onondaga Nation, the central tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy in Upstate New York. She graduated with a degree in television/radio/film from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she produced several short films and documentaries.

She currently works as photographer and staff writer for Ononda’geh Ongwawenna, Onondaga Nation’s newsletter, and covers issues relevant to her community.

SUZANNE NEWMAN FRICKE, PhD

(Ashkenazic-American), wrote her art history dissertation at the University of New Mexico on 20th-century Native pottery.

She has taught art history at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. She co-curated two exhibits that traveled in Russia in 2012 and 2014. She curated a third show, Woven Together: Celebrating Spider Woman in Contemporary Native American Art, which exhibited in two Russian museums in 2015.

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.

ANNIKA K. JOHNSON is a doctoral candidate in history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.

Her dissertation research examines the confluence of Eastern 1 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Dakota and European-American visual culture in the Upper Midwest during the mid-19th century. Contemporary art plays a large role in her interpretation of historical images and their legacy. In September 2016 she will begin a research fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

LARS KRUTAK, PhD, is a research associate in the

Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. His dissertation research focused on Rarámuri (Tarahumara) arts and crafts producers in Mexico. He is the author of Tattoo Traditions of Native North America: Ancient and Contemporary Expressions of Identity (Stichting LM Publishers, 2014), among other books on the subject of Indigenous tattoo. Krutak is a curatorial consultant and photographer for the current Royal Ontario Museum exhibition Tattoos: Ritual. Identity. Obsession. Art. and Museum of International Folk Art exhibition, Sacred Realm: Blessings and Good Fortune Across Asia.

MICHELLE LANTERI is a freelance writer and master of arts student in art history and Native American studies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. She holds two bachelor of arts degrees in media studies and art history and museum studies from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. For two years she served as a curatorial assistant at GreenHill, a contemporary art center in North Carolina.

Lanteri’s current projects include Itaa Katsi: Our Life, a 2016 exhibition focused on Hopi arts and culture at the New Mexico State University Museum, and her thesis, centered on the musealization of Native American artworks.

THOLLEM McDONAS is a peripatetic pianist,

keyboardist, vocalist, composer, improviser, collaborator, activist, teacher, and author. He has released move than 50 albums across the stylistic spectrum on 20 different vanguard labels. He performs throughout North America and Europe as a soloist and in collaboration with musicians, dancers, and filmmakers. McDonas has contributed articles to Anthology of Essays on Deep Listening and Full Moon Magazine.

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 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.

KIM MARIETTE is a writer focused on equine subjects. She has written for several magazines, including Art Horse Magazine and The Western Horseman, and is a regular contributor to the Draft Horse Journal and The Morgan Horse. Mariette recently published the book When Barn Fire Strikes: How to Protect Your Horses and Facilities from Barn Fires, Wildfires, and Other Emergencies (Alpine Publications, 2015).

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 has contributed Comanche short stories, including “Numukutsua Tubini: Where Is the Buffalo?”

WORKSHOPS AND FESTIVAL

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 Native-designed clothing and accessories. Short serves on the board of Wings of America. She exhibits throughout the Southwest and is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

MATTHEW RYAN SMITH, PhD, is the curator

of the Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant in Brantford, Ontario.

He is also a sessional professor of curatorial studies in the Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto, Mississauga. Currently, Matthew is 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 such as 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.

NEEBINNAUKZHIK SOUTHALL (Chippewas of Rama First Nation) is a writer, graphic designer, and artist working in photography, body painting, and threedimensional 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 as the public relations and web coordinator, where she photographs, designs, and manages media and communications.

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.

MARINA TYQUIENGCO, MA (Chamorro), is a

doctoral student in history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Tyquiengco studies contemporary Indigenous art of Australia, Canada, and the United States with an emphasis on photographic-based works. She serves as art editor for Hot Metal Bridge magazine. She has contributed to and edited for Contemporaneity, the graduate art history journal at the University of Pittsburgh.

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.

Register Now! summer@idyllwildarts.org 951.468.7265 idyllwildarts.org #iamtheIdyllwild SUMMER 2016

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Recent Developments MUSEUMS The Denver Art Museum received a $2.25 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to endow a Native Arts curator leadership position and support an American Indian art curatorial fellowship. The museum issued a call for candidates for the fellowship, a postdoctoral position.

The Audain Art Museum, a new museum in Whistler, British Columbia, opened its doors in March. Housing the British Columbian art collection of philanthropists Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa, the museum features historical and contemporary First Nations art. Its inaugural temporary exhibit is Mexican Modernists.

The territorial government of Nunavut is loaning 8,000 Inuit artifacts to the Inuit Art Centre of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Private and public funds, including a $15 million pledge from the government of Manitoba, have been granted toward the construction of the planned art center.

The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, conducted a major renovation of its permanent museum exhibit to celebrate its 40th-anniversary. The exhibit We Are of This Place: The Pueblo Story shares

narratives of all 19 Pueblo tribes in New Mexico through their own voices.

The Five Civilized Tribes Museum of Muskogee, Oklahoma, hired T. Sean Barney to serve as its new executive director. Barney’s background is in finance and human resources. The museum, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, occupies the Indian Union Agency building, built in 1875.

The Burke Museum in Seattle hired Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse as its curator of Northwest Native American art. She is also the associate director of the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art and the assistant professor of art history in the University of Washington’s School of Art, Art History, and Design and American Indian Studies Department.

ART FAIRS The Best of Show winners of the 58th Annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market were Jody Naranjo (Santa Clara) and Glendora Fragua (Jemez) for their collaborative pot, Pueblo Luck. The Guild 60th Anniversary Theme Award for Contemporary Pottery went to Jody Naranjo, and the Conrad House Award went to Sho Sho Esquiro (Kaska Dena-Cree). Classification winners were

Ernest Benally (Navajo), jewelry and lapidary; Jody Naranjo and Glendora Fragua, pottery; Marla Allison (Laguna), paintings, drawings, graphics, photography; Raymond Chee Sr. (Navajo), wood carvings; Robert Dale Tsosie (Navajo), sculpture; Berdine Begay (Navajo), textiles, weavings, clothing; Orlando Dugi (Navajo), Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Absentee Shawnee-Seminole), and Kenneth Williams (Northern ArapahoSeneca), diverse art forms; and Sarah Sockbeson (Penobscot), baskets.

Federación Regional Indígena del Alto Mayo (FERIAM) and several government agencies hosted the inaugural Feria del arte ancestral del pueblo awajún (Fair of the Ancient Art of the Awajún People) at the Regional Directorate of Culture San Martín in Moyobamba, Peru. The Awajún are a Jivaroan-speaking people of the Peruvian Amazon, who resisted Inca and Spanish conquest.

The first annual Southwest Indian Arts Event took place at Desert Diamond Casino in Tucson, Arizona. Awards were determined by participating artists, with the Grand Artists’ Choice Award going to Jolene Bird (Kewa). Geneva Scott Shabi (Navajo) and Anderson J. Peynetsa (Zuni) both won honorable mentions. The American Indian Association of Tucson and Bahti Indian Arts organized the market after the Arizona State Museum stopped hosting the Southwest Indian Art Fair due to budget cuts.

Objects of Art Shows, owned by Kim Martindale and John Morris, acquired the San Francisco Tribal and Textile Arts Show, which takes place every February in Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California. Objects of Art Shows hosts several annual art fairs in California and New Mexico.

ART SHOWS

Awa n dancers at the first Awa n Art Fair held at the egional irectorate of Culture San Mart n in Moyobamba, eru. Image courtesy of the Federaci n egional Ind gena Awa n del Alto Mayo.

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The grand prizewinner of the 45th annual Trail of Tears Art Show, hosted by the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma, was Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation). John Walkabout Owen (Cherokee Nation) won the

Trail of Tears Award, Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee) won the Bill Rabbit Legacy Award, and Bessie Russell (Cherokee Nation) won the Betty Garner Elder Award. Category winners were Mike Dart (Cherokee Nation), basketry; Diana Stanfill (Cherokee Nation), graphics; Ronda Talbert Moss (Cherokee Nation), miniature; Dan HorseChief (CherokeePawnee), painting; Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo), pottery; Antonio Grant (Eastern Band Cherokee), jewelry; and Sheila Bazil (Cherokee Nation), emerging artist.

The Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma, hosted its annual Art Under the Oaks Competitive Show.

Carolyn Pallett (Cherokee Nation) won Best of Show. Category winners were Vicki Coppedge (Cherokee Nation), traditional basketry; Mary Edward Smith (Muscogee Creek), commercial basketry; Carolynn Pallett, beadwork; Noel Grayson (Cherokee Nation), cultural items; Ruth Fallen (Cherokee Nation), textiles; Toneh Chuleewah (Cherokee Nation), jewelry; Carolyn Bernard Young (Choctaw Nation), wheel-thrown pottery; Candessa Tehee (Cherokee Nation), hand-built pottery; Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation), sculpture; Dylan Cavin (Choctaw Nation), 2-D miniatures; Ronda Talbert Moss (Cherokee Nation), 3-D miniatures; Dylan Cavin, graphics; and Gebon Barnoski (Cherokee Nation), painting.

HONORS The First Peoples Fund 2016 Artist in Business Fellows include David Bernie (Ihanktonwan Dakota), Jason Brown (Penobscot), Frank Cousins (Skokomish), Leslie Deer (Muscogee Creek), Daniel Frost (Cheyenne River Sioux), Karis Jackson (Crow-HidatsaArikara), Hillary Kempenich (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Gilbert Kills Pretty Enemy III (Hunkpapa Lakota), Chris Pappan (Kaw-Osage-Cheyenne River Lakota), Ronald Paquin (Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa), Molina Parker (Oglala Lakota), Derek Poitra (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Rosy Simas (Seneca), Brian Szabo (Sicangu Lakota),

Christopher Youngblood Cutler and Jennifer Moquino (both Santa Clara), Koi & Octopus, 2016, slip, clay. his collaborative work won first place in the nontraditional design division in pottery at the 201 eard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, hoenix, A . hoto: A. Meredith.

Darren Thompson (Ojibwe); and Valerie Veis (Chippewa-Cree). Their 2016 Cultural Capital Fellows include Brendon Albers (Cheyenne River Sioux), David Boxley (Tsimshian), Carol Emarthle-Douglas (Northern ArapahoSeminole), Lani Strong Hotch (Tlingit), Delbert Miller (Skokomish), Beverly Bear King Moran (Hunkpapa Lakota), Clarissa Rizal (Tlingit), Sondra Segundo (Haida), and Wayne Valliere (Ojibwe).

Phillip John Aarnaquq Charette (Yup’ik) was recognized by the Harvard Graduate School of Education with an Alumni Achievement Award at its Alumni of Color conference. Charette, a mask maker and woodcarver, serves as director of the Department of Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

The 2016 Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeships Award was given to master artist David Dutcher (Sault Chippewa) and apprentice Marjorie “Maggie” Maracle (Mohawk) for sewing beaded, pucker-toe hide moccasins.

PROJECTS Three B.C. Ferries will display Coast Salish art designs on their exteriors.

Through a competition of local artists, Darlene Gait (Esquimalt Nation) was chosen to design orca whales and wolves for the exterior of the ferries.

Ser Indígena (Being Indigenous) received funding from the Chilean National Council for Culture and the Arts to publish Reading on the Web to Indigenous Peoples III, the

third installment of literature about the Indigenous peoples of Chile. The project, founded in 2007, is online at serindigena.org.

ORGANIZATIONS Figurative painter and muralist Nani Chacon (Navajo-Chicana) parted ways with the activist organization Honor the Treaties and cited her concerns that the group exploited Native and Chicano issues for financial and personal gain.

Honor the Treaties was renamed and reorganized as the Amplifier Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, Washington, in care of Aaron Huey, a photographer who was criticized in 2013 for photographing sensitive ceremonies in South Dakota.

CRIME and LEGAL MATTERS Ecuador’s Comisión Nacional de Lucha Contra el Tráfico Ilícito de Bienes Culturales (National Commission for the Fight Against Smuggling Cultural Property) joined forces with officials in Argentina and Spain to recover 567 items of cultural patrimony. These include colonial-era artworks, maps, and precontact artifacts.

A thief stole $10,000 worth of Inuit art, the cash register, camera, and a narwhal tusk from the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit, Nunavut. The individual cut the museum’s phone lines to prevent the alarm from sounding, removed a Plexiglas panel, and broke a window to gain entry.

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Seven Directions Ashley Pourier

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ORN AND RAISED on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Ashley Pourier (Oglala Lakota) works at the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School. She earned her bachelor of fine arts degree from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and majored in studio art with a focus in three-dimensional art, Asian studies, and Japanese language with a minor in art history. Random, but she recommends studying what interests you!

After returning home from her undergraduate studies, Pourier stayed true to her interest and received a funded internship from the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School, became assistant curator, and is now curator.

Indigenous perspective. This show was curated by Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota) and gives New York audiences some of the most exciting Plains art today! The George Gustav Heye Center is strategically wooing art audiences over to Native art. It will be on view through December 6, 2016, so see if you get the chance. nmai.si.edu/explore/exhibitions

SOUTH. Our good friends at Racing Magpie, LLC,

Bear’s Heart (Southern Cheyenne, 1851–1882), Cheyennes Among the Buffalo, ca. 1875, graphic, crayon on paper. hoto: Carmelo Guadagno, ational Museum of the American Indian. art of Unbound: Narrative Art of the Plains at the Smithsonian s ational Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav eye Center, ew ork, .

are up to all kinds of great projects in South Dakota.

Mary Bordeaux (Sicangu Lakota) and Peter Strong launched this nonprofit organization to promote Native and regional arts. They offer consulting services and have created an arts incubator in Rapid City that houses studios, workshops, book signings, exhibits, and much more. racingmagpie.com

NORTH. The hyper-saturated paintings of Keith

BraveHeart (Oglala Lakota) play off the humor and challenges of the realities of being a Native American in the 21st century. He studied studio arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He’s moving into film with his camerawork on the documentary We Are A Horse Nation. facebook.com/Braveheartwork

EAST. Currently exhibiting at the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, Unbound: Narrative Art of the Plains presents modern and contemporary Great Plains artwork from an 1 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

eter Strong and Mary ordeaux (Sicangu Lakota), codirectors and coowners of acing Magpie, LLC, apid City, S .

BELOW. I had the pleasure of meeting Woodlands artists Kelly Church (Odawa-Ojibwe) and Wanesia Spry Misquadace (Fond du Lac Ojibwe). Both have to travel to remote forests in their homelands to harvest from trees that are under attack by introduced, invasive species.

The emerald ash borer has devastated the black ash tree, while the bronze birch borer destroys birch trees. These infestations take place below the bark—out of sight but not out of mind of these and other basket weavers and birch-bark biters, who became environmental activists out of necessity. These artists are fighting to save the trees that are integral to Great Lakes forest ecosystems. woodlandarts.com and wanesiamisquadace.blogspot.com

Melissa Melero-Moose (Paiute-Modoc), Tamano (Spring), mixed media with willows on canvas, 50 × 50 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

WEST. Paiute-Modoc artist and curator Melissa

Melero-Moose moved home to the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and is trying to establish her own art community.

Working with fellow Paiute and neighboring artists, Melissa founded the Great Basin Native Artists. This grassroots organization connects artists, provides a website and directory, hosts talks and workshops, and, by providing much-needed connections between curators and artists, has helped organize dozens of art shows to put Great Basin on the map. greatbasinnativeartists.com

CENTER. I love comics or graphic novels—whatever fits your fancy—so I love Native Realities Press. Let’s focus on superheroes. I’ve had a few conversations about the philosophy of superheroes concerning the infamous DC heroes and Marvel heroes. Remember, the United States of America is considered 240-some years old, whereas “ancient” civilizations have far richer oral histories to inspire more complex heroes. Native Realities Press is an Indigenous-run company raising the bar for Native graphic novels. nativerealities.com

Kelly Church (Odawa-Ojibwe), Grandmother Strawberry, 2014, wildharvested black ash splints, sweetgrass. Image courtesy of the artist.

ABOVE. The potential of 3D printers has just begun to be tapped in the art world. The Smithsonian Institution commissioned a 3D-printed sculpture of President Obama, and international artists have printed everything from vehicles to architecture with 3D printers. The technology has been harnessed to allow blind people to experience famous paintings through texture. Museums have replicated early Native artworks and Tania Larsson (Gwich’in) has replicated tanning and hunting tools in gypsum through 3D printing.

merald ash borer, an invasive beetle destroying the black ash trees of America, image courtesy of the S ept. of Agriculture (CC 2.0).

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Exploring Native Graphic Design

Eunique Yazzie: Design in the Community

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UNIQUE YAZZIE (NAVAJO) recently launched a creative service company called euniQue, LLC, in Phoenix, Arizona, where she lives with her son. She is Naaneesht’ezhi tachii’nii (Charcoal Streaked Division of the Red Running into Water Clan) born for Ma’ii deeshgiizhinii (Coyote Pass Clan). She grew up on and off the Navajo reservation.

When Yazzie was attending Chinle High School, her graphic design teacher, an older cousin, asked, “Have you given any thought on what you’re going to do for your profession or career?”

Her teacher/cousin gave Eunique a pamphlet for a design school, which at the time was a dazzling example of fast-paced design work and cuttingedge technology. Her father, a talented sketch artist, commented that had such an option been available when he was younger, it would have been his path.

Eunique enrolled in and graduated from Al Collins Graphic Design School.

At her first job at Sodexo, a food services and facilities management company, she handled the design and brand management for 43 dining and market establishments for Arizona State

By Neebinnaukzhik Southall

University, Northern Arizona University, library, bookstore, and community and other clients. Later, at The Arizona space serving English and Spanish Republic, she designed ads and eventuspeakers. In addition to their logo, she ally moved on to the parent company recently created a mural for the chilRepublic Direct, where she created dren’s nook that incorporates a map of designs for major clients and developed Phoenix and the Southwest, local flora, prepress concepts. She has also worked and interactive wooden pieces with with Red Note, Inc., National Urban numbers corresponding to 28 different Indian Family Coalition, the Visionary Indigenous languages in the Southwest.

Business Magazine, and American “I wanted everybody to see that we have Indian organizations at Arizona State. this rich mix of culture in this area, and A major project for her was that English isn’t the primary language rebranding the Phoenix Indian Center. in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and “I love teaching people about the power California,” she says. of color, the power of design, especially In Phoenix, she appreciates the when you are really trying to communicross-pollination of ideas she expericate to a certain population,” says Yazzie. ences when mingling and working with She standardized the center’s typefaces; diverse groups of people. She regularly adjusted their logo; designed new attends and participates in local art business cards, letterhead, and enveand design events such as the Phoenix lopes; and most importantly, developed chapter of CreativeMornings and the a new vibrant color palette to appeal to annual Phoenix Design Week. She a broader audience, particularly youth. savors the opportunity to learn and The colors correspond to particular teach as well as advocate for others. departments and programs. “Prickly Yazzie encourages Native designers to Pear Red,” an attractive hue, now not isolate themselves but rather engage represents the center. with the larger design community. She Eunique also serves as the director would like to see more Natives at local of marketing for Palabras Librería design events.

Bookstore, an intercultural, nonprofit “We need to be more present,” Eunique says. “We need to be in those spaces where we are not represented.

We need to show people that we are here, that we have ideas, we have voices.”

Having experienced the difficulties of alternating from insider to outsider in various situations, Eunique stresses that designers cannot let insecurities or other people’s issues hold them back. “I am here for a purpose, just as much as the next person has a purpose.”

Collaboration is important, too.

“We’re not all cut out to do it all,” says Yazzie. “If we are growing as a collective community rather than individuals, we are going to grow faster.”

Having lived on and off the reservation, she sees the need for individuals to take what they learn back to ABOVE: Eunique Yazzie (Navajo), 8 Oz. for You, 8 Oz. for Me, an installation about the negative their communities. “There needs to be impact of Arizona s mining on local water quality. O OSI : Logos and design by unique azzie.

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LEFT: unique azzie painting a mural at alabras Librer a ookstore for the children s nook. IG

a cycle,” she says. Recently, her aforementioned cousin asked her to help judge a design competition at Chinle High School. “I drove away almost in tears because it was such an emotional coming-back story—reflecting on my whole path as a designer.”

I asked her how young Native students can prepare for a career in design. “Right now you should be teaching them the fundamentals of design,” says Yazzie. While technical skills are important, a focus on production is not enough. Conceptual thinking is foundational to good design. “It’s really the idea that makes you a standout designer,” emphasizes the artist.

Eunique would like to see young Native designers take pride in what they do because “we have lineages that are based in design. We as Native Americans understand art, not just on a personal level but a community level, because it’s part of our community—that’s what holds us together.” She credits the prevalence of Navajo graphic designers and her own successes in commercial art to Navajo art practices.

“I think that rug weaving plays a

: he finished mural. Images courtesy of the artist.

big picture in design … Rug weaving is very technical. My grandmother was a famous rug weaver. I would watch her and I would see how methodical she was about it. And it wasn’t that she was putting yarn together just to put yarn together. It had a purpose, and it was telling a story. Rugs are pretty much stories of locations. They’re stories of people, they’re stories of families, they’re stories of a really rich, embedded culture. There are specific names for them, and there are specific names for designs in them.”

Eunique shared a moment where this cultural practice allowed for communication between her and her grandmother, who was going to create Eunique a biil, or rug dress, for her high school graduation. “I had drawn out this design that I wanted. And she just looked at me and she shook her head.”

Her grandmother spoke only Navajo, and Eunique could speak only English.

“I had my mom explain to her the design that I gave to her means something to me, and it means I want to be different.

I don’t want to be the same as everyone, but I still want to have my rug dress. I

still want to have that cultural part of me, but I also want to make it my own.

And then she kind of smiled, and so she did it.” The rug dress was bright green, which Eunique wore with dyed green hair to match. “It was my expression of who I was, and I’m glad that she understood that and she was happy with it. We had a moment where we had an understanding of each other in that rug.

“If you have [weaving] in your family line, your grandmother was super smart, because there is a lot of math that goes into those rugs, there is a lot of counting, there are a lot of processes. Grandmothers, just knowing when to split a design so that it equally matches, not just in the number of lines that they’re putting down but the space in between each of their designs—just the technicality by memory is amazing.

I am proud to come from that. It makes me really appreciate what I do.” When people ask why she likes design and where it comes from, Eunique says, “It’s in my blood. I know design because I saw it all around me.”

euniquecreative.com

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Iroquois Whimsies his humble ictoria-era souvenir gave rise to a new genre of beadwork among the audenosaunee and now is attracting the attention of avid collectors and art historians.

By Wandeyu Estrada-Goeman

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feel that while the term whimsy HOSE AREN’T glass is archaic, it is recognized in beads, are they?” many circles and does not A man sitting detract from its appeal to across from me collectors of Native art. lowers his spoon in his bowl Whimsies are ornately and leans over to examine the beaded soft sculptures, first string of iridescent, rice-shaped created by Iroquois artists in beads that the woman next to the early 19th century. The him sews onto black velvet. pieces, typically crafted from “Of course they’re glass,” velvet, cardboard, and stuffing, says the woman, not looking came in various shapes and up from her work. “Believe it or were the first items to feature not, I do listen to you.”1 the “raised” floral beadwork The man is Grant that is now the signature style Jonathan, a beadwork artist of the Iroquois people. from the Tuscarora, one of the Whimsies often took six nations of Haudenosaunee the form of items used in or the Iroquois Confederacy. the 19th-century homes of His companion is fellow Beaded Heart-Shaped Pincushion, Tuscarora Type, ca. 1870, crystal and glass bugle beads, 4 ¹/ in. diameter, Gerry iron collection. Image European women. Pincushions artist Karen Lynn Hill from courtesy of Gerry Biron. were the first and most Onondaga Nation, the central numerous type of whimsies tribe of the confederacy in produced. Other popular items were picture frames, needle Upstate New York. They are at the home of a mutual friend to cases, watch pockets, and whisk broom holders. chat about beadwork over lunch as I listen and take notes.

The original recipients of whimsies tucked them away The warm, cozy dining room is decorated from corner as special keepsakes and then passed them down as family to corner with antique and contemporary Native art. Grant heirlooms. In fact, many heirs have no idea of the object’s immediately spots a beaded, green velvet bird, hanging from a history or origin. Consequently, whimsies were often referred knob on a china cabinet. to as “Victorian” embroidery for many years, with no mention “You know that bird is Dolly Printup’s, right?” says of their Native artistry.

Grant, turning to his host. “Make sure to hang on to that.”2 Although endless designs were created, the construction While Grant is an artist, he is also an avid collector of of the whimsies was fairly consistent: a ground cloth provided beadwork, specifically a category of antique pieces, like the hanging bird, commonly known as “whimsies.” Flea marketers the “face” of the whimsy, was stretched over a cardboard frame, and then attached to a fabric backing of calico or and auctioneers in the 1950s were the first to use the term polished cotton. Paper patterns, typically of floral motifs, were “whimsy” to refer to the “whimsical” yet kitschy tourist glued onto the cloth, and beads were embroidered directly craft. Some beadwork artists and collectors prefer the terms onto the pattern. Besides the beaded elements in the center, “souvenir beadwork” or simply “Iroquois beadwork.” Others 1. Karen Lynn Hill, interview with Wandeyu Estrada-Goeman, February 2016.

2. Grant Jonathan, interview with Wandeyu Estrada-Goeman, February 2016.

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the sides of the piece were finished with tightly beaded edging, oftentimes accented with beaded loops and fringes. Whimsies were stuffed with various materials including straw, sawdust, and milkweed fluff.

Despite their original intent or eventual moniker, what is so fascinating about whimsies is what they represent. For Iroquois women, they were a physical manifestation of their resilience, creativity, ingenuity, and business savvy. They represented survival through community efforts and gender equality; things that were so foreign to many other societies yet were the foundation of Iroquois democracy.

Early History THE VICTORIAN AGE, with its rapidly expanding middle class, brought with it a huge boom in tourism. Travel, once only affordable to the upper class, was now accessible to the bourgeois masses. The whimsy was enormously popular among Victorian-era tourists, who were fascinated with their association with the lamentably, but not inconveniently, fading culture of Native peoples. The sparkling, beaded novelties were a must-have for travelers visiting areas around the Northeast, particularly Niagara Falls.

Tourists longed for an authentic experience, something pure and unsullied by industrialization. For many traveling to and around North America, this experience entailed an encounter with the “noble savage,” a tragic icon of the rugged frontier. The Victorian era was highly nostalgic, and an Indian-made memento was a reminder of a bygone era—wild and untouched, like the raging waters of Niagara Falls.

For Native people, years of war with colonies, disease, and the ongoing loss of land had taken a major toll, and traditional means of living were no longer sufficient to feed devastated communities. Since money was now the law of the land, “purse poor” Haudenosaunee communities were forced to find new ways to earn a living. Naturally, creating goods that could be sold to the waves of adventure-hungry tourists vying for a piece of their culture was a practical option.

Beadwork was nothing new to the Haudenosaunee.

For countless years before the arrival of European settlers, beads had been fashioned from quills, bone, pottery, and shells. Wampum, beads made from purple and white quahog clamshells, had been used to commemorate historical events such as treaties, strung in belts displaying symbolic motifs.

Europeans brought large, glass beads from Venice to the Iroquois. However, by the mid-19th century, small seed and tubular beads made in the Bohemian town of Jablonec became the most popular beads among the Haudenosaunee.

Although beads had been used to make jewelry and accent clothing worn within the community, items such as pincushions were first produced for outsiders.3 This indicates whimsies were made for the sole purpose of being sold, which naturally influenced their styles. Whimsy styles varied from one community to the next and changed over time.

Mohawk Whisk Broom Holder, 189 , glass seed beads, sprengperlen, sequins, cloth, collection of olores lliot. sed with permission.

Many of the earliest pieces found were made by the Seneca women in Tonawanda, most notably Caroline Parker (ca. 1826–1892), the sister of famed Seneca diplomat, Ely Parker. However, Seneca beadwork waned by the late 19th century. Caroline Parker, after marrying a Tuscarora chief, is said to have taught the women in his community how to bead the earlier floral designs. However, that idea is also disputed.

Most whimsies came from the Tuscarora Nation near Niagara Falls, and from the Mohawks of Kahnawake near Montreal, who made tens of thousands of whimsies between 1850 and 1920. The Tuscarora, who started producing whimsies before the Mohawks, are often credited for producing the first raised or embossed floral beadwork around the 1850s, but the technique’s origin is not known for sure. Although whimsy styles evolved throughout the hundred-year span of their popularity, mid-19th-century composition and motifs have most influenced contemporary Iroquois sewers and are widely recognized as the defining style of Iroquois beadwork.

With their proximity to Niagara Falls, the Tuscarora faced a widespread demand for their work. Every summer,

3. Historical photographs indicate that whimsies were used in Iroquois homes starting in the early 20th century. Beverly Gordon interviewed Mohawk and Onondaga people who remember seeing their grandmothers using beaded pincushions, whisk broom holders, and other whimsies in their homes. Beverly Gordon, “The Niagara Falls Whimsey: The Object as a Symbol of Cultural Interface” (doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1984): 310.

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ABOVE: Beaded Bag, Tuscarora Type, ca. 1910, glass beads, velvet, silk ribbon edge binding, glazed cotton edge gussets, × 5 in. (both sides shown), collection of Gerry iron. oth images courtesy of Gerry iron.

LEFT: Beaded Whisk Broom Holder, Mohawk Type, 1930, glass beads on velvet, 7 ⁷/₈ × 7 / in. (not including the fringe), collection of Gerry iron.

went to other locations in the United States and Canada, including popular vacation destinations in the Northeast.

Beadwork artist Gail Montour (Mohawk) recalls her mother, a well-known Mohawk sewer from Kahnawake, traveling as far west as Calgary and as far south as Florida to sell her beadwork.4 Although Mohawks also sold their beadwork at Niagara Falls, it became increasingly difficult after the Tuscarora Nation made a deal with the owner of the land near Niagara Falls, giving them exclusive sales rights over Canadian tribes. Other Iroquois and even non-Iroquois people still sold beadwork in similar styles near the falls, but due to a lack of detailed records from purchasers or sellers, the artist’s national origin is often only assumed.

Evolution of Whimsies

Tuscarora women, dressed in traditional clothing, laid their work by the grassy riverbanks of the falls and awaited the wagonloads of tourists. Local gift shops and bazaars around Niagara featured “Indian-made” souvenirs. Excursions to the Tuscarora Nation were offered, so tourists could have the authentic experience of purchasing their souvenirs from vendors in the village.

Unlike the Tuscarora, who had a massive tourist trade in their backyard, Mohawks had to travel to earn a living.

Although nearby Montreal was a lucrative market, sewers 4. Gail Montour, interview with Wandeyu Estrada-Goeman, February 2016.

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BEADWORK PRIOR TO THE 1850S was simple and featured flat, geometric, and organic designs drawn from customary community motifs. Small clear and colored seed beads dominated. Styles included many small pincushions in circle, heart, and eight-lobed shapes, often with beadwork on both sides. The popular, flat “zigzag bag” featured strings of tiny beads tacked down with another needle, a technique known as double-needle appliqué, to form zigzag designs.

Much of the known Seneca work is in this style, including Caroline Parker’s work.

The classic whimsy style emerged in the 1870s and featured elaborate, clear and white beadwork, moderately raised, on purple, beige, or blue velvet cloth, primarily with flower, bird, and leaf motifs. Given the large amount of crystal seed and bugle beads used during this period, the pieces have a glassy, lace-like appearance. While both Tuscarora and

Mohawks used the crystal-clear beads, the Tuscarora style tended to be more elaborate, covering most of the surface.

Mohawks often used blue, red, yellow, and green beads to accent the clear beadwork, customarily using all four colors together in one piece. However, no two have been found to be exactly alike.

Shortly after the death of Queen Victoria of England, whimsy styles evolved once again. Starting in the 1890s, the “baroque” style became popular. Mohawks produced a lot of work characterized by heavy ornamentation during this period. Wild, domestic, and even exotic animals such as lions and elephants appeared in designs. Hot-pink wool replaced the purple velvet as the favored ground cloth, and larger amber beads, chalk-white beads, and sequins were added to the bead palette.

Beaded tassel loops also emerged during this time.

Beadwork became remarkably raised with some pieces as high as two inches. Beaded words and numbers also appeared to mark the year, event, or location the whimsy was sold, such as Niagara Falls, 1901, and New York State Fair. Whimsies purchased during honeymoons bore sentimental expressions like I Love You and Remember Me. In an amusing tautology, some whimsies featured words that described the item itself, such as souvenir or a canoeshaped whimsy labeled boat. Most of the beadwork artists did not read or write in English, so they asked others to write out the word, which they then beaded. The writing was sometimes oddly worded, misspelled, or even backward.

The Victorian era ended by 1920 and the trend to buy Indian souvenirs had died down in the Northeast. Whimsies were still made during this period but were generally simpler and made with cheaper materials. Of course, a vast array of other souvenir beadwork was also created and sold. Collectors and scholars have spent countless hours studying and categorizing these objects by shape, style, materials, and origin.

e ce THOSE WHO STUDY souvenir art debate how much the style, evolution, and overall authenticity of the items have been affected by consumption by outside cultures. Native people have had to reinvent their identities, to a certain extent, in order to survive within the culture and economy their colonizers created.

How much outside influence affected Native souvenir art, particularly whimsies? The flora and fauna motifs obviously appealed to the tastes of non-Native, Victorian society.

Floral beadwork, with its rich fabrics and sparkling beads, could be compared to similar handicrafts done by Victorian women of European descent. The objects made were not ones typically made or used within Haudenosaunee communities until they were created as souvenirs—match holders, calling card cases, watch holders, and tie racks—all items from middle class, white society.

However, others contend that though the motivation to create souvenir beadwork was economically driven and influenced by its marketability to tourists, it always maintained

Beaded Watch Pocket, Tuscarora Type, ca. 18 0s 1880s, glass beads on wool, 3 × in. (not including the fringe), Gerry iron collection. Image courtesy of Gerry Biron.

integral elements of Haudenosaunee symbolism and design.

Anthropologist Beverly Gordon states that although the motifs on the souvenir art coincided with tastes and trends of Victorian culture, their genesis was in art created by and for Native communities. She points out that various motifs consistently featured in souvenir beadwork, such as half circles, undulating curves, and double curves in the floral and leaf patterns, existed in Iroquois quillwork prior to European contact and symbolize “sky domes” from Iroquois cosmology.

Similarly, common whimsy shapes, like asymmetric and trilobed hearts, are reminiscent of the shapes used in old Iroquois metal brooches.

Missionaries tried to convert Native people to Christianity and discourage them from practicing their own religions, so traditional symbols in Iroquois whimsies may have been coded to escape suspicion. Gerry Biron (Mi’kmaq descent), an artist and beadwork collector, says that in order to appear less threatening, traditional motifs were hidden within designs that appealed to the dominant culture.

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the whole community. Women were responsible for creating, marketing, and selling the items. Even though men assisted the women in various ways, the responsibility was carried on the shoulders of the women. This was in stark contrast to the sharply defined gender roles in non-Native Victorian society, where women rarely left the domestic sphere.

Decline and Revival

Mohawk Pincushion, mid-20th century, glass seed beads, pearl beads, sequins, velvet, cordage, ahnawake, collection of olores lliot. sed with permission.

related to nature, but to the Native person who created that piece, that flower may represent the sun. It was a covert way to express an old theme that was expressed in a way that was more comfortable to a Victorian person.”5 Beadwork was considered a distinctly “Indian” art form and practiced by the more traditional girls in the community.

Church groups engaged in crafts such as quilting and sewing, but beading was considered “too longhouse” (the traditional Iroquois religion), and was discouraged. Although beadwork fed families, it also carried on the culture.

Gail Montour says her grandmother, mother, and many other sewers were the sole providers for their families, and she remembers beadwork as a community effort between the women. When someone planned a trip to sell their beadwork, all the sewers gathered to make as much beadwork as she could fit in her traveling case.

“They trade patterns, laughing, telling stories … It was all in Mohawk. I’ll never forget that,” says Montour.

Historically, Iroquois confederacy has been hailed as the model for American democracy. Their aboriginal government, in place long before the arrival of Europeans, was a sophisticated, egalitarian system in which everyone in the community had a voice. As a matrilineal and matriarchal society, Iroquois women have always played a central role in community and political issues.

The way in which souvenir beadwork was produced and distributed fell in line with Iroquois philosophy. Spearheaded by women, the Iroquois souvenir industry was supported by 5. Gerry Biron, interview with Wandeyu Estrada-Goeman, February 2016.

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AFTER WORLD WAR II, whimsy production slowed drastically. Tastes had changed, perhaps partially because the fantasy of the “disappearing savage” had lost its novelty.

Souvenir items still sold at the New York State Fair and Native art markets. Raised beadwork, a style from the classical era of whimsy making, became the Haudenosaunee style.

Whimsies may have suffered at the hands of art historians and collectors from outside the community, who viewed the beaded works as garish and inauthentic, which did not fit their preconceived notions of what Native art should be.

They viewed whimsies as strongly influenced by the market and therefore tarnished.

The last four decades have seen cultural revivals by Native communities across the continent. Many people have sought to learn their language, their culture, and their arts. Beadwork, along with other Indigenous arts, has made a remarkable comeback. Not only are more Native people learning how to bead, but beadwork has earned a newfound respect in the upper echelon of the Native art world.

In the past decade, dozens of art exhibits have featured both antique and contemporary Iroquois beadwork. Gerry Biron curated an exhibit and catalogue called Made of Thunder, Made of Glass, which featured several prominent Haudenosaunee beadwork artists. Biron, who collects antique beadwork, wanted to see the art form and artists finally get the recognition they deserved. One of the artists represented in the exhibit was Grant Jonathan.

Jonathan, who grew up on Tuscarora Reservation, is known for his jewel-toned whimsies shaped like birds, strawberries, and hearts. Although his mother taught him to bead when he was a teenager, Jonathan did not begin to seriously pursue beading until after his mother’s death in 2007. Under the tutelage of Rosemary Hill, an acclaimed sewer and teacher in the Tuscarora community, he gained the skills and confidence to finally submit his work in Santa Fe’s Indian Market, where he won best of category in 2007. Since then, Jonathan’s work has been sold at SWAIA every year.

Jonathan collects antique Tuscarora whimsies and encourages sewers in his community to draw inspiration from the amazing array of motifs developed by their industrious and creative ancestors.

Many credit Jonathan as one of the first Iroquois beaders to show their work in a high-end, juried art show. For years, Iroquois artwork in general had been underrepresented in some of the Native Art markets, particularly the major ones in the Southwest, such as Heard Museum and Santa Fe Indian Market, where the beadwork category is often

Grant Jonathan (Tuscarora), Iroquois (Tuscarora) Beaded Bird Whimsy, 2012, silk velvet, cotton, satin bias tape, poster board, ellon interfacing, eltex interfacing, nylon thread, glass beads, brass sequins, sawdust, olyfill,10 ½ × 10 × 3 in, collection of ational Museum of the American Indian.

Image courtesy of the artist.

dominated by Plains beadwork. Markets in the Northeast and Midwest, such as the Eiteljorg Indian Market, feature more Haudenosaunee beadwork. The Woodland Indian Art Show and Market in Wisconsin has a raised beadwork category, and Oneida Nations artists regularly win awards for their contemporary whimsies.

Karen Lynn Hill learned raised beading from a Cattaraugus Seneca friend during her summers in the Iroquois Indian Village at the New York State Fair. After the fairgrounds closed in the evening, the sewers got together to share patterns and bead all night.

During these sessions, Hill learned old Iroquois techniques and designs. She organized sewing workshops in her home and invited master sewers to teach her group about old-style beadwork items, such as birds, bags, and hats. In 2012, she began showing her work in Native art shows.

Like Jonathan, Hill loves classic Iroquois flora and fauna motifs and bases her work on these designs. But with her unique bead and color choices, long stitches, and interpretations on established shapes, Hill has created a style that is her own.

Tammy Rahr, a Cayuga artist

living in Southern California, puts a contemporary spin on the antique art form. Rahr, primarily self-taught, has beaded since childhood. She makes moccasins, regalia, dolls, and cradleboards, and has taught beading. In one of her classes, she taught how to make a beaded bird whimsy. After a few sessions of teaching the class, the redundancy of the birds wore her down.

So, she decided to make a beaded dog whimsy, modeled after her own dog.

After that, coinciding with the turn of the new millennium, she produced an

array of unconventional whimsies—cats, cars, even UFOs. She beaded names of the objects on the whimsies, but thought, “Why write words in English?” so she beaded words in Cayuga, Mohawk, and Onondaga, depending upon “what works best in the aesthetic of writing the word.”6 Some of Rahr’s whimsies are a little more risqué. After a breakup with a boyfriend, she created a tonguein-cheek parody of the “Fast Boat” canoe whimsies and made one that said “Dream Boat,” but instead of a canoe, her pink-colored whimsy was in the shape of a penis. This launched her series of erotic whimsies, both masculine and feminine. Despite her experimental designs, Tammy continues the customary techniques of whimsy construction.7 Once considered kitsch, whimsies are highly collectable artworks today.

Whimsy beadwork artists created the raised beadwork technique, now the signature style of Six Nations’ beading and a crucial part of Haudenosaunee regalia. With humor and grace, contemporary Iroquois beadwork artists continue to sew whimsies.

“I think whimsies have always been high art,” says Tammy Rahr. “Now you look at these old whimsies and they are in prominent museum collections.

The techniques and stitchwork were incredible.” She looks forward to what new directions artists take with whimsies in the future.

Tammy Rahr (Cayuga), UFO Whimsy, 2003, seed beads, sequins, metallic cloth, velvet, 3 private collection. hoto: A. Meredith (Cherokee ation).

× 8 in.,

6. Tammy Rahr, phone interview with America Meredith, April 2016.

7. Tammy Rahr, interview with Wandeyu Estrada-Goeman, December 2015.

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Mata Ortiz Pottery Ceramics saved a remote village in the Chihuahuan esert.

After a surge in popularity, the potters have had to adapt and refine their styles to survive.

By Cathy Short

I

FIRST VISITED the village of Mata Ortiz in 2006, at the height of the local pottery’s popularity. Eight years later in 2014, the difference could hardly be more profound.

Tourists and traders had all but disappeared. I returned this past February to find out more about how Mata Ortiz pottery became such a highly regarded art form and to see the impact on the community.

The dusty village of Mata Ortiz lies along the Palanganas River in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, close to the Sierra Madre Occidental and about 100 miles south of the US border. The locals emigrated from across Mexico and live a world away from other urban centers.

Mata Ortiz, founded in 1909 as a major rail and lumber center, was originally named Pearson after the Canadian president of the railroad. The lumber industry collapsed during the Mexican Revolution, resulting in a devastating loss of jobs. When foreign names lost favor in the mid-1920s, the village was renamed after Juan Mata Ortiz, a Mexican commander who was executed in the 1880s by Geronimo outside Casas Grandes. In the 1960s, when the local railroad repair facility moved to Nuevo Casas Grandes, the village lost its remaining economic base.1 A new ceramic tradition in Mata Ortiz saved this remote community. The village lies south of Paquimé, also called Casas Grandes, a large precontact city that reached its zenith in the 14th century.2 The local Casas Grandes culture flourished from 800 to 1450 CE,3 which was part of the greater Mogollon culture dating from circa 50 BCE to 1450 CE.4 Prehistoric sites and relics, including potsherds, abound in the area. During the historical era, pottery in the region became a lost art.

The Beginning THE UNLIKELY PARTNERSHIP of two people—Juan Quezada Celado (Mestizo), who grew up in Mata Ortiz, and Spencer MacCallum, an anthropologist, art historian, and author from San Pedro, California—became the spark that ignited the now renowned Mata Ortiz pottery movement.

Nearly 76 years old today, Juan is the well-known potter who started it all.

Juan’s mother, Doña Paulina, shared stories about Juan’s early years with Spencer MacCallum back in the 1970s. The whole family moved to Mata Ortiz when Juan was only a year old. He never liked formal education and managed to avoid it until he was nine. After three years of school, Juan realized he could quit if he started a man’s work of woodcutting in the hills to help support his family. Juan learned “¡nada!” in school according to Doña Paulina. He stayed at the back of the room the whole time, drawing pictures. Since he did not make a problem for his teacher, his teacher did not make a problem for him.

Juan spent a lot of time in the dirt street in front of his house as a child, experimenting with anything that had color, including insects, plants, rocks, and even egg yolks. He had a complex personality and was intensely shy, comfortable only when he was up in the mountains. Although Juan later learned how to deal with people so his shyness did not show, there were days when he asked his mother not to let anyone know he was home. He would head for the storeroom where he slept with his siblings, and draw and paint on the walls with whatever colors he had. When the walls were covered with his work, Juan would clean them off with a newspaper soaked in kerosene and start over again. Despite his shyness,

1. Greg Scott in discussion with the author, February 2016.

2. Paquimé roughly corresponds to the Medio Period of Casas Grandes culture. Lekson dates Paquimé from 1300 to 1400 CE. Stephen H. Lekson, “Dating Casas Grandes,” Kiva 50, no. 1 (Fall 1984): 59.

3. Richard F. Townsend, ed., Casas Grandes and the Ceramic Art of the Ancient Southwest (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 67, 70.

4. Stephen Lekson, “Early Mogollon,” Encyclopedia of Prehistory: Volume 6: North America, ed. Peter N. Peregrine and Melvin Ember (Boston: Springer, 2001), 115, 121; Kenneth B. Tankersley, “Late Mogollon,” Encyclopedia of Prehistory: Volume 6: North America, 287.

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A O : illage of Mata Ortiz. L F : Juan Cathy Short (Citizen otawatomi).

he became the undefeated village boxing champion until his mother put an end to his boxing career.5 As a youth, Juan traveled to the nearby mountains with the family burro and searched for firewood to sell. In his travels, he found ancient potsherds and intact pots. Juan did not know if the pots had a ritual significance, but he did realize that they represented the ancient peoples who once lived in the area. He became determined to find the same clay, molds, tools, and paints, and to figure out the process to make such beautiful pots.

When Juan came across fragments of Casas Grandes Ramos polychrome and other styles of precontact pottery, he studied their designs and extrapolated a Mogollon aesthetic.

uezada, 201 . oth photos:

It never occurred to Juan that he could not make beautiful pots like those he found. Spencer likens Juan’s imagination and experimental mind to that of a Renaissance artist. The discovery aspect and the satisfaction of problem solving have driven Juan throughout his life.

Juan did not know what raw clay looked like or where to find it when he started experimenting. He did not know what other raw materials might be involved or what to do with them if he found them. At first, bottoms did not come out right, and the clay cracked. It was a challenge to find colored slips for the pots that could survive firing and that would remain bright and not flake off. Juan ended up using only mineral materials for painting, still a characteristic of Mata Ortiz pots. Juan had no mentors to help him during these long years of experimentation.

One of the many significant problems Juan had to solve was how to paint such fine, long lines and intricate designs. After experimenting with hair from every type of animal living in the area, Juan tried burning sotol and using the resulting fiber. Though finer than animal hair, it was not fine enough. One day it occurred to Juan that the ancestors must have had long hair, so he cut his own hair and used it for painting. To his delight, it worked. Juan remains amused after all these years when he tells the story of looking everywhere for brush material, only to find it on his head. It took years for Juan to figure out the complete pottery-making process, but once he did, he began to teach his family and friends. This was the beginning of the creation

5. Spencer MacCallum in discussion with the author, February 2016.

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A O : Spencer MacCallum. hoto: Cathy Short.

L F , O : Juan Quezada (Mestizo), Polychrome Pot, ca. 1970s, clay, collection of Greg Scott. hoto: Chris Short (Citizen otawatomi). L F , O OM: Humberto Piña (Mestizo), 2016, Polychrome Pots, clay, private collection. hoto: Chris Short.

of the pottery-making community in Mata Ortiz. This is the basic story as told by Juan, but there is more to it.6 It took 16 years of effort before he succeeded in 1970 in making the first pots that satisfied him. And although Juan was proud of his first pots, no one was interested in buying them. Juan gave them away to friends. Eventually, the pots made their way to Casas

Grandes to small traders, who came to Juan’s house looking for more pots.

They offered to buy a day’s production of two or three pots for five dollars.

Juan was content with this arrangement, which was better than the two or three dollars he made a day as a general laborer. Around 1974, he became the first person in Mata Ortiz to support his family making pottery full time.

6. Juan Quezada in discussion with the author, February 2016.

7. Spencer MacCallum in discussion with the author, February 2016.

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Three of Juan’s early pots fortuitously found their way to Bob’s Swap Shop in Deming, New Mexico, where they were traded for used clothes.

Spencer MacCallum, who studied art history at Princeton and had been interested in Mexican archaeology since childhood, happened to be in Deming to meet a friend. When he visited the swap shop, he spotted Juan’s three pots. He claimed they jumped up on their hind legs and said, “Look at me! We were made by a man who knows who he is.”7 Spencer was impressed enough by the integrity of the unsigned pots to seek out their maker, with no more information than that the pots were from Mexico. He headed south into Mexico, armed with photographs of the pots and feeling as if he had been taken over by some higher force—and not objecting. Spencer worked his way south into Mexico along the only paved road, showing the photographs to everyone he could and asking if they knew who had made the pots. He was finally directed to Mata Ortiz, where

he encountered a boy on a burro who led him to the home of Juan Quezada.

Spencer thought he was looking for a woman potter—and Juan never thought anyone would be curious enough about his pottery to come looking for him.

A Symbiotic Relationship WHEN SPENCER ARRIVED at Juan’s house that day in 1976, Juan confirmed that the pots in the photos were his.

Although by then a small number of other potters were active in Mata Ortiz, it was the symbiotic relationship between the artistic excellence of Juan and the dedicated mentorship and advocacy of Spencer that led the way for the development of a ceramic tradition in Mata Ortiz.

Spencer worked out an arrangement with Juan to collect all the pots he made and provide him with a monthly stipend. He wanted Juan to emphasize quality, not quantity.

“I don’t understand. I don’t speak English,” responded Juan. “I don’t know what is going on, but I am very happy.

When are you going to pay me and for how many months?”8 Spencer’s sponsorship, which took different forms over the next eight years, allowed Juan to continue experimenting with different techniques in sculpting, painting, and firing. His designs evolved from those inspired by precontact patterns to his own visual vocabulary.

Juan’s designs became highly complex and symmetrical. He divided a pot’s surface into three, four, or even five parts, repeating the same design in each section. The only guides Juan used are small specks of dark paint on the lip of the pot that separate the different parts. On one four-part pot, one section was significantly smaller than the other three. Spencer asked about this deviation. Juan laughed and explained that his doors and windows did not yet have screens. Just as he was ready to paint the pot, he was called

Juan

uezada s gallery in Mata Ortiz. hoto: Cathy Short.

to the kitchen. When he returned and started painting, he did not realize until too late that he was following an extra mark that a fly had left on the lip.

With Spencer’s urging, he signed his pots. The anthropologist sent photographs of Juan’s artwork to museums and other places, hoping to spark interest in the United States in Mata Ortiz pottery.

Over time, Spencer accumulated 85 high-quality pieces, enough for a significant museum exhibition that traveled to several localities. The exhibition resulted in recognition and enthusiasm for Juan’s art. A number of individuals raised funds to donate the entire collection to the San Diego Museum of Man.

Mata Ortiz Ceramic Technology MATA ORTIZ POTS are known for being one-of-a-kind, signed pieces, made from local clays, painted with mineral slips, and formed and painted completely by hand. Tools are simple and include smooth pebbles or bits of bone, hacksaw blades, and paintbrushes made from children’s hair. While the technology used is a redevelopment and refinement of the ancient Casas Grandes culture, the resulting pottery is something new,

unique, and constantly evolving. The Mata Ortiz pottery tradition is no longer based on copying the prehistoric pots and design. Mata Ortiz pots are very symmetrical with thin walls.

Designs cover the complete pot, often in dynamic, swirling patterns and finely executed geometrics.

The local clays and mineral paints come in an unusual range of colors.

The clay is plastic enough to hold its form without collapsing, allowing curves in the pot wall. Some of the clays naturally contain volcanic ash as the temper. When temper is needed, prefired clay, sand, or volcanic ash is added. Clay is mixed with water, and the mixture is then sifted through cloth to remove debris. Wet clay is placed in containers to sit until the clay settles to the bottom. The water that collects on top is poured off over two or three days. The thick clay remaining is dried until it reaches the desired pliable state.

At that point, it is ready to work.

The pot’s bottom, locally called the tortilla, is flattened and placed in a plaster base mold that wicks water out of the clay. One or two large coils of clay, or chorizos, are rolled out. The use of a single coil of clay increases the strength of the pot, allowing the extremely thin walls for which Mata Ortiz pottery is famous. A vigorous, finger-pinching technique forms the pot. When the mouth of the pot is

8. Juan Quezada in discussion with the author, February 2016.

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sculpted, a small additional clay coil may be added to form the lip. After a brief period of drying, a hacksaw blade is used to smooth the surface.

When the pot is bone dry, it is sanded, covered with oil, then lightly rubbed with water and polished to achieve the desired smoothness for painting.

Powdered minerals mixed with liquid clay are used to paint the pots.

Pots may take only a few hours to form, while painting the complex designs may take several days. Designs on pots follow the brush and are not drawn or planned before painting begins.

Painted pots are then given a light application of oil and polished to the desired sheen.

The clays fire at low temperatures. Early on, dried cow dung was used for outdoor firing, but now tree bark and wood are used for all but the white pots. Larger vessels are usually fired individually, while three or four smaller pots may be fired together. Pots are placed on stands and covered with metal containers or large terracotta flowerpots when fired

outdoors. Air is allowed to circulate when firing polychrome pots. Blackon-black pots can start with any clay color and are fired on a sawdust base in an oxygen-free environment. This creates a chemical reaction that turns the clay black. Outdoor firing usually takes 30 to 45 minutes. Small kilns are commonly used now because they offer better quality control and less breakage.

The most noticeable difference between pit-fired and kiln-fired pottery is the smoky aroma of pots fired outdoors.

The Art Matures FEW OTHERS IN MATA ORTIZ took up pottery until the 1980s, when it emerged as a viable occupation.

By then, the younger generation had strong role models. Traders had artificially aged some of the earlier pots, leading to concern by collectors that Mata Ortiz pots were nothing more than copies of prehistoric relics. The United States government demanded that all Mata Ortiz pots crossing the

Efren Ledezma (Mestizo), Polychrome Pot, 2014, clay, private collection. hoto: Chris Short.

border be marked “Made in Mexico” or “Mata Ortiz.” Spencer was instrumental in reversing this practice by convincing officials in Washington, DC, that Mata Ortiz pottery was art.

Debi Flanigan, an Americanborn ceramic artist who moved to Mata Ortiz in 1985, notes the market was still small for the pottery when she arrived. She took examples of the pottery to Arizona to help develop markets there.9 Others did the same, and more galleries and museums started to exhibit Mata Ortiz pottery.

With growing recognition, more buyers, academics, other potters, and tourists visited the village. By 1990, there were close to 300 active potters.

Collectors favored better work by more accomplished potters, stimulating increased refinement of technique as a second generation of potters entered the arena.

Interest accelerated with exhibits such as those at the Heard Museum and Arizona State Museum in 1977 and The Potters of Mata Ortiz/Los Ceramistas de Mata Ortiz, at the University of New Mexico Art Museum in 1995, curated by Bill Gilbert. Gilbert, a professor of art and ecology, curated subsequent shows and wrote articles and catalogues about the art. Scholarly and popular books about the regional style include The Miracle of Mata Ortiz: Juan Quezada and the Potters of Northern Chihuahua and The Many Faces of Mata Ortiz.

Juan’s artistry was finally recognized in Mexico as well as in the United States. In 1999, he traveled to Mexico City to accept the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes (National Prize in the Arts and Sciences) presented by Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.10 More traders and tourists from around the world poured into Mata Ortiz, peaking around 2005. Debi Flanigan served lunch to as many as 90 tourists a day for 15 or more years around this time. Three or four busloads of tourists came most days, and as many as 500 to 600 potters were active when I first visited Mata Ortiz in

9. Debi Flanigan in discussion with the author, February 2016.

10. Patricia Velázquez Yebra, “Da la vuelta al mundo el arte en barro de Juan Quezada,” El Universal (December 11, 1999), web.

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Oscar Gonzáles Quezada (Mestizo), Blackware Pot, 201 , clay, private collection. hoto: Chris Short.

2006. The influx of money beyond the basic needs raised the quality of life in the village. Residents built bathrooms with running water, repaired their homes, built and expanded houses, and purchased vehicles.11 Unfortunately, tourism and pottery sales in Mata Ortiz later plummeted as drug violence reached the area and the US government discouraged travel to Mexico.

Mata Ortiz Today AS THE NUMBER OF TOURISTS and traders declined, potters from Mata Ortiz increasingly traveled to the United States to exhibit and demonstrate their art. Now that the height of drug violence in Mata Ortiz seems to have passed, visits by traders and tourists are trickling back. This past

year has brought one or two busloads of tourists a month, although some months still go by with none. Most of the pots are sold out of homes, where they are often made and displayed in a bedroom or kitchen. Other potters set up along the main street or at the local Adobe Inn whenever the word gets out that tourists are in the village.

The old railroad station sells the work of a group of women potters. Prices are noticeably lower than they were a decade ago, as the potters compete for the few buyers who come to Mata Ortiz. In his house in town, Juan still maintains a gallery of pots made by his family and other locals.

Villagers who are no longer able to support their family with their pottery have had to search for other jobs, move to other towns, or travel to the United States looking for work. Some of the

older residents who spent a lifetime making pots now find it difficult to work in the fields or find a job in nearby towns such as Colonia Juárez. Some of the men with new jobs still paint pots that their wives have made.

Jerry Boyd, a longtime local trader and co-owner of the Adobe Inn in Mata Ortiz, observes that demand for Mata Ortiz pottery in the United States is down from the peak years, both in terms of the number of venues that carry it and the number of people who want to buy it.12 Estimates of full- and part-time potters in Mata Ortiz today have dropped to around 400. It is difficult for new potters to enter the market because of the time and work involved in learning the technique and today’s demands for high quality.

Exporting Mata Ortiz pottery to the United States used to be duty free as a cultural exchange. The rules changed in 2015 when the Mexican government began collecting taxes.

Exporters must now pay a broker’s fee on the Mexican side of the border, and, if American, on the American side as well. In some cases, potters are chipping in to pay the fees and exporting directly as a group. Debi works with one such group and sells their pots to museums, galleries, and wholesalers in Arizona.13 More specialization is evident, with some Mata Ortiz residents collecting clay or sculpting the pots, others painting or firing—or selling, sometimes for pay. Income from selling pottery still helps the family financially and sends children to college.

The younger generation is looking for career opportunities other than pottery; however, the youth in families that produce the most sought-after, highest-quality pottery continue to carry the tradition forward.

As Juan Quezada and the most talented, dedicated Mata Ortiz ceramic artists continue exhibiting in Mexico, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere, new audiences will discover the beauty of their pottery.

11. Patricia Velázquez Yebra, “Da la vuelta al mundo el arte en barro de Juan Quezada,” El Universal (December 11, 1999), web.

12. Jerry Boyd in discussion with the author, February 2016.

13. Debi Flanigan in discussion with the author, February 2016.

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The Art of Horse Painting by the Plains Nations Of all the animals the horse is the best friend of the Indian, for without it he could not go on long journeys. A horse is the Indian’s most valuable piece of property. If an Indian wishes to gain something, he promises his horse that if the horse will help him, he will paint it with native dye, that all may see that help has come to him through the aid of his horse. rave uffalo (Lakota)1

By Kim Mariette

N

ATIONS NATIVE TO THE NORTHERN PLAINS traditionally have painted their horses as they painted themselves—for tribal ceremonies, personal visions and quests, achievements and successes, society membership, and war with other nations. Each event determined what types of symbols were painted on the horse. Each symbol determined the powers the painter wished to invoke upon his horse and himself, such as protection, courage, strength, and honor. A horse’s owner would use the body of his horse as a canvas on which to portray his achievements as a warrior, detailing certain brave deeds and depicting their successful outcomes, such as a horse raid or the stealing of an enemy’s most valuable horse. A horse would also be painted to visualize the significance and interpretation of a dream or vision to its owner. Regardless of the reason, a painted horse would share the same story on both sides of a conflict, although it was not necessarily the same animal that participated in the events it portrayed.

As neighboring nations warred with each other, a communication method of quick, clear understanding was needed that could be deciphered from a distance to determine if riders were friend or foe. Although each nation had tribally specific symbols with specialized meanings used only among their members, eight

intertribal horse-painting symbols developed that were immediately understood throughout the Plains. They were the rectangle, handprint, circle, dot cluster, a series of short horizontal lines, rounded or squared hoof prints, a group of irregular blotches, and painted-over battle scars.

A red handprint on the shoulder of a Lakota or Dakota warrior’s horse was called a “blood mark,” which signified a specific accomplishment during war and was the highest honor a warrior could achieve. In some nations it meant that the warrior had knocked down an enemy or had killed one in hand-to-hand combat.

Oral history about the handprint comes from Apache and Comanche Nations, in which a warrior was fatally wounded during a fierce battle. Before dying, the warrior patted his horse on the right shoulder with his bloody hand, creating a “message of death” to his people when the horse returned to camp and warned them of impending attack. When General George A. Custer began his attacks on the native Plains nations, the “red message of the dead” became known as the “bloody Custer”—in other words, “Get Custer!”

If a warrior was participating in a “do or die” mission where he was at risk of being ambushed and killed, the handprint on his horse was placed upside

1. George P. Horse Capture and Emil Her Many Horses, eds., A Song for the Horse Nation: Horses in Native American Cultures (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2006), 41.

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Lyle Miller Sr. (Yankton Dakota), Buffalo Horse Shield, 2011, acrylic, 25 × 20 in. Image courtesy of the Collection of the Akta Lakota Museum, St. Joseph s Indian School, Chamberlain, S , 95 981.

down. If a horse and rider returned to camp after a successful mission that was particularly dangerous, such as sneaking into an enemy’s camp and silently killing a warrior with a knife, the horse’s owner would place a “pat hand” on his horse’s rump.

Thick circles with the center filled in signified breastworks, and were painted on the rump and shoulder of a horse if enemies had been killed while fighting behind the shelter of rocks or logs. A long row of both circles and dots might appear on a Dakota or Lakota warrior’s horse with the same meaning.

An open red circle would be painted around a horse’s eye to improve a horse’s eyesight for seeing other riders or game that might be nearby. A circle around the horse’s nose was thought to enhance the animal’s sense of smell and alert its rider to possible danger.

Battle scars on a horse were circled with red paint and painted over to honor the horse and indicate where it had been wounded but survived.

Three or four short, stacked, horizontal lines applied to a horse’s front legs were coup counts achieved by a warrior. Members of the Crow, Blackfeet, Nakota, Dakota, SUMMER 2016

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orse

ith Symbols. Image by the author.

and Lakota Nations also painted coup lines on the noses of their horses.

Before returning to camp, successful horse-stealing Blackfeet warriors would paint red horizontal lines across the foreheads of the stolen horses.

Members of the Blackfeet and Hidatsa Nations applied a stylized symbol of a man, one with arms and legs spread out, on the chest of a horse that had run down an enemy on foot in battle. Right and left handprints on the horse’s chest were also used to show that he had run down or trampled an enemy to death.

A cluster of large dots was used to represent hail. A horse with this symbol told of a warrior’s vision in which hailstones had pelted down on his enemy pursuers and allowed him to escape.

A rectangle typically meant that a warrior had led a war party.

Several misshapen blotches were painted on a horse as an expression of mourning upon the death of its owner.

Rounded or squared hoof tracks showed the number of successful horse raids a warrior had participated in. Each points-down print signified a captured horse.

Possessing supernatural abilities like the other powerful animals—elk, bear, and buffalo—the horse carried this perspective one step further. Because the horse did not shy away from humans and allowed itself to be ridden, it was seen as an exceptionally strong power

animal. What set the horse apart was its unique, singletoed hoof. The elk, buffalo, and deer had cloven hooves, which split their tracks, but the horse had solid hooves, which were very clear in its tracks. The upside-down U of a horse’s single-toed track eventually became known as the symbol to depict the number of horses a warrior stole while on a raid. When shod horses were captured or obtained in trade with other nations, the horse-track symbol would show a line across the ends to represent a horseshoe.

Spiritually, the Lakota Nation regarded the horse as a messenger or a physical manifestation of the Thunder Beings of the West. Using painted symbols enabled the horse to be receptive to that thunder power, which was connected to war. A horse that carried lightning symbols with forked ends on its front or rear legs symbolically stated that its owner had direct contact with the Thunder Beings, either through a vision or dream. A crescent-shaped design at the end of the zigzag stripe indicated a lightning strike. Through the use of the striped symbol, a warrior appealed to the Thunder Beings for his horse’s speed and sure-footedness in battle.

To be alone with our war-horses … teaches them to understand us, and us to understand them. My horse fights with me and fasts with me, because if he is to carry me in battle he must know my heart and I must know his or we shall never become brothers.

—Plenty Coups (Crow)2 In her book Turtle Lung Woman’s Granddaughter, author Delphine Red Shirt (Lakota) writes of an event spoken of by her great-grandmother:

Medicine Marked orse. Image by the author.

2. Mike Cowdrey, Ned Martin, and Jody Martin, Horses and Bridles of the American Indians (Nicasio, CA: Hawk Hill Press, 2011), 208.

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ABOVE: Kevin McGhee (Brulé-Yanktonai), Lakota Warrior, 1992, acrylic, 20 × 30 in. Image courtesy of the Collection of the Akta Lakota Museum, St. Joseph s Indian School, Chamberlain, S , 92 885.

RIGHT: Webster Two Hawk Jr. (Sicangu Lakota, 1959–2015), Winter Charge, 1988, watercolor. Image courtesy of the Collection of the Akta Lakota Museum, St. Joseph s Indian School, Chamberlain, S , 89 128.

Turtle Lung Woman said when my grandfather Ité Sįyąkhiya painted himself as a zuyá wicháša [warrior] with clay, he painted his horse with the same clay.

He painted his šųkawakhą [horse, suka meaning dog; wakha meaning sacred] to invoke its sacredness, just as he painted himself. He revered it, particularly the one he rode into battle or into a herd of buffalo.

He painted it to signify that it is a sacred animal, a messenger of Wakįyą, the thunder being. It was believed then that the horse came from the west, where the dreaded thunder being dwells. The power of Wakįyą resided in it. It did the bidding of that terrible being. It came to kill, the way the thunder being has the power to destroy. So, too, the horse gives man the ability to slaughter the great thathąka [buffalo] for the good of all. In times of war, it allowed him to count coup, then slay his enemy.3 Paint for warriors and for their horses came from the natural resources that surrounded them. Dyes and pigments were created using clay, bark, berries, eggshells, charcoal, flowers, plants, moss, and even manure. After being ground up, these substances were combined with binders such as urine, saliva, egg yolks, animal fat, or blood that liquefied them for painting.

As Red Shirt writes: When the women wanted to help the men prepare the paint they used to paint themselves and their horses … they dug a small deep hole and carefully built a fire in it. While it burned they took the powdery ocher material, mixed it with water, and formed it into a ball. When the fire burned itself out, the women used

antlers from a deer to rake the hot coals out. They placed the ball of ocher upon the warm earth and covered it with the coals. They built another fire on top of it. The heat changed the color of the ocher to red.

The red ball of ocher was cooled and pounded into a powder. It was kept in a small bag and mixed with buffalo fat when it was needed to produce red paint … Sometimes these colors are made with plant dyes but those were unreliable. The genuine colors were red, yellow, white, and black, made from the earth. These colors never fade. They are our sacred colors.4 The powdered paint was kept in small deerskin pouches, which could be carried directly into battle.

If successful, a warrior might apply paint to his horse before returning to camp so that his people could see from afar that he was returning with honor.

Within each nation were societies that developed around the aspect of war. Warrior Society markings were visible and portrayed a specific membership by the horse’s owner. Society markings usually covered about

3. Delphine Red Shirt, Turtle Lung Woman’s Granddaughter (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 130.

4. Ibid., 131.

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Donald F. Montileaux (Oglala Lakota), Warrior’s Horse, 2003, acrylic. Image courtesy of the Collection of the Akta Lakota Museum, St. Joseph s Indian School, Chamberlain, S , 20032049.

one-third of the horse’s rump, or fully covered the head, chest, and front forelegs. The symbols used were normally stripes or spots, used separately or combined, applied over large painted areas. Intermixed with society markings could be symbols that depicted a warrior’s own visions and war exploits.

Outside the realm of war, horses were painted for specific rituals within each nation. For example, the Blackfeet Confederacy designated certain horses for the transportation of their sacred Medicine Bundles. The horse reserved for the Thunder Pipe Bundle was elaborately painted with a stripe of red across its forehead and down its nose. A zigzag line ending with a fork was painted down the horse’s hindquarters and forequarters. (If this line ended in a horseshoe it was called the “Eagle Claw” and may have matched an identical symbol on the robe of the Thunder Pipe Bundle owner.) Red

dots were painted on the horse’s neck and hindquarters. The mane and tail were also painted red to complete the ensemble.

An equine bearer of the Beaver Bundle was painted in symbols that represented the four phases of the moon: full, waxing, waning, and in crescent. The responsibility of the Beaver Bundle’s owner included observing the moon and its phases, which helped with forecasting the weather, among other things. The hind leg of a Beaver Bundle horse might have a cone-like figure with a round top to indicate weather prediction by its owner.

The Dakota, Blackfeet, and Assiniboine nations had Horse Medicine societies, whose members had special powers with the care and healing of horses. These powers were granted to Horse Medicine Society members by guardian spirits and were carefully protected by each individual. Secret Society rituals remained private but the very public

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performance of a ceremony called the Horse Dance was meant to be viewed by all.

To participate in this sacred event, only horses with a specific coat color were used in the dance’s performance. Blacks, whites, sorrels, and buckskins represented the four primary directions of west, north, east, and south. These animals were painted with specific symbols to invoke the powers of the earth.

In the book Black Elk Speaks, the Oglala Lakota tribal Elder describes himself participating in the Horse Dance ritual as it appeared to him in a vision: There were four black horses to represent the west; four white horses for the north, four sorrels for the east; four buckskins for the south … also there was a bay horse for me to ride, as in my vision … the four black-horse riders were painted all black with blue lightning stripes down their

sat. I was painted red all over with black lightning on my limbs.5 In his published analysis of the horses in Black Elk’s vision, author Julian Rice stresses the significance of the bay horse that the holy man was riding.

According to Rice, that horse signified “the existence of thunder power in a mortal being of the earth.” The horse’s coat color of brown resembled the dirt of the earth; the horse’s black mane and tail were a “corporal sign of Wakinyan’s creative power, here manifested in earthly form.”6

ABOVE: Martin Red Bear (Oglala-Sicangu Lakota), Spirit Horse, 1992, acrylic. Image courtesy of the Collection of the Akta Lakota Museum, St. Joseph s Indian School, Chamberlain, S , 20073299.

BELOW, RIGHT: Richard Red Owl (Oglala Lakota), Warrior’s Victory Celebration, 1989, acrylic, 20 × 24 in. Image courtesy of the Collection of the Akta Lakota Museum, St. Joseph s Indian School, Chamberlain, S , 89 497.

legs and arms and white hail spots on their hips, and there were blue streaks of lightning on the horse’s legs. The white-horse riders were painted all white with red streaks of lightning on their arms and legs, and on the legs of the horses there were streaks of red lightning, and all the white riders wore plumes of white horse hair on their heads to look like geese.

The riders of the sorrels of the east were painted all red with straight black lines of lightning on their limbs and across their breasts, and there was straight black lightning on the limbs and breasts of the horses, too. The riders of the buckskins of the south were painted all yellow and streaked with black lightning. The horses were black from the knees down, and black lightning streaks were on their upper legs and breasts.

My bay horse had bright red

streaks of lightning on his limbs, and on his back a spotted eagle, outstretching, was painted where I

Out of the earth I sing for them A Horse nation I sing for them out of the earth I sing for them, the animals I sing for them.

—Lone Man (Sicangu Lakota)7

5. John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), 130–131.

6. Julian Rice, “Akicita of the Thunder: Horses in Black Elk’s Vision,” Native American Literature 12, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 18.

7. George P. Horse Capture and Emil Her Many Horses, A Song for the Horse Nation: Horses in Native American Cultures, 5.

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Hatsutsil Uchben Maya Art Inspires a

ew Generation in the ucat n

By Geoffrey E. Aronson

S

URROUNDED BY MAYA ARTWORKS made for the tourist trade—masks, hats, hammocks, and more— professional painters explore themes of precontact cultural roots in Indigenous Maya centers throughout the Yucatán peninsula.

My first peek into the world of contemporary Latin American painters was through Chilean-born Jaime Fierro’s monochromatic, larger-than-life-size works covering the walls of La Casona de Arte y Cultura in Valladolid, Yucatán.

In each of his pieces, a face takes up the entire picture frame, and seldom was there more than one figure. Maya women, children, and warriors are depicted in Jaime Fierro’s artworks.

For those of us who live in the Yucatán and have observed the art scene in the past decade, we have noted a mini-renaissance of contemporary painting influenced by both Maya culture and pre-Hispanic Maya art design and techniques.

Indigeneity in Mexican National Identity EVEN A CASUAL BROWSING of Mexican art history books reveals a lack of Maya-themed painting prior to World War II. Not until the 21st century do we see the explosion of Maya enthusiasts in the arts.

Indigenous Mexicans are underrepresented in Mexican history. When discussed, it is in response to overwhelming sociopolitical factors. In 1857, Mexico had its first and only full-blooded Indian president, Benito Juárez (Zapotec). His presidency was interrupted in 1862 when the French, under Napoleon III, invaded the country and installed a rival government. Emperor Maximilian I, Napoleon’s appointee for Mexican rule, was deposed five years later. The shame of Mexico’s weakness gave rise to an ardent nationalism and appreciation for its Native American leader. The occupation of Mexico by a European power encouraged a search for a strong Mexican national identity and central government. Its former leader Juárez, having been a descendant of its original peoples, lent some prestige to its Indigenous community.

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For at least a decade after the overthrow of Maximilian, a few Mexican painters depicted the Indigenous in their work.

But as many of these were of Hispanic ancestry of the dominant social class, they portrayed Indians with Eurocentric sensibilities. Skin color was lightened, facial features Europeanized with smaller cheekbones and noses, and they were depicted as subservient and appreciative of their criollo masters. The settings for these paintings were the hacienda or theatrical scenes of classical Rome. They were never painted in their own homes. Their depiction was double edged: part of the national heritage but inferior to their white counterparts.

The 1920s brought about more impetus to raise national esteem for the Indigenous culture. Mexico had endured a decade of civil war and needed to forge a new identity. In 1921, Adolfo Best Maugard became director of the federal department for art education—an appointment that introduced Maya aesthetics to all of Mexico’s children. Best Maugard’s earlier works were detailed illustrations of pre-Columbian artifacts from in the Valley of Mexico, the center of Aztec civilization. As director, he introduced to the nation’s art curriculum his book, Manual of Drawing: Tradition, Renaissance, and Evolution of Mexican Art, in which several design elements were emphasized: the spiral, circle, arc, wavy line, S-shape, and zigzag—predominant design elements in prehistoric art. He urged art teachers to bring students out of the studio and have them draw their home, town, and country surroundings. From the studio to plein air was the directive.

Prior to World War II, Diego Rivera’s paintings best demonstrated Best Maugard’s concepts or subject matter.

Now many artists, particularly in the Yucatán, look to precontact art for inspiration. Located in southeast Mexico, the peninsula is home to major classic Maya cities. Today, an estimated 537,500 people in the Yucatán, or 30 percent of the population, speak Indigenous languages, with Yucatec Mayan being the most common. The Yucatán has the highest percentage of Indigenous peoples of any state in Mexico at 65.4 percent, according to the Comisión Nacional Para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas de México (CDI).

Today, this Indigenous identity is expressed in contemporary arts. Four artists give us insights into this development.

ABOVE: Enrique Diaz (Maya), Cesiak centro ecologico sian ka’an, mural.

RIGHT: Enrique Diaz (Maya), Title Unknown, paint, cardboard collage.

Images courtesy of the artist.

Enrique Diaz NOT UNTIL A YEAR after I began teaching English as a second language at the Universidad de Valladolid, Yucatán, in 2010, did I see evidence of my first Mexican artist with strong Native roots: Enrique Diaz (Maya). One of my colleagues, an anthropology professor, had several small illustrations of fish at coral reefs in his office. They were both pleasant to look at and technically proficient. I asked about the artist.

The professor knew that Enrique lived in town but could only guess where. At a nearby ice cream parlor, I saw a life-size portrait of Emiliano Zapata (Nahua descent), the Mexican freedom fighter and land reformer of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. Not only did the painting carry Enrique’s signature, but I discovered the building was also Enrique’s home.

I got to know Enrique over the next several years, and he was very open about his work, his commissions, and his travels. Married to a local woman and father of two teenage daughters, he had originally come from the small village of Jiquipilas, Chiapas, almost a thousand kilometers away at the western edge of Maya territory.

In 2011, I planned to create public murals in the small villages along the “Maya route,” the cluster of predominantly Maya communities in the center of the Yucatán state. Having seen some of Enrique’s work that related directly to his own cultural roots, I sought him out to see if he would paint some murals. The fit would have been perfect, much better than my own, which were better suited to New York subways than the hinterlands of Mexico’s interior. Enrique provided a résumé and digital images. Unfortunately, the project never got funding, but I have not given up hope and am considering trying again in the future.

We kept in touch. Recently, I learned that he is negotiating with a public school principal to teach art classes at a school in an outlying village near Valladolid. There will be no salary, and the cost of paint and supplies is currently being arranged.

At the age of six, Enrique moved with his family to Tuxtla Gutierrez in the state of Chiapas. His father had no special training or skills, so when offered a position as night watchman at the state university, he seized the opportunity for better financial security. At about the same time, he recognized his son’s artistic talent, and Enrique himself decided at that tender age to become an artist.

“My father spared no expense in the family’s education,” says Enrique, “and he paid for many art workshops and supplies until I was 18. He encouraged me totally in becoming an artist.”

At the age of 22, Enrique was able to attend Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts) in Mexico City on an academic scholarship. He studied graphic design but became disappointed with his studies.

“I wanted to express more what was inside of me,” he said, and so returned to Chiapas. Four years later, he returned to Mexico City on another scholarship, but this time enrolled in an all-around plastic arts program, including painting, sculpture, and cabinetmaking, among other media. At no time did he study under anyone who inspired him with Maya themes or image-making designs.

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ABOVE: Victor Argaez Sanchez (Maya), La comezon (The Itch), 2014, oil on panel, 63 × 51 ¹/₈ in.

BELOW: Victor Argaez Sanchez (Maya), La charla (The Chat), 2014, oil on panel, 63 × 51 ¹/₈ in. Images courtesy of the author.

In 1993 at age 29, Enrique returned to Chiapas and took a job with the Cultural Institute to repay his student scholarship. His responsibility was to create promotional materials, posters, and banners for the arts festivals and events for the institute, and teach painting workshops to children.

The following year, an insurrection spearheaded by Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation directly challenged the federal government to acknowledge the human rights of the many Indigenous peoples in Mexico. Within two years, the Mexican congress acceded to the Zapatistas’ demands with a treaty. The center of Chiapas, from Ocosingo to San Cristóbal de las Casas, claimed semi-autonomy. Today, along the road between those two points, signs tell motorists that they have left the jurisdiction of the Mexican government and have entered the independent domain of the Zapatista Army.

Another result was that pride of one’s Indigenous ancestry increased exponentially, whether one was mestizo—of mixed Indigenous and Spanish heritage—or fullblood Native American. All things Indigenous are now held in higher esteem and seen in a more positive light.

For Enrique, the radically different sociopolitical atmosphere was a career changer. “It changed my way of thinking.

What was I doing working for the government? It [the Zapatista Movement] opened my cultural senses,” Enrique explained in his quiet, humble voice. There is no bitterness, no regret, only a relaxed pride in explaining what had been a significant turning point in his life.

In the following years, he worked for no salary in Zapatista-run community schools and taught children how to paint murals, cartooning, and printmaking.

“We didn’t care that we had no money. We didn’t need it.

We had our work cut out for us,” Enrique told me.

Enrique still returns to Chiapas periodically, and teaches workshops in government schools and guides the children to paint their own murals on the school walls. He also exhibits his artwork in a gallery in Tulum, a tourist town south of Cancun on the Gulf of Mexico, and has painted murals commissioned by the coffee growers association of Chiapas.

In 2015, he completed ten murals for a guest house near the beach in Tulum.

Asked if he thought the government does enough to promote Indigenous art, Enrique says, “[Opportunity is] out there. You have to go and get it.” His high altruistic sense, perseverance, and unrelenting drive have made for his success as a practicing artist. Not the least to mention is his talent.

Victor Argaez Sanchez MURAL PAINTING has a strong tradition in Mexico, and Victor Argaez Sanchez (Maya) paints murals, gratis, in the most remote villages in rural Yucatán. These include Telchac Puerto, a small fishing village on the Gulf of Mexico, and his hometown of Buctzotz, a village of 7000, located 100 kilometers east of Mérida.

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Marisol D’Estrabeau (Totonac), El pensador (The Thinker), 2006, oil and acrylic on canvas, 59 × 114 ¹/₈ in. Image courtesy of the artist.

chachalacas”—large, gregarious game birds—and the “plaintive chirping” of doves. He comes from a family of musicians, but had to travel to study visual arts.

In 1983, Victor married, and the young couple moved to Mérida so he could study art. The celebrated portrait artist Ermilo Torre Gamboa introduced him to color mixing and other fundamentals.

“I attended the Centro Estatal de Bellas Artes (State Arts Center) in Mérida,” Victor recalled. “Later, from 1987 until 1992, I was involved in art education with artist Manuel Izamas Salazar.” He also became more politically aware and studied the 1968 Paris student protests, the Tlatelolco massacre of students in Mexico City that same year, and the Cuban Revolution. He and his friends read Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Jorge Luis Borges, Latin American authors who raised Latino pride with their extraordinary achievements.

Yucatecan artist Fernando Castro Pacheco (1918-2013) inspired Victor’s painting, as did the archaeological sites of Ek’ Balam, Chichén Itzá, and Uxmal. For the next 30 years, Victor used oils, watercolors, and acrylics to portray local Maya lifestyles. His paintings often feature mature, ample Maya women relaxing between chores. Occasionally he paints lovers or guitarists in concert in soft pastels that give a romantic cast to Yucatecan life.

Victor moved back to Buctzotz after completing his art studies, but visits Mérida periodically. He sets up outdoor displays of art at Hidalgo Park. He’s shown at all the venues in the capital city, including Museo Fernando García

Ponce-Macay, the principle local art museum, as well as the gallery at Teatro Peón Contreras, Centro Cultural de Mérida Olimpo, and commercial galleries throughout Mérida.

Victor’s collectors are primarily businessmen, then government and universities. Foreign collectors account for eight percent of his sales. “I don’t see the government as having a strong entrepreneurial spirit,” says Victor. It’s up to us to fight hard to make the government listen to us.”

Through portraying living Maya people, Victor believes artists can help them “achieve a greater level of acceptance.”

Marisol Dominguez Estrabeau MARISOL D’ESTRABEAU (Totonac) loses herself in complete absorption in the act of painting. Critics have described her work as “a transformation with never-ending surprises.” Her work can be fragile, imaginative, sweet, but especially free form in painting and printmaking.

Currently residing in Cancún on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, Marisol was born and raised in the Totonaca region of Veracruz. From 2001 to 2005, she studied graphic design at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Diseño de Arte in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. In 2006, she embarked on a whirlwind of international exhibitions in Spain, Canada, France, United States, Cuba, and Germany.

Her work is marked by an endearing whimsy, brightly luminescent, fantastic creatures straight from her imagination.

She is inspired by Maya and other precontact Mexican art.

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ABOVE: Otoniel Sala (Purépecha-Tarahumara), Niño indígena chichimeca (Indigenous Chichimeca Boy), 2015, mixed media mural on wall, Calvillo, Mexico.

LEFT: Marisol D’Estrabeau (Totonac), Mandrárgora de la luz (Mandrake of Light), 2009, acrylic on canvas, 43 ½ × 35 ½ in.

up and lived experience,” she says. Viewers have told her, “You have recovered ancient expressions of joy and zest for life that are characteristic of the Totonac culture.”

“Since I was a child, I knew my life was destined to invent, create, play forever,” she says. “The first thing I wanted to be was a bricklayer and astronaut, so I am not so very far from what I wanted to be originally—working with plastic materials that promote respect for my life and inspiration for the mystery of the universe in general.

“Maya art was somehow present in my experience since I came to live in Cancún in 1993, and continues to foster my passion to get to know more of the works in the monuments, reliefs, ceramic tiles, etc.” Living in Maya territory has allowed Marisol “to visit several important cities and museums and appreciate those artifacts made of ceramics, jade, stone, and stucco.” She has traveled to archaeological sites throughout Mexico and into Guatemala.

“The Maya developed extraordinary pictorial art—sculptures and murals with themes related to heaven and earth, of great creative freedom. The creations are characterized by soft, undulating forms and human figures, animals, plants, and figures of angels,” the artist observes. “I have found Maya forms clearly relating to my work, such as the flowers and lines linked to organic nature.”

Marisol feels that the Mexican government could play a more active role in supporting Indigenous art. “Schools should encourage it as [having] equal importance to other subjects taught. Likewise, the government should give more space to show it so that it can be appreciated by the public.

“Every family has a responsibility to sow interest in this wonderful culture for future generations,” she continues.

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“Then as far as the schools are concerned, this is where the Maya language should be taught and the government should allocate a budget for research and the discovery of further archaeological sites and their proper maintenance. As a society we should be interested in promoting such activities and not just for the tourists.”

Otoniel B. Sala Castro OTONIEL SALA (Purépecha-Tarahumara) never attended a formal art program but took classes from time to time.

Growing up in Ticul, Yucatán, he is mostly self-taught. His parents were traders who sold goods at town fairs. Otoniel’s earliest jobs were administrative and clerical jobs. The artist says, “As a child, I worked with a teacher in a workshop where he painted clay pots and dishes with Maya motifs … I guess painting has been a part of me forever. It’s my passion, my motivation, and lifestyle. My beginnings in art began at a very early age. Art is part of the essence of who I am.”

Working with architects to design hotel decor honed his artistic skills and inspired him to take more courses in art to improve his technique and eventually travel to Spain for a six-month painting residency.

Otoniel paints large-scale portraits in the Hyperrealist style—a movement begun in the 1960s and exemplified by the work of Richard Este. Hyperrealism strives to reproduce reality in finer detail than photography.

While Otoniel’s portrayal of Maya figures demonstrates his mastery of Hyperrealism, his fame in Mexico lies more with his steles, frescoes, and wall paintings inspired by classical Maya civilization. His creation of the entrance to

the Kabah Ecological Park stands as his crowning achievement. Painted in oils and with metallic dust, the walls of the entrance re-create both the subject matter and design elements of pre-Hispanic art.

“I deeply feel my roots,” says the artist. “I have visited almost all the archaeological sites such as Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, Chichén Itzá, Ek’ Balam and others. I make an altar for the Day of the Dead and perform a ritual before starting to paint a mural. I have read several versions of the Popul Vuh.” While he does not speak Maya, he understands it a little when spoken.

“The Maya culture is not lost and is still very much alive,” points out Otoniel. “It is only different to the pre-Hispanic era. I feel very intimately connected with it, and I have always lived very close to its customs and, especially, the art … I am basically interested in all the different pre-Columbian cultures that existed in Mexico.

“I think the government could promoting culture more, not only Maya, but all the diverse groups here in Mexico. Governments often are not interested or do not have the people to encourage these cultural projects, so one must propose and deliver a good project,” says Otoniel. However, he says, “If you are an artist who has interesting proposals and do quality work, there are many opportunities.”

Otoniel now resides in Mexico City, an 18-hour round trip by car from the Yucatán. “Today, I have my own studio where I do many different projects and collaborate with other artists and institutions, where I also teach.”

Resurgence of Pride TODAY, WITH THE RISE of Indigenous status and ethnic pride among the general public, the acceptance of Mexico’s precontact roots has never been higher. The challenge to the federal government by the Maya of Chiapas in 1994 and the subsequent declaration of Indigenous rights

Otoniel Sala (Purépecha-Tarahumara), Tortuga de Jade (Jade Turtle), 2012, oil, 39.5 × 59 in.

signed by the national government has demonstrates to all Mexicans the higher esteem accorded Mexico’s descendants to its first inhabitants.

Likewise, the growing sentiment of multicultural pluralism in the United States has increased acceptance and attention among her citizens in the artwork of Indigenous peoples worldwide. Interest among visiting tourists from foreign countries has made for a steady rise in the sales of

art inspired by Classical Maya culture, but also by the many other Indigenous cultures throughout of Mexico.

Coupled with the commercial development of Cancún in the late 1970s and the growing increase of area’s tourism, millions of people have been introduced to ancient and contemporary art of Maya and other Indigenous Mexicans. And millions more are to come in the years ahead.

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PROFILE

Navajo Printmaker

Marwin Begaye

By Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

A

S A MASTER PRINTMAKER, Marwin Begaye explores and expands the usual limitations of print media. An assistant professor of printmaking and painting at the University of Oklahoma, Begaye brings a wide range of skills to his work. He has an associate degree in illustration and graphic design from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, an associate degree in painting from the Institute of American Indian Arts, a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting, and a master of fine arts degree in printmaking, both from the University of Oklahoma. All of this training prepared Begaye to work in multiple media and styles by broadening his knowledge not only in technique but also in history. He took studio and art history classes to enhance his studies: “Getting that background helps me in making my work so I can find and research artists, both historic and contemporary.”1 Begaye has a deep commitment to the various techniques of printmaking, though initially he did not have much interest in the discipline. While studying painting at IAIA, he was invited to be part of the Monothon, an annual printmaking session sponsored by the College of Santa Fe and SITE Santa Fe. “IAIA and the College of Santa Fe were hosting Aboriginal artists, and they were trying to get local artists to come into the studio and make monotypes with them. I was there at the right time. I walked into the studio and said, ‘I don’t know anything about this.’ The printers told me the rules, and off I went. After that session, I was hooked. But I’m still learning about printmaking. That’s the beautiful thing about this process and why I love it. I’m always a student. I’m always trying to find out more. I always want to know why. I’m the kid that always takes apart the radio just to figure out and understand how it’s working. This mentality has helped me with my artwork, like how to put pattern within pattern on the wood block.”

While Begaye appreciates art by non-Native artists, he especially enjoys “looking at Indigenous artists, because I understand the dialogue a little bit more due to the shared cultural experiences. We’re talking the same language. I don’t have to read about a history, because I know about their history or where they’re coming from. I don’t have to read a theorist to understand where the artist is coming 1. All quotes are from an interview with the artist on February 19, 2016.

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Marwin Begaye. All images courtesy of the artist.

from. I feel like just by looking at it, there’s already that conversation that they started that I can participate in, because I’ve had a similar experience [to] theirs.”

Though Begaye is skilled at different forms of printmaking, both intaglio and relief, he has a special affinity for woodblock printing. As a Native American artist, he noticed the dearth of Native printmakers, especially in woodblock. “Some are doing lithographs, but no one has really focused on woodblocks,” says Begaye.

Woodblock printing is the oldest printmaking media for both Native and non-Native artists. “I believe that Indigenous people have done some sort of incising or etching on a surface, whether it was on shell, birch bark, or rock. There was some sort of printmaking happening.”

One advantage to woodcuts for Begaye is that they are very portable. He can take them with him and just start cutting.

And woodblock printmaking is less toxic than other forms, which also appeals to him. “Etching, engraving,

MARWIN BEGAYE

and lithography … use materials that are usually linked to health issues. I’m always looking for a safer process to use at home that is not so toxic.”

Begaye continues to perfect his technique. “I learned how to do all these little, subtle things in these woodblock prints. What I notice about woodblocks is that they … didn’t have any energy when I was looking at them.

I started playing, trying to see how I could create movement in a medium that seems stagnant on the surface.”

Begaye’s work has a virtuoso quality as seen in his dense, detailed woodcuts. When the laser cutter came out, he wondered if he could match the small cuts made with a laser cutter.

“Can I be better than that laser cutter?

The answer is yes, I can make finer cuts and come out with a great print.

I’ve done both woodcuts and linocuts with cuts much smaller than you would normally see.”

Begaye carries his passion for printmaking into his work as an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches “printmaking at all levels, from the very beginning to the very advanced. I introduce students to the processes and the way of thinking about printmaking, and I also work with graduate students, where it’s more about [concept].” In his classes, Begaye incorporates the history of printmaking into his curriculum.

“You have to get an idea of that tradition, where it came from, and how it’s evolving,” says Begaye. “Within the lectures and demonstrations, I feel like the history is already built in, because the methods are historical.”

For all his enthusiasm, Begaye is realistic about the role of printmaking in the art world. He observes that printmaking is still sort of the “overlooked child.” “Everyone always goes to sculpture, painting, and photography. Most printmakers realize this. I hope to get more people interested in the medium”—a medium that has many advantages, including its

Redtail Hawk, 2014, woodblock print, 36 × 24 in.

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ability to reach a wider public. Begaye notes, “One of the things that I love about it is that it’s so accessible at all different social levels. You can show a print out of the trunk of your car, and that same print is in a museum. It speaks to everyone. That’s what I love about it.” Begaye shares his works in different venues, including the Santa Fe Indian Market. “This was my first year showing there. It was good. It was good exposure. Other than that, Red Earth was the only [market] that I did. I mainly exhibit in university museums and galleries.”

Begaye uses his art to address social issues in Native communities, such as the prevalence of diabetes in American Indian cultures. “A few years ago, I was diagnosed with an allergy to sugar. The doctor gave me the options. One, continue this lifestyle. I wasn’t partying in excess; I was just living like everyone else.

Or, cut out sugar, live longer, and be healthier. He said, ‘Trust me. Four days. Just give me four days without sugar, and on that fourth day, if you still feel like crap, you can continue doing what you want to do. But you will feel healthier and think more clearly.’ So, I took up the dare and haven’t had sugar since. I changed my diet, changed the way I shopped, changed my lifestyle.”

He created a series of woodblocks that included consumer products that he would see at family gatherings, things that perpetuated an unhealthy way of living. He got to travel and present the work, and along the way, people would tell him stories about their family members.

“I didn’t expect them to share such heart-wrenching stories with me,” Begaye says. “It was hard to hear these stories and seeing people … who are no longer a part of the community, who have passed on.” He also found that many people were not ready for the messages in this series.

“My message scared them.

It made them uncomfortable. It

Man Comes Around, 2014, woodblock print, 30 × 26 in.

was too straightforward. I blame my family. Navajo women are very straightforward and take no bullsh—.”

Begaye also credits his wife, heather ahtone (Chickasaw-Choctaw), the James T. Bialac associate curator of Native American and non-Western art the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, as a major influence on his work. “She’s awesome. I love listening to her talk out her ideas. Our discourse helps me work through my own ideas.”

He recalls working as a freelance graphic designer for different health organizations that were trying to reach out to Native communities.

“I thought they weren’t aggressive

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enough. My only goal was to reach Indians. I started looking at different printmakers in history, such as Mexican woodblock printer José Guadalupe Posada, who were using the medium to speak to and for the people.” Begaye created images of calaveras (skulls) as Navajo women, wearing squash blossoms and their hair in a bun so “Native people would recognize that I was talking to them.”

Begaye’s series of skeletal riders recalls Albrecht Dürer’s intricate woodcuts of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but it also refers to local environmental concerns such as the effects of fracking and oil drilling on

MARWIN BEGAYE

Flicker I, 2015, mixed media, 24 × 24 in.

water. The artist saw parallels between Dürer’s horsemen and the typical Oklahoman Native Flatstyle art featuring horses and riders with flowing hair.

In recent years, Begaye has explored avian subjects.

“The bird imagery was in reaction to the diabetes series as a way to keep myself balanced. I started this series to keep me centered, keep me back, to balance that whole experience out.” In mythology, birds have had many different meanings in Native cultures, especially in Navajo stories. “If I’m in an area as a visiting artist or for an exhibition or as a speaker, I will do a bird for that area. I will research local birds that have a lot of power in Native

cultures or an indigenous bird that became extinct. It’s my way of honoring that relationship.” Not only are birds an important part of mythology, they serve as the bellwether for the world’s environment.

“Being Native, I like having my connection to the land, my connection to mother earth,” says Begaye. “I felt in a way that was my responsibility, to bring that about. That’s what the bird series has come into now: their connection, our relationship to the birds, their relationship to the land, to the water, to the different things that are part of who we are. I’m just trying to get people to notice nature a little bit more.

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Parrot, 2015, monotype, serigraph, woodblock print, 28 × 22 in.

“Everyone’s stuck on their phones and computers,” he continues. “We don’t notice our surroundings because everything is so accessible through a rectangle or a square. I was brought up to be part of the land or a part of the experience.”

Begaye experienced the connection between birds and the landscape directly. “When we lived in Santa Fe there were lots of birds. Several years later, I was visiting Santa Fe during a beetle infestation in all the trees and there were no birds there. They’re usually flying around, singing, doing whatever. They had just disappeared. That was one of the things that I noticed; where are all the birds? It was creepy.”

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These stories connect the birds to larger environmental issues. “Right now I’m working on a two-foot-by-fourfoot woodblock about the whooping crane because they’re almost extinct. Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico seem to be in their migration pattern. Because of the way I’ve cut the wood block, it has a reference to ‘born for the water.’ It has a pattern that I’ve developed that is kind of the representation of water. In our traditional stories, there is a connection within patterns using these smaller cuts to reference cultural significance.”

Behind the birds, Begaye carves an intricate pattern influenced by his grandmother, a textile artist who wove

MARWIN BEGAYE

Earth Song, 2015, woodblock print, 30 × 26 in.

rugs. “I stayed with my grandmother a lot growing up, and I watched her weave. There’s that influence, the textiles, the patterns.”

The artist studies Indigenous textile patterns from around the world and also his local environment. “I walk around with a sketchbook in my back pocket, and I draw the patterns that I see,” he says. “When I get home or when I’m riding in a plane, I start redoing some of those patterns.”

He has accumulated thousands of patterns that he alters and refines on his laptop.

“I recently started doing mezzotints. I took to mezzotinting

because it works with how I think.

Maybe it’s because of how I use the wood blocks—it’s taking the opposite [approach]. With other media, when you mark on them, that’s the mark you get. With woodblock and mezzotint, it’s the reverse,” Begaye says. Mezzotint is a demanding medium—rare today because of the time required.

“The application of the rocker to the matrix is direct. I’m getting used to the sound. With woodcutting, what seems to be addictive to me is listening to the cuts. With the mezzotint, it’s listening to the

flattening of the metal.” He jokes, “My son calls it ‘very sadistic. You get a flat blade, you spent all the time rocking it, putting texture on there, then you flatten it back out to create your image. What is wrong with you?’ ” Begaye continues to challenge himself as an artist. In his work, he asks, “How can I push myself?

How can I come up with new ideas?

How can I push the medium of printmaking? What can I print on?”

He has experimented with printing on surfaces other than paper. “I’d like to do more installation work with the woodblocks. I’d also like to go bigger and print a four-by-eight-foot block at some point, with the same amount of detail and care that I’m doing these smaller ones with.”

During the academic year, Begaye is busy with classes, so he creates his own art during the summer. “I’m working on a two-byfour-foot woodblock. During the school year, this usually takes me about three months, but if I don’t have to go in and teach, it usually takes me about a week to cut from beginning to the end.”

He is currently working on a new series of monoprints that are “more intuitive.” Using a range of sizes, he layers screen prints with chine-collé, drawing, and painting.

Begaye incorporates patterns from his sketchbook into the background, pulling from his own images and patterns. The birds in the center are in black and white while the background images are in color because “people always wanted me to do them in color and this is me reacting to that, being defiant about it—or being an artist about it. It’s a way to get people to notice the specific characteristics of the bird.”

With so many different media and designs, Begaye’s work continues to move forward and reconsider the idea of what a print can be.

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Guna Painter

Kansuet

By Peter Szok, PhD

F

ROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF POLITE SOCIETY, J Street is perhaps Panama City’s most scandalous center of booze-induced revelry. Once the domain of US servicemen stationed in the country’s nowshuttered military bases, J Street and its blaring cantinas still attract working-class patrons, hustlers, pool sharks, prostitutes, and mariners who often arrive after weeks on the ocean and who are eager to blow off a bit of steam as their ships transit the Panama Canal. J Street is a place of excesses and inescapable sadness, yet it is also the site of remarkable creativity, especially in terms of Panamanian visual culture.

In a studio above the din of laughter, salsa, cumbias, and clanking beer bottles, Lucio López Cansuet (Kansuet) calmly listens to classical music as he produces some of Central America’s most stunningly spiritual Indigenous paintings.

Kansuet’s paintings transcend his environs and suggest a link between nature and humanity, a link that heals and gives light to the soul.

Kansuet belongs to the Guna (formerly Kuna) community, one of Panama’s eight Native American ethnicities and a group widely known for their molas, the stitched, reverse appliqué panels that women sew onto their blouses. The colorful mola is a symbol of Panama. Its intricate designs appear in tourist literature, on t-shirts, coffee cups, and in television commercials. Non-Indigenous interests have shamelessly exploited the mola, provoking a torrent of lawsuits from the Guna. The Guna benefit from strong political structures, which stretch from the village to the regional level and culminate in the Congreso General Guna, with its stable of well-trained lawyers. The Guna are justifiably proud of their success at defending their cultural patrimony and in resisting recurrent Western intrusions. In 1925, they rebelled against the Panamanian government and forced the establishment of Guna Yala, one of Latin America’s most successful, self-governing Native American regions.

Guna Yala 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 for hunting and agriculture. While some villages embrace external influences, others insist on more gradual changes.

The Guna are also urban people. Today roughly half of their 80,000 members reside in Colón and Panama City, the two principal urban areas of the republic. There, Guna intellectuals are reshaping many disciplines conventionally associated with non-Indigenous populations. In jazz, contemporary dance, painting, architecture, and other areas, they are making exciting contributions and helping to challenge long-held conceptions of Native Americans as “primitive” people, who must give up their identities if 5 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Kansuet (Lucio López Cansuet).

they wish to participate in broader society. Even the mola in this context is increasingly understood as a contemporary element, which has always evolved to reflect the times and that has changed again to suit city life. Kansuet’s art is part of this effort, as well as a region-wide attempt to insert Native American sensibilities in the ongoing debates surrounding conservation of the environment. Kansuet’s paintings propose a state of harmony between nature and humanity, a perspective born partly of his youth in Guna Yala.

Kansuet is the son of a migrant agricultural laborer, who worked for many years near the Costa Rican border on the banana plantations in the distant Bocas del Toro province. Kansuet and his three sisters remained in Guna Yala, where their mother raised them on Gardi Yandub, an island located just off the coast at the far western end of the comarca (territorial division). To a newcomer, the

KANSUET

Lluvia (Rain), 2015, mixed media on canvas, 69 × 59 ⁷/₈ in. All images courtesy of the artist.

area can seem wondrously idyllic, with the absence of large-scale economic activities and with the mainland ascending rapidly from the shoreline into a series of small, verdant mountains. The Guna have done much to protect their environment, particularly by prohibiting foreign investment and by restricting many of the activities that have left other parts of the republic deforested.

Nevertheless, the western half of Guna Yala is closely connected to the global economy, as many of the same forces that affect the urban context have made their way into the comarca. Indeed, parts of Guna Yala do not seem far removed from the hustle of boisterous J Street. Cruise ships and sailboats anchor off the islands and deposit hundreds of vacationers who usually wander about for several hours to

experience what is marketed as Guna Yala’s “prehistoric” communities. More extended stays are also a staple of the region with a growing number of hotels and backpackers, as well as busy air and land routes between the coast and the capital. The tourist sector drives a thriving market for molas and for the sale of jewelry and other artistic objects. In some ways, Kansuet is a product of these factors. He grew up in an area of stunning beauty, increasingly penetrated by outside influences.

As a young boy, Kansuet took an interest in drawing. He loved to doodle and mark up his notebooks and soon found himself in the tourist business, producing images for the steady stream of visitors. Their expectations of encountering a primordial Eden, as well as his own understanding of his surroundings, inevitably influenced

Kansuet’s production. Kansuet is an enthusiastic fisherman who developed his love for the ocean, paddling a cayuco every morning to reach his school on a neighboring island. He regularly returns to Guna Yala to see his family and to explore the nearby rivers, coves, and beaches. These were the haunts of his childhood, and he still considers them to be his first and most important teacher. Kansuet is outspokenly pro-environment. He waxes nostalgic about Guna Yala’s flora and fauna and their impact on his sense of aesthetics. He recounts standing on the dock of his village and marveling at storms as they advanced across the ocean and recalls his experimentations to reproduce their splendor with nothing more than watercolors and paper. January and February were his favorite time of year, as heavy rains gave way to drier and windier weather and to millions of leaves falling from the trees of Guna Yala. Swirling leaves, flowers, vines, and grasses figure prominently in Kansuet’s paintings, referencing the lessons of this earlier period.

Kansuet’s formal art training began in 1991 when he ventured to Panama City to study at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. After several months, Kansuet became bored with his classes and yearned for the companionship of old friends and family. He returned to Gardi Yandub during a teachers’ strike, although the walkout had not actually affected his institution. Later he decided to stay in Guna Yala to participate in a regional soccer tournament. The vagaries of youth and lack of resources delayed Kansuet’s education for nearly a decade, years that he used to travel through Guna Yala and sketch its people, landscapes, and wildlife.

Kansuet credits his knowledge of the comarca, in part, to this time of uncertainty and wandering. In 2000, he was back in Panama City, where he first completed his secondary preparation before enrolling again in the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. Kansuet studied under Silfrido Ibarra and became fascinated with the career of Gustav Klimt. The SUMMER 2016

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Danza con pelicano (Dance with Pelican), 2015, mixed media on canvas, 34 × 78 ¾ in.

influence of both mentors is apparent in Kansuet’s work, in his Ibarra-like idealizations of the natural world and in his focus on the human figure, which follows the example of the Austrian symbolist by framing the subject in nearly abstract ornamentation. Kansuet uses his daughter Alyson as his model and places her in tangled plants, seedpods, coral, and swirling marine life. Sometimes she appears in front of luminous backgrounds whose crisscrossed patterns resemble those of the mola.

In 2006, Kansuet finished his training at the academy.

His superior abilities had caught the attention of his professors and secured an invitation to present his graduation thesis at Panama City’s Allegro Galería. The gallery, founded in 1991, has specialized in cultivating promising talent and in undertaking progressive and unconventional projects, such as a recent collective exhibition on the Canal and the Canal Zone in Panamanian history. Over the years, Allegro has continued to represent the artist and has assisted him in penetrating a growing number of markets. In 2009, Kansuet was honored with a commission to undertake the official painting of President Martín Torrijos (2004–2009). Later, Kansuet received an invitation to complete a portrait of Demetrio H. Brid, a prominent member of Panama’s 1903 independence movement. Kansuet’s pieces hang prominently in the presidential palace, alongside those of some of the country’s leading artists, as a testament to the hard-won advances of Indigenous people in Panamanian society.

What would be the best way to describe your style? How do you define your art?

I describe my art as Magical Realism. The paintings have many realistic aspects, but they are combined in a fashion that is always magical. For example, the landscapes that I 5 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

create are fundamentally imaginative. The girl may appear wrapped in leaves or twisted branches. The branches and leaves can be very realistic; nevertheless, the scene itself is an invention of the mind, a product of fantasy, a kind of dream. The girl in the paintings is my daughter Alyson.

I have painted Alyson for many years, but I would never describe my renderings of her as portraits. Yes, the physical representation of her is accurate; however, I place Alyson in fantastic settings, asleep in a seedpod, in a hammock of vines, or stretched along the coast of Guna Yala. Such portrayals cannot accurately be called portraits. They are something else: Magical Realism.

Those who have written about your art often emphasize its focus on nature. Could you talk about nature and its function in your painting?

Having been raised in Guna Yala, I can never distance myself from its beauty. It is part of my being, part of my essence, and it emerges in all of my artworks. Even as I live in Panama City, I find that nature remains a key part of my life. It is a legacy of those days in the comarca. Much of our environment today faces threats. Even in Guna Yala, this destruction seems inevitable, as we are unfortunately adopting many of the same practices that have caused such damage in other places. One idea of my pieces, then, is to show people that there is another path, to show them that it is possible to live at peace with nature, to demonstrate the potential of a new harmony. Many Indigenous artists work on similar topics, and there is a widespread perception that Indigenous people have important insights to offer on the subject. I feel that this view is a kind of opportunity. It gives us a voice or a role in society. Although I am just an artist, I

KANSUET

an essential part of the environmental movement, as they certainly will face the most negative consequences of our failure to act on the issue. Indeed, children are the most important reason for us to care about nature.

Will you continue to paint Alyson in the future?

Ha! People always ask me that question! Yes, I hope I can continue to paint her in the future, but of course, this is really up to Alyson. As a young girl, Alyson saw the paintings as something fun, a kind of game, but now she is 13 years old. She has her own ideas and sees things in a more complex manner. It will be her decision. As my daughter, Alyson will always inspire me. She is an important reference point of my life, and regardless of her age, she allows me to examine my own past and to explore more deeply the themes of my art.

How does Indigenous culture inform your art? How do Guna aesthetics enter into your thinking?

Ofrenda (Offering), 2015, pastel on paper, 29 × 21 in.

feel that my work is part of the broader effort to fight for the conservation of our environment.

Your daughter Alyson appears in most of your paintings. What is the relationship between childhood and the natural world? What is Alyson’s role in your paintings?

Yes, Alyson is my daughter, and I have painted her for many years. I think that Alyson reflects my nostalgia.

Whenever I think of nature, I recall my own childhood. I recall how I

perceived the forest and the river and how I felt in those places. I think that this sentiment is the basic connection.

She is a child, as I once was a child, and in some ways, I see myself through her life. Children, in general, have a greater sensibility toward their surroundings and an ability to appreciate them more than many adults can. They are more innocent and open to observations while we suffer so many obstructions in our daily lives. I also think that Alyson’s presence affirms a basic reality. She is there to remind us that children are

My Guna culture is always there, always with me. However, I don’t introduce it in a conscious or forced manner. I never think that, as Guna art, it must contain this or that element. Rather I paint what is born in me. I paint what I am inspired to do, and the cultural aspects come to me naturally, without much thought or deliberate planning, in such things as cayucos, hammocks, and molas. I especially lean toward natural representations, such as the seeds, the trees, and the animals of the comarca. But none of these elements are ever compulsory. They come to me gradually through the process of painting. Allow me to provide you with an example. In preparing a piece for my last exhibition, I felt that something was missing from the composition. I often sense that I need an animal, but not just any animal. I need an animal that I can understand and that perhaps conveys meaning to my public. This painting featured Alyson in a cayuco, and in the background, there was an approaching mass of dark clouds. The scene reminded me of experiences SUMMER 2016

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ABOVE: Sobre el regazo del mar (On the Lap of the Sea), 2015, oil on canvas, 39 ½ × 63 ¾ in.

OPPOSITE: En el silencio de la noche (In the Silence of the Night), 2015, mixed media on canvas, 69 × 60 in.

years ago in my village, when in the darkness, we lay asleep in our hammocks, and the night heron announced that it was going to storm. I immediately added the night heron to the painting. Such understandings have such beauty and wisdom. They are a part of our grandparents’ legacy, and of course, they deserve to be preserved and to be projected onto canvas. However, I always approach these things in a fluid manner so that my expressions can be universal. I have no desire to narrow my audience, to reduce it to those with detailed knowledge. In fact, my hope is that a person in any part of the world can understand and feel my creations without the necessity of explanations. I want my art to speak for itself.

galleries, and there is a true appreciation and support for art in certain quarters. I have been very fortunate to do quite well, and I have never been forced to ponder seriously the thought of abandoning my vocation. While I initially faced obstacles related to my Indigenous ethnicity, I feel that I have largely overcome these issues and that they are no longer very relevant to me personally. In general, I am very optimistic about Panama’s future. My sense is that Panama has the potential to become a dynamic center for art in Latin America. My advice to young people is to work hard.

Talk to me about the art scene in Panama. What is art’s position in Panamanian society?

Yes I do. I am involved in education both here and in the comarca, where I regularly provide workshops for children.

When I was a child, there were few of these opportunities. I had to figure out things on my own, so my hope is to make things a bit easier for others. I participate in these activities out of an interest in forming a new generation of artists.

My desire is to see the potential in others, to awaken their interest, and to encourage their growth in the discipline. It is a very gratifying experience.

Panama is a very commercial society. It is a place of deal making and international business, and its art scene can seem almost like a world apart. Most of us have faced some measure of difficulty at some point in our careers. That, of course, is almost natural. However, there is a sense that the government could play a more helpful role in encouraging the art scene in Panama. While government institutions organize activities, they often are not what is expected. Many artists expect more from the state and more opportunities on a regular basis. The private sector, on the other hand, has been quite dynamic. Panama has a growing number of 5 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

When I visited your studio in the past, you often were working with young people. Do you continue to involve yourself in the instruction of artists?

Kansuet is represented by Allegro Galería in Panama and Saltfineart in California.

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Dzawada’enuxw Interdisciplinary Artist and Educator

Marianne Nicolson, PhD

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

M

ARIANNE NICOLSON, whose name is also ‘Tayagila’ogwa, is of Scottish descent and a member of the Dzawada’enuxw First Nation, a Kwakwaka’wakw people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. She holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1996), a master of fine arts degree from the University of Victoria (1999), a master of arts degree in linguistics and anthropology from the University of Victoria (2005), and a doctoral degree in linguistics, anthropology, and art history from the University of Victoria (2013). Nicolson was also mentored in customary Kwakwaka’wakw drawing, painting, and carving by seminal artists Wayne Alfred (Kwakwaka’wakw) and Clarence Moon (Kwakwaka’wakw).

Nicolson’s interdisciplinary practice hinges on Kwakwaka’wakw Indigenous knowledge to scrutinize ceremonial procedures, language, and artistic production.

Critics took heed in 1998, when Nicolson scaled a rock face in Kingcome Inlet to paint a massive, 28-by38-foot pictograph to commemorate the lastingness of her ancestral village of Gwa’yi. She was the first to do so in more than 60 years. Ten years later, in 2008, Nicolson created the site-specific architectural installation The House of the Ghosts on the façade of the Vancouver Art Gallery. From dusk to dawn every day of the exhibition, she projected Kwakwaka’wakw-influenced imagery featuring totem poles, a human skeleton, and salmon onto a building whose complicated history as a courthouse and jail includes prosecuting First Nation peoples under the government’s potlatch injunction.

Nicolson has exhibited her work in numerous cultural institutions in Canada, including the Art Gallery of Great Victoria, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, and Canadian National Arts Centre, in addition to international exhibitions at National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, New York, and the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia. Nicholson’s work is also included in public and private collections and is represented by Equinox Gallery in Vancouver. I had the pleasure of speaking to the artist about her work this past February.

I’d like to begin with your childhood. Where were you raised and how does it affect your current art practice?

My parents met in Alert Bay [on Cormorant Island, British Columbia]—my dad is Scottish and was working for the coast guard; my mom was living in Alert Bay at the time, working at the local residential school. Later they moved 5 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Marianne Nicolson. All images courtesy of the artist.

down island. I was born in Comox, then we moved as a family to Victoria. After my mom and dad split up, my mom moved us to Vancouver. She started sending us to Kingcome Inlet in the summers. That was my introduction to my home community. It had a major effect on my consciousness because the difference in my worldview and lifestyle was still pretty strong. Basically, my mom sent us up there and said, “Your relatives will take care of you.”

Looking back on it, I guess she had an understanding of the community [laughs]. Sure enough, we were taken in, and we lived with different relatives. It was amazing, actually.

When we went up there, there was no electricity, so basically there was this ancient community that still had a viable, old way of seeing their relationships to one another and the land, which had a huge impact on my artwork and my ways of thinking. It’s carried through all the way to my practice.

MARIANNE NICOLSON

how can the general population be comfortable with calling this their home or understanding this as their home, when this fundamental issue has never been resolved? What I’m trying to do through my artwork is to try and raise awareness of these issues.

You could link it to the environmental movement today, where this general societal distance from land and from place has created a cesspool of land abasement that affects all populations.

We have to address issues—our issues—of how we consider our homeland and what those issues are. I feel strongly that Indigenous peoples have answers to those questions, if we’re willing to listen.

Now, you have undergone extensive academic training covering a breadth of disciplines including visual art studio, linguistics, art history, and anthropology. Can you speak about how your educational background comes to inform your art practice?

Cliff Painting, 1998, petroglyph, Kingcome Inlet, British Columbia.

In light of your time spent in Kingcome Inlet, how important is the concept of place or home to you and your work?

Oh, absolutely fundamental, because I see my artwork as a public platform for the expression of ideas around how human beings relate. One of the major things I’ve encountered in my own life, and which continues to be a feature, is this notion of home, and what is a homeland, and how do we relate to place. In Canada,

particularly where I come from, this is hotly contested. There is this British colonial notion that this landscape on the coast originated with contact and therefore the colonial history is privileged. And yet what I found out and how I grew to understand things is that Indigenous First Nations have always been on these lands, and that a fair and just negotiation over how that relationship to the land was going to be mapped was never set forth by the colonial government. So

It’s an interesting and somewhat conflicted relationship, actually.

Growing up, it was emphasized that we needed to go out and get an education to figure out how we’re going to live in this modern world, then come back … Since they wanted me get an education, I followed through to get the highest form of education available. In the long run, once I’d gone through all of that, I realized that I didn’t get a modern education or a Westernized institutional education … to have an academic career or to become a professor. It was one avenue, one platform, available to me where I could devote my time to learning. I needed to learn as much as I could about both our traditional systems and the modern systems to succeed in the mandate that had been set out for us. One thing led to another.

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space and time. In all of that research was the structure, which was good for me because it allowed me to engage in this research intensively, and what I found was that the worldviews were so different. There was this beautiful philosophy behind the way the Kwakwaka’wakw-speaking people understood their relationship to each other, their communities, and their lands that was absolutely fundamental to how we were going to approach the ongoing negotiations being asked of us around land claims, treaty negotiations, and everything else.

It was funny. I thought there was a danger in pursuing too much Western academic education. I thought I might be pulled into that stream, and what it ended up doing was to heavily influence my art practice. The other thing it showed me—which was kind of scary, actually—was I realized that the Western colonial systems we’re living under now are extremely detrimental to our future, even as human beings. It was a bit awful because, growing up, I retained a certain trust in the system, and my education—my experience of being cross-cultural—stripped those ideas from me. I realized, holy s—, there are no assurances even at the highest level. All it does for me is show how faulty the systems actually are. It’s been motivating, and I’m glad I got the education, because it does give me strength to work from both sides.

Is there a philosophy that drives your work?

Communication, building understanding. Continuing to perpetuate a worldview that I think has tremendous value and that is under duress. I see my art practice as social activism, a way of maintaining a worldview that I strongly believe contains answers to how we’re going to survive climate change and what’s going to happen to our environment.

I use the artwork to advocate for that, and I try to maintain traditional concepts and ideas in the works

Widzotłan’s Gwayułalał? What Is to Become of Us?, 2007, photograph, silver inlay on wood.

Photo: Bob Matheson.

themselves. So, formal qualities of the work are less important. I’m trying to map these concepts and ideas in a modern way for modern audiences, so they can come to an understanding as to what these philosophies must be.

You’ve spoken about the significance of cultural revitalization for Indigenous communities. Can you talk about how cultural

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revitalization is unfolding in North America and how it can be sustained for the future?

Initially, I felt strongly that language was the form under which we were to truly revitalize our cultures. We need to maintain our languages.

Across North America, all Indigenous languages are fading; some of them are going to be extinct; few of them

MARIANNE NICOLSON

Tunics of the Changing Tide series, installation view, 2007, wood, acrylic, brass, copper, abalone shell, and silver inlay on wood, 57 × 63 in. each.

Photo: Bob Matheson.

are slated to survive. But I realized during my research that language was just one major pillar of that understanding, and if we worked hard—not just on language but on other forms as well, such as artwork, ceremony, song, dance, and even our political advocacy—that all those things together would contribute to a revitalization of a worldview.

It’s like a heartbeat. We as a people had suffered so much oppression that the heartbeat was just barely discernible, but you can see a shift from the 1960s, 1970s, onwards, where that heartbeat becomes stronger again. I believe North American Indigenous peoples are looking at revitalization, but part of the major fight I see is that we don’t succumb to an ideological brainwashing where we accept or attempt to map our culture to Western European notions of capitalism. If we map those things, then it’s like our culture becomes more of an outfit we wear but not something we live.

My fight in everything I do—in my art practice and political work at home—is to try to keep the concepts and ideas alive, because they don’t fit within the Western European colonial framework; they just don’t fit. The danger for us as Indigenous peoples is that we revitalize formal aspects of our cultures but we don’t maintain or hold onto what is truly important, which are the concepts, ideas, and ways of being.

Indigenous history was handed down mainly through storytelling, which doesn’t necessarily fit the European model of archivization. Would you say Indigenous languages that follow in the oral tradition are archives in themselves? Is Indigenous language an archive?

Oh, definitely. As a monolingual English speaker who knew a little Kwakwaka’wakw and who had a familiarity with the sound of it because Elders used to speak it around us, I thought to myself, “Well, why can’t we just translate everything?” I was able to study the language intensively and do these comparisons. What I realized was that, conceptually, there were such differences, and embedded in those languages, almost as a code, is a way of understanding things that you cannot translate into English. The languages themselves are very structured in how they choose to express ideas that lead to the conceptual underpinnings of the culture itself.

Arguably, you rose to prominence in 1998 when you scaled a rock face in Kingcome Inlet to paint a largescale pictograph dedicated to Gwa’yi. Could you speak about how this project came about, your experience in painting it, and how it affected the local community?

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The House of Ghosts, 2008, drawing, projection on the Vancouver Art Gallery.

in my early 20s living with one of my uncles in Kingcome.

He was bringing me in and out of the village; you could only reach the village by boat. We were in a small boat with an outboard motor, and he stopped the boat on the way back into Kingcome and pointed from one mountain to this other mountain, stretched his arms out wide, and said, “All that you see before you is under our people.” I understood, “Ya, he’s teaching me.”

At that time, I spent my summers in Kingcome and my winters going to university. It took a while for it to sink in but gradually I came to understand that, technically and legally under Canadian law, none of my uncle’s interpretation was upheld by the Canadian state. Our reserve was three square miles that was allocated to us, and we had legally become somewhat like squatters on Queen’s land. It was shocking to me the difference in the interpretation.

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I thought, f— that, I’m going to abide by what I was taught through my uncle, who handed down to me knowledge that has come from thousands and thousands and thousands of years of our place on this land. I cannot acknowledge, I cannot abide by this imposed notion of what our state is considered to be under Canadian law. The strongest act that I can do artistically is to create something that upholds the traditional place of the land for our people, our understanding, and worldview.

Well, what do you do as an artist? You make something no one can miss. Anyone coming into that territory cannot miss this large declaration of the land of these ancient relationships. That painting is of our original story, so to tie this back to our origin story, they say the beginning of time, which I translate as when the waters receded and the land was revealed, that’s when our people arrived to this land. I wanted to privilege that perspective, I wanted to be

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very public, and I wanted it to be of strength to the community, because legally—especially when it came to our relationships to government and industry—it was extraordinarily inconvenient for us to have this little village in the middle of all this logging.

We were basically inconvenient and in some ways almost nonexistent. That has shifted and changed somewhat in the last 20 years, but I wanted to make this strong political statement, and in recognition of the community, I was going to acknowledge our perspective and worldview.

Another prominent work opened at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2008.

Essentially, The House of Ghosts transformed the façade of the gallery into a Northwest Coast ceremonial house. When discussing the work, you wrote, “Come ghosts, you whose night is day and whose day is night in this Great House, I beg you, Great Healer, to take pity on us and restore us to life.” Could you provide further context on how this quote references the work and the forces beyond it?

The Vancouver Art Gallery was originally built to be the BC courthouse, and I wanted to look at that history of colonial law and place it in relationship to Indigenous understanding, particularly Kwakwaka’wakw. So, I thought, what I’ll do is … a performance akin to our ceremonies. We do these performances that manifest ideas, so I’ll do these performances and I’ll transform the exterior of this colonial structure into the interior of an Indigenous structure. The exterior of the building through the light projection at nighttime would be transformed into the interior house posts and crossbeam of what we call a big house. In doing so, anybody driving by or in front of the gallery at that time became, spatially, actors within that performance, because now they’re on that ceremonial floor, so they’re implicated as participants in the piece.

I wanted to do that because I was questioning Canada’s history in relation to Indigenous peoples. Our ceremonies had been banned and outlawed. Our people had been put in jail for practicing these things, yet these things were the manifestation of all these concepts and ideas. The text itself refers to the great house, which either refers to Canada as a nation or the land itself. The ghosts, in our belief system, represent the connection to our ancestors that is very strong, so I wanted to tangibly look back to our ancestors and say, “Help us.” I also wanted to look at how we perceive our relationship to the spirit of the land and look to a spiritual presence to help us, recognizing that we are in dire straits, not just as Indigenous peoples but as a nation. The land is completely under duress.

Aesthetically, the work is powerful.

Politically, the work holds deep meaning. Could you talk about the general public’s reaction to the work?

Did their reactions differ from the First Nation community’s reaction?

It’s hard to gauge people’s reactions to artworks. I thought it was well received. I always wanted to create [contemporary] works, but works that were also comprehensible to my own community. I’m not creating works that are so abstract that people say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about because the language you’re speaking is foreign.” All of these ideas come out of Kwakwaka’wakw fundamental beliefs, and so I think Indigenous peoples could understand the work’s concepts. In a way, I was speaking to the general population from that position of being Kwakwaka’wakw, saying we as a people are not well. We as an Indigenous people have suffered tremendously, yet are working toward getting better. I also say that we as a people, after living together in this place that we call home, are not well because unresolved issues have not been addressed. And we cannot

move forward until these things are addressed. I think Indigenous people should refuse to join in on the trajectory that Western Europeans are on, because it’s completely destructive to the land, communities, and individuals.

In recent years, your work has incorporated elements of wood and glass. Certainly evidence of this was present during your 2013 solo exhibition at Equinox Gallery. There, you inscribed, presumably by laser cut, Kwakwaka’wakw iconography onto sculptural objects that resemble whale fins breaking the surface of the water. How did this work come about, and what were its larger implications?

I was looking at notions of performance; that’s why I’m interested in installation. At the time, I was working on my dissertation and studying these concepts around space, and I thought I could transplant spaces and apply these ideas. That’s where those glass- and light-based works start to come out.

The medium itself helped me translate these ideas. The work was called Walking on Water. I wanted to show these beautiful fins. There’s this cliché attachment to bears and whales along the coast but our actual relationship with them is destructive. Under Kwakwaka’wakw understanding, killer whales were very much honored. You didn’t kill them; you didn’t hunt them.

There’s an intuitive understanding of this when people come to the coast and see killer whales. When you’re on the ferry and a pod of killer whales comes by, the entire boat runs to the side. People are all looking for the killer whales.

Walking on Water was a reference to Jesus and the notion of miracles. My comment was that policy-wise, we’re watering down our relationship to the environment. Around that time, Canada passed legislative bills that SUMMER 2016

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Bax’wana’tsi: The Container for Souls, 2006, glass, light, red cedar, dimensions variable, collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Photo: Scott Massey.

removed water rights, so for Canada—and the general population—their relationship to these water systems was basically being whittled down to a hope for a miracle. I still believe that. The point we’re at in our true understanding of the world and the environment is that we’re still hoping for a miracle. That reference to walking on water was a double meaning because the people that were walking around the fins were in the position of walking on water. If those fin backs are breaking the surface of the water, then we’re walking on water. I wanted to implicate the audience, because I don’t think we’re removed from any of these issues. We’re involved in these issues, so the people who experience the installation are also the ones walking on water, including myself.

When discussing an artist’s work, I’m curious to know what the artist struggled with or continues to struggle with in their practice. Do you encounter a difficulty that resurfaces when making work?

What I struggle with is the responsibility. I feel like it’s an extraordinarily privileged position to be in, to have a voice, and I feel my art practice has given me a voice. I feel I have the opportunity to advocate for my family, my community, Indigenous peoples, humanity, and that’s so paralyzing at times. I’m thinking, “F—, I have to trust that I have the knowledge, that I’m not going to screw up, and with every 6 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

exhibition or auction I have to hope that I make something worthy of that privilege.”

Would you say there’s pressure?

Yes, but I feel like I’m doing all right. I haven’t dropped any bombs or dropped the ball, but I do feel pressure. I struggle with that, I do. Some of the subject matter I’m taking on—I’m scared a lot of the times. It’s like diving off the high board. I think to myself, “Why don’t you just shut up?” It’s hard to bring that kind of attention to yourself and to make sure that what you’re saying is accurate, well informed, and articulate, because you’re representing other people and their experience as well. So, I do; I feel the pressure.

And to do justice to others as well?

Exactly that. Yes. I’d like to talk about your influences; what or whom is a force behind your work?

A lot of contemporary influences intrigue me. I’m intrigued by certain writings. Anthony Hall wrote a book, Earth into Property, which I felt was an absolutely seminal work in terms of understanding the colonial history of North America. Even this notion of earth into property is very fundamental to me. How do we frame our relationships to property, to land as a property? It’s a concept, it’s not

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What projects or exhibitions do you have planned for the near future?

I have a show opening in Philadelphia that deals with residential schools. I think it’s a strong work but difficult for me to create because the subject matter is tough. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of a life it has.

I’m also creating a piece right now that is going to Australia. It’s a lightprojection work that deals with the 1862–63 smallpox epidemic in Victoria, British Columbia, which decimated the coast nations. It’s all there in historical documents, but the general understanding of this history to this place is limited. So, it’s going to show in Australia first, and I’m hoping it will show here in Canada afterwards.

When smallpox broke out in Victoria, a couple thousand Indigenous people from the coast communities had come to Victoria for trade and were forcibly evicted. At that time, the authorities knew they should quarantine and vaccinate them, but instead they put a gunboat out into the harbor and forced them to leave. That spread the smallpox up and down the coast. It was a massive die-off. These are the types of histories that people need to know and understand.

The Rivers Project, 2015, etched glass, stainless steel, red cedar, acrylic paint, 28 ft. 1 ¹/₃ in. tall, Vancouver International Airport.

a given. I’m interested in Naomi Klein’s writings. She has a lucid way of understanding and then putting forward a more general expression of what is happening that is not academic.

Arthur Manuel, the son of George Manuel who was an Indigenous activist all through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, is working with Naomi Klein.

They are generating fundamental concepts and ideas that are exciting.

As far as artists go, recently Raymond Boisjoly [Haida]; his artwork is extraordinarily fascinating. Some

strong ideas are going on in that work. Marina Abramović, her performance work …

Her early or later work?

The most recent work, including the show at the Museum of Modern Art, The Artist is Present. Initially, I thought, how are you going to pull that off? But it was groundbreaking stuff in terms of art challenging people’s ideas.

I have a couple other shows on the go, too, including an opening at Simon Fraser University in May, which looks at the relationship between nonIndigenous peoples to Indigenous artworks on the coast. There’s heavy appropriation, which stems from the desire to engage or share a sense of place with these peoples, but instead of true engagement, there’s a topical engagement of, “Maybe if I buy this mask and put it on my wall, then I’ll have a connection.” I feel compassion around that. What I want is to strip that away and have a real dialogue.

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Cherokee Ceramic Artist

Jane Osti

By America Meredith

T

AHLEQUAH, OKLAHOMA, a colorful college town of nearly 16,000 residents, rests in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Founded in 1839, the town is the capital of both the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and supports a thriving artist community. One of its most vibrant residents is Jane Osti. Her studio is always abuzz with activity, whether she is sculpting pots, painting, teaching, or hosting events.

My friend Jacquie Archambeau and I recently visited Jane’s newest studio location, a Downing Street storefront. Jane had a good laugh at my freestyle parking attempts. We entered the sparkling new space, where she had already fired a series of ceramic feathers.

Since, in the winter months prior to moving to her new studio, it was too cold to work with clay, she had briefly taken up painting. “I wanted to be a sculptor or a painter,” Jane admitted, “but I’m proud to be a potter now.”

Her pottery has drawn praise from all across Indian Country—for its grace, technical excellence, and exquisite design. Often imposing in size, her pots are hand-coiled and hand-burnished. Jane studies historical and precontact Cherokee ceramics, but she does not make historical replicas.

Distilled from early iconography, tribal stories, and natural surroundings, her visual language manifests in the ceramic sculptures in surprising and ever-changing ways.

Jane pushes the technical limits of the material. She harvests clay and also uses commercial clay; she pitfires and uses a kiln. Always evolving, she explores the full range of colors, textures, and shapes of the clay, and her designs come more from incising than painted slip.

Jane Osti firing a pot. Image courtesy of the artist.

Turtles figure prominently in her work. They’re important in Cherokee culture and symbolic of women dancers who pound rhythms wearing turtle shell shackles. Dogwood blossoms are another of her preferred motifs. The Cherokee Nation lies on the westernmost border of the dogwood’s natural habitat, and the blossoms in Indian Territory must have reminded early Cherokees of their homelands in the Great Smoky Mountains back East.

Born in the Cherokee Nation, Jane moved to California as an adult.

There she married, raised a family, and launched her art studies at Skyline College in San Bruno. She returned to Oklahoma and earned her bachelor’s degree in 1989 and master’s degree in 1992, both at Northeastern State University (NSU). There, ceramics sparked her interest and set her life’s path. In recognition of her accomplishments, the Cherokee Nation declared her a national treasure in

1. All quotes by Jane Osti come from discussion with the author, February 25, 2016.

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2005. She is represented by Lovetts Gallery in Tulsa, and she frequently exhibits at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill.

Jane is generous with her knowledge and readily gives credit to her mentors, the most influential being Anna Belle Sixkiller Mitchell (Cherokee Nation, 1926–2012).

Through trial and error, Mitchell singlehandedly revived pottery among Oklahoma Cherokees. The Cherokee Heritage Center will host the Anna Mitchell Legacy Exhibit from November 12, 2016 through April 1, 2017. The show will feature work by Anna and her primary students, all Cherokee Nation members: Jane, Crystal Hanna, and Victoria Mitchell Vazquez (Anna’s daughter), and their students. Jane also recognizes the contributions of North Carolina potter Joel Queen (Eastern Band Cherokee) and Alabama potter and scholar Tamara Beane.

How did you learn about precontact Cherokee iconography?

Tammy Beane and Joel Queen gave a pottery workshop in 2005 and discussed Cherokee designs. They brought books, DVDs, and photos from museums. I visited collections of Cherokee work, like the one at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I still haven’t been to the McClung Museum, but Tammy sent me photos from their collections. I’ve been sharing those with others, too.

Anna Sixkiller Mitchell was your inspiration and mentor. Could you share how she became interested in pottery?

Yes, she was. She was in her early 40s, and all her kids were done with school so she had time to explore pottery.

JANE OSTI

Medicine Morning, 2015, hand-coiled, stone-polished, double-fired ceramic pot, 18 ×15 in. Photo: Jane Osti. The shape and four-point rim of this pot are characteristic of early Cherokee pots. Incised designs represent red root leaves, turtles, four winds/four directions, cloud/water, and friendship designs.

Bob, her husband, wanted a pipe like Sequoyah’s. That was one of the first things she made, and I believe it exploded [laughs]. She had no one to teach her. She had to do it all on her own. Back then, we didn’t have the Internet and few books with anything Cherokee in them, so she visited museums. She went to North Carolina to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and to the Gilcrease Museum, too.

Did you learn ceramics directly from Anna?

I met her when I took pottery for my bachelor’s degree. I didn’t want to take pottery, but I had to graduate, so I studied pottery with Jerry Choate in that last year, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I also took a Cherokee Studies class. We had to interview someone we admired, so I chose Anna.

I had seen her pots but I didn’t know

her at all. I went to her house. She wasn’t very tall, but I was scared of her [laughs]. That was the first time we met, but we just became the best of friends.

When she was in the hospital before she passed away, she’d introduce me to the nurses as “her best friend.” We had a 25-year relationship.

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didn’t just teach pottery; she taught Cherokee values and told stories about her early life. Her husband Bob was really important to the pottery, too. He’d gather clay. His support of her was the biggest thing. He supported her as much as anyone could ever hope for. We had a special relationship.

She had other students, too: her daughter Victoria Mitchell Vazquez and Crystal Hanna.

It’s amazing how much people wanted this revival of Cherokee pottery in Oklahoma. From that first generation of students, it’s just blossomed.

Anna taught lots of people, but you have to teach a hundred to get three people to continue with it.

It seems that you need an internal drive to excel at art.

Almost anyone can learn the basic technical skills, but your pots are incredible. They’re so refined, and you’ve pushed them to achieve these dimensions that no one else is doing. So, what do you think truly makes someone an artist?

Passion. You may be skilled, but if you don’t have passion …

I’ve had students that were absolutely wonderful, just made beautiful pottery, but it wasn’t going to become their life.

They had other interests. But if you absolutely love it and can’t wait to do it every day… I’ve felt that way every day since I’ve started doing it.

In Native communities, it’s expected that artists give back to their communities. You are teaching the next generation, but they are also competing against you.

And they beat me, too [laughs]. I’ve really enjoyed teaching over the years. I like seeing the students do well. Sometimes I don’t teach for a little while, then I’ll have a class and think, “I should do this more often.” I had a class a few weeks ago; they did amazing work for first-time potters. I have small classes where I can really mother them.

You’ve dug your own clay and pit-fired pottery. What are some ways you have changed your pottery?

My pottery may look the same to other people, but every few years I need to reinvent myself and do something new and different. I can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and over. I love historical pottery, and I do some, but I can’t just copy the old pottery. I use parts of it that I love and that interest me but not to replicate it.

The designs all mean something. Like this one is a cloud design [examining wooden paddles], this is a variation on the friendship design, and this is a spiral. Now, this one is a Creek design—I’ll give them credit. I have a couple of early ones that are just texture. I just love the paddles.

The paddle-stamped designs strengthen the pot and conduct Cherokee Spring, ceramic tower, 21 × 13 in. Courtesy of the National Museum the heat better. The old cooking pots were stamped, so when you held them, they wouldn’t slip out of your hands. of the American Indian Museum Store. Photo: Jane Osti.

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JANE OSTI

Qualla Cooking Pot, 2014, hand-coiled pot with notched rim and appliqué features, 9 ×13 in., collection of the Philbrook Museum. Photo: Jane Osti.

The earliest pots were cord-marked [impressed by wrapped cordage in the wet clay]. Why did they switch to stamped designs? Beauty. They always wanted to make things beautiful. The cord-marked pots provided texture and distributed the heat, but as time went on, we always had to make things beautiful.

I’ve been told the most often-used design in Southeastern pottery is the scroll, because we always lived near water. Our ancestors were so much more observant than we are today.

They had time to observe movement of the water and drew designs to indicate wind and water. With all the tools we have at our disposal now and all our education, how many of us have come up with an original design?

At Doris Littrell’s Oklahoma Indian Art Gallery, someone told me, “You can listen to Jane Osti’s pottery. They all have their own sound.”

After I’d been making pottery for about five years, I was five feet away from a

pot, and I could hear it. I could hear the sound coming out from it. Kind of spooked me, actually. But I think what happened was, after five years, I finally got quiet enough to hear it. We’ll have to go listen. [Break to listen to the pots.

Sounds resonate in them, much like with a seashell held to one’s ear.]

I love that you experiment with raku and metallic slips.

I first started firing raku in Santa Fe in 1992. Have you ever heard of John Reeve? He was a ceramic artist who taught at the studio founded by Bernard Leach, a famous potter in London in the 1950s and 1960s. He taught me how to work with raku at Santa Fe Clay, and Austin Realrider taught me about raku, too. I did that for years with the smaller pots and wall pieces.

You have exhibited in galleries, markets, and art shows. What are some of the main places you’ve shown over the years?

National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, IAIA Museum, Heard, Eiteljorg, Santa Fe …

Ten years ago I could count maybe six Cherokee artists in Indian Market.

What made you first try Indian Market?

Anna was the trailblazer. She started doing Santa Fe Indian Market in the 1970s or ’80s. I started showing there in 1994. Anna opened the door for all of us. Some people thought that Cherokees didn’t do pottery. I’ve had potters come up to me and say, “Let me see your hands!” at market, and then say, “Okay, I guess you did make this” after they looked my hands over.

When did you live in California?

From 1966 to 1985. My brother was in the navy, and I just wanted the adventure. I got married after I had been there two or three years. We lived in Southern California for about ten years, and Northern California about eight years.

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I would like to see those kids today, and see if they remember that, since they didn’t have other art classes. Anyway, I could see that they were interested and liked art even though they hadn’t studied art before.

I had only one art class growing up, in fourth grade, and I loved it. I went to a little, tiny, three-room country school, then high school was Oaks Mission School, and they didn’t have art.

Where did you grow up?

Teresita. It’s 15 miles north of town.

Little, bitty place. We lived in Tulsa for part of one year. That’s when I had the art class.

Red Root for Medicine Clan, incised, hand-coiled, double-fired ceramic pot. Image courtesy of Lovetts Gallery, Tulsa, OK.

Does leaving your homeland make you appreciate how you grew up?

When I went to Santa Fe in 1991 or ’92, I missed the Cherokee street signs and hearing people speak Cherokee and having access to information. I knew I wanted to come back here.

I have to give a shout-out to Cherokee Nation for the one percent of construction funds slated for art. More of us can almost make a living now.

That has helped a lot of people.

Why do you think young students need visual arts?

My granddaughter started doing pottery a couple years ago. She was naturally good at it. She got into the Santa Fe Indian Market last year at age 14 and won first place in her category. I think it did a lot for her self-esteem. It taught her a lot more about Cherokee

culture than she knew before and exposed her to other tribes, too. So just using her as an example, I think it has done her a lot of good.

I taught one summer at Cave Springs [Elementary School] in 1989. It was this little, tiny school between here and Stilwell, and they didn’t even have an art program. They had money for supplies, so we had drawing, painting, sculpture, and pottery. It was only a weeklong summer class, so the first four days, we spent each day doing one thing. We used Southeast Mississippian designs, especially from Spiro, so on the fifth day we went to Spiro Mounds.

The children were excited because they were familiar with the designs. I had a party and gave them all awards. The teachers there said, “Oh, their parents, they won’t come. They won’t show up.”

We had a little exhibit. That room was full of parents. They all came.

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Everyone around us was pretty poor; we weren’t poorer than anyone else, but my aunt made beautiful gardens.

She didn’t have much, but she kept her house really nice. She cooked wonderfully. I think those things were art to the people of that time. They did the best they could with what they had. She made beautiful pies, canned wonderfully, and even her way of doing laundry was beautiful. In my 20s or so, gardening was my art. I was 33 before I took my first real art class. From that day on, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I think people’s lives can also be art.

Like you were saying before about early people using pots to cook but still wanting them to be beautiful.

Art was educational, philosophical, utilitarian—but aesthetics were integrated into every aspect of their lives. Speaking of utilitarian art, have you cooked with any of your pots?

No, I haven’t. Tammy Beane cooks in hers all the time at Moundville [Alabama]. We do workshops there. I think these pots needed to be made all the time, because you can’t heat them up that many times before they break. I think it was a continuous industry.

I read in Moundville’s Economy [University of Alabama Press, 1991] that archaeologists located clay pits and a pottery-making area, so they think there was labor specialization.

JANE OSTI

I think every household made pots, but they had specialized master potters for chiefs, burials, and ceremonies.

I started going to Moundville ten or fifteen years ago. Their culture used to be called the Southern Death Cult.

Now it’s called the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Dr. [Charles Justin] Noble was my teacher at Northeastern. I loved him. I took every class he taught: archaeology, anthropology, ethnobiology, and world regions. He explained that death was such a part of life then. Today, we make a big deal about death, but back then it wasn’t anything to be scared of—like we are now. The skeleton and skull imagery—I don’t particularly like to do them—but I don’t think they represent anything scary. They are more of a celebration of the cycle.

Could you talk about becoming a Cherokee National Treasure?

Anna was our first national treasure in pottery. She got it in 1989, the first time that anyone was made a treasure. I was given the award in 2005. Lisa Snell and Lisa Rutherford nominated me. They had been taking my pottery classes.

Victoria got the award in 2012. Crystal Hanna should get it sometime soon.

The four of us have worked the longest in Oklahoma [Cherokee] pottery.

It seems like removal created so much upheaval and many things were lost.

Baskets survived, but pottery didn’t.

Our pottery reached its peak around the 14th to 16th centuries but started declining after the 17th century with the introduction of European metal.

And there was so much upheaval: migrations, disease, warfare, the Indian slave trade …

But there was also the introduction of metal pots and pans through trade, so people didn’t need to make the pottery anymore. People still went out to the woods and gathered materials for basketry. The baskets came to Oklahoma and continued to be made.

Keeping the Night Watch, coil-built clay. Image courtesy of Lovetts Gallery, Tulsa, OK. This work was inspired by the Key Marco Cat, a 16th-century woodcarving from Florida.

I’m just amazed how three generations of artists have completely transformed the pottery in this area.

he’s gone off on a completely different direction—wild and crazy. Karin and Lisa are doing great.

I hope we can include many people in this upcoming exhibit. Some have gone on to do markets, like Karin Walkingstick, Lisa Rutherford, and Steven Woods. Steven has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, but I taught him how to do the coiled pottery. I like that

What projects are you working on?

The move to my new studio was my big project for the last couple of months.

I’m working toward Santa Fe Indian Market in August and then the Anna Mitchell Legacy Exhibit in November.

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Albuquerque

Lightning Speak: Solo and Collaborative Work of Raven Chacon University of New Mexico Art Gallery

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AVEN CHACON’S VISION is so deep and complete that it forces us to question our own existence and our relationship to everything around us— politically, communally—to question our values and how we interact with each other and the natural cycles that sustain us. I think of him in the same context as the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, for instance, but completely for his own original approach and perspective. How do we respond in the presence of such work? I ask myself this question before burdening/enlightening anyone else with it.

Raven Chacon (Navajo) is a composer, noise musician, conceptual artist, instigator, and collaborator, among other activities and endeavors.

He has been a longtime member of Postcommodity, an Indigenous arts collective based in the Southwest and well known to the readers of this magazine.

I reviewed their album, We Lost Half the Forest and the Rest Will Burn This Summer (SickSickSick Distro), in FAAM Issue No. 8. Chacon is also a longtime member of Death Convention Singers, Tenderizor, and KILT, and has contributed to other projects and musical collaborations over the years.

I was able to attend the opening of Lightning Speak and visit the exhibition the following morning. Equally gratifying, the two visits differed significantly one from the other. People filled the evening opening. There was a palpable sense that together we were experiencing work that would be a catalyst for some kind of action. From these imaginative and mischievous installations themselves, a deep empathy and joy permeated the four rooms.

Viewing the exhibit the following morning encouraged a much more focused meditation with the work and

encouraged me to consider, “How do I respond as a writer/artist/human being (with my own personal and societal identities)?” Every piece challenged both conscious and unconscious assumptions our society-at-large accepts as truth and normality. Overall, the exhibit revealed that this objective reality of Western civilization is indeed not normal at all, but artificial and limiting in many ways.

The exhibit features 17 different pieces. I wish I had the opportunity to return repeatedly to this exhibit, perhaps each time to experience just one piece, observe its influence on my reality when I leave, then return again and have a full experience with the next piece, and so on. Unfortunately, I don’t live close enough to Albuquerque to do so.

Raven Chacon (Navajo), Report, 2001, video still.

Drum Grid (2010) is a Postcommodity collaboration, a live, large ensemble of drummers spread around Albuquerque. For this exhibit, it was presented as a video on a monitor on the wall. One drummer at a time is shown, each in a different location. As I watched the video, I started to realize that they are spread out throughout a suburban area. In neighborhoods and intersections, they communicate and respond to each other in a relay. At first, each strikes his or her drum once, then the next drummer strikes, and so on, but we only see one person at a time. I began to realize that this could be quite disturbing to the people who slept, worked, and generally lived their lives in these neighborhoods. It was obvious, however, that the drummers were not intending to disrupt or disturb but were using this space on the planet to interact across a distance, communicate through sound, and simply participate with the sounds of the environment. However, the drummers undoubtedly knew that this would also be a disruption to everyday activities.

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Report is another video in the exhibit of a live performance of a musical composition, only the instruments were eight rifles and handguns of various calibers. The high-production quality of the video itself was necessary for the success of the piece, and definitely better than Drum Grid, whose DIY production quality was a perfect complement to its respective concept.

Report can be experienced in several ways, one being a customary, notated composition for an octet, whose instruments just happen to be guns. Another way, and perhaps quite unsettling, was to focus on the shooters lined up like a firing squad aiming at an out-of-frame target. What are they shooting at? Guns represent various and competing ideas and emotions for different audiences.

They play a tremendously significant role in American folklore and contemporary life as an instrument of violent oppression (both by individuals and in institutionalized brutality); as a necessary defense against oppressors with guns; as a way of gathering food for survival; for trophy hunting. Guns are a bedrock of culture or the greatest menace to civilized society. America has a fascination with guns, but others see them as a sign of paranoia and consider them political weapons and/or overwhelming, moneymaking machines.

No matter how the observer thinks or relates to guns, it can’t be denied that this is yet a new way to experience them.

Report can be viewed in the context of the music of John Cage and Pauline Oliveros, whom Raven cites as part of the lineage of the most influential musical philosophies of the 20th and 21st centuries. At the same time, the concept and realization is unique within this context. Both Drum Grid and Report are equally effective, due to what we don’t see outside the frame and for what we see inside it.

Field Recordings (1999) are three framed photographs of beautiful landscapes, each with corresponding headphones playing extreme, sonically magnified field recordings of otherwise serene locations. It’s a jarring and incredibly compelling contrast between the photos and what is blasting through the headphones (though the volume coming through the headphones is not

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necessarily loud). This creates a unique experience with place and encouraged me to question my expectations.

Ofrendas de luz by the Death Convention Singers, which resulted in their album Brujas, played through headphones at a table along with three other recorded pieces on a loop. The recordings came about in an unusual happening. A number of players were personally invited to enter anonymously into an abandoned building at night and improvise with other anonymous players. No one knew who was there at any given time. Every room was recorded and eventually mixed into a sonic experience released as an album.

This is a brilliant concept for musicians to experience music making in a unique way, disregarding the ego, attempting to hide their identity through their playing, encouraging each musician to play differently than they ever had before, and to experience the wonder of producing a sonic environment where each person is an equal contributor.

The exhibit’s many other installations include Score for Marginal Objects (2014), a collaboration with Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish), which entails a musical text score printed on a piece of paper for each person to take with them to perform outside the gallery. ...lahgo adil’i dine doo yeehosinilgii yidaaghi is a graphic score incorporating Indigenous geometries.

Gauge (2013–2015) is a score Raven created for a three-channel projected video of icebergs being painted by Canadian artists. While Contemplating Their Fate in the Stars, The Twins Surround the Enemy (2003), featuring a theremin and two finches, takes inspiration from the Navajo Creation story. Still Life No. 3 (2015) depicts the Navajo emergence into this fifth world with the recording of a woman’s voice in Navajo cut up and edited to intentionally cause confusion.

This exhibit lays it down: we are all responsible for our own reaction to objective reality. We are all responsible for how we behave in relation to society and to the dynamics of our existence.

Question it all and play with it. This is freedom!

—Thollem McDonas

Anadarko

Chase Kahwinhut Earles: Ancestral Caddo Pottery Southern Plains Indian Museum

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HE US DEPARTMENT of the Interior Indian Arts and Crafts Board’s Southern Plains Indian Museum (SPIM) recently hosted a splendid collection of pottery

by Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo) in the museum’s Rosemary Ellison Gallery.

Curator Bambi Allen (Comanche) had admired Earles’ pottery displayed

at the Red Earth Festival. Over the next two years, she worked with the artist to bring his ceramics to Anadarko. She believed an exhibit of his pottery would provide an important showcase of handbuilt, pit-fired Caddo pottery. SPIM is one of the few institutions to regularly offer solo exhibits for American Indian artists, and this exhibit represents Earles’s first one-man show.

While the museum no longer houses a gift shop of local art, it now has a wonderfully interactive children’s art center. Children have a large and colorful work area to create art while family members visit the next-door gallery. This addition, dedicated in 2002, provides a spacious, hexagonal-shaped gallery for displaying art.

Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo), DeeTumBah Kahwis (Horse Tripod), 2014, pit-fired ceramic trilobed bottle with Red River clay and mussel-shell temper, 22 × 19. Image courtesy of the artist.

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Earles’s pottery is inspired by his ancestors’ designs. The Caddo Nation tribal headquarters is located in Binger, Oklahoma. The Caddo are a confederacy of several Southeastern tribes with homelands in Eastern Texas, Northern Louisiana, Southern Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma. Southeastern Woodlands tribes historically lived on the eastern borders of North America with bountiful forest ranges, mound-building cultures, elaborate architectural structures, rich pottery, and intricate basketry.

Caddo pottery, as with other Mississippian cultures, acknowledges the three levels of cosmology: Underworld, with serpents, fish, and all things beneath the water and underground; Middle World, inhabited by humans and creatures on the land; and Upper World, with flying birds, moon, clouds, stars, and all things heavenly.

Some of the oldest surviving pots from Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center depict these three worlds. Earles’s DeeTumBah Kahwis (Horse Tripod) (2015) shows elaborate spiral wave designs in its highly polished surfaces that rival any commercially made glazes. His incised design motifs often include spirals, moon, sun, serpents, and other historic Caddo designs.

Chase Kahwinhut Earles writes: I do, in my own way, believe in the World Above, our land, and the Underworld. I do believe in the Creator Above, Caddi Ah Ah Hiyo. ... The Caddo shared many things with the Spiro people, and were a sort of sister tribe; the same as all confederacies of the Caddo people as a whole. In the Caddoan origin story, our people came up from under the ground in darkness into the land of light on earth. In this way, I believe our pottery is fundamentally connected to our people and is at the center of our people’s lives because, like our people, it comes from under the ground and turns into a vessel.

And to the ground it returns, like our people, indicated by our extremely elaborate funeral practices where all

the pottery goes back with the owner into the ground.1 According to Earles, continuing the thousand-year-old potterymaking tradition of his ancestors is an important responsibility. His journeys to ancestral Caddo lands to collect freshwater mussel shells and dig clay from the banks of the Red River represent the way it was “always done before.” The majority of his pots are pit fired outside. This represents an important transmission of culture and one the artist hopes will encourage future generations to do the same. He readily shares Caddo history, cultural knowledge, and his own developed pottery techniques because it honors the art of his ancestors.

Nine of Earles’s pots displayed at SPIM give viewers a rare glimpse at the elaborate and elegant design motifs and refined ceramics techniques that were first created in the ancient past.

Two pots, the largest, are DeeTumBah Kahwis (Horse Tripod) and Kahwis Bahateno (Red River Bowl). Only one white porcelain pot in the exhibit is kiln fired with commercially made materials. It serves in stark contrast to the other eight coil-built, pit-fired pieces on exhibit.

In 2009, Earles was inspired by Pueblo-style pottery. This interest led him to research his own tribal cultural heritage and its art, which ultimately led him to Jeri Redcorn (Caddo-Potawatomi) and her pottery.

Interestingly enough, at the same time, Jeri Redcorn reached out to the artist’s mother about Caddo tribal genealogy.

Out of this serendipitous connection grew a rich mentorship and networking link for Earles. After much trial and error, Earles perfected his own signature pottery technique.

His work is worthy of the recognition and awards he’s garnered, including a first place at the 2013 Santa Fe Indian Art Market, among others. His pottery is in several public collections.

Earles can be contacted through his website at caddopottery.com.

—Juanita Pahdopony

1. Chase Kahwinhut Earles, email message to author, February 10, 2016.

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Portland

Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy: Zig Jackson, Wendy Red Star, Will Wilson Portland Art Museum

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DWARD SHERIFF CURTIS (1868–1952) is one of the most controversial photographers of the early 20th century. His iconic, sepia-toned portraits of Native American individuals taken during his travels across the United States are loved by many but have also contributed to stereotypical conceptions of Native American identity. Despite their beauty, critics contend that Curtis reduced diverse peoples to picturesque Others destined for extinction, embodied by his famous photograph titled The Vanishing Race. Recent shifts in thinking about the staged identity presented in his photographs call for closer scrutiny.

Curators Dr. Deana Dartt (Coastal Band Chumash) and Dr. Julia Dolan ambitiously explore these contradictions and Curtis’s impact on Native representation in Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy, a timely exhibition held at the Portland Art Museum (PAM).

Photogravures from PAM’s complete portfolio of Curtis’s The North American Indian (published between 1907 and 1930) intermingle throughout the exhibition in galleries dedicated to three contemporary Native photographers: Zig Jackson (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara, b. 1957), Wendy Red Star (Crow, b.

1981), and Will Wilson (Diné, b. 1969).

Their innovative examinations of Native American representation span a striking spectrum of critique.

Temporally, Jackson, Red Star, and Wilson belong to three distinct, artistic generations and are rooted in different moments of contemporary art practice. Today they work within the same emerging framework of global

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contemporary Indigenous art: artists who are rooted in a particular place but look broadly to create art that reflects their sense of being within time.

Zig Jackson’s photographs in the exhibition span three decades and reflect his conceptual approach to identity politics. A wall-sized version of Camera in Face, Taos, New Mexico (1992) greets visitors and announces the exhibition’s emphasis on contemporary artistic agency. Part of his Indian Photographing Tourist Photographing Indian series, it portrays a Caucasian tourist intrusively photographing a young Indigenous dancer, just inches from his face. His documentations of non-Indigenous tourists and photographers at Native American cultural events such as Crow Fair appear humorous at first but resonate with grief and incredulity of this continued voyeurism.

While acknowledging the inaccuracies of Curtis’s romanticism, Jackson highlights the pedagogical potential of the volumes. “He was an educator,” Jackson remarked in reference to Curtis’s intent to preserve and share Native culture. This relatively positive view reflects Jackson’s commitment to education as a professor himself. The artist (and educator) is always present in Jackson’s work, even when he is not visible.

In his series Entering Zig’s Reservation, Jackson asked, “Why can’t I be my own Indian of my own reservation?” Jackson claims public spaces, parks, and government buildings with official-looking signage that includes laws such as “No New Agers.”

These imagined reservations are often deeply symbolic and personal. The photograph Buffalo Enclosure, Golden Gate Park (1997) speaks to the importance of buffalo to the Three Affiliated Tribes, and the name, Rising Buffalo, given to him by his grandmother.

Moving through the galleries, viewers leave Jackson’s reservation to enter Apsáalooke (Crow) territory.

Of the three artists, Wendy Red Star’s installations most directly and colorfully reevaluate the Curtis legacy.

In Let Them Have Their Voice (2016), Red Star cut into copies of Curtis’s photogravures, painstakingly removing the

Zig Jackson (Mandan-Arikara-Hidatsa), Camera in Face, Taos, N.M. from the series Indian Photographing Tourist Photographing Indian, 1992, pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Smith Gallery © Zig Jackson.

faces of twelve Crow leaders from their portraits. “Let’s give them a rest,” she said of the warriors’ images, honoring them as individuals rather than icons.

Red Star’s intervention is restorative and feminist. After extensive research into Curtis’s work with the Crow, she discovered that not a single portrait of a Crow woman was included in his large-scale portfolio. Curtis’s emphasis on masculinity obscured the prominence of women and the matrilineal nature of Apsáalooke culture, a cultural bias targeted by many of Red Star’s exhibited works.

In Map of the Allotted Lands of the Crow Reservation Montana—A Tribute to Many Good Women (2016), crowdsourced photographs of Apsáalooke women wearing handmade elk tooth dresses float over a map of Crow land allotments. “This is pure Crow photography,” Red Star asserted, Crow women photographed on their own terms.

Her work addresses the complexities and ambiguities of photographing and being photographed as a Native person.

As a young person at Crow Fair, being photographed by tourists was simply part of the experience, she remarked.

A captivating portrait of Red Star and her daughter and collaborator Beatrice is a highlight piece of the

exhibition. The pair sits confidently amidst diverse material culture (an IKEA couch, Pendleton blankets, and handmade dolls) suggesting that distinctions between mainstream American and Apsáalooke are fluid, shifting rather than dichotomous. Her hashtag #Apsáalookefeminist extends this project into the ever-shifting digital landscape.

Will Wilson approaches portraiture from a participatory angle in his series Critical Indigenous Photography Exchange (CIPX). He uses the antique tintype method of photographic image-making to collaboratively photograph Indigenous men and women with objects and poses of their choosing.

Curtis’s photographs rarely ended up in the hands of the Native individuals represented. Wilson explained, “I’m interested in a more humane way to make photographs.” He gifts the original tintype to his sitters and keeps a digital copy for his use. His portrait of dancer Rulan Tangen (Métis) is a stunning example of this process. Beautiful and disorienting, the immense scale of the exhibited photographs is at odds with the nuanced effects of tintype exposures.

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with a concern for the natural world.

Though Wilson did not create these works specifically for the exhibition, they clearly engage with the core questions of Native American representation and agency. However, a more explicit integration of Curtis and Wilson’s work would have strengthened the show. The lone Curtis volume at the center of Wilson’s gallery portrayed central Californian baskets, highlighting a strained connection to Wilson’s Diné heritage and the broader themes of the exhibition.

An exhibition catalogue with artist statements and essays more thoroughly examining the exhibition’s key concepts was sorely missing, and would have greatly enriched the fields of Curtis and Indigenous studies. However, exhibition organizers seized upon the teachable moments sparked by dialogues between diverse artworks. In an unusual move for an art museum, the visitors’ own reflections are incorporated throughout the exhibition. The astonishingly diverse responses to educational prompts demonstrated that visitors are truly evaluating historic and contemporary art in relation to their own experiences, stereotypes, and emotional responses.

One visitor stated that a white person referring to Native Americans as vanishing was “an aggressive act,” while another stated that he or she “could not tell where Native Americans are … They could be all around me.”

Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy gracefully opens a dialogue across time and cultures about the Curtis controversy and ethics of image-making, without alienating Curtis fans or taking a definitive stance on the debate. Such an effort necessarily challenged curatorial traditions and the authority of the museum. With the selection of artists Zig Jackson, Wendy Red Star, and Will Wilson, the curators proved that contemporary Indigenous artists are vital in our interpretation of images, past and present. Jackson, Red Star, and Wilson are the agents of their own representation.

—Annika Johnson and Marina Tyquiengco

Tulsa

Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain Gilcrease Museum

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CCASIONALLY, an art exhibition comes along that has the ability to shift our sight from the tangible into the metaphysical world. Things You Know But Cannot Explain, a major retrospective featuring the art of Rick Bartow (Wiyot-Yurok, 1946–2016), is one such show. Particularly poignant, the curators of the exhibition worked with the artist throughout the process of designing the show before his recent passing. From beginning to end, the experience of engaging with work by one of the most significant contemporary Native artists does not disappoint, and, in the wake of his death, deepens the viewer’s appreciation for Bartow’s ability to transcend the physical world. The success of the show would not be possible without the vision of co-curators Jill Hartz and Danielle Knapp, who understand Bartow as a visionary of the observable world.

They present more than 120 paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, and mixed media from the late 1970s through 2014 in a thematic method that brings a sense of cohesion to Bartow’s haunting images and varied media.

In a recent phone conversation with Hartz, who currently serves as the executive director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene, she generously explained how the show came into existence. Hartz was new to the West Coast when she took her position at the Schnitzer in the summer of 2008. “I’m from the East Coast. I think when you become a director or a curator in a new area you want to know who the artists are that people think you need to know about … I saw Rick’s work and I fell in love with it early, early on.” The museum continued to collect Bartow’s work but did not consider a major show until Bartow suffered from

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a stroke in August of 2013. Hartz recalls, “It was like a shake-up [but] not just for him … we thought, wow, if we ever want to do something major with Rick, we should do it now.”

The decision to include Bartow’s input when constructing Things You Know But Cannot Explain adds to the success of the show—Bartow’s repertoire clearly reflects his identity and his experiences through imagery from Native American mythology as well as visualizations of humanity struggling to overcome challenges of the physical world. Born in Newport, Oregon, in 1946, he became interested in art at a young age and eventually attended Western Oregon University, where he graduated with a degree in secondary art education in 1969. A member of the Wiyot Tribe of Northern California, his family developed close ties with the local Siletz Indian community. Early years were not without hardship, and his Wiyot-Yurok father died when Rick was only five. Bartow was drafted into the Vietnam War the same year he graduated from college. He served in Vietnam as a teletype operator and musician in a military hospital until 1971. Although honored for his service with a Bronze Star, Bartow returned to the United States troubled with the things he encountered firsthand in war.

Subsequently, art became the outlet that would see him through the inexplicable things experienced throughout his life. The earliest work in the show, as well as the title of the exhibition, Things You Know But Cannot Explain marks the skill of an emerging master and the agony of what it means to be human. Created in 1979, the graphite drawing’s single figure stands against a black void. With eyes closed and mouth agape, this figure appears to scream in gut-wrenching agony.

Unsurprisingly, Bartow spoke the language of art history fluidly, and the drawing Things You Know But Cannot Explain channels the spirit of various artists and genres, including British artist Francis Bacon, who captured the affected consciousness of humanity post-World War II. I had the privilege of experiencing the otherworldly Things You Know But Cannot Explain exhibit at the Gilcrease

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Rick Bartow (Wiyot-Yurok, 1946–2016), From Nothing Coyote Creates Himself, 2004, wood, metal, 41× 84 × 16 in.

Museum in Tulsa in late February. A lovely, silver-haired docent greeted me at the museum’s entrance. When I asked her where I could find the Bartow exhibit, she leaned in closely and with a whispered voice explained, “You’ll go down this hall, which will lead to a marvelous sculpture. Walk around it. You won’t know where it begins or ends. We know who he is and where he comes from, but what is he trying to tell us?” I realized that she was simultaneously speaking about the artist and the sculpture titled From Nothing Coyote Creates Himself. With goosebumps, I headed down the hallway to experience the transformative process of listening to “what he is trying to tell us.”

In the hall leading up to the sculpture, various two-dimensional works by Bartow inhabit the space and illustrate why one needs to see these objects in person rather than view catalog reproductions. Counting the Hours (2005), a brilliant pastel with graphite on paper, arrests the viewer’s attention. In person, the brilliant cool tones, such as the overall vibrant blue, pull you into the work. The subject, merging of man with bird of prey, keeps you engaged. In the catalogue reproduction, an oval shape with an eye appears just above the bird of prey.

However, when viewing the work in person, the image becomes clearer.

Human and animal morph as they exchange characteristics with one another. In the top third of the image, a human face fades into the surface of the paper. The only discernible features of this face include a realistic, grey human eye that stares outward, while all that is left of its mate is a black, almond-shaped hole. Directly below, a bird of prey comes into focus. This creature’s eyes consist of black, hollowed-out caverns, while his feathers are patches of color that leave behind indexical marks of the artist. In place of a left talon, a human handprint—presumably Bartow’s—faces palm outward with a bright, red streak coming from its center.

When first shown at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Counting the Hours was included in the constructed category of Transformation; however, space constraints at the Gilcrease required various adjustments, and this work now greets viewers at the entrance. Not all the works from the original show are exhibited at Gilcrease. According to Hartz, each of the exhibit’s themed categories, Gesture, Self, Tradition, Dialogue, Transformation, and New Work, had their own spaces, and all the items chosen for the exhibit were on display.

This is the only drawback to the show: every venue will have a different installation based on available space. At the Gilcrease, the exhibition space itself consists mainly of one large, rectangular space, which proves problematic in clearly delineating spaces between categories. Two smaller, adjacent spaces house the Works on Paper and New Work sections. An unbound book made on handmade paper and titled Ten Little Indians was not displayed.

Despite the space constraints, my experience at the Gilcrease was magical.

I spent two and a half hours engaged in another world created by Bartow, with a diverse crowd who came specifically to Tulsa to view the show. I overheard enthusiastic comments from children such as, “This reminds me of The Legend of Zelda!” and conversations in French and Spanish about the human-animal elements in the master’s work. Based on my time in the exhibition, it is clear that Things You Know But Cannot Explain engaged all comers and left them with an experience that altered their perceptions.

Since the initial opening at the University of Oregon, more venues have been added. Tour dates can be viewed at jsma.uoregon.edu/Bartow.

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Washington, DC

Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist National Museum of the American Indian

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S A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE, this exhibition offers viewers a lush art history of Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation) and her complex journey as a painter.

Curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo) and David W. Penney, Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist will be on display at the NMAI through September 18, before it opens at the Heard Museum on October 13, the first stop of its multiyear tour. In this exhibition, visitors will move through WalkingStick’s life experiences as recorded in the art she has produced over the past 40-some years. Like all of the works in this show, WalkingStick’s gilded and boldly colored silhouette paintings and her hand-worked diptychs of external and internal views of landscapes resonate as vibrant memories generously shared with viewers.

One of the most notable qualities of this exhibition is an architectural element that functions as a directional pathway through the third-floor, south gallery. The interior walls in this 9,500-square-foot space have cutout areas, which serve as windows to allow visitors to see the artist’s phases of her

career as spiraled and overlapping, rather than clear-cut and linear. The creative use of the space offers an inviting environment that made me feel as if the exhibition had no definitive beginning or end. This sense of fluidity also parallels the idiom of open, organic forms layered within WalkingStick’s paintings.

The first part of the exhibition, The Sensual Body: Early 1970s, presents the artist’s sinuous take on Hard-Edge Painting. In an interview with journalist Jeff Chang at the NMAI, WalkingStick cited two of her influences as American Pop painters Robert Indiana and Tom Wesselmann. These artists’ use of bold color and crisp lines—for Indiana in his dynamic text paintings and for Wesselmann in his sexy female figures and “kitsch” still lifes—clearly engage in a dialogue with WalkingStick’s Pop and minimal Hudson River landscapes and nude self-portraits. The colors and compositions of WalkingStick’s Sensual Body acrylic paintings—pieces she made while earning her MFA at the Pratt Institute—enticed me into second and third views of these works.

The energy in front of each of these paintings was like a magnet; my “iron” eyes were enthralled with the visual vibrations of WalkingStick’s Pop style.

The next pulse point of this exhibition was a 1974 painting entitled Teepee Form. Also acrylic, this work was a component of the Material and Meaning: 1974–85 section, an area that revealed the beginnings of the arc form that became an iconic,

Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation), Gioioso, Variation II, 2001, oil and gold leaf on wood panel, 32 × 64 in. Courtesy of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis.

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ever-present character in WalkingStick’s art. Teepee Form was painted on canvas in turquoise-greens, blue-purples, and red-purples, soon after WalkingStick had cathartically built a small Abstract Expressionist tipi in her yard to confront emotional issues with her Cherokee father. Rather than being conical like the sculpture, the tipi form in the painting closely resembles apron panels, reminiscent of other paintings in this section. The painted tipi form is connected by linear strokes that extend to the top and bottom edges of the canvas and imply WalkingStick is firmly linked to both the past and the future. The “attached” tipi also points to WalkingStick’s art practice as a grounding force in her life that provides her with an ever-developing sense of self. In the artist’s interview with Chang, she shared the humor of her appropriation tactic in both the tipi painting and three-dimensional piece, that as a Cherokee, making these architectural forms is not part of her people’s culture.

WalkingStick thinks of her paintings as objects, and this belief is most clearly demonstrated in works where she has hand-blended wax with pigment.

In Cardinal Points, a painting from 1983–85 in the Material and Meaning section, a copper cross carved into the center of this composition guides the outward flow of this work. The artist has also incorporated sparkles into the painting’s thick and weathered surface area of reds, blues, greens, and golds.

WalkingStick embeds the density of the acrylic and wax with her experiences, with the cross representing the four directions. The artist has also said that the cross—another constant form in her art—has a dual reference to Christianity as part of her spiritual life. A stunning five-by-five-foot canvas, Cardinal Points’ materiality radiates the complexities and intricacies of the artist’s journey of becoming “herself.”

Being a New Mexico resident, I was excited to see WalkingStick’s Southwest landscape New Mexico Desert (2011) on display in Washington, DC. In this oil-on-panel painting installed on the exhibition’s title wall, the artist

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meshes the deep crevices of the dry, orange-yellow earth with sage and saturated green shrubs. As a continuous landscape with a cloudy sky, the work features a visible middle seam, signaling to viewers that this 40-by-80-inch painting is a diptych. On top of the landscape forms in the right panel of this work, WalkingStick overlaid a painted Navajostyle geometric pattern that features turquoise cross forms, terracotta terrace forms, and darkly colored, terraced diamond forms. The pattern is the artist’s way of both representing some of the Native American peoples in New Mexico and reminding audiences to consider Indigenous perspectives of the landscape. This geometric pattern also connects to the motifs, overlaid on the New Mexico driver’s license card, which are uncannily similar to those in WalkingStick’s New Mexico Desert.

For WalkingStick, it was very important that the exhibition have the cultural referent, American, in its title.

While this show is surely a keen portrayal of the tides of the artist’s life as a

This show ... speaks to global contexts of humanity preserved by WalkingStick in her art.

Cherokee-Scottish-Irish-American wife, mother, and painter, it also speaks to global contexts of humanity preserved

by WalkingStick in her art. For instance, during her time as a Cornell University art professor (1992–2005), the artist took her practice abroad during multiple trips to Italy—experiences that materially resonate in the gold-leafed figures in her Italian Romance paintings.

Viewers can relate to WalkingStick’s primary engagement with European art production by considering their own memories of visiting places that have changed their lives forever.

On a related note, WalkingStick’s intellectual travels have taken her through texts about Native American histories; the artist’s channeling of this knowledge into her art was prominent in several works in the exhibition. Some of the artist’s paintings about historical persons and events include Nez Perce

Crossing, Variation (2008), Farewell to the Smokies (2007), Sacagawea, Leader of Men (1976), and the Chief Joseph series (1974–76). The topics of these works inform WalkingStick’s understanding of her own identity and are commemorated in her art as moments of education and connections to earlier generations of Native American peoples.

In sum, countless moments in Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist made me feel that I was seeing the artist in her works as either a figure or as the landscape itself. In her artist’s statement, WalkingStick acknowledges her presence in her paintings’ nonfigurative, landscape environments.

Experiencing more than 40 years of Kay WalkingStick’s art history is a gift.

I hope readers will be able to visit Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist at its home venue or at a touring locale.

—Michelle Lanteri

ADVENTURE AND INTRIGUE FROM COVER TO COVER. What You’ll Learn May Surprise You. •

A Guide to the Cherokee National Museum Newspaper Collection

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Records of the Moravians, Volumes 1-6

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The Development of Law and Legal Institutions Among the Cherokees

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The Life and Times of Reverend Stephen Foreman Enjoy these and many other hard-to-find books on Cherokee history and culture.

21192 S. KEELER DR., PARK HILL, OK 74451 (888) 999-6007 • CHEROKEEHERITAGE.ORG

SUMMER 2016

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REVIEWS

Book Review Survey

Indian Baskets of Northern California and Oregon Costaño Books, 2015

W

EAVING. Where to begin? Author Ralph Shanks and editor Lisa Woo Shanks lay it all out for us in Indian Baskets of Northern California and Oregon by analyzing the technical features, materials, forms, and functions of the baskets created by the tribes of this region.

The various styles of basket weaving are broken down through discussion of technique as it is found in five geographical areas. Shanks refers to these areas as Northwestern and California Neighbors (Northwestern California cultures, Wiyot and Southern Humboldt Athabaskans in California, and Tututni of coastal Oregon); Northeastern California (Achomawi, Atsugewi, Wintu, and Yana); Coos and Neighbors; Columbia

River and Northern Oregon Coast (Tillamook, Clatsop, Chinook, Wasco, and Wishram); and Cascade Oregon (Klamath, Modoc, Molala, and Wasco). Archaeologists used historical baskets to illustrate their perceptions about the territory held by each tribe. The ways in which various basket weaving techniques differ and overlap illustrate the existence of contact and influence between these tribes.

Shanks is an anthropologist whose research focuses on Indigenous basketry of California and Oregon. He has published two other volumes covering this topic.

I must state that I have not read his other two volumes but assume the books present a large amount of technical information regarding basketry, as this volume does.

The amount of detail covering variations in twining, wrapping, work face, direction, knots, warps, and wefts is impressive. His descriptions of major materials such as beargrass, conifer roots, hazel, Juncus species, maidenhair fern, redbud, tule, willow, and woodwardia fern are also remarkable. The reader has been given the gift of a technical manual about the basketry of these regions.

What I find missing from this volume is information about the culture of the Indigenous people of these regions. Historical art forms reveal a great deal about the people from which they come. If you are looking for a deeper insight into these tribes, then this is not the book for you. While the function of many baskets is described, very little about the people who used the baskets is revealed through these descriptions.

The author speaks from a historical point of view. The wording of this volume, with the exception of a few brief notes regarding some tribes such as Achomawi, leaves

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the reader with the impression that all of this basketry and all of these people existed only in the past. But many of these people are part of thriving tribes that exist today. They still create skillfully made baskets.

It would have been preferable to see Shanks extend his research to not only focus on the past but the present as well. Impressions from living weavers would have provided great insight into this art form.

Indian Baskets of Northern California and Oregon contains colorful images of historic baskets.

The clarity and detail highlights the great skill required in the basketmaking process. Several black and white historical images of basket weavers and their works are also in the book.

These images come from private as well as museum collections. However, very few dates accompany the photographs.

Providing dates to when the photograph was taken or when the basket was created would give the viewer a stronger reference to evaluate the basket or relate to the historical figure in the image.

If you are a collector of historical Indigenous baskets, then this is an irreplaceable reference tool for you to use to evaluate your collection. If you are a Native basket weaver and want to view the technical skill and method of historical weavers, then this is a superior manual. If you are a reader who is looking into the history and culture of the tribes of Northern California and Oregon, I would suggest that you include this book as only a basic starting point into your interest.

A five-page bibliography included in this volume can be researched to seek out more knowledge about the people behind the creation of these baskets.

—Michole Eldred

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GUEST COLUMN

Authentic American Treasures Native American Arts & Crafts

By Lars Krutak, PhD

C

RAFTSMANSHIP. AUTHENTICITY. QUALITY. VALUE. These traits we all seek when buying Native American art and craftwork for ourselves and others. But when unfair competition arises from counterfeit or fraudulent producers, “this seriously erodes the sustainability, vitality, and economic well-being of Indian tribes and their members and businesses, while also negatively impacting buyers and collectors,” says master artist Harvey Pratt (Cheyenne-Arapaho).

Among his many accomplishments, Pratt serves as chairman of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board (IACB).

The IACB is a federal agency within the US Department of the Interior created by Congress in 1935 to promote the economic development of federally recognized American Indians and Alaska Natives through the expansion of the Indian arts and crafts market. The IACB’s policies are determined by five commissioners who are appointed by the Secretary of the Interior.

A top priority of the IACB is the implementation and enforcement of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, a truth-in-advertising law that provides criminal and civil penalties for marketing products as “IndianOscar Howe (Yanktonai Dakota, 1915–1983), Dakota Eagle Dancer, 1962, casein on illustration board, 24 ¼ × 19 ½ in., collection of the Sioux Indian Museum, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, R.62.9.

Robert L. Penn (Sicangu Lakota-Omaha, 1946–1999), Untitled, 1971, acrylic on canvas, 28 ⁵/₈ × 28 ½ in., collection of the Sioux Indian Museum, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, R.71.2.2.

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made” when such products are not made by Indians, as defined by the act.

“By requiring truth-in-marketing of Indian art and craftwork, the act is intended to protect Native American artists and artisans who rely heavily on the production and sale of … art and craftwork to provide their economic livelihood, preserve their rich heritage, and pass along their unique culture from generation to generation,” Pratt explains.

As part of its program to promote Native American art and craftwork, the IACB created a convenient source directory of some 400 Native American-owned and operated businesses to assist customers with selecting authentic Indian art and craftwork from across the nation.

The directory includes galleries selling one-of-a-kind collector’s pieces, tribal arts and crafts enterprises, and a wide spectrum of retail outlets. This online business directory (www.doi.gov/iacb/source-directory) includes

the location and tribal affiliation of the owner/ producer, a listing of their art and craft products, business hours, and any special services offered. New submissions are heartily welcomed.

The IACB also operates three museums that are integral to their surrounding communities and the IACB’s mission: the Sioux Indian Museum (Rapid City, South Dakota), Southern Plains Indian Museum (Anadarko, Oklahoma), and Museum of the Plains Indian (Browning, Montana). Each museum plays an important role in promoting authentic Native American art and craftwork through their permanent exhibitions, new exhibitions featuring established and emerging artists, rotating promotional sales exhibitions, and public educational outreach activities.

The museums are major economic, cultural, and educational attractions in their respective regions, and their staff work as advocates to inform the public about the act and to encourage submission of valid complaints of violations under the act.

The IACB’s free publications for consumers offer handy tips on everything from being a savvy shopper (e.g., get a written guarantee) to knowing what to look for when shopping for turquoise jewelry.

“Providing a level playing field is extremely important,” observes Pratt. “For the highly talented, dedicated, and hardworking producers of genuine Native American art, we must protect these authentic American treasures, which are inherent components of the very fabric of Indian society.”

Celebrating 30 Years of Selling Inuit Art

GUEST COLUMN

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

NATIVE AMERICAN ART APPRAISALS, INC. SINCE 1936

For more information on the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, please visit www.doi.gov/iacb or call (888) ART-FAKE (278-3253).

(855) NAAA-INC INFO@NAAAINC.COM VISIT WWW.NAAAINC.COM

CALL EMAIL Unknown Sioux Artist, Men’s Moccasins, ca. 1900–1920, deer hide, glass beads, quills, cotton, silk, collection of Sioux Indian Museum, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, R.69.2.22 a-b.

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GUEST COLUMN

Copyright Protection and the Arts

By Kevin R. Kemper, PhD, LLM

F

IRST AMERICAN ARTISTS, perhaps you included, ignore copyright law to their professional and financial peril.

You want to create, and often business details stress out that process and hurt the art. And that hurts you and the rest of us who benefit from your art.

It’s a good thing that our imaginary First American artist Misty has a friend and fellow tribal member, Ima, who practices intellectual property law. And it’s a good thing you read First American Art Magazine, so you can reflect on these issues and consider further researching copyright laws or finding your own attorney.

During the past three columns, we have learned how US copyright law protects artistic creations, when others can claim “fair use” for using copyrighted work without permission, and the issue of copies of copies of copyrighted work. This final installment will look at some of the basics of copyright infringement and litigation.

The last time Misty had met with Ima, a serious legal issue had to be resolved because an entrepreneur had copied a copy of Misty’s copyrighted art, and then sold copies for a profit.

“Where is the case right now?”

Misty asks Ima, as they sit together at a picnic table in a park near their tribe’s headquarters.

“I’m so glad we ran into each other today,” Ima said. “I just received a positive response from his attorney to my demand letter. They are offering to stop sales altogether and give you 50 percent of the profits in exchange for an agreement not to sue.”

Misty cringes and is visibly distraught.

“Why don’t we just sue and make this guy pay for what he’s done?!”

Ima, calm as usual, smiles. “He’s offering to pay you 50 percent of profits and to stop selling the postcards. Likely it’s more money than we could get if

we went to court. And isn’t it better to avoid all of that psychological expense and time so you can focus on your art?”

Misty knows Ima is right, but she’s still upset.

“Suppose we go to court. What do we have to prove?” Misty asks.

Ima gets out her smartphone to read something to Misty.

“For instance,” Ima explains, “the website for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes California where you find an enormous amount of copyright litigation, lists the following as model jury instructions based upon Title 17 of federal statutes:

Anyone who copies original elements of a copyrighted work during the term of the copyright without the owner’s permission infringes the copyright.

On the plaintiff ’s copyright infringement claim, the plaintiff has the burden of proving both of the following by a preponderance of the evidence: 1. the plaintiff is the owner of a valid copyright; and 2. the defendant copied original elements from the copyrighted work.

If you find that the plaintiff has proved both of these elements, your verdict should be for the plaintiff.

If, on the other hand, the plaintiff has failed to prove either of these elements, your verdict should be for the defendant.1 “Then it goes into specific definitions for valid copyright, authorship, copy, original elements, etc. The simple becomes complicated quickly, depending on the facts of the situation,” she continues.

Let’s review the facts of Misty’s case. In the Spring 2016 issue of First American Art Magazine, we learned how a member of the public had taken

a photograph of an original piece of Misty’s pottery with a unique image of a water bird. Then an entrepreneur used that image, which had been posted on social media, to create postcards.

“Who owns the copyright of that postcard?” asks Ima. Misty shrugs. “Maybe I do, because it’s an image of my art.”

Ima explains how the photograph taken by the member of the public could be copyrighted. The entrepreneur could also claim copyright protection.

Likewise, there has been recent concern about copyrights of photographs placed on social media becoming the property of the social media sites.

Ima shows Misty an interesting list of FAQs in “About Copyright,” an article posted in Facebook’s Help Center, as well as a form for reporting copyright infringement.

Who gets the protection? It depends on if the artist has created something original. Who infringes?

Someone who copies something original without permission.

“What about tribal law?” Misty asks. Ima sometimes wonders if Misty would have been a good attorney, given her ability to think creatively. Misty had heard some tribes like the Yurok have created their own copyright laws, but generally they are patterned after the US copyright laws.

“Our tribe doesn’t have one and there are always questions about jurisdiction,” Ima says. Not to mention the fact that the person who took the photograph and the entrepreneur who sold the postcards are not Native.

The federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, PL 101-644, prohibits people who are not enrolled in a federal or state recognized tribe or are not approved by a tribe to claim that their arts and crafts are “Indian.”

This is regulated by the federal Department of Interior.

1. United States Courts for the 9th Circuit, “17.4 Copyright Infringement—Elements—Ownership and Copying (17 U.S.C. § 501(a)-(b)),” web.

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The act doesn’t help disenrolled Indians who are artists, and there well may be First Amendment issues with prohibiting various kinds of art.

Still, that law had not escaped Ima as she wrote the demand letter to the offending entrepreneur. Perhaps it was the leverage needed for him to agree to settle.

“We haven’t even discussed issues like which of the two to sue, or whether they have defenses,” Ima said.

“However, I think we should take the deal from the entrepreneur, who has money and has made money from the copying, and not sue the other party.

It’s just not worth the cost to go further, and in this case, you get what you want: respect and protection for your work.”

Ima knows that often the best legal advice in Indian Country encourages collaboration and consultation when possible, especially with extremely sensitive and challenging issues. More often than not, they can be expensive. Lawsuits don’t just require attorney’s fees. Even in pro bono cases there are costs for filing, transcripts and other court reporting, service of other parties, etc.

Misty hadn’t realized how many legal concerns are involved in creating and marketing art. She just wants to express what’s in her heart. She didn’t know she had to think so businesslike.

“Why does creating my own art have to be so complicated?” Misty moans to Ima. Ima smiles and they both laugh.

“That’s the way life is,” Ima says.

“And sometimes you have to protect what belongs to you. If someone is ethical, they won’t take what doesn’t belong to them. Unfortunately, not everyone is ethical.”

Misty feels the knot in her gut tighten at the thought of someone attempting to steal her art. Still, she feels better knowing she has an

Illustration by Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation). © 2015 Roy Boney Jr. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

attorney who will continue to defend and support her and her rights.

Misty now knows that she can register the copyright for her work online at copyright.gov/eco when she has created something worth financially protecting. She also knows that this gives her more enforcement powers in the event of infringement.

Numerous other factors are involved like term of copyright. The issues discussed in this four-part column have covered enough information for a First American artist to be encouraged to learn further about copyright laws and other rights to their own artwork.

Let’s be frank: the copyright of a quick watercolor sketch worth only

$25 probably isn’t worth protecting.

However, a $1,000 painting may be worth it.

Finally, Misty’s art has been improving since she’s been working with Ima. She knows that only the best of her work will justify the use of copyright laws. The more money she makes, the more she can work with attorneys, accountants, and others. And the more money she makes, the more art she can create.

And all Misty really wants is to be able to create her artwork. It benefits her, her family, her tribe, and society. The original purpose of US copyright laws continues today, more than 225 years later.

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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ART + LITERATURE

Cherokee Writer, Poet, and Educator

Santee Frazier

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

S

ANTEE FRAZIER (Cherokee Nation) is a Santa Fe-based writer and educator who earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Syracuse University. In 2001, the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program awarded him the Truman Capote Scholarship.

In 2009, the University of Arizona Press published his collection of poems under the title Dark Thirty as part of their Sun Tracks series, and in the same year, Frazier received the Lannan Residency Fellowship.

In 2011, he was the Indigenous writer-in-residence at the School for Advanced Research.

Native Arts and Cultures Foundation awarded him a fellowship in 2014, and his writing has appeared in several US and international publications including American Poets, Narrative Magazine, Ontario Review, and Ploughshares. His writings examine intersections between Native life and mainstream America with an uncompromising view toward beauty and truth. Frazier is currently a writer, an instructor at Syracuse University, and an advisor and faculty mentor in poetry at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

I interviewed him and discussed his perspectives on writing.

I’d like to begin with your early life.

Exactly how did your interest in writing develop?

The act of writing poetry, sitting down, thinking about language—craft and technique—didn’t happen until I attended my first poetry workshop at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe in 1999. At that time, the institute was located on

the same campus as the now defunct College of Santa Fe. I lucked out having Arthur Sze as my first poetry teacher, who taught poetry through ancient Japanese and Chinese poetic transitions. He taught a wonderful course called The Poetic Image in which he asked his students to translate poems written by the likes of Bashō, Li Po, and Sei Shōnagon (granted, Pillow Book isn’t poetry). It’s rare to find a teacher and poet that truly believes in each of his students.

Arthur brought the best out of his students with a caring, nurturing, classroom persona. While he always recognized talent, every writer in his classroom had something to offer to the classroom dynamic. His teaching gave me the confidence to pursue language on my own terms, as an artist. It wasn’t until I began working with poet Jon Davis did I hold my art to any formal standard or code of ethics. My informal/formal education on how to revise poems happened in his office. No matter how busy he was, he always made time to continue our conversation on or about the written word. Now working with him in the IAIA MFA program, we get to continue our conversation every spring, summer, and winter during residency.

Another part of me thinks about art from a more spiritual perspective.

Sometimes I convince myself that I have always been an artist. In Letters to A Young Poet, Rilke delineates poetry as a lonely occupation, and for the better part of my life, I felt isolated in my experiences, as if I am a voyeur of parts of human life, of Native life, the parts of life most rarely noticed or seen. I try to distill these things in my poems. I don’t know if any of this is true, but I like to think this way.

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Santee Frazier.

Could you speculate on the ways in which your Native identity influences your work?

It’s tough. In terms of art making, composition, I would say my Native identity is in the negative space in my poems. It’s there but never appears on the surface of the page. It is my job as a poet to make things new, bring my life experiences and my attempts at good poetry to Native American literature. Prosody and identity are synonymous, so, I try to compose my poems without making them overly “Indian.”

Do you have a writing philosophy, and if so, could you describe it to the reader?

I have a sense of prosody, or theory, of how poetry should work. More than anything, it’s a code of ethics on how to engage the poem. Most of it consists of being critically objective of everything I put into a poem, from

SANTEE FRAZIER

content to form and technique. We could probably do a whole interview on this alone, but I’ll save our readers the anguish of delineating my artistic failures.

In 2009, you published the poetry compilation Dark Thirty, a telling rumination on Native life in contemporary America. Could you speak on how this work emerged and what drew you to its subject matter?

The first half of my life was spent in a deep sense of shame about being Native, which I didn’t come to realize until I met my wife and had children. More and more, I realize it’s a shame rooted in oppression, being forgotten or voiceless. My poems are always trying to distill that shame into something sublime or visceral. I don’t mean to say that I am ashamed of cultural heritage, actually quite the opposite, but that it’s difficult to measure impact of the systematic violence inflicted on the people indigenous to, for lack of a better term, the Americas. Eduardo Galeano discussed this at great length in his book The Open Veins of Latin America, which taught me to respect our histories, cultures, and shared historical trauma by engaging the psychology of the marginalized through my poems.

Your work is often described as being dark, somber, or gritty in its uncompromising telling of experiences, both personal and collective. I wonder how you feel about such reviews?

Reviews are always a strange outof-body experience for me, and I make it a rule to never fully entertain interpretations of my work. Poetry is a manicured experience but also a space for which readers can explore how the language resonates with their understanding of image and sound.

Poems come to me; it’s all I can say.

There is a common misconception that somehow artists are gods of their work, but I have come to believe that we are only conduits. If I could choose to write a successful poem every time I sit down to write, I would save myself the anguish that comes with searching for new poems. What I mean to say is that I could easily sit down and write different versions of the same poem I already know how to write, but that isn’t honest or ethical.

It’s the poet’s job to make experience and language new; so, the search for new work is constant and frustrating.

What do you struggle with when writing and, consequently, how do you overcome it?

I’m curious to know how your work has transformed since Dark Thirty?

Do you see a shift in your subject matter or approach?

Revise.

In approach? Yes. In terms of content, it depends. I work in a few voices, and those have evolved over the last eight to ten years.

Who is your audience and for whom do you write?

Richard Hugo would say there is no reader. When I am drafting a poem, I take that perspective. Through revision, I try to distill a poem through several drafts, at which point I begin to panic as [I consider] who would actually want to read my poems. I am interested in more Native or First Nations people reading and writing poetry. More importantly, I am not interested in producing work that panders to a non-Native audience but one that seeks to engage Indigenous intellectual perspectives and philosophies—an Indigenous intellectual sovereignty, if such a term can be considered here. One of the most destructive prongs of the systemic oppression and violence the West inflicted on us was destroying our knowledge systems. I think it’s possible to rebuild these systems through the arts.

Fear, mostly. Fear that I will write the same poem for the rest of my life. I am suspicious that every poem I have written over the last 17 years is actually the same poem written over and over with new forms and language. I am constantly searching for new language and ideas for my poems.

What is the most important writing advice you ever received?

What influences your work?

Sound, mostly. Hearing language and replicating those sounds in a poem.

This helps me quell the narrative impulse that runs throughout my work. Poetry is first and foremost an experience through sound. Images created through an attention to sound are always the most dazzling and immediate. The page acts as an echo chamber. “Talking Leaves” is a phrase often referenced in stories about Sequoyah, the creator of the Cherokee syllabary, and I used to think that concept was a bit hokey (or poor English translation), but I have come to respect it throughout my time writing poems.

Do you have any projects planned for the future?

I am currently writing my second book. It’s still unclear if it will be any good. I like to keep my expectations to a minimum.

Finally, from the last question from the “Proust Questionnaire”: What is your favorite motto?

“Good friends, good food.” I don’t know who said it first.

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ART + LITERATURE

Mangled & The Accordion The cloud yonder frailing rain, Mangled sings “Kaw-Liga,” playing his ribs, thumb to pinkie, pressing the flesh between bone, foot tamping pavement. Weaker than hay, small liver for innards, face shallow as wren’s beak threaded into the blacktop, Mangled drags his boots, pinging rocks off fence posts on an evening fraught with diesel.

It’s true, he sweats too much to hitchhike, the brim of his hat limp over his grease-shined mug. Strolling the wind-etched flat of Texas, through the dairy-dust-ups, hens murmuring through shack tin. Mangled, aimless til dark.

Mangled & The Accordion Mangled in the knife-etched stall, hat tilted over his eyelids. The light hums him to sleep. In the dark of brain, he hears the knife, the hollow click of steel and bone in the palm. Hears the sound of skin flayed from an apple. When he mashes keys and squeezes, daylight tunnels to fuzz. Brailing the slick of the ivory like the cue he cupped into the dome of the barkeep who poured him short.

Mangled playing songs of gutted stripers, of knife puncturing belly, of fish heads tossed in the bucket. Mashing the buttons as he sounds out the words “bone skeleton in the bucket fills.” Tamping the tile, in the knife-etched stall, light humming him to sleep.

—Santee Frazier

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MEMORIAL

Rick Bartow December 16, 1946—April 2, 2016

R

work is a glory of mark making—from the tightest figurative rendering to the most expressive splatterings—all with a keen eye for color and composition.

His friend and gallerist Charles Froelick described Bartow as “an artistic omnivore, constantly searching the internal and external worlds for emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and poetic inspiration.”1 A stroke in 2013 jolted the artist’s world. He could draw but his singing voice changed drastically. He fought to regain his speech, singing, motion, and art-making abilities. His stroke was a wake-up call to the community and inspired Jill Hartz and Danielle Knapp, both of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, to curate an ambitious retrospective, Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain.2 Because his retrospective will continue traveling for several years, new audiences will still get to experience Rick Bartow’s vision. He leaves behind a large family, including his brothers, his children, and his grandchildren. His artwork and songs remain his enduring gift to us.

—America Meredith

ICHARD ELMER BARTOW left this world, surrounded by his friends and family, from the same town in which he grew up, Newport, Oregon. As an artist, he produced work with feverish intensity and showed in countless exhibits. Soaring monumental sculptures stand as public testaments to his artistic vision: The Cedar Mill Pole (1997) at the White House and We Were Always Here (2012) at the National Mall near the National Museum of the American Indian. Despite his runaway success in the international art world, he stayed true to his roots and was much loved in his home state of Oregon.

Bartow was born in Newport to Mable Nelson Bartow Mekemson, European-American, and Richard Bartow, Mad River Band of the Wiyot Tribe and Yurok descent. His father died when Rick was only five years old. His mother married Andrew Mekemson, who raised Rick as a son. The local Siletz tribe helped Rick develop relationships with the Native world.

Rick was a musician since his teens. In 1969, he earned a bachelor’s degree in art education from Western Oregon State College, then was immediately drafted into the army, where he served for 13 months in Vietnam and earned a Bronze Star. When he returned from war, Rick’s first wife pushed him to take his artwork seriously. He began showing in the 1970s and was first represented by the Jamison Thomas Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

Rick Bartow’s haunting aesthetic flows from drawings, paintings, prints, to sculptures that often explore uncanny transformations from the animal world to the human realm.

He frequently applied paint directly with his hands. His

1. Charles Froelick, “Master Interpreter Rick Bartow, Interpreted by a Friend,” National Museum of the American Indian Blog, April 14, 2011, web.

2. This exhibit is reviewed in this issue on pages 76 and 77.

LEFT: Rick Bartow, photo: Frank Rossini.

RIGHT: Rick Bartow (Wiyot-Yurok, 1946–2016), Coyote’s Reception, 2009, pastel, graphic on paper. Both images courtesy of Froelick Gallery.

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2016 SHOW DATES FRIDAY - SUNDAY AUGUST 12 - 14 | 11AM - 5PM 2016 OPENING NIGHT GALA THURSDAY, AUGUST 11 | 6PM - 9PM BENEFITING

T H E C I TY ’ S D I F F E R E N T S U M M E R S H O W. T H E N E W, T H E O L D, T H E U N I Q U E , T H E U N E X P E CT E D - M O R E T H A N 7 0 P R E ST I G I O U S E X H I B I TO R S W I L L S H O W CA S E A N I M P R E S S I V E VA R I E TY O F O B J E CT S O F A RT

2016 SHOW DATES WEDNESDAY - FRIDAY AUGUST 17 - 19 | 11AM - 5PM 2016 OPENING NIGHT GALA TUESDAY, AUGUST 16 | 6PM - 9PM BENEFITING

VIEW & PURCHASE BASKETRY, JEWELRY, TEXTILES, KACHINAS, SCULPTURES & MORE!

S H O W S H E L D AT | E L M U S E O, I N T H E R A I LYA R D, S A N TA F E , N M | 5 0 5 6 6 0 4 7 0 1

CALENDAR

Calendar May 1–ongoing: Bar Harbor, ME People of the First Light, a survey of the Wabanaki culture and history at the Abbe Museum, 26 Mount Desert St. (207) 288-3519 | abbemuseum.org

May 6 & 7: Winnipeg, MB Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery 20th Anniversary Symposium at the University of Manitoba School of Art, Room 136, 180 Dafoe Rd. West +1 (204) 942-2674 | urbanshaman.org

May 6–June 5: Nuuk, Greenland Annual KIMIK Exhibit at Katuaq Cultural Centre, Imaneq 21, group show of Greenlandic arts collective +299 36 37 70 | katuaq.gl | kimikart.com

May 6–June 30: Winnipeg, MB The Fire Throws Sparks at Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art, 203–290 McDermot Ave. Opening reception Friday, May 6, 8:00–11:00 pm +1 (204) 942-2674 | urbanshaman.org

May 6–ongoing: Kodiak, AK Qayat, an exhibit of Alutiiq maritime traditions, featuring a rare, historic kayak (qayaq), at the Alutiiq Museum, 215 Mission Rd. Opening reception Friday, May 6, 5:00–7:00 pm (907) 486-7004 | alutiiqmuseum.org

May 7: Ganado, AZ Native American Art Auction at the Hubbell Trading Post, with over 400 items including Navajo weaving.

Preview 9:00–11:00 am, auction begins at 12:00 noon (928) 755-3475 | nps.gov/hutr

May 9–July 14: Brantford, ON

Arctic and Indian arts for the 21 century st

26 Maine Street Kennebunkport, Maine 207 967-2122

Earl Plummer, Indian Market Best of Jewelry 2013 Visting artist July 14, 15, 16

First Nations Art, longest running juried First Nations art exhibit in Canada, at the Woodland Cultural Centre, 184 Mohawk St. | (519) 759-2650 | woodland-centre.on.ca

May 10–14: Park Hill, OK Native Youth Photography Exhibit at the Cherokee Heritage Center, 21192 S. Keeler Dr. (918) 456-6007 | cherokeeheritage.org

May 10–October 16: Vancouver, BC Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, 6393 NW Marine Dr., curated by Karen Duffek and Tania Willard | (604) 827-5932 | moa.ubc.ca

May 13: Albuquerque, NM Loren Tsalabutie: Solo Exhibit at Grey Dog Trading, 400 San Felipe NW, Old Town | (505) 243-0414 | greydogtrading.com

Sculpture | Prints | Jewelry |Beadwork |Baskets shop online: www.homeandawaygallery.com

SUMMER 2016

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Contemporary Native Art Show . Permanent Collections . Historic Tours . Gift Shop . Open Daily . Free Admission

100 Mission Drive, Pine Ridge, SD 57770

www.redcloudschool.org/heritage

605.867.8257

May 13 & 14: Santa Fe, NM

May 21–September 5: Winnipeg, MB

Randy Chitto and America Meredith: Two-Person Show and First American Art Magazine No. 11 Launch Party at Red Clay Studio, 1507 Center Dr. #D. Friday, May 13, 5:00–8:00 pm, and Saturday, May 14, 1:00–5:00 pm | (505) 920-3995 randychitto.com | firstamericanartmagazine.com

Oviloo Tunnillie: A Woman’s Story in Stone at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 300 Memorial Blvd. | +1 (204) 786-6641 | wag.ca

May 14: Seattle, WA Burke Museum Native Art Market at 4331 Memorial Way NE 10:00 am–3:00 pm | (206) 543-7907 | burkemuseum.org

May 20–22: Mashantucket, CT Indigenous Fine Art Market East [IFAM(E)] 2016 at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, 110 Pequot Trail. Glow party, Friday, May 20. Art market, Saturday, May 21, and Sunday, May 22 | (860) 396-7058 | indigefam.org

May 21–October 10: Santa Fe, NM Finding a Contemporary Voice: The Legacy of Lloyd Kiva New and IAIA at the New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Ave. (505) 476-5072 | nmartmuseum.org

May 21–ongoing: Los Angeles, CA Revealing Creation: The Science and Art of Ancient Maya Ceramics at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), 5905 Wilshire Blvd. | (323) 857-6000 | lacma.org

May 28 & 29: Santa Fe, NM

3rd Annual Jicarilla Apache Show at the Millicent Rogers Museum, 1504 Millicent Rogers Rd. (575) 758-2462 | millicentrogers.org

Native Treasures Indian Arts Festival, hosted by the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, at the Santa Fe Convention Center 201 W. Marcy St., featuring more than 200 artists (505) 982-7799 ext. 3 | nativetreasures.org

May 21–August 20: Park Hill, OK

May 29–August 15: Denver, CO

Threads of Time: Cherokee Clothing at the Cherokee Heritage Center, 21192 S Keeler Dr. (918) 456-6007 | cherokeeheritage.org

Why We Dance: American Indian Art in Motion at the Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Pkwy.

(720) 865-5000 | denverartmuseum.org

May 20–22: Taos, NM

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at the Artesian Gallery 100 West Muskogee St | Sulphur, Oklahoma 73086 580-622-840

Weaving Co-op High-End Handwoven Items margaretroachwheeler.com | mahota@brightok.net

One-Day Workshops

Supplies Provided

May 6. Finger Weaving with Karen Berry, $100 May 7. Southeastern Beadwork with Martha Berry, $100 May 27. Natural Dye Gathering with Margaret Wheeler, $30 June 24. Knotless Netting with Leandra Spangler, $100 August 2. Black Ash Basketry with Kelly Church, $100 Sept. 23. Hand-Sewn Organic Cotton Blouse with Margaret Wheeler, $30

June 1–July 1: Vancouver, BC Amanda Spotted Fawn Strong: Four Faces of the Moon at grunt gallery, 350 E. 2nd Ave. #116 | +1 (604) 875-9516 | grunt.ca

June 4–September 4: Portland, OR Native Fashion Now at the Portland Art Museum 1219 SW Park Ave. | (503) 226-2811 | portlandartmuseum.org

June 5–August 14: Pine Ridge, SD 48th Annual Red Cloud Indian Art Show at the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School, 100 Mission Dr. (605) 867-5491 | redcloudschool.org/artshow

June 8–11: Juneau, AK Celebration in downtown Juneau and Art and At.óow at the Walter Soboleff Building, 105 S. Seward #201 (907) 463-4844 | sealaskaheritage.org

June 10–12: Oklahoma City, OK 30th Annual Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival at the Cox Convention Center. Adults $11, children under 18 free (405) 427-5228 | redearth.org

June 11–November 20: Tulsa, OK First Person: Remembering Little Bighorn at the Philbrook Downtown, 116 E. Mathew B. Brady St., curated by Christina Burke | (918) 749-7941 | philbrook.org SUMMER 2016

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CALENDAR

June 12, 2016–April 16, 2017: Santa Fe, NM

July 9 & 10: Collinsville, IL

Arts of the Jicarilla Apache at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 704 Camino Lejo Rd. (505) 982-4636 | wheelwright.org

21st Annual Cahokia Mounds Contemporary Indian Art Show at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, 30 Ramey St. (618) 346-5160 | cahokiamounds.org

June 23–September 10: Warm Springs, OR

July 16: Rapid City, SD

Kindred Spirits: The Artist Journey of Lillian Pitt at the Museum at Warm Springs, 2189 Highway 26 (541) 553-3331 | museumatwarmsprings.org

3rd Annual Native POP: People of the Plains in Main Street Square, formerly Gathering of People, Wind, and Water (605) 394-4101 | nativepop.org

June 24 & 25: Okmulgee, OK

July 17, 2016 – October 1, 2017: Santa Fe, NM

Muscogee Creek Nation Festival Council House Art Market at the Muscogee Creek Nation Council House, 106 W 6th St. (918) 549-2434 | creekfestival.com

Into the Future: Cultural Power in Native American Art at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC), 710 Camino Lejo (505) 476-1269 | indianartsandculture.org

June 25 & 26: Indianapolis, IN

July 23 & 24: Victor, NY

Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 W. Washington St. (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org

24th Annual Native American Dance and Music Festival at the Ganondagan State Historic Site, 7000 County Road 41 (585) 742-1690 | ganondagan.org

June 26–November 6: Tulsa, OK

July 30: Santa Fe, NM

West Mexico: Ritual and Identity at the Gilcrease Museum 1400 N. Gilcrease Museum Rd. | (918) 596-2700 | gilcrease.org

July 1–3: Green Bay, WI Woodland Indian Art Show and Market at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center, 2040 Airport Dr. Free admission (920) 288-9544 | woodlandindianart.com

First American Art Magazine No. 12 Launch Party at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 708 Camino Lejo 3:00–5:00 pm | (505) 476-1269 | firstamericanartmagazine.com

For more events, visit our online calendar at

firstamericanartmagazine.com ca en ar

IFAM(E) indigenous

fine art market

east

glow party may 20 fine art show may 21 22

the pequot museum mashantucket ct indigefam.org art: samuel lafountain

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NIAA

NORTHEAST INDIGENOUS ARTS ALLIANCE

These objects are not trophies, but instruments of passion, with the power to unexpectedly reveal mysteries.

—Ralph T. Coe

First Fridays!

...a behind the scenes look at the collection! every first Friday of the month, 1-4 pm

Aspen Plaza 1590 B Pacheco Street Santa Fe, NM 87505 or contact us for an appointment at: (505) 983-6372 / www.ralphtcoefoundation.org

benjamin harjo jr. american indian artist flight of the moon, 2015, acrylic on Arches paper

benjaminharjojr.com SUMMER 2016

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Advertiser Index Victoria Adams | victoriaadamsjewelry.com

3

Antique American Indian Art Show | thesantafeshows.com

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Celebration | sealaskaheritage.org/institute/celebration

4

Cherokee Art Market | cherokeeartmarket.com

2

Cherokee Heritage Center | cherokeeheritage.org

8

Cherokee Heritage Press | cherokeeheritage.org

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Chickasaw Nation, Southeastern Art Show and Market chickasaw.net interior front cover Orlando Dugi | orlandodugi.com

81

Exhibit C Gallery | exhibitcgallery.com

13

Froelick Gallery | froelickgallery.com

1

Grey Dog Trading | greydogtrading.com

91

Benjamin Harjo Jr. | benjaminharjojr.com

95

The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School redcloudschool.org/ArtShow

92

Home & Away Gallery | homeandaway.gallery

91

Idyllwild Arts | idyllwildarts.org

15

Indigenous Fine Art Market East | indigefam.org

94

Inuit Images | inuitimages.com

83

Keshi the Zuni Connection | keshi.com

9

Advertise in First American Art Magazine! Classifieds provide affordable advertising solutions for art professionals and service providers. Contact us today: (505) 473-0149 or ads@firstamericanartmagazine.com.

Mahota Studios | margaretroachwheeler.com

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Native American Art Appraisals, Inc. | naaainc.com

83

ARTWORK

Native POP: People of the Plains | nativepop.org

12

Cherokee Woman Online Boutique, www.cherokee-woman.com.

We carry Authentic Native American Art, including jewelry, pottery, carvings, etc. Our mission is to support and promote Native American Artists and bring the highest quality art to our customers. Get 20% OFF your first purchase at www.cherokee-woman.com — use Code “NEWORDER” at checkout.

Native Treasures Indian Arts Festival | nativetreasures.org

13

New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs nmculture.org/lkn

7

Noksi Press | noksi.com

96

Objects of Art Santa Fe | thesantafeshows.com

90

Ralph T. Coe Foundation | ralphtcoefoundation.org

95

Jack Sabon | sabonart.com

12

Southwest Traditions | southwesttraditions.com

9

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ORGANIZATIONS The Southeastern Indian Artists Association is a Native American-run, 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 providing support through our online directory, image gallery, exhibiting opportunities, art business workshops, forum for Native artists, and interested community members to connect and interact, and an online presence for rural Native artists. For more info, 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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Southwest Association for Indian Arts santafeindianmaket.org

interior back cover

Treasures of the Southwest | treasuresofthesouthwest.com Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian wheelwright.org Woodland Indian Art Show and Market woodlandindianart.com

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Native Art. Inspired.

Fine Art Fashion Music Dance Cinema

Santa Fe Indian Market SOUTHWESTERN ASSOCIATION FOR INDIAN ARTS

August 20 & 21, 2016 santafeindianmarket.com Come for the art. Stay for the experience!

Artists, Counter-Clockwise from top left: Carol Emarthle-Douglas (Northern Arapaho/Seminole), Ernest Benally (Navajo), Troy Sice (Zuni), Jackie Bread (Blackfeet).

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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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Arts of the Jicarilla Apache June 12, 2016 – April 16, 2017

A major exhibition on the work of Jicarilla Apache artists, with an emphasis on basketry, pottery, and beadwork.

Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry

Eveli

May 15, 2016 – January 15, 2017 The Wheelwright Museum celebrates the multicultural story of southwestern jewelry with a retrospective of work by Eveli Sabatie, protégé and collaborator of the great Charles Loloma.

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; and several private donors. Photos by Addison Doty and Neebinnaukzhik Southall.