First American Art Magazine No. 19, Summer 2018

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

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

NO. 19, SUMMER 2018

DISPLAY UNTIL JULY 31, 2018

GREAT BASIN NATIVE ARTISTS

JOHN BRENT BENNETT

OKLAHOMA INDIAN BALLERINAS

ANDREA CARLSON

IRA WILSON & SWAIA’S NEW ERA

YATIKA FIELDS

ARCTIC BEADWORK AS PERFORMANCE

SANDY FIFE WILSON

ONE OF THE NATION’S FASTEST GROWING NATIVE AMERICAN ART FESTIVALS ONE OF THE NATION’S FASTEST GROWING NATIVE AMERICAN ART FESTIVALS

MAY MAY 26, 26, 2018 2018 •• SULPHUR, SULPHUR, OKLAHOMA OKLAHOMA FOR FOR MORE MORE INFORMATION, INFORMATION, CALL (580) 272-5520 OR EMAIL CALL (580) 272-5520 OR EMAIL ARTISTINFO@CHICKASAW.NET. ARTISTINFO@CHICKASAW.NET.

T. C. C A N N O N ARTIST • MUSICIAN • POET • VETERAN

THROUGH JUNE 10, 2018 AT T H E P E A B O DY E S S E X M U S E U M T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America is organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and made possible in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation and Ellen and Steve Hoffman provided generous support. We also recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.

MEDIA PARTNERS

T.C. Cannon (1946–1978, Caddo/Kiowa), His Hair Flows Like a River (detail), 1973-77. Acrylic and oil on canvas. Anne Aberbach and Family, Paradise Valley, Arizona. © 2017 Estate of T. C. Cannon. Photo by Thosh Collins.

161 Essex St. | Salem, MA pem.org

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Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer is organized by the Denver Art Museum. It is presented with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Bank, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the citizens who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine, CBS4, Comcast Spotlight, and The Denver Post.

Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band Choctaw/ Cherokee), I PUT A SPELL ON YOU (detail), 2015. Repurposed punching bag, glass beads, artificial sinew, and steel; 40 × 14 × 14 in (101.6 × 35.6 × 35.6 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Museum purchase, 2015.11.1. Image courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California. Photograph by Peter Mauney.

BUYING OR SELLING INDIAN ART? KNOW THE LAW Under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, all American Indian and Alaska Native art and craft products must be marketed truthfully regarding the tribal enrollment and Indian heritage of the artist or craftsperson.

Allan Houser, Chiricahua Apache, “Apache Fire Dancer” © 1961, Collection of the Southern Plains Indian Museum, USDOI, IACB

TAKE HOME A TREASURE FROM INDIAN COUNTRY-BUY WORKS PRODUCED BY MEMBERS OF FEDERALLY RECOGNIZED TRIBES. For a free brochure on the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, including how to file a complaint, contact:

U.S. Department of the Interior

Indian Arts and Crafts Board Toll Free: 1-888-ART-FAKE or 1-888-278-3253 Email: iacb@ios.doi.gov | Web: www.doi.gov/iacb

Northern Plains Indian Art Market

SIOUX FALLS, SD | -30, SEPTEMBER 23 - 24, 2017 September 29 2018 SIOUX FALLS CONVENTION CENTER Sioux Falls, SD

Best of Show Art Preview & Reception September 28, 2018 Old CourtHouse Museum

www.NPIAM.org

Jeneen Frei Njootli and Tsēma Igharas, Sinuosity, 2016. Image still from performance

THE CONTEMPORARY NATIVE ART BIENNIAL - 4TH EDITION

NÍCHIWAMISKWÉM | NIMIDET | MY SISTER | MA SŒUR GUEST CURATORS: NIKI LITTLE AND BECCA TAYLOR WWW.BACA.CA

MAY 3 - JULY 22, 2018 La Guilde Montreal, QC

MAY 5 - SEPTEMBER 9, 2018 Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke Sherbrooke, QC

NOVEMBER 1 - DECEMBER 20, 2018 Art Gallery of Mississauga Mississauga, ON

MAY 4 - JUNE 16, 2018 Art Mûr Montreal, QC

MAY 5 - JUNE 22, 2018 Stewart Hall Art Gallery Pointe-Claire, QC

MAY 9 AND MAY 19, 2018 McCord Museum Montreal, QC

The artists and the gallery would like to thank :

ACC-CCA

Black

VISUAL VOICES CO N T E M P O R A RY C H I C K A S AW A R T

VISUAL VOICES: Contemporary Chickasaw Art Touring Exhibition

June 8 - Sept. 9, 2018 FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART University of Oklahoma 555 Elm Ave. Norman, OK 73019-3003 Opening Reception Thursday, June 7, 2018 7 p.m. Public Opening Lecture 8 p.m. Public Opening Reception fjjma.ou.edu | @fjjma Admission is always free!

Brent Greenwood, Gathering Medicine [detail], 2017 acrylic on canvas, 40 in. x 30 in.

Grant provided by the Chickasaw Nation C H I C K A S AWA R T I S T S . C O M

6TH ANNUAL NATIVE ART MARKET & CULTURAL CELEBRATION

JULY 20-21, 2018

RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA FRIDAY

ARTIST AWARDS RECEPTION Dahl Arts Center

SATURDAY

NATIVE FINE ART, FASHION SHOW, & FILM SHOWCASE Main Street Square

www.nativepop.org

Keith BraveHeart (Oglala Lakota) 2017 “Kolas” Acrylic on Canvas

ISSUE NO. 19, SUMMER 2018

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Great Basin Native Artists: Giving Voice to the Land

By Jean Merz-Edwards

24

Recent Developments

16 20

The Oklahoma Indian Ballerinas

By Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

32

Seven Directions

By Denise Neil-Binion, PhD (Delaware-Cherokee)

88

A New Era begins at SWAIA: Ira Wilson Chosen as Executive Director

By Jason Morgan Edwards (Seminole)

38

Collections: St. Louis Art Museum

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD Calendar

94

Beads on a Thread: Reflections on Beading as Performance, Process, Material, and Method in the Arctic

By David Winfield Norman

42

48

REVIEWS Exhibition Reviews

72

Book Reviews

84

EDITORIAL

ARTIST PROFILES

54

John Brent Bennett: Haida Jeweler, Printmaker, and Sculptor

By India Rael Young, PhD

48

Andrea Carlson: Anishinaabe Painter

By Sheila Regan

54

Yatika Starr Fields: Osage-Muscogee-Cherokee Painter

By Jami Powell, PhD (Osage)

60

Sandy Fife Wilson: Mvskoke Textile Artist and Shell Carver

By Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

66

Nuances of Censorship 86

By Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

IN MEMORIAM James Luna (Puyukitchum-IpaiMexican American)

By Deana Dartt, PhD (Coastal Chumash)

92

Bahe Whitethorne Jr. (Diné)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

93

60

66

cover Yatika Fields (Osage-MuscogeeCherokee), Prayer for the Bee's Return, 2008, oil of canvas, 73 × 71 in. Image courtesy of the Sam Noble Museum, Norman, Oklahoma.

SUMMER 2018 | 9

Coe Center Experience our unique collections

Issue No. 19, Summer 2018 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Managing Editor: Mariah Ashbacher Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Online Editor: Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Marketing Director: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Copy Editor: Rosa Cays (Chicana) Proofreaders: Annie Bridgers (Comanche), Staci Golar (Cornish-WelshAmerican), and Jean Merz-Edwards Layout & Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Design Consultant: Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Social Media: Staci Golar (Cornish-Welsh-American), Michelle J. Lanteri, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Nina Sanders (Apsáalooke), and Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho)

Regional Representatives

Great Basin: Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute-Modoc) Great Plains: Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) Northeast: Kelly Church (Odawa-Ojibwe-Potawatomi) Northwest: Marianne Nicolson, PhD (Dzawada’enuxw Kwakwaka’wakw) Southeast: Michole Eldred (Catawba-Eastern Band Cherokee) Southwest: Holly Coonsis (Zuni)

Editorial Advisory Board heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw-Chickasaw) Jonathan Batkin, Wheelwright Museum James T. Bialac, JD Teri Greeves (Kiowa) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DFA (Hopi-Choctaw) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole) Ken Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho-Seneca) India Rael Young, PhD

Advertising Representative Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent), barbara@firstamericanartmagazine.com International distribution by Disticor Magazine Distribution Services.

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

Copyright ©2018 by First American Art Magazine, LLC. Cover and contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or part by any method without written permission, except those specific images listed with Creative Commons licenses. Any errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. First American Art Magazine® is registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

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Arctic and Indian arts for the 21 century st

26 Maine Street Kennebunkport, Maine 207 967-2122 Gabriel Frey

Mary Tafoya

Sam Dimmick

Sculpture | Prints | Jewelry |Beadwork |Baskets shop online: www.homeandawaygallery.com

RED EARTH FESTIVAL June 8-10, 2018

COX CONVENTION CENTER/MYRIAD GARDENS DOWNTOWN OKLAHOMA CITY

3 Full Days of World Class Art PowWow • Food • Music Dazzling Dance Performances America’s Most Unique Parade

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“Midnight Wolf”

by Micqaela Jones (Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone)

CELEBRATING FIVE YEARS OF FAAM

F

AAM NO. 19, SUMMER 2018, marks the fifth-anniversary issue for First American Art Magazine.

B efore the pilot issue was published, as an “insider,” I wasn’t even sure what writing about Indigenous art of the Americas—with all the layers of romanticism, exoticism, paternalism, and Eurocentrism peeled away—would even look like. Now, after five years, we know.

First American Art Magazine grew out of conversations with my fellow Native American artists. We noticed few artists attended public lectures, symposia, and conferences about Native art. We also felt the lack of informed criticism when we curated art shows. Fascinating exhibitions, discussions, and research were taking place, yet they weren’t reaching the public.

One of FAAM’s goals is to help bring various enclaves within the Native art world together. It’s surprising in a comparatively small art scene how groups remain unaware of each other. The most obvious schism is between the art market circuit and the museum circuit; however, people would be surprised how nimbly many Native artists navigate between these two arenas, and how many “booth artists” have advanced art degrees and exhibit internationally. I’m continually shocked by the lack of engagement between academics who base their careers on Native art and living Native American artists.

Both popular and academic writing share the problem of covering the same handful of artists over and over.

Meanwhile, so many fascinating artists have either never been written about, or have been discussed in a completely superficial or imprecise manner.

FAAM strives for accuracy, and our credo is to never knowingly print a false statement. We acknowledge our inevitable errors in our errata section. In a field dominated by marketing, maintaining a standard of integrity is of paramount importance to us.

While we love introducing new artists to audiences, we also revisit established artists, particularly those who came before the internet. It’s crucial that

above America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Ꮎ ᎢᏤ-ᏳᏍᏗ ᏧᎾᏓᏅᏓᏴᏫ, 2014, linoleum block print on mulberry bark paper, A/P, 5¾×101/4 in.

we privilege the Native artists who maintain strong connections to their tribal communities.

At our booth at the recent Heard Fair, the child featured on the cover of the FAAM spring issue brought his family up to collect copies. Children and adults related to Mark Tahbo (Hopi-Tewa) and Paul Vigil (Tesuque) wanted copies of their memorials. It warms my heart to see how First American Art Magazine has become part of the fabric of the Native art community. Many on our editorial staff are artists, curators, arts administrators, and volunteers, and share lifelong commitments to the Native art community. I sorted mailings for the Center of the American Indian when I was six years old.

FAAM is a journal publishing original research but not an academic journal, so the writing needs to be concise and accessible to the public. You, the reader, need to enjoy the articles and want to finish them so they fulfill their purpose.

Distilling highly complex, nuanced concepts into comprehensible writing free of jargon is the necessary, final step in the writing process.

Our conversation must be inclusive.

Here in the United States, Indigenous peoples are only 0.9 percent of the population.1 We need non-Native allies, period. I’m glad we’ve had writers from highly diverse backgrounds—even writers from Indigenous groups outside

the Americas—share their perspectives on Indigenous arts for the Americas. The visual arts have been a way for us to let others see the world from our perspectives and allowed us to bypass—and counteract—the overwhelming misinformation still in circulation about Native peoples. All world cultures deserve their day in the sun, and visual art is an entrée toward understanding Indigenous cultures of South and North America.

In FAAM Issue No. 0, Spring 2013, I wanted to blast through perceptions of what Native American art was, so I wrote a feature article about 21st-century Greenlandic Inuit art. David Winfield Norman kindly advised me on that article. Coming neatly full circle, in this issue, David has written the feature article about two leading Kalaallit artists and one Iñupiaq-Athabascan artist. In the pilot issue, Denise Neil-Binion interviewed Anita Fields; in this one, Jami Powell interviews Anita’s son, Yatika Fields, while Denise contributed the Seven Directions column in this issue.

As heather ahtone, one of our editorial advisors, declared back in 2012, “Every time an Indigenous artist creates an object that reflects concepts rooted within her culture, this same artist is perpetuating the culture one more day as an act of self-determination.”2 Let’s celebrate this act together.

—America Meredith

1. “The World Factbook: United States,” Central Intelligence Agency, web.

2. heather ahtone, “Reading Beneath the Surface: Joe Feddersen’s Parking Lot,” Wicazo Sa Review 27, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 73.

SUMMER 2018 | 13

LETTERS TO FAAM

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS DEANA DARTT, PhD (Coastal Band Chumash), is an independent scholar and curator who received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of Oregon. Dartt served as curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum from 2012 to 2016 and previously served as curator of Native American ethnology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences, where she taught as an assistant professor of American Indian studies. She is the 2017–2018 Anne Ray Scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She operates Live Oak Museum Consulting out of Eugene, Oregon.

H

ELLO TO EVERYONE at First American Art Magazine.

I have really enjoyed your magazine thus far, which I purchased at a local bookstore. There are so many gifted Native American artists, past and present. It is a feast for the eyes and a real treat to see their amazing work and learn so much about Native art and the cultures that have produced such talent.

Hope your magazine has a prosperous future. Thanks for your help.

Sincerely, Ann Rochelle Kingston Springs, TN We appreciate you taking time to write to us, Ann. Glad you’re enjoying the magazine, and thank you for subscribing! —FAAM We welcome your letters to the editor! If we print your letter, we will send you a free copy of that issue of the magazine. Please email your letters to: INFO@FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM or mail letters to: FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE Attention: Editor 133 24th Avenue NW #126 Norman, OK 73069 14 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

JASON MORGAN EDWARDS (Seminole-AfricanAmerican) has been practicing photography for more than 30 years. He began his career as a freelance writer and photographer in 2010, after retiring from the United States Environmental Protection Agency. He earned his BA degree in economics from Case Western Reserve University, where he also earned minors in English, art, and marketing. He has written for several magazines and newspapers including Native Peoples, Indian Country Today Media Network, Navajo Times, and The Independent (Gallup). In his writing, he strives to tell our stories, in our way, using our own words.

ANDREA L. FERBER, PhD, is an art historian and independent curator. Her current curatorial project is Palimpsests for the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She has several forthcoming publications and is a contributor to the Art Market Dictionary, a new resource from De Gruyter Publishers in Berlin.

SUZANNE NEWMAN FRICKE, PhD (AshkenazicAmerican), 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, the University of New Mexico, and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She has curated three exhibits, Octopus Dreams: Works on Paper by Contemporary Native American Artists; As We See It: Photography by Contemporary Native American Artists; and Woven Together: Celebrating Spider Woman in Contemporary Native American Art, which traveled to Russia, Japan, and the United States.

TAMMI HANAWALT, PhD, is an art historian and associate curator at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She teaches at the Institute of

American Indian Arts and has taught at the University of Oklahoma. She is interested in gender and performance theories and is currently working on two publication projects that stem from her dissertation, “Paradox Regained: The Trickster in Native North American Art and Culture.”

MICHELLE LANTERI is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation predoctoral fellow in Native American art history at the University of Oklahoma. She presented a paper on Apsáalooke (Crow) artist Wendy Red Star at the 2017 College Art Association (CAA) conference and curated the 2018 exhibition, Wendy Red Star: The Maniacs (We’re Not The Best, But We’re Better Than The Rest) for the University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University (NMSU). Lanteri earned an MA in art history from NMSU and has served in curatorial roles for the University Museum as well as the Greenhill Center for North Carolina Art. At the 2018 CAA conference, she chaired the panel, “Intercontinental: Indigenous Artists of the Americas on the Contemporary Art Stage.”

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.

DAVID WINFIELD NORMAN is a PhD candidate at the University of Copenhagen where he is researching the role of performative and time-based art in Greenland in the post–Home Rule era. His writing has appeared in journals, exhibition catalogues, and magazines such as Tidsskriftet Kritik, Kunst og Kultur, and Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. He has curated and facilitated interventions at Nunatta Katersugaasivia Allagaateqarfialu (Greenland National Museum and Archives) and the Anchorage Museum.

BRYN BARABAS POTTER is an independent curator and freelance writer specializing in Native American basketry.

Working with tribes and institutions, she has curated over two dozen exhibitions. She is adjunct curator at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, was curator of basketry at the Southwest Museum/Autry Museum of the American West, and a resident fellow at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West from 2013 to 2015. Potter has a BA and MA in anthropology from California State University, Northridge. She has written for American Indian Art Magazine, California Archaeology, First American Art Magazine, News from Native California, Journal of the Southwest, and other publications.

JAMI POWELL, PhD (Osage Nation), is the associate curator of Native American art at the Hood Museum of Art

at Dartmouth. Powell received her doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and previously worked as a faculty lecturer in the American studies program at Tufts University. Her research examines the representations of American Indians in museums as well as the interventions Indigenous artists make through creative self-representations. Powell is currently collaborating with the Osage Nation Museum on a ribbonwork documentary project and writing an essay for the edited volume Theories and Methodologies for Indigenous Art in North America.

STACY PRATT, PhD (Mvskoke), is a writer, musician, and independent scholar. She earned a master’s degree in literature from the University of Arkansas and a doctorate in creative writing (poetry) from the University of Southern Mississippi.

She is the online editor for First American Art Magazine and also writes for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and online publications. She lives in DeRidder, Louisiana.

SHEILA REGAN is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis.

She has written online pieces for Hyperallergic, ArtAsiaPacific, American Theatre, Salon, PRI, and Broadly, as well as print articles for local publications such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, City Pages, and the Growler. Regan earned her BA degree in theater from Macalester College in St. Paul and her MFA in acting from Indiana University in Bloomington.

MATTHEW RYAN SMITH, PhD (Euro-Canadian), is the curator of the Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant in Brantford, Ontario. Smith is also the Canadian section editor of the Art Market Dictionary and resides on the editorial board of the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (YoMIS).

YVONNE N. TIGER (Seminole-Muscogee-Cherokee) is a PhD student and freelance writer. She is an adjunct instructor of Indigenous Studies at Montana State University, Northern, and at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. A first-generation graduate, her two master’s degrees centered on Native American boarding school policy and Native American art history and curation. Tiger’s current work remains focused on Indigenous futurisms, sci-fi graphic novels, and the intersectionalities of Indigenous art, identity, resistance to settler-colonial systems, and resurgent intellectual and cultural sovereignties.

INDIA RAEL YOUNG, PhD, art historian and curator, studies Indigenous art, print media, and emerging modes of reproduction. Her curatorship and writing negotiate feminist, decolonial, and critical race frameworks to track the cultural geography of the contemporary North American art world. She graduated in 2017 with a doctorate from the University of New Mexico and is now the research specialist in Native American art at the Princeton University Art Museum.

SUMMER 2018 | 15

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS The American Indian Cultural Center & Museum in Oklahoma City hired heather ahtone (Choctaw-Chickasaw) as its senior curator. ahtone previously served as the James T. Bialac associate curator of Native American and non-Western art at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma.

She recently earned her doctoral degree from the University of Oklahoma.

Representatives of Oklahoma City, the state of Oklahoma, and the Chickasaw Nation negotiated land agreements in February and construction of the museum is scheduled to resume this summer.

MUSEUMS The Royal BC Museum in Victoria contributed CAD $500,000 to its repatriation program that will assist First Nations in repatriating items of cultural patrimony and works of intangible cultural heritage, such as sound recordings. The head of the museum’s First Nations Department and Repatriation Program, Lucy Bell (Haida), founded the Haida Heritage and Repatriation Society and has helped repatriate more than 500 Haida ancestors back to their communities.

The Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire, appointed Jami Powell (Osage Nation) as its first associate curator of Native American art. Powell received her doctoral degree in anthropology this spring from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She taught as a faculty lecturer at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

Remai Modern, which opened in 2017 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, hired Gerald McMaster (Plains Cree-Siksika) as an adjunct curator. He will serve on the museum’s international advisory committee and

above Jami Powell, PhD (Osage Nation), associate curator of Native American art at the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire.

will assist in public programming development. An acclaimed curator who served as art director of the 2012 Biennale of Sydney, McMaster is a professor of Indigenous visual culture and critical curatorial studies at OCAD University. He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and Interpretation.

The Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust donated $2.5 million to the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, to fund a new curatorial position for the Thaw Collection of American Indian Art and related projects. The museum’s curator, Eva Fognell, became the first Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of American Indian Art. The trust will contribute an additional $1 million in 2019 toward an art acquisition fund. Fognell has worked at the Fenimore Art Museum since 2002. She earned her master’s degree in museum studies at the Cooperstown Graduate Program.

Collectors Kathy and Phillip Power have enabled the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor to develop the Power Family Program for Inuit Art. The couple donated their collection of 200 hundred works of Inuit art, valued at $2.5 million, and a $2 million gift to create this Inuit art program and endow it indefinitely.

GALLERIES & ART CENTERS

above American Indian Cultural Center & Museum, view from the west, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

16 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

The Epcot Center’s American Heritage Gallery at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, will feature Creating Tradition: Innovation and Change in American Indian Art. This long-term exhibition of Native American art was curated in

I D Y L L W I L D partnership with the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. Creating Tradition will feature works by artists such as Glenda McKay (Ingalik Athabascan) and Loren Aragon (Acoma Pueblo).

Annie Aculiak (Inuk) and her husband Pierre Jacques are opening Annie Aculiak Studio and Inuit Gallery in Sechelt, British Columbia. Aculiak is a textile artist, carver, basket maker, and beadwork artist. Her gallery handles her work as well that of her relatives, including sculptures by her late brother, Johnny Aculiak (Inuk).

A R T S

Native American Workshops and Festival 2018

France Trépanier (Mohawk) resigned on February 20, 2018, as Aboriginal curator of Open Space Arts Society, a nonprofit art center in Victoria, British Columbia. The Aboriginal Curatorial Collective called for a boycott in applying for a full-time curatorial position offered by Open Space. IBPOC Victoria conducted a public forum and placed resigning board members as an interim board. Open Space is continuing to review its commitments to the Indigenous community and is conducting an equity audit.

AWARDS & HONORS The Canadian Art Foundation bestowed its inaugural Wanda Koop Research Fund award of $15,000 to Tanya Lukin Linklater (Alutiiq). The Canadian Art Foundation named the award, which funds research by a mid-career visual artist, for Wanda Koop, an painter based in Winnipeg and the first artist to appear on Canadian Art's cover.

The Vernacular Art Forum bestowed its 2018 Paul E. Buchanan Vernacular Architecture Award upon the Caddo Mounds State Historical Site for its Caddo Grass House Project. Caddo Nation tribal historic preservation officer Phil Cross (Caddo-Potawatomi) led a team to build a full-sized Caddo grass house. Located near Alto, Texas, the historical site is home to two precontact Caddo platform mounds.

ART SHOWS Grand prize winner of the 47th annual Trail of Tears Art Show, hosted by the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma, was Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation).

Classification winners were Kenny Henson (Cherokee Nation), painter; Paul Hacker (Choctaw), sculpture; Mike Dart (Cherokee Nation), basketry; Jane Osti (Cherokee Nation), pottery; John Gritts (Cherokee Nation), graphics; Norma Howard (Choctaw-Chickasaw), miniatures; and Mike Phillips (Cherokee Nation), emerging artists. Norma Howard won the Trail of Tears Award and the Betty Garner Elder Award. Kindra Swafford (Cherokee Nation) won the Bill Rabbit Legacy Award.

June 18 through July 1 Scholarships for Native American adults and kids available for all workshops! summer@idyllwildarts.org IdyllwildArts.org/nativearts 951-468-7265

Use the promo code : FAAM2018 for $25 off of Idyllwild Arts Summer Adult Programs. Expires: 6.1.18 SUMMER 2018 | 17

above, left Hilaría Chavez Carrillo (Wixárika), El nacimiento del mundo, 2017, acrylic yarn and beeswax on wood, 47½ × 47½ in., on display at the Bienal de Arte Huichol, Mexico City. above, right Jamie Okuma (Luiseño-Shoshone-Bannock), stands next to her Best of Show piece, Protect, Honor, Cherish, at the 60th annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, Phoenix.

ART FAIRS Inuit artist collective Isuma selected a team to curate the Canadian Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennale. The fiveperson team features Asinnajaq (Inuk), a filmmaker from Montreal; Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish), an independent curator based in Albuquerque; Catherine Crowstone, chief curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta; Josée DrouinBrisebois, senior curator of the National Gallery of Canada; and Barbara Fischer, chief curator at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto.

The first Bienal de Arte Huichol opened on April 12 and will continue through June 25 at the InterContinental Presidente Hotel in Mexico City. Forty Huichol artists were juried into the show, which features yarn paintings and chaquireados, beaded mosaics set in beeswax. On the last day of the fair, a prize of Mex$1,000 will be awarded on the strongest work.

ART MARKETS Jamie Okuma (Luiseño-ShoshoneBannock) won Best of Show at the

60th annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, which included a one-time prize of $10,000 sponsored

by Howard R. and Joy M. Berlin and Christine and Leland W. Peterson.

Classification winners were Lyndon Tsosie (Navajo), jewelry and lapidary; Garrett Maho (Hopi), pottery; Peggy Fontenot (Patawomeck), paintings, drawings, graphics, and photography; Mavasta Honyouti (Hopi), Pueblo carvings; Cliff Fragua (Jemez Pueblo), sculpture; Kevin Aspaas (Navajo), weavings and textiles; Jamie Okuma, diverse art forms; Geo Neptune (Passamaquoddy), baskets; Orlando Dugi (Navajo), personal attire; and Beverly Bear King Moran (Standing Rock Lakota), beadwork and quillwork.

Angela Babby (Oglala Lakota) won the Conrad House Cutting-Edge Award, and Albert Haskie (Navajo) won the best of the youth art.

In conjunction with Indian Day on April 19, Alter do Chão in Pará, Brazil, hosted its second annual Tapajós Mutak Indigenous Art Show, which included music, dances, film screenings, workshops and four-day art market. The festival celebrates the cultures of the

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Tapajós region, which include the Tupaiú, Apiaka, Arapiun, Arara Vermelha, Borari, Kara-Preta, Kumaruara, Munduruku, Maytapú, Jaraki, Tapajó, Tupinambá, and Tapuia peoples.

above NMAI Director Kevin Gover (Pawnee) consults with World War II Veteran Jesse Edward Oxendine (Lumbee) in Pembroke, N.C. about the National Native American Veterans Memorial, May 2016. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC.

PUBLIC ART The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) has selected five finalists from a pool of 120 applicants to submit designs for the National Native Veterans Memorial.

The finalists are James Dinh, Harvey Pratt (Southern Cheyenne-Arapaho), Stefanie Rocknak, Leroy Transfield, and a collaborative team of Enoch Kelly Haney (Seminole) and Daniel SaSuWeh Jones (Ponca). Their designs will be on display at NMAI in Washington, DC, and New York City from May 19 through June 3. A winner will be announced on July 4. Once constructed, the memorial will be placed on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

ONLINE RESOURCES Indigenous Cinema, a website created by the National Film Board of Canada, offers free streaming films by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis directors. Part of the film board’s Indigenous Action Plan, the site (nfb.ca/indigenous-cinema) offers

more than 200 titles of features, shorts, documentaries, and animation.

Natives Photograph, a website and database project started by Josué Rivas (Mexica-Otomi) and Daniella Zalcman, the founder of Women Photograph, launched this May. With a goal to “elevate the work of Indigenous visual journalists and bring balance to the way we tell stories about Indigenous people and spaces,” it will offer support for its members and provide a database of Indigenous photographers for photo editors. nativesphotograph.com

CRIME & LEGAL ISSUES The Missouri House Special Committee on Small Business voted unanimously in February to move forward with HB 1384, which would define American Indian artists as members of federally recognized tribes. The current federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA) also allows members of state-recognized tribes and tribally-designed artisans to

identify as American Indian artists. If passed, the bill would allow Missouri to enforce infractions; currently, the federal prosecutors enforce IACA. Marshall University in Charleston, West Virginia, was fined $4,999 by the US federal government for its failure to comply with the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The law requires universities, museums, and other institutions that receive federal funding to complete inventories of Native American human remains and associated funerary objects in their collections and share that information with related tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.

Tyler Creighton Bodle of Merrill, Oregon, was arrested in 2017 for stealing several artifacts from Native American graves in 2016. After pleading guilty to six counts of unlawful possession of Native American items, Bodle was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $12,000 in April 2018.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

DENISE NEIL-BINION, PhD

E

NROLLED in the Delaware Tribe of Indians and the Cherokee Nation, Denise Neil-Binion grew up in Welch, Oklahoma. She earned her doctoral degree in Native American art history at the University of Oklahoma and her master’s degree in Native American art history from the University of New Mexico.

Denise’s research interests include Prairie Style beadwork, Native American painters in Oklahoma, and

humor and cartooning in Indigenous art. She has taught classes in art history at the University of New Mexico and the University of Oklahoma and is currently working as a freelance writer. In addition to her work as an art historian, she has served as executive director of the 99s Museum of Women Pilots. She will be joining the staff of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow in June 2018. the Denver Art Museum from May 13 to August 12, 2018, and will then tour the country with stops at the Mississippi Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, and finally the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. denverartmuseum.org/exhibitions/ jeffrey-gibson BELOW. The “Myth of Extinction” of Indigenous tribes of the Americas has been and continues to be a fallout from colonization and a lack of education about Native peoples. This summer, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center in New York hopes to engage and educate audiences through a new exhibition, Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean | Taíno: herencia e identidad indígena en el Caribe. The show will open July 28, 2018, and run through October 2019. According to the NMAI website, “In increasing numbers, individuals, families, and organizations are affirming their Native ancestry and identifying themselves as Taíno.” The exhibition will examine the prevalent and incorrect belief that the Taíno became

ABOVE. Although we often think of the Armory Show as the introduction of modern art to the United States in 1913, the legacy of the exhibition continues more than a century later.

In 1994, four New York gallerists, Colin de Land, Pat Hearn, Matthew Marks, and Paul Morris, launched a new iteration of this groundbreaking exhibition. Among the artists featured in this year’s show was Choctaw-Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson.

Gibson’s installation, Without You I’m Nothing, was featured in the New York Times article, “30 Must-See Artists at the Armory Show.” His solo exhibition, Like a Hammer, will be displayed at 20 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

DENISE NEIL-BINION

extinct shortly after European colonization and educate the public about the legacy of Native peoples throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands and their diasporas. nmai.si.edu/explore/ exhibitions/upcoming CENTER. Indigenous painters from Oklahoma are known not only for their small-scale works of art but also for their painting murals. Between 1934 and 1943, members of the Kiowa Six and artists associated with Bacone College graced many public buildings in Oklahoma with these large-scale works of art.

This legacy is carried on by the OsageMuscogee-Cherokee artist Yatika Starr Fields, whose murals can be seen across the country. In conjunction with the exhibition, Fluent Generations: The Art of Anita, Tom and Yatika Fields, at the Sam Noble Museum in Norman, Fields has created a new mural. Measuring 18 by 10 feet, the mural was painted March 12 to 16 and April 5 to 8. According to Fields, “This unique opportunity will allow museum visitors a chance to see the work being created and the many elements, materials, and structures used to paint a mural. This glimpse into the creation will break a magic barrier to the wonderment of museums and painting.” samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/ permanent-exhibits/current-exhibits SOUTH. Enduring Beauty: Seminole Art and Culture will be on exhibit March 22 to July 8, 2018, at the Orlando Museum of Art. The exhibition, drawn from I. S. K. Reeves V and Sara W. Reeves’s private collection, celebrates Seminole culture with works of art, adornment, and domestic crafts dating from the early 19th century to the mid-20th century. The show includes embroidered and beaded bandolier bags; clothing embellished with appliqué, embroidery, and patchwork; beaded necklaces; woven baskets; and dolls.

Accompanying these objects are historic paintings, prints, and photographs that document important individuals, families, and the Seminole way of life during the past two centuries. omart.org/ exhibitions/enduring_seminole

NORTH. Native Portraiture: Power and Perception is currently on view and will run through February 10, 2019, at the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington state. The exhibition poses the question, “What is communicated when an outsider portrays someone from another culture?” Although the show includes the usual artists of the American West such as Ernest L. Blumenschein, Edward S. Curtis, and Charles M. Russell, Native American artists represented include Rick Bartow (Wiyot-Yurok, 1946–2016), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke), Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute), Stephen Foster (Haida), Thomas Haukaas (Sicangu Lakota), Doug Hyde (Nez Perce-Assiniboine-Ojibwe), Kevin Red Star (Apsáalooke), and Meryl McMaster

above Yatika Fields (OsageMuscogee-Cherokee), Renewal, acrylic on canvas, collection of the Oklahoma State University Art Collection, Stillwater. Image courtesy of the Sam Noble Museum, Norman, Oklahoma. opposite, far left Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee), All Things Big and Small, 2016, acrylic and graphic on canvas, 70 × 57⅛ in., collection of Lisa and Stuart Ginsberg. Image courtesy of the Denver Art Museum. Photo: Peter Mauney. opposite, near left Unknown Taíno Artist, Chican Ostionoid Zemi, 800–1500 CE, San Pedro de Macorís Province, Dominican Republic, collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 20/3511, purchased in 1941 from A. E. Todd.

SUMMER 2018 | 21

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

(Plains Cree-Siksika). According to the museum’s website, these 21st-century Native artists seek to deconstruct the myths and preconceptions about Native people through their art. The depiction of Indigenous people in art of the American West has perpetuated and continues to perpetuate stereotypes, so this exhibition “aims to give voice to Native people and communities to show their resiliency and power over the ways in which they are portrayed and perceived.” tacomaartmuseum.org/exhibit/ native-portraiture EAST. The Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association (ATADA), a professional organization of art dealers specializing in Native American and international tribal arts, has recently returned more than one hundred ceremonial artifacts to Southwestern tribes.

The repatriation is the result of the organization’s Voluntary Returns Program.

ATADA representatives work directly with tribal communities and spiritual leaders.

It is impossible to estimate the number of sacred and ceremonial items circulating in private collections, and much work remains to ensure that objects are returned to their

benjamin harjo jr. american indian artist the shout, 2017, graphite and colored pencil on arches watercolor paper, 8½ × 12 inches

B E N J A M I N H A R J O J R .C O M

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respective tribes. It does seem like a step in the right direction, and hopefully this program will lead to a growing awareness of the importance of repatriation among collectors. atada.org/voluntary-returns WEST. heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw-Chickasaw), has been named senior curator of Oklahoma City’s American Indian Cultural Center and Museum. She assumes her role after serving for more than six years at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art as the James T. Bialac Associate Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art and upon completion of her doctoral degree in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Oklahoma. heather brings with her a vast knowledge of Native American art, history, and culture, as well as close ties to the Indigenous communities of Oklahoma, which will be represented at the cultural center and museum when it opens in 2021. theamericanindiancenter.org above heather ahtone, PhD (ChoctawChickasaw), newly hired senior curator of the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum, Oklahoma City.

OPPOSITE Kevin Red Star (Apsáalooke), Buffalo Horse Medicine, ca. 2007, mixed media, 44 × 40 in., Tacoma Art Museum, Haub Family Collection, gift of Erivan and Helga Haub, 2015.29.12. Photo: Richard Nicol.

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SPRING 2018 | 23

GREAT BASIN NATIVE ARTISTS Giving Voice to the Land

By Jean Merz-Edwards

Tsaan napuni, tai sokopin, tsaan napuni, tai sokopin, oyo paam paan kematu tsaa napuni, tai sokopin.

GBNA has already proven to be a model for regional artists to connect, share resources, and collectively amplify their public presence. Before discussing this process though, it is important to understand a little more about the region.

Tsaan napuni, tai sokopin, tsaan napuni, tai sokopin, Soko tontsiyama, paan kematu tsaan napuni, tai sokopin.

A SOURCE OF LIFE

How beautiful is our land, how beautiful is our land, forever, beside the water, the water, how beautiful is our land.

How beautiful is our land, how beautiful is our land, Earth, with flowers on it, next to the water how beautiful is our land.

I

—“Imaa Hupia” (The Early Morning Song), Shoshone1

N SPRING 2014, as a contributing writer for First American Art Magazine, Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute-Modoc) interviewed Ben Aleck (Pyramid Lake Paiute). When the two visited, they discovered they each experienced a sense of isolation in their work. As they conversed, they got an idea. Perhaps countless other artists working throughout the Great Basin region might also benefit from meeting each other. Aleck and Melero-Moose

wondered what would happen if they founded a group where other Indigenous artists living in the Great Basin could gather and support one another.

The outcome has been limitless growth and opportunity for artists. The fateful meeting resulted in the formation of the Great Basin Native Artists (GBNA),2 a collective of Indigenous artists residing in, or originally from, Nevada, California, Southern Oregon, Southern Idaho, or Utah. Four years later, the GBNA maintains an online image gallery and artist directory; announces local, regional, and national exhibition opportunities; holds art and business workshops; keeps a current mailing list; and provides cultural arts education for the Native and non-Native communities.

“WHEN I THINK OF THE GREAT BASIN, I imagine endless landscapes of hills that look like resting dinosaurs and chunky, chocolate chip mountains, long, single lane highways, and big open skies,” says GBNA member Topaz Jones (Shoshone-Lummi-Kalapuya-Molalla).

Locked between the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin is comprised of about 400,000 square miles and encompasses about one-tenth of the contiguous United States. It is high-desert country with low annual rainfall. Rivers and streams all end in sinks, marshes, or lakes because there is no natural drainage out of the region.3 When Melero-Moose thinks of the Great Basin, geographical terms do not apply. Rather, she notes the abundance of life. “I think of cattails, willows, pine nuts, junipers, tule reeds, rivers, cottonwood trees. I think of Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake. The windy spring.” The contrasting perspectives of Western science and impressions of Indigenous

1. Steven J. Crum, The Road on Which We Came (Po’i Pentun Tammen Kimmappeh): A History of the Western Shoshone (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1994), 4-5. These are the words from a Western Shoshone dance song translated and transcribed by Beverly Crum.

2. Melero-Moose in discussion with the author on May 9, 23, and 27, 2014. See Jean Merz-Edwards, “Melissa Melero: Northern Paiute-Modoc Mixed Media Artist,” First American Art Magazine 4 (Fall 2014): 38–43.

3. Warren L. d’Azevedo, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 11: Great Basin (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1986), 1, 51–63; Steven J. Crum, The Road on Which We Came, 1.

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women whose ancestors are from the land embody differing worldviews.

Recently discovered high mountain campsites dating back 13,500 years have challenged archaeologists’ picture of the region, but they have known that ancient humans made the Great Basin their home. In 1940 at Spirit Cave in Nevada, archaeologists Georgia and Sydney Wheeler encountered a burial for a man wearing moccasins and shrouded in a rabbit-skin blanket and reed mats.

Petroglyphs dating from 10,000 to 14,800 years ago remain in the tufa near Winnemucca Lake on Pyramid Lake Paiute land. These carvings are the oldest known petroglyphs in North America.4 Additionally, tule duck decoys—like those Paiute hunters still make and use today—were found in Lovelock Cave in Churchill County, Nevada, and date from about 400 BCE to 100 CE. While these examples illustrate the unbroken line of artistry by Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin, challenges remain. These challenges show us the necessity of the Great Basin Native Artists collective.

A COMPLICATED PAST AN HISTORICAL SURVEY of the Great Basin region from an Indigenous perspective would fill the gaps in the present narrative. Currently, the Handbook of North American Indians Volume 11: Great Basin is one of the only comprehensive studies of the area.

Volume editor Warren L. d’Azevedo, the late professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno, divided the Great Basin into ethnological groups of the Western Shoshone, Northern Shoshone and Bannock, Eastern Shoshone, Ute, Southern Paiute, Kawaiisu, Owens Valley Paiute, Northern Paiute, and Washoe.5 The Handbook of North American Indians uses the “culture area approach” and was undoubtedly impacted by Julian Steward, one of the primary anthropologists who studied the Great Basin in the early to mid-20th century.6 Steven J. Crum (Western Shoshone) notes Steward was

above, top Needle Rocks a t P y ra m i d L a ke. P h o to : Seabamirum (CC BY 2.0). above, bottom Great Basin Native Artists after a talk at the Pyramid Lake Museum & Visitors Center, November 2014. Left to right: Phil Buckheart (Absentee Shawnee), Ben Aleck (Pyramid Lake Paiute), and Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern PaiuteModoc). opposite Map showing the Great Basin drainage basin, created by Karl Musser for The New International Atlas, Rand McNally, 1993 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

4. L. V. Benson, E. M. Hattori, J. Southon, B. Aleck, “Dating North America’s Oldest Petroglyphs, Winnemucca Lake Subbasin, Nevada,” in Journal of Archeological Sources 40, no. 12 (December 2013): 4466–4476.

5. d’Azevedo, Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 11.

6. Richard O. Clemmer, L. Daniel Myers, and Mary Elizabeth Rudden, ed., Julian Steward and the Great Basin: The Making of an Anthropologist (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1999), xvi.

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that Steward failed to recognize the rich “inner life” of the Great Basin Indigenous people rooted in a “deep attachment to the land.”8

RECIRCULATION IN THE ART WORLD

top Ben Aleck (Pyramid Lake Paiute), Mount Rose, pen and ink on paper. Image courtesy of the artist. bottom Hungry Valley, Nevada.

Photo: Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute-Modoc). opposite, top Great Basin Native Artists exhibition at the Pyramid Lake Museum & Visitors Center, Nixon, Nevada, 2014. opposite, bottom Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern PaiuteModoc) with her mixed media artwork at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe.

“one of the most influential anthropologists of modern times,” but gave the public an inaccurate and insulting “mental image of the Great Basin people,” as “some of the simplest people on earth” who “lacked elaborate social or political organizations such as bands or clans.”7 Crum concludes

THIS LACK OF UNDERSTANDING extends to the art of the Great Basin Native Americans and accounts in part for the challenges Great Basin Native artists now face. Historian Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) suggests that colonial power relationships allowed Steward’s work to be the authority among anthropologists on interpreting Native American cultures.9 Crum explains that Steward “saw the Pueblos of the Southwest as the ‘highest form of Native American,’ ” in part because of their artistry, social organization, and agriculture methods. In a 1936 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) report, Steward suggested Navajo weaving, Hopi pottery, and other Indian arts be introduced to Indigenous people in the Great Basin.10 Steward’s antiquated notions still circulate in the region, even in the art world. Painter and printmaker Topaz Jones, who currently lives in Santa Fe, explains the “major difference” for artists between the two regions, Great Basin and the Southwest, is namely the ability to make a living. When she lived in the Great Basin, Jones designed T-shirts and entered poster contests. Since moving to the Southwest, her paintings are exhibited in museums and galleries. Her work procures more money, she connects with people in the art world “24/7 every weekend” if she chooses, and the selection of shows to enter her paintings and prints are much greater.11 Jones participates in the GBNA because she wants to see artistic opportunities available in the Great Basin.

7. Steven J. Crum, “Julian Steward’s Vision of the Great Basin: A Critique and Response,” in Julian Steward and the Great Basin: The Making of an Anthropologist, ed. Richard O. Clemmer, L. Daniel Myers, and Mary Elizabeth Rudden (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1999), 117–18.

8. Ibid., 117, 123, 125. For Crum’s discussion about how other scholars, such as Catherine Fowler and the late Omer Stewart, have challenged Steward’s conclusions, see pages 118–9.

9. Ned Blackhawk, “Julian Steward and the Politics of Representation,” in Julian Steward and the Great Basin: The Making of an Anthropologist, ed. Richard O. Clemmer, L. Daniel Myers, and Mary Elizabeth Rudden (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1999), 203–18.

10. Crum, “Julian Steward’s Vision of the Great Basin,” 122.

11. Topaz Jones in discussion with the author, March 21, 2018; Topaz Jones, email message to author, April 1, 2018; “Topaz Jones,” Great Basin Native Artists, web.

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GREAT BASIN ARTISTS GROUP MODEL: NATIVE ART IS THE MEDICINE THE CHALLENGES the literature captures and Jones experiences, MeleroMoose articulates: “There are very few places that display and celebrate Great Basin culture and artworks.… Sometimes it feels like our Native American history was completely erased.”12 When Melero-Moose and Aleck founded GBNA, they had only a few members and a small list of artists for the exhibition, The Way We Live: American Indian Art of the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno in 2012 and 2013.

From there, Melero-Moose says, “We put a website together with some of the artists from the exhibition and created a small directory. We started having many small regional exhibitions, and the group began to grow in numbers and in popularity. Over the next three years, we reached out to the Native community through craft fairs, powwows, cultural events, and word of mouth, and we began to grow a comprehensive list of artisans and fine artists.” Today, around 25 members gather regularly. Three members, currently incarcerated, joined the group and communicate from afar.

The GBNA collective continues to grow from a stable base. The group exhibits several times a year at such venues as the Santa Fe Indian Market, Heard Fair, Maidu Museum, Stewart Indian Boarding School, and the Autry Museum. GBNA also provides consistent art business education. Melero-Moose is developing a curriculum and a how-to guide for communities starting art groups, which will eventually be available gratis on the GBNA website and in the directory.

This year, Melero-Moose becomes the inaugural Peter S. Pool Fellow at the Nevada Museum of Art Center for Art + Environment, where she will consolidate her research and add to the museum’s archives as she develops the Great Basin 12. Quotes and other information from Melissa Melero-Moose are from conversations and emails with the author on February 23, 2018, various dates in March 2018, and April 14, 2018.

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Native Artist Research and Directory Project. This free resource will expand upon the original GBNA directory and will include a comprehensive file for each artist—past, present, and emerging in all media—replete with artist statements, images, biographies, artist résumés, and inventory lists.

Melero-Moose’s research for GBNA also includes traveling to Native communities and events in the region and collecting oral histories. She is expanding on existing research of the California Basket Conference, California Tribal Conference, and Nevada’s Indian Territory Tribal Tourism Conference, while she attends events in Eastern California and Nevada tribal communities.

Looking forward, Melero-Moose says, “Our larger vision for the group is to get Great Basin Native art and education out into the region, country, and world to motivate our Great Basin tribes to come together and build our own cultural center that our Native and non-Native communities so desperately need. I see this place being a way to interact with our community, share our culture and arts, and educate the public.” Art is the key to “the revitalization of our culture. … This is the time!”

LINDA EBEN-JONES (NORTHERN PAIUTE-MODOC)

top Linda Eben Jones (Northern Paiute-Modoc) beading at home. Photo: Cat Allison. bottom Linda Eben Jones (Northern Paiute-Modoc), Hummingbird Bag, canvas, deerhide, glass seed beads, thread. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite, top Karma Henry (Fort Independence Paiute), Pagwi, 2017, aerosol paint, acrylic on canvas, 18 × 24 in. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite, bottom Karma Henry (Fort Independence Paiute) in her studio.

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WHILE COMPILING the artist’s directory, Melero-Moose added her mother’s name to the list. Like many elders in the area, Eben-Jones at first resisted the idea of being an artist and felt that creating beadwork, jewelry, dance regalia, and Paiute dolls is not art—is it? Melero-Moose exclaimed, “Mom, you are an artist!”

Born in 1948 in Schurz, Nevada, Eben-Jones attended the Stewart Indian School in Carson City, Nevada, from 1963 to 1966.13 Under the BIA’s relocation program, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area after graduation. Eben-Jones recalls, “I was just an innocent little girl from Reno. I’d never been over the mountain before.… My [times in the] sixties were very enlightening.” She studied business 13. Linda Eben-Jones, in discussion with the author, March 19, 2018.

at a local college and then worked in personnel management for the federal government. In 1974, when Melissa was born, they moved back home to Reno.

These early experiences that now inform her art culminated in the 1980s when Eben-Jones began making dance regalia for her daughter and grandson.

Without patterns to model, Eben-Jones sketches original ideas. Melero-Moose adds, “My mom is an amazing illustrator.

We have these great little books of her designs filled with little Indian people at powwows.” Eben-Jones constructs the clothing from her designs and adds beadwork.

Although she has been creating dance regalia for decades, Eben-Jones considers herself a late bloomer as an artist. “I’ve had a lot of experience working around artists. I know many artists, have admired and collected their works, but I never considered myself an artist.” She says, “As a collective, Indian people in the Great Basin have really been ignored and they haven’t really had a lot of publicity, and they are just as talented in every way as any artist. GBNA and FAAM really inspired me … to see that I am an artist.”

Inspiration comes from other places as well. According to her artist’s statement on the GBNA website, Eben-Jones’s mother, brothers, nieces, nephews, and sister merit the title of artist as well. Eben-Jones remembers, “One day I was looking at a book from 1954 of a collection of beaded baskets at the Smithsonian, and I realized [it was the work of] one of my niece’s grandmas,” Eben-Jones recalls. “I was shocked when I saw it because it was Esther Davis. She’s Paiute from Pyramid Lake.”

Now embracing her identity as an artist, Eben-Jones says, “I call myself a ‘golden age dancer,’ and I am becoming a sketch artist. I’m also a writer and the family historian. I’m writing a collection of stories and a book for my family, which is the Great Basin people. In the last two years, I’ve been in two exhibits with the GBNA.” She continues with a hint of foreshadowing, “Before I retired, I started to do research on the Stewart Indian School.

There has never been a book written.”

KARMA HENRY (FORT INDEPENDENCE PAIUTE) AFTER A TEN-YEAR CAREER in the field of medicine, multimedia artist Karma Henry followed her passion for art and earned a bachelor’s degree in painting at California State University in Northridge and then a master of fine arts degree from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Today, Henry paints to convey her Native worldview.

On her website, she states, “Paiute lore and family stories” provide the basis for the work she conjures. She then “builds on these ideas integrating petroglyphs, topographic maps, historical photographs, SUMMER 2018 | 29

Great Basin Native Artists because I’m a part of that group, and one of the original mission statements of the group is we’re alive, we’re still here; Native people are still here.” In recent years, Henry served as vice chairman of her tribe, the Fort Independence Indian Community of Paiute Indians. “It was interesting to meet some other artists who were in my area I never got a chance to meet before.”14 Through these connections, Henry strengthens her voice and speaks clearly through her art.

TOPAZ JONES (SHOSHONE-LUMMIKALAPUYA-MOLALLA)

top Topaz Jones (ShoshoneLummi-Kalapuya-Molalla), Once Upon a Time, acrylic on canvas, private collection. bottom Topaz Jones (ShoshoneLummi-Kalapuya-Molalla) in Santa Fe. Photo: Dan McCoy (Muscogee-Potawatomi).

and documents, as well as animal imagery and traditional Native beading.”

Exhibited with GBNA, these works of art convey Henry’s strong connection to the Great Basin and evoke permanence and ephemerality at the same time.

Henry’s connection with the GBNA began at a backyard barbecue in Santa Fe in 2012 when she first met Melero-Moose. Joining the GBNA has increased her presence as an artist through “meeting other artists in the group, exposure with the group doing shows, like the one at the Maidu Museum in Roseville and the UC Davis show at the C. N. Gorman Museum last spring.”

Henry continues, “The group as a whole—through Melissa—we are getting the word out. One voice is not always heard, but when it’s a group of voices, we tend to do a little better.”

The benefits of being part of GBNA extend beyond group exhibitions. Now when Henry shows at an art market she says, “I’ll have information out about

“MY MOTHER is from the Great Basin and my father is from the Pacific Northwest,” says painter and printmaker Topaz Jones. She was born in Portland, Oregon, and lived there until she was about nine years old. Her family moved to Idaho, then to Oregon again, with extended time in Washington during her teenage years.

“Growing up I traveled back and forth, like a modern-day nomad, with many places I call home.”

At the age of 17, Jones enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, where she earned her associate of fine arts degree, after which she moved to the Northwest for a few years. She eventually returned to familial roots and settled on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation at the border of Idaho and Nevada.

To free her inner “suffocating” artist, Jones returned to Santa Fe in 2008 and earned her bachelor of fine arts degree in 2011, met her true love, brought two souls into the world, and continues to create art relentlessly.

The theme of place in her work situates Jones squarely within the GBNA. Of her creations, the artist shares, “I reflect on my upbringing through art. In my paintings, I use iconic imagery with my own symbolism and intertwine landscapes that create

14. Karma Henry, in discussion with the author, March 18, 2018.

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alternative realities I call dreamscapes.

Although, I never limit myself to one style or theme, I create different bodies of works in a variety of disciplines, such as painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, beading, and weaving.”

Jones met Melero-Moose when they both were living in Santa Fe, and through the GBNA group, the two continue to collaborate remotely on projects such as show exhibitions.

“I enjoy being a part of the GBNA group because I can maintain a presence and a connection with my family and home through my artwork,” Jones says.

In her works exhibited with GBNA, Jones extends her central theme of place to the specific location of the Great Basin. Jones articulates, “When I think of the Great Basin, I’m filled with a longing that is deeply rooted in my upbringing and migratory ancestry.”

Specific explorations of the Great Basin through art intersect with the history of place. In 1848, when a non-Native first found gold in Coloma, California, European-Americans had not settled the Great Basin region in large numbers. In fact, California was still part of Mexico. Over the next seven years, in what we now call the Gold Rush, prospectors infested the area as they trampled the natural flora and fauna with their horses and livestock and harvested the land through mining practices that still haunt the region. In addition to addressing the land issues that resulted from this point in history, Jones understands the negative effects of nuclear testing on the Shoshone lands by the United States government.

According to Jones, these land issues ground her research and her work.

As a contract illustrator and Shoshone language and cultural consultant for a publisher that makes educational books for children, she just completed her first short story. Tami Becomes a Bowman is “about a Shoshone boy coming of age and seeing white pioneers for the first time.” The GBNA plays a pivotal role in the connection between Jones and her dream job. She relates the circumstances under which it found her: “I

was referred to this publisher by a very close and dear friend. The publisher needed a Shoshone consultant. They saw my artwork and profile on the GBNA website and offered me a job.”

CONCLUSION: TAKING ROOT FROM A SHARED VISION between two artists in 2014, GBNA has taken root. The group continues to grow as it moves past a complicated history and asserts the significant role of the art and culture of the Indigenous people of the Great Basin.

The GBNA also serves as a model for other places interested in achieving similar results. For those thinking of implementing a regional art collective, Melero-Moose exclaims, “You can do it, too! We started with me and one other artist complaining about how there are no opportunities in our town. I guess you can talk about what you want to do forever but nothing will ever get done until you just do it!”

top Great Basin Native Artists at the Maidu Museum & Historic Site, Roseville, California, May 2015. Left to right: Ben Aleck (Pyramid Lake Paiute), Brandy McDaniels (Pit River Tribe), Louinda Garity ( Wa s h o e Paiute-Shoshone), Melissa M e l e ro - M o o s e ( N o r t h e r n Paiute-Modoc), Phil Buckheart (Absentee Shawnee), and sitting Jean LaMarr (PaiuteAchomawi). bottom Great Basin Native Artists logo, designed by Paula Robison, Reno, Nevada.

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THE OKLAHOMA INDIAN BALLERINAS How five Native American women from Oklahoma became leading dancers in America, rose to international fame in the early 20th century, and left a lasting impact of generations of dancers

By Stacy Pratt, PhD

I

N APRIL 2017, a small company of young ballerinas from Encore Performing Society—most of them Cherokee, all from Oklahoma— performed at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, under the direction of Elena GladkovaHuffman, a former ballerina from Volgograd, Russia. They performed a reimagined version of The Four Moons, a ballet commissioned in 1967 for the Second Oklahoma Indian Ballerina Festival.1 That festival honored the tribal backgrounds of five world-famous ballerinas whose successful careers and dedication to their cultures led to Oklahoma becoming the unlikely ballet powerhouse that it is today—and led them to be known as the Oklahoma Indian Ballerinas.

When Maria Tallchief, Marjorie Tallchief, Yvonne Chouteau, Moscelyne Larkin, and Rosella Hightower began their respective careers in the 1940s, ballet was considered the provenance of Europeans, specifically Russians. Though they never danced onstage together, 2 all were connected with the legendary Ballets Russes. Founded in 1909 by Sergei Diaghilev, Ballets Russes was one of the

most important ballet companies of the 20th century. Originally headquartered in Paris, the company toured Europe and the Americas and collaborated with artists like Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Coco Chanel. After Diaghilev died in 1929, the company split into two companies, both of which underwent several name changes. The five ballerinas each danced with several of the post-Ballets Russes companies.

The most famous of the Oklahoma Indian Ballerinas, Maria Tallchief (Osage, 1925–2013), was born to wealthy parents on the Osage Reservation in Fairfax, Oklahoma. Like many Osage families of the time, the Tallchiefs were affected by the oil murders. But as Tallchief wrote in her memoir, the murders weren’t the reason the family moved when she was young.3 Her mother’s desire to further her daughters’ dance careers led the family to Los Angeles, where she and her younger sister Marjorie eventually studied under the celebrated dancer, Bronislava Nijinska.

In 1942, Maria Tallchief joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo,4 which was headquartered in New York City when World War II broke out. There, she met

and eventually married the celebrated choreographer George Balanchine.

While with City Ballet (which eventually became New York City Ballet), he created several roles for her, most notably the title role of The Firebird, the Swan Queen in his version of Swan Lake, and the Sugar Plum Fairy in his version of The Nutcracker.5 Following her divorce from Balanchine, she finished her contract with City Ballet and became the highest paid dancer in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. After she retired from dancing, Maria Tallchief founded the ballet school of the Lyric Opera in Chicago and was later the director of the Chicago City Ballet. In 1987, she turned her attention to teaching. Upon her death, choreographer Jacques d’Amboise said, “When you thought of Russian ballet, it was Ulanova.

With English ballet, it was Fonteyn. For American ballet, it was Tallchief. She was grand in the grandest way.”6 Maria’s younger sister, Marjorie Tallchief (Osage, b. 1926), resides in Delray Beach, Florida, where she retired after several years as director of dance at HARID Conservatory. During her career, she danced both classical

1. The first Oklahoma Indian Ballerina Festival was held in 1957.

2. Four of the ballerinas danced together in the original production of The Four Moons, but Maria Tallchief had retired by then and did not perform.

3. Maria Tallchief with Larry Kaplan, Maria Tallchief: America’s Prima Ballerina (New York: Henry Holt, 2015).

4. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was one of the companies formed after the demise of Ballets Russe. It is different than Les Ballets Russes [plural] de Monte Carlo, which was formed earlier and eventually became the Original Ballet Russe.

5. Many say Tallchief ’s Sugar Plum Fairy is one reason The Nutcracker became the cultural phenomenon that it is in America today.

6. Jack Anderson, “Maria Tallchief, a Dazzling Ballerina and Muse for Balanchine, Dies at 88,” The New York Times (April 12, 2013), web.

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top Maria Tallchief, collection of the Oklahoma Historical Society, 2012.201.B1289.0033, Oklahoma Publishing Company Photography Collection. bottom Marjorie Tallchief, collection of the Oklahoma Historical Society, 2012.201.B1289.0082, Oklahoma Publishing Company Photography Collection.

and contemporary roles with several important companies, including Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the Paris Opera, where she was the first American Indian première danseuse étoile (principal dancer). Her entry in The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture describes her as “one of the most versatile ballet dancers of the twentieth century.”

The two Tallchief sisters’ greatnephew, playwright, and Southern Straight dancer, Russ Tallchief, says the sisters brought their Osage heritage to ballet. “I think an inherent sense of rhythm that Maria and Marjorie both shared was a part of their roots,” Tallchief says. “They grew up hearing the drum, and when they moved to California and into the dance world, I believe they took the rhythm with them.”

Also swept away by ballet as a young girl, Yvonne Chouteau (Shawnee, 1929– 2016)7 was raised in Vinita, Oklahoma.

As a child, she learned the ceremonial and social dancing styles of several surrounding tribes. At the age of five, her father took her to perform Native dances at the Chicago World’s Fair, but it was an Oklahoma City performance of the Ballets Russes that inspired Chouteau to take up ballet. She became the youngest dancer to join the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at age 14.

Chouteau and her husband, dancer Miguel Terekhov, founded the University of Oklahoma School of Dance as well as what is now the Oklahoma City Ballet.

In 2017, the school affiliated with the Oklahoma City Ballet was renamed the Oklahoma City Ballet Yvonne Chouteau

School in her honor.

Like all of the Oklahoma Indian Ballerinas, Moscelyne Larkin (PeoriaEastern Shawnee, 1925–2012) left home at an early age. She left Tulsa at 15 to tour with the Original Ballet Russe. She later danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where she met her husband, dancer Roman Jasinski. Together they founded what eventually became Tulsa Ballet. A Village Voice review of the company’s 2018 New York City performance noted that Tulsa Ballet “has remained one of the most important ballet companies in the country for some time now.”8 As a dancer, Larkin was known for comical roles, and as a teacher for her emphasis on the lyrical, delicate style that is a hallmark of the Ballets Russes.

Cheryl Forrest, a former dancer

7. Yvonne Chouteau is often listed as being Cherokee, because her tribe, the Loyal Shawnee, were politically part of the Cherokee Nation after European-American citizens of Kansas forced that band of Shawnee from Kansas to Indian Territory from 1869 to 1971. The Loyal Shawnee became federally recognized as the Shawnee Tribe in 2000 and are independent of the Cherokee Nation.

8. Brittney Feit, “Returning to the Joyce, Tulsa Ballet Negotiates the Concept of Community,” The Village Voice (March 7, 2018), web.

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taskmaster, seeing to our adherence to proper technique.”

After her acceptance to Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Rosella Hightower (Choctaw, 1920–2008) of Durwood, Oklahoma, spent most of her career—and her life—in France.

Her New York Times obituary calls her a “ballerina of enormous flair and virtuosity” and notes that she was “adored in Europe.”9 After an illustrious career, Hightower founded the Centre de Danse Classique in Cannes, France, now called the L’Ecole de Danse de Cannes–Mougins Rosella Hightower. She directed several major companies, including the Paris Opera Ballet from 1980 to 1983, which she reorganized prior to passing it to her successor Rudolf Nureyev. In 1975, France dubbed her a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.

HONORING LEGACIES

top Star dancers of Marquis de Cueva’s International Balley at Bois de Boulogne, M a rc h 3 , 1 9 5 8 . Ro s e l l a H i g h towe r (Choctaw) in the center (Jacquelioe Moreau, left, and Genia Melikowa, right).

Image courtesy of Keystone Pictures USA/ Alamy. Used with permission. bottom Moscelyne Larkin (Eastern Shawnee-Peoria), Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, 1948/1949, gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 in., collection of the National Library of Australia, Valrene Tweedie collection, 27171839. Photo: Maurice Seymour, Chicago. opposite Yvonne Chouteau (Shawnee Tribe), Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, 1948/1949, gelatin silver print, 10 × 8 in., collection of the National Library of Australia, Valrene Tweedie collection, 27181683. Photo: Moss Photo, New York.

and now historian with the Tulsa Ballet, co-author of Roman Jasinski: A Gypsy Prince from the Ballet Russe, and recipient of the 2004 Governor’s Award for the Arts, danced for Larkin and Jasinski in Tulsa.

“Our training benefited greatly from the teamwork of these two gifted individuals,” Forrest writes.

“Mr. Jasinski wanted us to MOVE, and while he certainly gave us corrections, it was Miss Larkin who was the

FOR HER PRODUCTION of Four Moons, Gladkova-Huffman commissioned set pieces and costumes from Cherokee artists Betty Frogg and Noel Grayson, denoted by the Cherokee Nation as National Treasures for their willingness to share their knowledge.

She feels the Oklahoma Indian Ballerinas are treasures for the same reason.

“They all went on to teach. They opened their own schools and companies, and all these places carry their names. That is their legacy,” Gladkova-Huffman says. “They danced throughout their whole lives, and then they taught their whole lives just so the kids in the following generations would have access to dance. ... In order to be recognized as a National Treasure, you have to not only know your art and practice it, but you have to teach your art. And so that’s what I think their legacy is: making [ballet] accessible to everybody who wants to participate in it.”

The five ballerinas also developed the ballet portion of the very competitive Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute (OSAI) at Quartz Mountain, a two-week intensive camp for young artists of various disciplines. Maria Tallchief was the first ballet instructor for the OSAI pilot program in 1977 and returned in 1987 as a guest artist.10 Randy Tinker Smith (Osage-Cherokee) is the director of Wahzhazhe: An Osage Ballet, which tells the story of the Osage Nation.

9. Jack Anderson, “Rosella Hightower, Prima Ballerina and School Founder, Is Dead at 88,” The New York Times (November 4, 2008), web.

10. Maggie Boyett (director of alumni engagement and assistant director of development for the Oklahoma Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain), email message to author, March 4, 2018.

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She says the Tallchief sisters’ influence continues in their home community. Smith says, Every Osage knows about Maria and Marjorie, especially here in the villages. Everyone 60 years and older, men and women, all took ballet if they lived around here in our villages— because of them. You don’t know how many men come up to me and say, ‘Oh, yes, I took ballet at Miss Whitman’s 40 years ago.’ ... There was so much money on the Osage [Reservation] that they had time to do art and learn how to dance and sing and do these different things that you might not have seen in other tribes. I have never ever had an Osage ask me why we’re doing a ballet to represent ourselves, historically. And every single person from another tribe has asked me, ‘Why did you do ballet?’ So it is very specific to our tribe.

And it’s not just dancers who were affected by these five ballerinas. Their legendary careers inspired books, films, music, a ballet, sculptures, and paintings that have made ballet part of the cultural and literal landscape of Oklahoma.

THE OKLAHOMA INDIAN BALLERINA FESTIVALS AND THE FOUR MOONS THE TERM “OKLAHOMA INDIAN BALLERINAS” didn’t come about until long after the dancers it refers to rose to prominence. Tulsa Ballet archivist and president emeritus Georgia Snoke, co-author of Roman Jasinski: A Gypsy Prince from the Ballet Russe, recalls how the first Oklahoma Indian Ballerina Festival, and the term, came about. Snoke recalls, Moussia and Jasha11 [who had moved to Tulsa to teach] were in New York visiting old friends for the summer. They were at the Russian Tea Room with Anatole Chujoy, the creator of The Dance Encyclopedia, and he looked at them and said, ‘You guys are sitting on a gold mine. There are five Indian ballerinas who were born in the 1920s. You should do something with it.’ His comment coincided with, in a year or so, the 50th anniversary of the state of Oklahoma, so that’s why the 1957 Oklahoma Indian Ballerina Festival began.

Four of the five ballerinas danced selections from classical ballets for which they were known, including Swan Lake (Maria Tallchief), Les Sylphides (Chouteau), and Giselle (Hightower and Larkin). Hightower flew in from Madrid, and Chouteau danced even though she had given birth barely a month prior. Marjorie Tallchief was unable to attend because of her own performance schedule. Dancers from the Tulsa Ballet, including Snoke, were the corps de ballet.12 Artist Acee Blue Eagle (Pawnee-Muscogee-Wichita, 1907– 1959) designed the cover of the black-and-white program that featured a stylized ballerina inside an inverted triangle with a sun design on the right and a buffalo head on the left. Because of the ballerinas’ fame, the event was covered by international

media, but some of the coverage reflected the stereotypes of the day. One headline from the London Times read: “Red Indian Queens of the Dance, an Oklahoma gala.”13 Ten years later, the ballerinas came together again for the Second Oklahoma Indian Ballerina Festival. This time all of them attended, but Maria Tallchief, who had recently retired, did not dance. For this festival, the ballerinas, along with their husbands—all of whom were successful European dancers— choreographed a ballet in honor of their tribes. Titled Four Moons, the ballet featured costumes specific to each dancers’ tribal heritage14 and music by Cherokee-Quapaw composer Louis Ballard. The program cover was designed by Muscogee-Seminole artist Jerome Tiger. The Four Moons turned out to be one of Tiger’s final paintings before his untimely death on August 13, 1967, just months before the festival, which began in Tulsa on October 18, 1967.15 His daughter, artist Dana Tiger (Muscogee-SeminoleCherokee), says the painting continues to have an impact.

“It was one of the last ones he did before he passed away, and that makes it real special in my eyes,” Dana Tiger says. “He painted it when we lived on Baltimore Street here in Muskogee in our little house; then it took on a life of its own and is known worldwide now. Even people who don’t know anything about [him] would see that painting and it would spark an interest. It kind of has a magical quality to it.”

11. Ballerinas were encouraged to take Russian names, so Larkin became Moussia Larkina. Maria Tallchief famously refused to change her name to the suggested “Tallchieva.” “Jasha” was an affectionate nickname for Jasinski.

12. The group of dancers surrounding soloists and principal dancers in a ballet.

13. Program information and headlines provided by the Tulsa Ballet Archives.

14. The Osage Nation was represented by Marjorie Tallchief and her sister, Maria.

15. A second performance was held in Oklahoma City on November 2, 1967.

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The tempera and casein painting, on the blue background seen in much of Tiger’s work, depicts four young women with long, black hair rising in increasingly open poses in front of four full, orange moons. His accompanying statement describes the intent of the piece: The first Indian maiden bows low to her Creator, appreciative of the life He has given her. / Dancing joyfully and freely, the second Indian maiden runs fleet of foot through the evening. / The third moon frames the Indian maiden in her grace and beauty, depicting life at its peak. / The fourth Indian maiden, majestically serene, rises to the spiritual world, climaxing a life fulfilled.16 Both performances of The Four Moons ballet received good reviews, locally and nationally. The Tulsa Tribune wrote that it “should no more be confined to Oklahoma than Swan Lake to Russia.”17 Snoke says the festival, and The Four Moons performance in particular, created a bond among the famous dancers, who embraced their roles as representatives of their tribes and Indigenous people of Oklahoma.

“All those Indian ballerinas had known that they had Oklahoma ties,” Snoke says. “They had been rivals within the same companies. But once a big hoopla was made over their American Indian heritage, at the end of their careers, they really began to enjoy a kind of sisterhood.”

top Jerome Tiger (Muscogee-Seminole, 1941–1967), The Four Moons, casein, tempra on paper, 15 × 17 in. Image courtesy of Tiger Art Gallery, Muskogee, Oklahoma, tigerartgallery.com bottom Left to right: Moscelyne Larkin, Marjorie Tallchief, Maria Tallchief, Rosella Hightower and Yvonne Chouteau, being named Oklahoma Cultural Treasures at the Oklahoma State Capitol, 1997, collection of the Oklahoma Historical Society, State Arts Council, 19687.GO.SAC.6.20. Image courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society

INDIAN BALLERINA, FLIGHT OF SPIRIT, AND THE FIVE MOONS IN 1982, Oklahoma celebrated its 75th anniversary of statehood with a performance of The Four Moons, this time performed by Tulsa Ballet dancers.18 In anticipation of the event, the largerthan-life statue, Oklahoma Indian Ballerina, by Oklahoma artist Jay O’Meilia, was unveiled. The statue, which stands outside the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, is a composite of all the ballerinas.

All five ballerinas attended the 1991 unveiling of Chickasaw artist Mike Larsen’s mural, Flight of Spirit, which is painted in the rotunda of the state capitol in Oklahoma City. The mural depicts the five ballerinas wearing white dance costumes, all in classic ballet poses in front of a group of people in clothing and regalia representing the ballerinas’ tribes. Behind them, five geese fly across a sunset that silhouettes Natives on the Trail of Tears.

In an article on the death of Chouteau, Larsen recalled the ballerina coming to assist during the painting of the mural: “Yvonne would come by with a giant bag of Fritos—she loved Fritos … and we would talk and she would guide me and help me with posing of the ballerinas and making sure everything was correct. She was not bossy. She was very kind. We came to know her quite well.”19 In 1995, Oklahoma sculptor Monte England, inspired by Larsen’s mural, began the sculptures that would become The 16. Jerome Tiger, “Four Moons,” Tiger Art Gallery, www.tigerartgallery.com/art/ four-moons/.

17. Program information and newspaper clippings courtesy of Tulsa Ballet Archives.

18. Tulsa Ballet became a professional company in 1978.

19. Brandy McDonnell, “Yvonne Chouteau, one of five American Indian prima ballerinas from Oklahoma, dies at 86,” NewsOK (January 27, 2016), web.

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above Mike Larsen (Chickasaw), Flight of Spirit, 1991, collection of the Oklahoma State Capitol, used with permission. Image courtesy of the Oklahoma Arts Council.

Five Moons.20 He passed away before he finished, and the works were completed by his close friend, Shawnee sculptor Gary Henson. In 2007, the five sculptures, each depicting the ballerina in a pose and costume of her choice, were unveiled in the front garden of the Tulsa Historical Society where they stand today. Chouteau and her husband attended the unveiling.

Her own sculpture was modeled after her dance, “The Trail of Tears,” from Four Moons. In an interview from that time, Chouteau explained what dance meant to the ballerinas: We went into this not wanting to be famous—it was beside the point. We did this because we loved it with all our heart. We felt we simply couldn’t live without dancing. All of us felt like that, since we were babes in arms. We had to dance. It was in our nature or spirit to dance. So many people have asked me over these many, many years, not only in Oklahoma but everywhere, ‘How is it that five girls—ladies from Oklahoma—chose the same art and each of you excelled to a certain degree in it?’ ... I think it’s very much due to the fact that we all had Indian

heritage, and dancing comes very, very naturally to the American Indian.21

BALLET TRAILBLAZERS ASIDE FROM THE FOUR MOONS, the ballerinas didn’t perform roles specifically about Indigenous people, but their influence is felt in collaborations happening today. Ballet began in Italy and spread across Europe, and thanks in great part to the Oklahoma Indian Ballerinas, it now has an American style. That means new ballets that tell American stories—like Wahzhazhe: An Osage Ballet in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, or Colorado Ballet’s Moccasins En Pointe, a piece that combines classical ballet with fancy shawl dancing, which was performed this year at the Denver March Powwow.

Russ Tallchief is excited to see ballet embrace the cultural exchange set in motion by The Four Moons.

“I think that the convergence of dance styles, such as ballet and Indigenous dance, is part of the natural evolution of dance as it reflects our cultural identities,” Tallchief says. “Dancers don’t have to choose one dance style or another—two or more styles can inform each other.

The [Four Moons] choreographers were drawing upon both Native and ballet [dances] to create the movements. Just think if they were as fluent in traditional Native dance as they were in ballet when they choreographed the pieces. Now we are seeing dancers that have that fluency in Indigenous dance and ballet and other modern dance styles. I’m looking forward to seeing new choreography that extends the narrative of dance to represent the complexity of our cultural identities.”

Forrest says that complexity is what makes the ballerinas’ legacy so powerful.

“Those early powwows were held dear by all five of the Indian ballerinas and instilled in them a love of dance,” says Forrest. “They were trailblazers in the world of American ballet due to that early exposure, and became ballerinas at a time when there were no other American ballerinas, let alone with Native American heritage and all hailing from the same state. By virtue of their collective talent, beauty, and discipline, they heralded the importance of ballet in this country, represented American ballet to the larger world, and solidified the cultural contribution of the state of Oklahoma.”

20. The title of the sculptures refers to The Four Moons ballet.

21. Brian Daffron, “Tulsa sculptures commemorate Oklahoma’s five Indian ballerinas,” Indian Country Today (February 27, 2008), web.

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A NEW ERA BEGINS AT SWAIA Ira Wilson Chosen as Executive Director

By Jason Morgan Edwards

T

HE WORLD-RENOWNED Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) selected a new executive director this past February: Diné arts aficionado Ira Wilson (Many Goats clan born for Salt clan). Wilson brings years of experience to the position. More importantly, he brings years of experience working within the artists’ community. His is a highly regarded reputation, earned over a 25-plus-year stint as manager of Shumakolowa Native Arts gift shop within the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (IPCC).

He also served as IPCC’s lead buyer for the last two years of his tenure. His expertise in identifying authentic jewelry has been highly sought, particularly in New Mexico where there was a major federal investigation and subsequent arrest of several shop owners in Old Town Albuquerque a few years ago.

Wilson is approaching this new role with the same attitude of humble grace for which he’s known. “I’ve done a lot of things over my career. I’ve had a good run. I’ve been very fortunate. At the end of the day, I’m just Ira Wilson.” It was a whirlwind first month as he was getting to know the SWAIA staff and the true scope of the position. He laughingly says that the shock of being selected had not worn off. “It’s a lot to absorb every day. There are a lot of moving parts at SWAIA. It’s a lot of getting to know people and making introductions.”

SWAIA has a relatively small staff, but it has a large footprint. Wilson is quick to credit the staff for their hard

work and dedication. “It’s really amazing what they do. It’s pretty incredible to see from the inside.” The organization is not just a major hub for the arts community but for the whole state of New Mexico.

SWAIA’s signature event, the annual Santa Fe Indian Market, brings tens of thousands of people—artists, collectors, and tourists—into the city for the two-day market and associated events. Wilson asks, “Is it overwhelming? No. Is it a lot to understand? Yes. But, I have taken the opportunity to observe how all the parts work. I know that some things will have to be modified in the future.” He says the biggest challenge has been getting to know all the new faces, but he relished the chance to make new connections with the idea of progressing and growing SWAIA’s presence.

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Transparency is what Wilson cites as one of his main focuses. “I think there’s been a certain mysticism about how SWAIA operates. I really want to dispel that. I want to be more transparent with our artists, internally and externally. I also want to make some adjustments with our sponsorships so we can get to year one hundred and really plan something awesome. … Those are the two biggest places I feel like we can address immediately.” Wilson notes his staff is being extremely receptive to his ideas and making strong efforts to implement them.

Wilson feels the transition into this new position with SWAIA was made easier due to his former position at IPCC. He traveled extensively throughout the Southwest to establish strong personal relationships with the individual artists.

While at IPCC, he regularly led informational presentations to educate the public in distinguishing real Native art versus fakes. He says, “The presentations I did were inspired totally by my love and appreciation for the real-deal, Native American art. I see the people who create it every day. They came [to the center] with hopes and dreams of becoming a recognized artist. And, a lot of times it’s out of necessity, too. I saw a lot of grandmas, aunties, and grandpas come through, and they’re just trying to put food on the table and make an honest living by crafting things.” That gets to the heart of the matter very directly: counterfeit crafts hurt Native artists by essentially taking away earnings.

above Crowd scene on Lincoln Avenue. Santa Fe Indian Market is the largest Native art event in the United States. Image courtesy of SWAIA. opposite Ira Wilson at a reception at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2016. Photo: Jason Morgan Edwards (Seminole).

Wilson will tell you, in no uncertain terms, “I simply want to perpetuate Native culture. By that I mean protect it as well.

This is sacred to us. Jewelry is sacred.

Adorning yourself with sacred stones for luck or relief roots us to Mother Earth.

[Counterfeits] are taking our culture away from us.” He feels a certain duty to protect his people and visitors to the Southwest from fakes and the people who sell them. He continues, “I can guarantee no one knows everything there is to know about Native art. However, when we are informed, and we know what we’re talking about, I love to share that knowledge with people.”

Following in the footsteps of wellknown Zuni artist Tony Eriacho, Wilson makes a significant distinction between hand-made and hand-crafted. “Some artists have built a reputation on one-ofa-kind masterpieces. Ernest Rangel (Diné) is one of those artists who chooses to make everything by hand. It’s his signature. Then there are those individuals just trying to feed their families. So, they’re stringing them very quickly and selling them at low cost.” Both types of artists are respectable and hardworking. But, the

1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act (doi.gov/ iacb/act) sets forth the standards as far as how the crafts are defined and marketed.

Wilson is receptive to it all and he expects full disclosure on the part of the artists.

Wilson brings that same ingrained passion to his new role as executive director. “It’s the same mentality. It’s such a broader scope of art. For me, being on the inside [of SWAIA] is a great opportunity to promote Native artists. I’m now given the tools to promote a broader spectrum.

That’s exciting to me. Because SWAIA has built a good reputation over the years, I have the opportunity to promote Native artists globally.

“They’re noted for being the pinnacle of Native American art,” Wilson continues. “It gives me a chance to [expand on] the work I was doing before: meeting artists, learning about artists, and learning about the craft. And, then, sharing it with the world.”

Wilson commends and credits his predecessors for expanding SWAIA’s concentration beyond the Southwest.

Thanks to them, “Artists from different areas are able to have a voice and showcase their art at SWAIA.… It’s all about

growing and sharing different cultures.

I’m very psyched that SWAIA is very supportive of that.”

SWAIA has historically emphasized Southwestern Native art, but Wilson recognizes the scope of Native American art is global. “That’s just the reality of what we’re dealing with in 2018. We have Inuit artists. We have artists from the Northeast Coast. There’s some incredible art that we have to acknowledge as being the finest in Native American art. I’m glad that SWAIA is open to embracing that.”

At the start of his tenure, Wilson’s learning curve is heavily focused on the more mundane, administrative aspects of the position. He looks forward to being more directly engaged with the artists themselves as market approaches.

His attentions and duties can switch on any given day, though. SWAIA is deeply ingrained in the very fabric of New Mexico, particularly as a corporate entity of Santa Fe. Wilson is coming to appreciate the dynamic aspects of the organization, from the IM Edge exhibition and interactions with city government to creating new alliances with other arts organizations.

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Wilson also brings other experiences to the executive director position.

“That’s the unique thing about my skill set. I have 26 years of experience in the Native American arts industry. I’ve been on the for-profit side. I’ve helped the not-for-profit side. I’ve worked with artists for years and years and years. So, I’m well rounded in all aspects of those duties.”

Wilson understands the value of finding the proper balance to assume leadership of an organization such as SWAIA. Part of maintaining that proper balance is having other creative outlets.

Wilson is one of the founding members of the musical mélange, Red Earth. He, along with fellow artist, musician, and cofounder, Adrian Wall (Jemez), describe the band’s style as “funky, phat, tribal stew.” Wall says, “We coined that term many, many years ago because we couldn’t describe [our genre], either. We were never going to be signed to a major label because they couldn’t market us.” Wilson adds, “We’re everywhere, and we’re okay with that. The founding members come from a heavy metal background. That’s what we play. Every song, whether it’s reggae or calypso or African-something, it’s delivered with that same metal attitude. You know—louder and faster and harder. It’s what gives us that overall edge.”

Wilson continues, “Our desire to learn new song crafting and new styles and try to master them has also been a

driving force. The members who’ve stayed with us the longest were gravitating that way. We’ve had members leave because we were trying new things. That wasn’t really what they wanted to play.”

Red Earth could quite literally perform as their own opening, headline, and encore acts without ever leaving the stage because they transition into so many different styles of music. Wall ascribes the band’s success and popularity to their versatility. “It wasn’t something we intentionally did. We were writing things that felt good to us. It’s really cool. There are musicians in the band who really challenge [each other], as far as the music goes. It’s hard to play. But, it has this vibe that’s really incredible. It’s pretty organic.”

Wilson’s innate desire to promote creativity is boundless. In 2015, after a five-year hiatus, he revived the Electric 49 at the Gathering of Nations powwow.

The concert phenomenon known as the Electric 49 developed out of a creative mashup. It is loud, live, and in full effect during Gathering of Nations weekend.

The response to the 2015 revival was so strong and positive, Wilson and his merry band of eclectics decided to give the people what they wanted with shows in 2016 and 2017. This year’s iteration will be the 20th anniversary. They’re still working out the lineup, but the idea is to have musicians and bands from over the years come play short sets.

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The Electric 49 “was the brainchild of Wall, Charley Baca, myself, and Jeff Duneman,” says Wilson. While they were touring, “we got to go out and see some really cool bands on different reservations.

We got to thinking, ‘Why aren’t bands like Cisco, who does like a chicken scratch, heavy metal—why aren’t they seen?’ We were wondering why bands like that, and Red Earth, weren’t getting a chance to shine. We said, we’re going to find these bands and we’re going to do a cool show.

We’ve got the heat in Albuquerque. Let’s bring these bands in from everywhere.”

The concept grew from there. It became a three-hour festival. Wilson created a platform and a showcase for Native bands to get noticed. “Indigenous had its place. A Tribe Called Red had their place. But, what’s the undercurrent? Who was really cool that people weren’t seeing?

We’ve brought on Casper and the Mighty 602 Band. We’ve brought on Native Roots.

That was the fun and the challenge of it.

That was the crux of the Electric 49.”

His musical endeavors are one facet that sets him apart from SWAIA’s past directors. But, Wilson differentiates himself by simply stating, “They are not me. I am not them. We all have our way of connecting to the community and we all have our own ideas. Going forward, it’s really going to be concentrated on what’s best for SWAIA.” He is intently focused on the future of the organization and developing an enduring platform for the artists. For the present, being so new in the position, he has concentrated on streamlining and tweaking rather than instituting any broad, sweeping changes.

He takes the same measured approach with most other aspects of his life.

“Any person that comes into a position like this can have general ideas of where we would like to see the organization go,” Wilson calmly says, “but I think a smart director really needs to sit down for a minute and learn how the moving parts work. I really don’t want to be someone who makes decisions based on simply my wants and needs. I have to examine the whole picture to make decisions that are best for our artists and best for SWAIA. I really am not going to go in there and say, ‘This is about me.’ You know, there’s a broader picture.”

SWAIA seems to have lost a bit of its luster over the recent past. There has been some erosion of trust between the participating artists and SWAIA’s selection committee. Tenure status, which guaranteed entry, for some of the more historical artists has been at the root of much of the friction. Wilson prefers to look ahead. He intends to address these concerns through increased transparency in the selection process and says, “Going forward, one of the mains things for me is the communication we have with our artists. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what SWAIA is. I want to work toward opening the eyes of what the organization really is and what we are trying to achieve for the artistic community.”

Wilson continues, “I understand there have been some rough patches.

There will probably always be waves of that, but I am going to try to do my best to cure that going forward. I’m going to do my best to make sure the artists are informed. They have got to know what our platform is. [They’ve got to know] that they are able to work with our organization to better it. That’s really one of my primary goals as executive director.”

Wilson appreciates the feelings of the artists. He’s making every attempt to lead in the right direction.

Wilson is already supported by many within the Native artist community by virtue of their comfort and familiarity with him. Wall says of his friend of 27 years, “We’ve worked together [as members of] Red Earth for quite a while.

We were writing music, being creative, also running a business. Ira definitely took on a leadership role. Everyone else deferred to him to make decisions.” At the same time, Wilson garnered a lot of respect for his ability to recognize when to draw back and compromise for the good of the whole. Wall adds, “He knows how to work with people, how to collaborate.”

Wall feels this will translate well in Wilson’s new role with SWAIA. He says, “He’s always worked at the cultural center.

In the lead buyer role, he was always very fair. I think he’s definitely the right person for the [SWAIA] job. He’s had a lot of experience. He’ll do fine.” He goes on say that Wilson has a lot of strengths, but what really sets him apart as the right

above Ira Wilson, left, and Adrian Wall, right, performing with Red Earth at the Electric 49, Launchpad, Albuquerque, New Mexico April 29, 2016. Photo: Jason Morgan Edwards (Seminole). opposite Ira Wilson playing acoustic guitar, 2018. Image courtesy of the author.

candidate is his ability to establish and maintain relationships. “He knows what’s going on in the art world. He also has a lot of experience managing people and managing budgets. He’s well-rounded.”

Coming from a family of Native artists, Wilson has an artist’s heart.

He understands the practical value of real Native arts. As one would expect, some items carry a heavy price tag. Not everyone can quite wrap their head around the notion of paying $500 for a bolo, or thousands of dollars for a Navajo weaving. However, Wilson attaches real work-hour values to the items to give customers a more practical perspective.

“There may be three to four hundred working hours in a given rug,” he says, noting the price. “If this person worked four hundred hours to build this rug, and if they got paid minimum wage, they’re actually losing money for you to enjoy a piece of beautiful art.” That’s not even taking into consideration the hours it took to raise the sheep, shear, and hand-process the wool.

SWAIA does not have formal ties with other artist organizations that convene markets in Santa Fe on that same weekend, such as We Are the Seeds or the Indigenous Fine Art Market. But Wilson does not see them as competing with SWAIA. As far as he’s concerned, “They

are very welcome to show their work and to sell their work. We’re very open to it.”

Wilson says, “To be perfectly honest, I think there should be room for all forms of art within SWAIA. On the flip side of the coin, I know there were some artists who were not happy with the decision to do away with tenure, and that’s completely understandable, but I’ve also had a lot of younger artists … doing some amazing things with art that were very thankful to finally have the chance to get into SWAIA.” Wilson takes the perspective that SWAIA is, and should be, ever-evolving and developing. He hopes to find the correct balance in the upcoming years.

In closing, he makes this statement to Indian Market visitors, whether they be first-timers or repeat visitors: “The SWAIA brand has built itself to be the pinnacle of Native American art [markets]. There’s really not a whole lot I can do, personally, to improve on any of that. I feel the teams of people and organizations and all the people who have helped SWAIA achieve the goals speak for [themselves].

So, anyone, new visitors or old visitors, when they come to SWAIA, they know they are going to see the best of the best.”

The dates for the 97th Santa Fe Summer Indian Market are August 18 & 19, 2018.

Details can be found at swaia.org.

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BEADS ON A THREAD Reflections on Beading as Performance, Process, Material, and Method in the Arctic Monad: the absolute, the irreducible, singular unit of expression that contains within itself the simulation of an entire history of thought.

By David Winfield Norman

A

THREAD STRETCHES from one Arctic coast to the other as a hand pulls beads over and under the oceans, dips under languages, and stretches them into a pattern to a rhythmic beat. Each sphere of glass, an atom—a self-contained unit, one eye staring into another.

Alone, they remain locked in their absolute singularity, their oneness. Along the thread, they lose their resolution and begin to speak as a collective. Each bead builds its expression in relation to the ones that came before and after until a pattern takes shape.

This Februar y, three artists gathered in Copenhagen to build an exhibition that took its point of departure in beading as practice, material, and method. Jessie Kleemann (Kalaalleq), Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq-Athabascan), and Nanna Ánike Nikolajsen (Tunumiu) approached the theme from a wide spectrum of conceptual, personal, and historical perspectives. The exhibition, Stitching Beads: Arctic Stories Change Hands, was presented by the North Atlantic House in Copenhagen through May 13. It was once a storage for the Royal Greenland Trading Company at the first port of

entry where Greenlanders entered Denmark prior to the 1950s. The location carries with it a certain sense of history even now, as it has been transformed into a cultural center representing Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.

Together the three artists weaved a diverse tapestry that models the ways beading and thread create a framework for knowledge. They ask us to examine how beading—as an historical and contemporary practice, as a performance and as an object—has produced such a diverse and powerful range of

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expressions throughout the circumpolar world.

From the historical end, beading already carries with it a material history of cultural exchange. The image of the West Greenlandic women's national dress, with its elaborate, net-beaded collar, is ubiquitous in discussions of cultural heritage. It holds high symbolic weight as one of the most visually distinctive markers of Greenland’s material culture, but the practice of beading has not always been as central as it is today.

Until the mid-19th century, carved sea mammal ivory, stone, and bone were the main adornments of choice throughout Greenland. Glass beads first arrived with Dutch whalers in the 17th century as trade goods. However, as Rosannguaq Rossen indicates, the beaded collar dates to around 1860.1 It was first sewn onto a woman’s wedding garment, but today the beaded collar can be worn for almost any festive, public occasion. While the glass beads replaced bone and skin stitching, the collar’s abstract geometric designs point to a longer history of art and fashion across the Arctic, seen everywhere from historical tattoo patterns to harpoon designs.

Despite its current status as a hallmark of Greenlandic identity, the beaded collar presents us with a material history of cultural encounter in a river of changing times. Just as the collar signifies a creative history of self-determination that evolved in the shadow of a colonial economy, the collar itself transforms over time. Starting with a single band of beads, new layers are added to the collar as a woman enters different phases of her life: her graduation, marriage, the birth of a child, and so on. The collar is a living thing; it grows and evolves with the woman who wears it.

As an object, beadwork is inseparable from the act of beading itself. The material bears witness to these layers of social connection among women, and it re-performs those connections every time the collar is worn or displayed. In this sense, one work encapsulates the exhibition and its goal of connecting three female artists whose personal histories stretch from the coasts of Greenland to Alaska. Jessie Kleemann’s installation, Nuilarmiut Takisuut (Beadwork Dress, 2012), is so large that if worn, it would cover her from head to toe. Kleemann sewed it together with five seamstresses, and that collaboration makes its way into the material structure of the dress 1. Rosannguaq Rossen, “When Beads Became Part of Greenlandic Culture—and Social Control?,” pamphlet. This short essay was printed as a handout for the exhibition. Rossen is a PhD student and lecturer at the Institute of Culture, Language, and History at the University of Greenland.

above Jessie Kleemann (Kalaalleq), Perlekravekjole (Beaded Dress), 2012, glass beads, cotton and polyester thread, cotton lining, sheep wool trim. Photo: Simon Lautrop, Copenhagen. opposite Nordatlantens Brygge (North Atlantic House), cultural center, Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: Paul May, paulmay.org (CC BY 2.0).

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ab ove J e s s i e K l e e m a n n ( K a l a a l l e q ) , P o s t ko r t t i l søster (Postcard to Sister), 2018, glass beads, cotton and polyester thread, enlarged postcard image, steel arbor.

Both photos: Simon Lautrop, Copenhagen. opposite Sonya Keliher-Combs and Jessie Kleemann, detail of En Kappe, to søstre (One Mantle, Two Sisters), 2018, poem, silk flowers, beadwork installation.

as well. In the sense that a single beaded collar expands throughout the lifetime of its owner, the scale of this work reflects the many lives that have created it. The different sections each draw on a slightly different color range, with the uppermost band of beads referencing the colors Kleemann’s mother used to make her first collar. It is a testament to the strength of social connections among women who have worked collectively to bring this project into being, including the many more unnamed women in Greenland who have developed this art form over time.

This monumental work is framed

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by another installation just behind it, in a slightly darkened corner of the gallery. Simply titled Postcard to Sister (2018), the installation is composed of a blown-up letter her sister sent her in time for Christmas in 1982, after Jessie had completed her theater education in Denmark, traveled in Sápmi (the northern Scandinavian territory of Sami people), and had moved back to Nuuk.

This long journey home laid the foundation for the artist’s border-crossing art practice and her decades of advocacy on behalf of artists in Greenland. Just two years later, Kleemann would become the director of the Nuuk Art School, where she expanded the school’s one-year program to include master classes by visiting international artists like Carl Nesjar, a renowned Norwegian colleague of Pablo Picasso, and new media such as performance, photomontage, and site-specific installation.

But before all that, in the postcard reproduced for this artwork, Jessie’s sister is describing the work their mother is doing repairing Jessie’s beaded collar, which she promises to send her. Printed on the postcard itself is a message in Greenlandic and Danish: “Let us show the world that we can rule ourselves,” along with a postmark showing a woman wearing none other than the West Greenlandic national dress.

This balance between beadwork as a deeply personal practice and as a national symbol plays out in the quiet unease surrounding Beadwork Dress. It is a stunning artwork in its own right, but if worn, it would completely obscure the identity of the woman wearing it, immobilizing her, and weighing her down under thousands of glass beads.

The costume sits at the center of an ongoing debate in Greenland between those who wish to protect the national outfit as an iconic object, and those who wish to experiment with it and challenge past conventions, pointing to the long history of change and transformation that underlies today's beading practices.

Beadwork Dress and many of the other works in this exhibition rest suspended between these poles— between objecthood and movement,

between a stable source of meaning and an endless variety of expressions.

Rather than claiming an easy solution, this exhibition leaves these questions open, creating a space for dialogue and collaboration.

BEADING AS PROCESS AN IMPLICIT DIALOGUE, an invisible connecting thread, stretches through the exhibition in harmony with the three artists despite their very diverse backgrounds, particularly in the connection linking Kleemann’s installation practice with a new body of work by Sonya Kelliher-Combs. When Sonya arrived in Copenhagen and visited Kleemann’s studio, she was amazed to see that she was working on an installation that melds beadwork and synthetic flowers. Without either of them knowing the other’s plans,

Sonya had developed one of her centerpieces for this project around melding synthetic flowers into her hallmark synthetic skin and stitch-based practice: a series of acrylic polymer skin-works titled Buried Secrets, A Million Tears.

Silk and plastic flowers have a very specific significance in the Arctic. In graveyards from Greenland to Alaska, it is common to find whole bouquets of fake greenery alongside headstones. They sometimes remain there for decades until the extreme winters finally erode them.

Artifice holds a surprising connection to memory: in the Arctic, silk flowers survive longer than the living thing, but they do not give the illusion of permanence. In honor of her husband’s heritage, Sonya has layered these silk flowers over handkerchiefs, a reference to an Irish wedding custom of passing down hankies through generations. And hidden among some of these skins are faint, ghostly tusk shapes stitched into all the layers of fabric and acrylic—shapes

that Sonya has often called “secrets,” which make a prominent appearance in the installation, Idiot Strings, Red Mark (2017–2018), and cast shadows onto the gallery walls.

“A plastic flower cannot wilt ... and a plastic flower cannot grow,” wrote Greenlandic poet and Inuit Circumpolar Council founder Aqqaluk Lynge. 2 Written in 1974, prior to Greenland gaining greater self-governance through home rule, he argued that the artificial culture introduced with colonialism would not die on its own, and that art alone is not enough to effect political change: “Art is the politics of the impossible.”3 But art can provide an aspirational horizon. It can model other ways of living and relating to one another and it can provide inspiration for more work—for example, by bringing to the surface the secrets of a million tears of lost loved ones whose voices will not be heard again. Sonya has previously said

2. Aqqaluk Lynge, “I Grønland— en plasticblomst visner ikke,” in Isuma: Ukiuni 25-ni taalliat, oqalugiaatit allaaserisallu = Synspunkt (Nuuk: Atuagkat, 1997), 265.

3. Ibid., 266.

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Sometimes the process of making her work is more important than the final product itself.

above Nanna Ánike Nikolajsen (Tunumiu), Akkerniaanngii series, 2018, acrylic pen on cotton paper, glass beads, cotton thread. Photo: Simon Lautrop, Copenhagen.

that sometimes the process of making her work is more important than the final product itself. In the end, it is up to everyone to continue that process by carrying forward the work of passing on knowledge, seeking what has been hidden from view, and actively remembering the past that has brought about our present.

BEADING AS ONTOLOGY BEADING AND OTHER ART FORMS can help us toward that process of active remembering by displaying its own process of development. The material Sonya works with displays the traces of her hands stitching through their many layers. Jessie’s works also seem to stand in for gestures, as the material that remains after an action or statement, reminding us that objects gain meaning through the human hands that shape them. The one collaborative work Sonya and Jessie created together embodies the performative dimension of handcrafted work. As the installation extends out like a shadow from Jessie’s poem, the beadwork and silk flowers merge subtly with a small, almost hidden group of Jessie’s family photographs.

Against the backdrop of personal and cultural histories that play out in Jessie’s and Sonya’s works, Nanna Ánike Nikolajsen focuses instead on the larger order of patterns and form that, on a structural level, link all of these concerns about cultural heritage, memory, materiality, meaning, and form.

Nanna has chosen to focus on a study of Tunumiisut, the East Greenlandic language (her family comes from just outside the town Ittoqqortoormiit).

East Greenlandic is a distinct language from the dominant Kalaallisut, or West Greenlandic. The less populous East Coast, with its harsher climate and much smaller population, has often struggled with being overshadowed by the West.

By a strange twist of fate, a large percent of linguistic studies about Tunumiisut were conducted, not by Danish colonial authorities but by French anthropologists. While completing her MFA, Nanna spent time in France studying these collections, and in her handmade prints, she has extracted certain Tunumiisut words and mixed them together with their Danish translations like a form of found poetry.

In her intense study of this linguistic material, Nanna has placed emphasis on repetition as a structure of expression in Tunumiisut, especially the aa phoneme. She has also created a

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complex symbology that gives material form to the sounds that language draws on by stitching patterns into sheets of deep blue paper. The threads stretch almost invisibly back to a single glass bead that rests at the center of these patterns. Her construction of these visual models draws partly on Nanna’s research into visual material from the Old Bering Sea culture, a culture dating to around 400 BCE whose fate is largely unknown.

Many have speculated that they assimilated into cultural groups known as the Thule, Inuit ancestors from Siberia to Greenland—the single bead connecting Inuit’s modern history.

Through Nanna’s experiments in repetitive mark-making, we come full circle to the exhibition’s contemporary collaboration between two sides of the circumpolar world. Thread represents a principle of connectivity, a form that gains meaning by bringing disparate things together. It is sometimes invisible, creating different levels of connection and distance between individuals and collectives, past and present, the material and the abstract. These connections play out in this exhibition sometimes in a direct sense—like in the material choices that link Jessie to Nanna and particularly Jessie to Sonya—but also in the larger search for patterns of meaning that underlies beading as a practice, as a repetitive performance that brings thousands of individuals together into a new collective.

One last installation stands out in the exhibition for its quiet anonymity.

Behind the monumental statement piece that is Jessie’s Beadwork Dress, a small white room rests in the middle of the gallery. In it is a simple table holding four piles of beads along with needles and thread, including a few unfinished strands of beadwork that anonymous visitors have threaded together during the exhibition period. In the end, the artists extend their invitation out to all museum visitors to continue this process of building connections and to continue the historical and contemporary legacies of beading—an open invitation that remains long after the exhibition has disappeared.

Language Marks Skin Secrets Eye Thread Cyclop Movement

Sprog Aftryk Hud Hemmeligheder Øje Tråd Kyklop Bevægelse

language marks thread skin’s eye and secrets unknown cyclop movements

sprog bestemmer tråd blikket i huden og hemmeligheder ukendt kyklops bevægelser

on threaded skin eyes seeing the secrets and the cyclop’s movements of unspoken languages whispered in the snow

gennem syet hud ser øjne hemmelighederne og dønninger fra kyklopens utalte sprog hvisket i sneen

melting motions of our mother’s and their mothers

vore mødres og deres mødres smeltende bevægelser

skin

huden

brown skin whitened heat in the cold Yes red eyes thread language marks changes

brun hud hvidnet varme i kulden Ja røde øjnes tråd sprog destinerer forandring

cyclops move ahead!

kykloper ryk jer!

Change the thread

Skift tråd

beads eyes

the eye

marks

perleøjet

mærker

øjet

languages endeared inequn’*

sprogene besnæres af inequn’*

deep ocean’s cyclop recycle

havets kyklop gentager stingene så dybt

skin deep

under huden —Jessie Kleemann

* Inequn’ is an abbreviation of inequnaq in Greenlandic, meaning “intriguing, sweet, loving.”

—Jessie Kleemann * Inequn’ er en forkortelse af inequnaq på grønlandsk, som betyder indtagende, sød, kærlig.

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PROFILE

HAIDA JEWELER, PRINTMAKER, AND SCULPTOR

JOHN BRENT BENNETT

By India Rael Young, PhD

L

AST SUMMER I had the honor of being invited to an impromptu halibut barbecue at John Brent Bennett’s house in Masset on Haida Gwaii. I was there working with Haida linguist and repatriation specialist Lucy Bell on a project for the Royal BC Museum, and she arranged for us to be well fed by her friends, filmmaker Helen Haig-Brown (Tsilhqot’in) and artist John Brent Bennett (Haida). I had spent several years following Bennett’s career as an emerging Northwest Coast printmaker while I completed my doctorate on the history of Northwest Coast Indigenous printmaking.

Bennett, of my same generation, was born in Masset in 1980. We both grew up surrounded by Northwest Coast art. Bennett, however, experienced the personal, familial vitality of Haida art making. His relatives, Reg and Robert Davidson, were two Haida artists instrumental in the establishment of a Northwest Coast fine art market. The Davidsons brought formline design—the most prolific, historic visual language on the Northwest Coast—to new audiences through their screen prints. Likewise, Haida master carver and mentor to Bennett, Jim Hart, is a renowned artist whose work can be found throughout British Columbia and the world. One of Bennett’s first major exhibitions at the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver, A Tale of Two Artists, paired prints from the Haida legend, Bill Reid, alongside Bennett’s lithographs. Bennett’s prints diverge from a 60-year tradition of Northwest Coast screen printing to innovate both medium and subject matter.

His lithographs that combine photography with the iconic, formal elements of formline, reduced to single, repeating forms, first captured my attention. After years of watching this visionary printmaker come up alongside

a new generation of Haida artists, I had the opportunity to meet Bennett, share a meal, and interview him about his art practice. Bennett brings the same warm, humble laugh and thoughtful manner to grilling halibut and talking art.

IRY: What are you working on these days?

JBB: I’m actually working with Jim Hart, mostly on sculptures. That’s what I consider my day job, anyway. I’ve got all kinds of things on the go, like carving Raven and the First Man on an ostrich egg.

I have a two-sided, oval dogfish sculpture.

I’ve got a miniature, twelve-foot totem pole on the go as well. That’s an eagle. I’m working all over the place, with jewelry as well.

How did you get into carving?

It’s hard to say when I started. I have carvings from when I was four years old.

I never knew I could take that on as a

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career until I was in my teens. When I was four years old, my great-uncle Claude Davidson [Haida, 1924–1991] carved argillite, and I wanted to carve so bad that I stole one of his carving tools, because my dad had some soapstone at home that I wanted to start carving with. But then I realized that it was wrong that I took that tool, and I threw it in the ocean before I could get caught with it. But then, if I got caught with it and told him that I wanted to carve, my career would have started at four …

I was always fascinated with the singing and dancing [of Haida culture]. I only got into art when I was maybe 13, when I started creating designs for my mom, Joyce Bennett, to make regalia with. I formed a business at 15 and I’ve been drawing for her ever since. Then I started engraving at 19.

Can you tell me more about working in collaboration with your mom?

JOHN BRENT BENNETT

My mom used to buy designs from her cousin Reg Davidson. She would take those designs and cut them out of wool and appliqué them to other garments that she made. One day I said, “I could draw those.” So, I started doing designs for her. I’d actually take the designs to my uncle—I call him uncle, but Reg Davidson is my mom’s cousin. He would give me pointers, and that was some of the first instruction that I received for my art, design lessons with Reg Davidson.

From there, I built my understanding of formline by doing designs for my mom. For our collaboration, she would come over with the garments and she’d have something that I coined as Haida shorthand, because she could draw the garments and what her idea was, but she couldn’t draw the design. She would draw a circle for a head with a bunch of jagged teeth, and she’d say, “Okay, it’s a shark face in the back and it goes around like this.”

I’d understand what she wanted and then I would draw it for her. She would say, “That’s exactly how I’d imagined it.” It was a nice collaboration; we complemented each other really well.

Does Joyce still live in Masset near you?

Yes, she lives in Old Masset with Dad. My dad, John Dale Bennett, actually just retired on Thursday. We celebrated and had a big dinner for him.

Congratulations. Is he feeling liberated?

I don’t know, I don’t talk to him much about it. He’s like the strong, silent type.

I hoped he was going to retire and start focusing on his boat. He has a boathouse right behind his house. He’s actually been carving a half model [Haida canoe]. He draws out boats in the old Haida style of boatbuilding … by carving a half model to scale and then taking that and drafting a boat out, also to scale. From there, you build it. I am hoping he’ll focus on that a bit more, because he is pretty much one of the last Haida boatbuilders left.

Boatbuilding definitely is not my passion, but I could apply my skills to helping him.

For example, I watch him struggle to carve something like a part of the boat called the rabbet, which is part of the bow and stern.

Coming from a family and a community of artists, how did you decide to go to Emily Carr University of Art and Design, in Vancouver?

[John laughs deeply before he replies.] Well, my mom bribed me with a car to go to university. The option to go to university was always there. One day they had a career-planning course at school. I had already planned that I was going to be a carver. I began my work experience with Jim Hart. I had spent two weeks with him, and it was a lot of sweeping [wood]chips and stuff like that. Once I had everything cleaned up, then I could trace box designs.

With Jim I had a full-time job right out

above Caught in the Grip II,

2009, lithograph, 28 × 19 in., edition 3/26. Image courtesy of Inuit Gallery of Vancouver. opposite John Brent Bennett

carving wood. Image courtesy of the author.

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PROFILE

above Self Portrait: Pillar Rock, lithograph on paper, 20 × 27 in., edition 5/11. Image courtesy of Inuit Gallery of Vancouver. opposite James Hart, Gwaliga Hart, John Brent Bennett, Brandon Brown, Jaalen Edenshaw, Derek White, Leon Ridley and Carl Hart (all Haida), Reconciliation Pole, 2017, cedar, paint, copper nails to represent the Native children forced to attend residential boarding schools, 55 feet tall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Image courtesy of the artist.

of high school. So my mom made the offer to go away to school, and I could take her car, which was a ’95 Camaro. I had to decide what to go to school for, so I decided to apply to Emily Carr for art school, and that was it. It was the only place I applied to. I was going to Emily Carr, or I was going to work with Jim. Then I got into Emily Carr. Jim was always really supportive of school. He said, “I’ll be here when you’re done. Come back, and my offer will still stand.”

I kind of took the long way to get back to working with Jim. I finished at Emily Carr in 2003 and moved to Montreal and started working toward a master’s program at Concordia University. I originally applied for the sculpture program and didn’t get in. That was when I decided to switch to print media. Because I didn’t have a portfolio from my bachelor’s degree in fine arts, [Concordia suggested that] I take a fourth-year-level print course with a master printer from New York, Matthew

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Letzelter, who had a huge influence on my printing practice.

He opened my eyes to the offset lithography press, which I had never used before. Before that I always figured silkscreen printing was the [best] process because it produced those clean lines and everything that you want in Haida art. Working with a new print medium, lithography, evolved my art practice to the point where I could start telling the stories that I wanted to tell, about my personal life, through my work.

That whole process [of rethinking material and arts media] started with printmaking and doing my master’s program. I started to focus on how I introduced the world to my culture—what that looked like outside of Haida Gwaii and in a cityscape like Montreal. I created about 40 editions around this idea about where I fit within the city and my culture, and where my culture fits within the world.

JOHN BRENT BENNETT

After I applied to do my MFA in sculpture, I thought, How the hell am I going to drag a totem pole out of Montreal? Then I realized my other passion was print, but I had no portfolio. I then met with instructors at Concordia to figure out what avenue to pursue.

One of their suggestions was to take the master print course to build a portfolio. It was quite a change! I went from applying to Emily Carr and getting in like it was no big deal to having to really struggle and work to get into a master’s program.

Once you began printmaking, did you mostly do offset lithography or did you do all kinds of printmaking?

I focused on lithography, but I also used a letterpress to achieve a certain style of print. The work I was producing on the offset lithography press lent itself well, because of hand-cut stencils and the photolitho developing process. The letterpress creates extremely clean lines, solid colors, with embossing. That evenness of the color is important. If I could open a print shop here, I would want both a lithography press and a letter press.

Everyone [at Concordia] assumed [what I was making was] what Haida art looked like. They didn’t have the baseline knowledge for where the art form came from, so I used a letterpress to produce … a baseline for what classical Haida art looks like.

I shy away from the word traditional. I actually don’t like that word. It’s a term that the market has placed on our art form. When Europeans showed up, the art form was about documenting history. This is the basis of my MFA thesis exhibition. The Europeans … were carving sailors in their uniforms; they were carving the ships. You can look at all those panel pipes with ships with rigging and coaches and horses. All that stuff was open for interpretation by the artists. They were carving what they were seeing at the time. It was at that point that they were documenting history.

But Europeans didn’t want a portrait of themselves in argillite, so they started collecting the classical work.

That’s where, I feel, the term traditional comes from, because the Europeans wanted what they saw as traditional works, not the ones documenting history.

At that point it became a market base art form.

And we have, kind of, been pigeonholed ever since.

I wanted my [thesis show] to document history in a way Haida art is supposed to, and whose history do I know the best? My history. I started documenting it through self-portraits and photography that I incorporated into the work. I asked how I felt about the city, how I felt about working through identity—how do I actually incorporate identity into Haida art? I began with the physical things that I felt were quite strong.

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left & above Black Bear Claw Rings, 2003, black bear claws, silver. These are part of Bennett’s regalia. Images courtesy of the artist. opposite Henslung, 2008, lithograph on paper, edition 5/27, 20 × 27 in. Image courtesy of Inuit Gallery of Vancouver.

I have a mole on my cheek. [I looked closely at] the shape of my eyebrows, the shape of my eyes, and I would stylize them into the self-portraits that I would do in Haida style, plus incorporate actual photographs of the cityscapes around me.

For one photograph, I had just moved to Montreal, which was a significant point in my life, and I wanted to document that history. One day I was walking down the street looking for an apartment to rent. The sky was so blue. The clouds were reflecting off the buildings.

I took the picture not knowing that years later I would turn it into a print.

I designed a self-portrait that removed the Haida image from the photograph in the way that I was removed from my culture, surrounded by Montreal. When I printed it, it looked unfinished. I wasn’t happy with it as a photograph. I started thinking about how to tie the two images together. That’s when I came up with my identity—a concept of Haida culture and this place, where someone could identify me, a fingerprint.

[For my thesis] I put all the works in chronological order. In my time in Montreal I had created over 40 prints. I made twelve for the show and hung them

all. The progression of where I started to where I finished was quite dramatic. The whole show was about my personal history, telling my story from where I started, one with my mom and one with my dad.

In that time frame I had so many different ideas, so many different avenues I could have gone down for a few editions.

There wasn’t enough time. I missed that creative intensity, and I wanted to have that flow in my other practices as well, like jewelry and sculpture. That’s when I started looking for alternative materials that would lend themselves to further my ideas. For example, I’m carving Raven and the First Man, which is one of our oldest stories, but instead of creating it in a known medium, I started to think about what material would lend itself to present this creation story, so that’s why I decided to use an ostrich egg … An ostrich egg signifies the beginning of life.

I was thinking how materials add value to the meaning of a work.

Did you learn engraving and jewelry work at Emily Carr?

No, no. I learned engraving jewelry from the school of hard knocks. It was something I did outside Emily Carr that actually kept me from spending money.

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The amount of prejudice that I faced at Emily Carr when doing classical Haida art was insane. They hated the fact that I was selling my work, that I was creating work, that I was making money with it.… I took a print course in silk screen and an etching print course. In the etching course—I had never produced an etching before, but I was starting to engrave—my instructor says to me, “You can do this work at home.

Why don’t you just go home? You’ll be happy there.” Pretty much almost saying I don’t belong at Emily Carr, and why am I producing this work here?

At the same time, I’m asking him, “Why is this an assignment?” He was trying to make me make postcards. I was like, “I don’t want to make postcards. I want to make art. I’m here to learn how to create art, not exist in a market. Don’t pigeonhole printers into just making cards, postcards, and stuff made at craft fairs. I’m here to create artwork.”

It wasn’t the first occasion I called out an instructor. I guess I made life difficult for myself at Emily Carr, but they made it difficult as well by trying to force me to do things that I didn’t want to do. Their attitude is that they’re trying to groom you into what an artist “should be,” and

JOHN BRENT BENNETT

I laughed. I said, “You’re forcing students inside this little specific box. How are you preparing students to have exhibitions in galleries?” It was maddening to me, and they couldn’t acknowledge that the work I was producing was selling and that I could make a living.

I’m sure you also came prepared with many extended family members who have very deep knowledge of just how the market works, and the systems that you have to negotiate to be an artist.

You know, I never got into that discussion too much with my uncles; I was too focused on the art form. When I would take work to a gallery and show it to them, it always felt like I was getting my teeth kicked in. You have to be strong.

They don’t prepare you for stuff like that, like negotiating price. So, that’s a whole different ballgame altogether, but they’re not worried about that kind of stuff at

school. They don’t prepare you for that.

And I wasn’t prepared by my uncles and relatives for that.

How do you see your art fitting into the history of Northwest Coast or Haida art or printmaking?

I would like it to be the starting point of a shift away from a market-based art form toward documenting history. The market dictates the work we’re producing. Why not start interpreting what we’re seeing in the world today? Jets, airplanes, cars, whatever we’re seeing in the world to make the art current. I want the privilege that every artist is afforded today to create whatever inspires. Where it gets messy for me is if my art gets too far out there, then the word Haida is stripped off or it’s called “Northwest Coast-inspired.”

But I’m a Haida artist. My piece, Henslung,

has a Haida Gwaii landscape and a Montreal cityscape. One of the images occupies the peaks and the other occupies the grooves. It’s open to interpretation, whether the viewer wants to focus on the positive or negative space.

Finally, what are the benefits and challenges of working on Haida Gwaii?

Well, the challenge is exposure. I feel like this [interview] is an amazing opportunity for some positive exposure, getting people to look at my work and to know my name. But then this is a world destination. Everybody wants to come here, so that’s more exposure than most get. There are a few galleries here that I have work in, so there are a lot of benefits to producing work here.

There are no real drawbacks to being on Haida Gwaii.

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ANISHINAABE PAINTER

ANDREA CARLSON

By Sheila Regan

Y

OU NEED TO BE on your A game if you want to keep up with Andrea Carlson. The Anishinaabe artist brings layers of cultural references to her discourse: obscure art films, French theory, Native American history, and a cultural critique that extends to both popular culture and “high art” institutions. Whether she’s whipping off an essay or unveiling her latest large-scale piece of art, Carlson’s subversive command of symbolism and meaning is awe-inspiring.

Carlson’s artwork has been wrapped around a city bus and projected on a no-longer-used lock and dam. She also makes drawings, paintings, and mixed-media work of ambitious scope.

Her impressive work, INK BABEL, for example, is 60 panels of cascading, fantastical images made to look like filmstrips.

The piece, like her earlier series, VORE, sets out to deconstruct narrative in relationship to power and colonialism.

Carlson’s monumental Sunshine on a Cannibal, made of 24 paper segments, is owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art where it is now on view. The mixedmedia piece pokes fun at artist Yves Klein’s distress at being the subject in someone else’s narrative, the 1962 shock documentary, Mondo Cane (A Dog’s World), directed by filmmakers Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi, and Gualtiero Jacopetti.

Carlson has recently been in residence at Highpoint Center for Printmaking creating ANTI-RETRO, which, like previous works, focuses on movies, this time Western films. Carlson is also working on another project called RED EXIT that addresses visibility based on knowledge or the ability to see things through proximity or vantage point.

Here is an interview with Carlson about these two projects, as well as her 2016 film, LET: an act of reverse incorporation, created after a protest of sorts

that she organized with local artists at the Minneapolis Institute of Art to confront the way they portray Indigenous cultures within the museum.

SR: Would you talk about what you are exploring with ANTI-RETRO? AC: Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis has given me the tremendous gift of editioning a series of prints. My first print is a piece titled ANTI-RETRO. At the center of the piece is a depiction of a horse falling, legs splayed, trapped in a potentially life-ending moment. Cowboys brawl in the foreground, but they are fixed in the landscape like fossils. On either side of the falling horse are two trees. One is a tree that is commonly referred to as “The Witch Tree” [or Manidoo-giizhikens, Ojibwe for “Little Spirit Cedar Tree”] from Grand Portage Reservation. The other tree is a Joseph Beuys tree and stone (recently removed from the Walker Art Center’s sculpture park). Some things have staying power and, like violence, tend to manifest again and again.

The title ANTI-RETRO comes from the

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title and concept in an interview Michel Foucault had in 1974 with Pascal Bonitzer and Serge Toubiana about Lacombe Lucien for Cahiers du Cinéma. In it, they discuss the power of film to frame the recent past and affect the memories of those who had lived through World War II with genre films about that time.

Foucault describes a battle for and over popular memory and the power to control the framework of historic memory. I’m grafting this concept onto settler-colonial mentality and its need to perpetually inject fresh blood into Western genre films. The framework of popular memory creates a fort. The genre has identified a protagonist and claims the audience as a form of that self. In this way, printmaking is the perfect medium to reference film criticism. The piece is essentially a film criticism poster ... with the addition of sigil magic for vulnerable trees and the visual suspension of violence and harm of the past.

There’s a liquidness to it. Almost like water. I know it takes you a long time to create these works, but is there a part of your process that incorporates a more improvisational technique? I wonder, just because there is such a sense of movement.

ANTI-RETRO is an 18-layer screen print and the first time I’ve ever had anything editioned. The process is unlike anything I’ve done before, and I had to learn how to adapt to the less-immediate feedback loop of printmaking. The movement in the line work is intentional. When viewing my VORE pieces, Frank Big Bear told me that [his son] Star and I paint stiff—frozen figures—and that my paintings look like sculpture. So, I’ve taken that criticism as a bit of a challenge and tried to imply movement or prismatic qualities ... but conceptually, the frozen aspects are important, too.

ANDREA CARLSON

above Cannibal Ferox, 2008, oil, acrylic, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper, 48 × 72 in. (overall).

Image courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota. opposite Andrea Carlson. Image courtesy of the artist.

An observation: I’m guessing those are mountains in the background, given the Western theme, but they also look a bit like icebergs.

They are actually nowhere and everywhere. My landscapes are mouths that consume all narratives and materially assimilate all people. The rocks and mountains are the teeth, if we want to take the symbolism further ... but they are mythic spaces, uncolonized spaces with only evidence of people. The cowboys of ANTI-RETRO are supposed to be vapor, or comic book drawings of cowboys on the rocks, but they are rendered flat. The people of Cannibal Ferox are actually sculptures, so you can see a pattern of human representation being a one-off, a copy of a fantasy.

Let’s talk about RED EXIT, your other new piece about not being able to see things based on vantage point and cultural ignorance, things like earthworks and mounds destroyed by unknowing farmers in Wisconsin. Have the mounds been something you’ve always paid attention to during the drive between Minneapolis and Chicago?

Is there something that you’ve been thinking about recently that changed how you thought about them?

I moved to Chicago in the spring of 2016. Interstate 94 connects these two cities through Wisconsin, the ancestral home of Anishinaabeg, Ho-Chunk, and Oneida people. The landscape is hilly and full of valleys, stratified bluffs, and white pine trees everywhere. There is a specific aesthetic to the tourist stuff in Wisconsin.

It has a mid-century feel, like Wisconsin

Dells, House on the Rock, and “Indian Head” everything.... I guess people think that the western border of Wisconsin looks like an “Indian” head, and they call it Indian Head Country. It is easy for things to go unnoticed in an environment with so much camouflage.

For all these tourist attractions, the mounds seem to not be one of them.

A person would have to seek out the mounds, and that is a good thing, a deliberate thing, I suspect, to protect them. I’ve read up on the mounds of this area long ago, but I didn’t realize how prolific the ancients were in building them. I was ignorant of the sheer number of mounds concentrated in and around the area of Wisconsin.

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at the wooden spaceship-looking interpretive center at the Grand Mound that has since closed to the public due to interventions of Native people. The Grand Mound dates back to 200 BCE and is known for its size, but the mounds I’ve been driving through along I-94 have a lower profile and depict anthropomorphic water panthers, birds, and men. Similar figures can be found in petroglyphs all over Rainy Lake, the Quetico region, and Ontario.

Petroglyph imagery is in my piece, Sunshine on a Cannibal. I reproduced a petroglyph image of men in a canoe to the exact scale as it is found on the rock, which is still smaller than “life-sized.”

Scale is interesting in ancient works and is so variable. For example, a water panther petroglyph may be the length of your forearm painted on a rock face, but as a mound, it may be the length of two 16-wheeler trucks. This might be a bad example, because I don’t know what size a water panther is in real life. But scale is interesting, nonetheless, and I feel that humans constantly size up things we encounter with our own bodies. There is a sympathy or familiarity that the scale of the body projects on other things. Do

I fit inside it, or does it fit inside me? Who could subsume whom? Can I carry it?

Part of the reason the mounds appeal to me is that they are not always detected; they are overlooked based on knowledge—or lack of knowledge that you are standing on something important, something ancient and beautiful. Many of these mounds were destroyed by farmers’ plows without the intention of erasing them, because the farmers didn’t care that the land they helped themselves to was a graveyard. And then there are the stories of settlers who knew in full that they were leveling mounds and they didn’t care, as was the case with some of the mounds at Aztalan State Park near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Many mounds in Wisconsin have roads intersecting them and dismembering figures, like Man Mound who is cut off at the knees. It is worth a Google image search.

How did you do your research on the mounds? I am guessing it might be difficult due to lack of information and also bad information.

As a visual artist, I’m able to make

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figurative references to the mounds, their invisibility based on their low profile, but I’m not under any obligation to provide Indigenous knowledge about them. There is so much bad information floating around, and I consider the source.

Abraham Lincoln believed that giants were buried in them, and clearly he and his ilk cannot be believed when it comes to Native things. Anyone who wishes to displace Indigenous people is problematic; anyone who believes in the “Lost Tribes of Israel” on Turtle Island is a problem, and their work serves an ulterior purpose. I have considerate access to Native scholarship, writers, and historians who are working on decolonizing their fields.

Would you say that you generally work from an idea, a thought? If so, is it something that percolates from research or does it usually just come to you fully formed?

For INK BABEL, I started from theory or a problem in my work that I wanted to antagonize. As a drawer and painter, I’m making static images, but I reference films and preformed narratives that aren’t static.

What am I eliminating by fixing their

ANDREA CARLSON

above Sunshine on a Cannibal, 2015, oil, acrylic, ink, color pencil, graphite on paper, 46 × 182 in. (overall), collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Image courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota. opposite INK BABEL, 2014, ink and oil on paper, 115 × 183 in. (overall). Image courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

likenesses into an immobile, time-frozen referential universe?

Films shot on film have a two-dimensional, physical quality that displays over time. But the parameters of the sight lines of a film are decided when the film is being recorded. The static elements of film produce a limitation that intrigues me. I decided to make INK BABEL show something that I had a hard time explaining. I wanted to make something film couldn’t: a dual pan-shot/panoramic image.

The piece depicts six landscapes stacked on top of each other in a grid of 60 cells.

The imagery along the y-axis contains figures that slightly shift and transform as the eye moves from cell to cell. The y-axis is the “time dominant” pan shot, as these subtle changes imitate the cells in a filmic pan shot. The x-axis is a “space dominant” panorama as one might see in still photography. The design of INK BABEL was in my mind for years before I figured out what I wanted to say with it—that it was to be about towers, power, and narrative migration.

This is different from my VORE series, which had a formal formula: each piece is made up of four 22-by-30-inch sheets of paper. The horizon lines run consistently from piece to piece, and each piece is essentially a double portrait. These works had a similar mother on a similar theme (cannibalism as a sensational metaphor for cultural assimilation), so they were a continuation without their own starts.

I’d be remiss to imply that any idea for work doesn’t spark initial starts within a community of brilliant writers, poets, and fellow artists. The impetus behind my VORE series started with conversations with LeAnne Howe about cannibalism while she was working on her book of poems, Evidence of Red. Of course, I put films and various references to my own research in that body of work, but she planted the seed of inquiry. I don’t even know where I end and Heid Erdrich begins anymore, as far as our creative research goes. Erdrich’s book of poems, Curator of Ephemera, is effectively a love letter to her visual artists, the artists that she admires. I frequently talk to my peers about projects that aren’t complete, and Mona Susan Power has given her time, reading my essays and laughing with me into the night on countless occasions.

This isn’t namedropping; this is citing my sources and bragging—so, maybe namedropping.

Could you say more about not knowing about where you and Heid begin and end? What is interesting about Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media is that, like your work, it has certain qualities that are similar to a piece of criticism. Would you say you are influenced by other writers’ and artists’ work, or discussions with them, or is it all mixed together?

I admire how Heid digs. Some of her poems perch humor at the edge of fear, and I choose to cling to the humor, because the other option would haunt

me. Her “Note on the Art” and “Curatorial Statement for Windigo Eye” in Curator of Ephemera filled me with the joy of looking at the endless horizon of Lake Superior.

Looking passively into endless spaces is nearly scrying, and so many artists and writers know that space. The book is playing with time and place; things are fleeting and profound. She positions herself in the future writing about now and about the artists in her sphere as having produced work with historic significance.

To answer your second question, I need community to have a reason to make anything at all. For the critical eye that I turn toward institutions and irresponsible image makers, every painting is an excessive, nearly baroque love letter. Art, films, writing, music, and conversations being the most privileged form of consumption, I create work under the influence of many.

Where did the name RED EXIT come from?

The words come from a poem by Gordon Henry, but I’ve taken it out of that context. Red exit signs are ubiquitous in North America. Because the piece is about absence, I wanted the title to be both readily recognizable and politically charged.

Could you talk about RED EXIT in relationship to INK BABEL and Sunshine on a Cannibal? To me, these two works deconstruct aspects of Western culture (film and fine art) by turning the white SUMMER 2018 | 57

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above Cannibal Holocaust, 2008, oil, acrylic, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper, 48 × 72 in. (overall). Both images courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota. opposite Vaster Empire, 2007, oil, acrylic, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper, 48 × 72 in., collection of the Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Duluth.

lens, or gaze, inside out. Is this similar to what you are planning for RED EXIT as you investigate visibility based on a person’s vantage point?

Sunshine on a Cannibal is perhaps me saying, “We can see what you’re doing.” I secretly refer to that piece as my “exploded clown,” so turning a white lens or gaze inside out might accurately sum up that nickname.

Two specific references in that piece are actually the same: Yves Klein’s Mondo Cane shrouded by the film Mondo Cane.

The film is a bit of fabricated documentary mixed with actual documented events. I think Klein’s outrage about the portrayal of his work in that film is interesting. His work had become the filmmakers’ paintbrush, and he didn’t like it.

RED EXIT is a piece that I’m still working on. It is a sister to and inverse of INK BABEL. RED EXIT is my piece about the mounds in Wisconsin and erasure and imperceptibility, whereas INK BABEL is about spreading outward and diaspora.

What is your feeling about Klein’s ou t r a g e ? D o y ou c on n e c t h i s feeling of having his work robbed/ misappropriated/misinterpreted to appropriation of Native culture, or are you getting at something else? Perhaps you see the irony in it?

Yes, I think Klein’s victimization by the representation of his work in Mondo Cane is ironic. He was accustomed to a level of agency in the interpretation and context of his work, which made the shock of his portrayal so unbearable. To say it

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crudely, he was stripped of his agency and treated like a woman—how he treated women. This piece is about the construct of “new worlds,” Rome being built upon Rome, “turtles all the way down,” recycled narratives and assimilation, and the conservation of energy. I wanted to send Klein’s Anthropometry series [in which nude women served as paint brushes] off into a zone of hyperpictorial sensibility.

You are incredibly thoughtful and specific in your cultural writing, almost brutal in your pointed critique of cultural systems. How does your process of creating visual art differ from your work as an academic and critic?

Do you find it to be a relief to work on something more abstract? Is one more difficult than the other, or more enjoyable/fulfilling?

RONNI-LEIGH ANDREA CARLSON

My visual art follows a slow trajectory of development. I care where it is shown and take the curatorial context seriously. In that way, I exercise right of refusal toward romantic or essentializing contexts. Being choosy also protects my studio time.

Whereas my writing is fast; I’ll write for little or no pay and for any blog as a rule rather than an exception. With writing I enjoy the editorial process, which is something I don’t tolerate with my visual art. I write about my own art, too, as a way of leaving some breadcrumbs with the hope that a talented writer will do me better justice than I have done for myself.

Was the film LET your first foray into filmmaking? What I enjoyed about it was that it was a protest piece, a film and collaboration with wonderful writers of different backgrounds. Did you ask people to write about the topic or was it more that you were aware of writings that you wanted to include (like Sun Yung Shin’s piece)? As an artist, do

you find yourself wanting to explore different forms and ways of creating work?

I’ve been making short films for a long time, but they are limited in scope and terribly weird. Years ago I buried a sculpture in my friend’s yard, waited a year, and tried filming the extraction. The sculpture slowly disintegrated while being uncovered, which was disappointing to me at the time, but I should release that film in a meaningful way at some point.

I’ve also helped on other artists’ films, too. I made friends with many artists from Winnipeg while working on Shezad Dawood’s film, A Mystery Play, which was produced by Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art in 2011. And recently I made The Uncompromising Hand: Remembering Spirit Island video piece

that stretched my abilities in digital film software.

But LET had a great creative structure.

I wanted the voices of the participants to be front and center, but I had to have imagery ready to go. We filmed a procession of participants walking out of the Minneapolis Institute of Art carrying monstrous, recreated objects from the collection and burying them. They rewrote the wall texts for several objects in the museum, and we recorded the participants reading their texts for the narrative of the film. Sun Yung Shin wrote about the museum itself as an object ... and Native voting rights in the state of Minnesota.

We screened the film a few days after the 2016 presidential election, and her piece made the audience cry. As an artist who often works on other artists’ projects, I like having my voice honored in collaboration.

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OSAGE-MUSCOGEE-CHEROKEE PAINTER AND MURALIST

YATIKA FIELDS

By Jami Powell, PhD

S

ITTING ON A COUCH with the sun shining through the glass windows of the Exhibit C art gallery in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown, Yatika Starr Fields recounts the story about how he received his middle name. On the drive from Hominy, Oklahoma, to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, he explains, his parents Tom and Anita Fields saw a large shooting star cross the sky; later that night, he was born. Fields’s parents, who are both artists, raised Fields and his siblings in an artistic home and encouraged their children to connect with the world around them in creative ways.

Fields’s vibrant and energetic work—most often on large canvases or on the sides of buildings—embraces abstraction and dynamism. The scale of his work demonstrates the physicality of his technique, and the movement of his work communicates a freeness of expression. In terms of his process, he explains, “I kind of let it evolve on the surface and let it come to a culmination, like an endpoint, and that’s the painting.

I have fun with it and let it emerge as it will.” In the past year, however, Fields has made a shift in his practice to more deeply address issues of social justice and global Indigenous politics through his work.

Fields’s work encourages his audience to reimagine their relationships with the world around them and draws on the juxtaposition of his lived experiences in Boston, New York City, northeastern Oklahoma, and Seattle as well as time spent in Santa Fe and abroad.

As he explains: “Playing with elements of space and time, I create a synthesis of symbolic objects, forms, and figures— floating and bending on the canvas at all angles, negating the horizon and the rule

of linear experience. In this suspended dichotomy between nature and the urban environment, a new world is made.”

Growing up with artist parents and traveling to Santa Fe Indian Market or to museums across the country for different shows, Fields has always understood the importance and possibility of what art can do in the world. For him, art is the means to express ideas, convey emotions, and work through problems. It is “just a way of life.” More recently, Fields’s inspiration to address political issues with his art was reignited through his participation in the solidarity movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

JP: Can you tell me about an experience that impacted your desire to create art?

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YF: Right after high school, I went to Malaysia. I was part of the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] conference in 2000. I was representing Native Americans as an ambassador there and all these other young Indigenous artists from the Pacific Rim. I remember being the youngest one there and getting to meet Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin and all the major players in the world in a gallery exhibition we had there. I saw the world arts and the global arts for the first time and how big that was, and it made a big impression on me. I knew right then and there that I had to step it up a bit from where I was and what I wanted to do. I knew I needed to do this and wanted to do this. I realized it was going to take a lot of work and it would be a lifelong endeavor.

YATIKA FIELDS

In thinking about politics and the making of change, I know you were involved at Standing Rock with the Water Protectors. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?

That experience was a really powerful one for me, and I think that anyone who went there felt it. As you can see from writings and arts made from it—really radical, beautiful, and powerful works with important dialogue—it was good and bad. It was good because it showed the true face of America and how it operates,

and it was bad because it showed a side that oppresses people, especially Indigenous people, and how that still continues, how we’re treated, and how land is treated. It also ignited things; it ignited the passion to create work against that oppression, and it created a new forum for activism, resistance, and made new networks as well as friendships. We live in a time where systemic racism idles within the fabrics of our country and challenges our daily lives—for people of color, people of differences—so coming together to rally and support each other,

above Yatika Fields (OsageMuscogee-Cherokee), White Buffalo Calf Woman March, 2017, oil on canvas, 62 × 62 in. Image courtesy of the Sam Noble Museum, Norman, Oklahoma. opposite Yatika Fields in his studio. Photo: Adam Murphy.

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not only Indigenous people but everyone, it felt like we were coming out from under a shadow. above America Realized, 2017, oil on canvas, 72 × 72 in. opposite Mni Wiconi, Oceti Sakowin, 2016, watercolor on paper, 19 × 26½ in. Both images courtesy of the Sam Noble Museum, Norman, Oklahoma.

I went as an artist and as a Native person.

My perception changed going there, because it was such an awe-inspiring moment to see the faces on the front lines and to see peoples’ devotion and heart toward it. To see the camaraderie and solidarity that happened within the camps was just mind-blowing and powerful. Truly, I never thought I

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would have seen anything like that in my lifetime. To see a camp fluctuating with so much movement and spiritual power, just miles away from where Fort Rice once stood, where Sitting Bull and his warriors fought the expansion of the Yellowstone railroad or the Fort Laramie Treaty. I mean, the same battles are being fought today on the same lands, only miles away. I was on a hilltop looking at an encampment with tipis; it was like a blast from the past with the same stuff happening.

YATIKA FIELDS

As an artist, what did you feel like you could do in the face of this ongoing oppression and colonization?

It’s not going to stop, but what can be created is the dialogue, the art, the knowledge, and the words to keep up the fight. To create the ability to not only survive it, but to gain and spread knowledge—to teach people, you know?

I could be on the front lines getting arrested, but my greatest gift is to paint.

I saw an opportunity to capture this movement through my art in a way that I could put it in front of people, in front of collectors of Indigenous or Native artwork. To put it out there, so it might touch people on a different level—for people who couldn’t see the front lines or who could only see the violence of the front lines. There was more than violence—also beauty. There are different ways, avenues … but my art is the best way I could go about this work. I’ve had to take a step back and figure out a new way of painting.

Your paintings from Standing Rock are clearly different from your previous works. They still have the movement and freedom of your other work, but the inclusion of figures and more representations is quite different for you. Can you tell me a little bit about the shift in your process?

In the Standing Rock paintings, I had to take a new approach, because these paintings were going to be about something.… These pieces are … a story, so I had to approach it differently—with a sketch. I had to do research; I had to make drawings. I really had to think about the symbolism and what I wanted the painting to convey and how it was going to be laid out in terms of composition. I had to take a whole new approach to [painting]. Adding figures as well. I haven’t done figure painting in ages, so I’m bringing in a whole new style to my painting, as well as a new approach and process to it.

In my opinion, it’s what you should be doing as an artist: growing and challenging yourself, evolving. I’m growing, and so is my work—how you position things and say things will change the process, so the process changed.

I love all three of the paintings from your Standing Rock series, but my favorite is White Buffalo Calf Woman March. It just shows the beauty and the resilience of our communities, and it takes these moments that were really challenging for the people involved and shows the beauty and strength of that moment. In America Realized, the colors and complexity of the imagery draws people into closer engagement with the piece. I’ve watched a couple of people interact with that painting; they’d stand there for quite a while and look closer and have a moment of Ohhh, I know what this is about. Is this slow burn something that is strategic?

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above, left Home Is Where the Heart Is, Sometimes That’s a Warzone, 2017, hanging installation. above, right Tent Metaphor, Resistance, 2018, oil on canvas, 50 × 50 in., on display at the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma. opposite Tent Metaphor No. 2, 2017, oil on canvas, 65 × 58 in.

Image courtesy of the Sam Noble Museum, Norman, Oklahoma.

of America, and it’s easier for people to kind of zone out and tap out and be numb to the severity of the situations. It’s an epidemic really, but you put art into the world if you have a platform, and I say, Why not? I have a platform to propel these paintings in front of the collectors of Native art. I know political art isn’t favored in Santa Fe. I know that it’s not why collectors go there. But, it is relevant for people to see the true treatment of Native America as well as the art created about it; that’s how I used that platform this past year.

people, and a big part of Native art as an Indigenous person [is that] your whole life is activism. You either hide it, do it, or suppress it, but it’s real. As a painter, that is my activism. I’ve come this far making these beautiful works; I need to show the other side to it as well. It’s not always pretty, it’s just real.

Do you think the fact that you have reached a certain point in your career allows you the space to kind of push up against some of that expectation or the idea that this is not what people want to see?

Initially, I started the Tent Metaphor series after] my observations of homeless encampments in Seattle, which speaks to the displacement of people due to socioeconomic problems stemming from issues in mental health, the rise of rent, wage wars, and drug epidemics. In Seattle, there are a lot of homeless African-Americans and Native Americans. I think, specifically within the Native American population, it

At this point, it’s like, Okay, I’m going to fully utilize this time to take the opportunity to talk about something important.

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This change in your consideration of your audience and the shift in your process is also evident in your Tent Metaphor series. When did your inspiration for that work emerge?

YATIKA FIELDS

stems from the reservation and removal periods, and the policies of relocation of Native peoples to cities. It can be hard for Native people to move out of community areas, because that’s where we really come together as people. Community is where our soul and heart are, and you take us out of that and it can be pretty hard, and I’m specifically speaking to American Indian people in cities …

Tent Metaphor was an observation about the displacement of people in city structures and the city culture, and I wanted to make paintings about those issues as well as create solutions. That was the first time I really thought about using the tents as a metaphor for these problems, but also as a structure that is used in these problems as a shelter, as a mobile home, as a temporary structure, as a structure to keep someone safe. Then I’m also making a metaphor for the art, to protect your spirit, your soul, and all the things that you keep especially close to your heart.

So, that was my first encounter with looking at the tent structure as more about social and political structures than as something for an outing with your family or weekend leisure.

At Standing Rock, there were a lot of tents and a lot of tipis … my observations went straight back to the homeless encampments. I talked to someone else who did photographs for a big newspaper and who traveled the world, and to them it was reminiscent of refugee camps.

Standing Rock was a totally different vibe, and everyone seemed happier than those places. … I saw these tents as a safe haven for people, for good spirits, but also to mobilize in the war zone. I started looking at tent structures as a metaphor of the heart and of the spirit, but also the structure itself as this larger symbol of resistance. It is a resistance to the displacement of people in cities and using these tent shelters within resistance encampments fighting the oil pipelines, and then within refugee encampments.

In Europe people use tents to occupy space in front of government centers and stuff like that, where they spray paint big

slogans on tents so they become banners.

Occupants will get in the tents, so these tents become symbols for that resistance.

What about the material of the tents themselves?

As an artist, visually I gravitate toward patterns and shapes and colors, and tents encompass all those. I found refuge within my own … visual needs and I figured out a way to deconstruct and reconstruct them on the canvas within a linear plane. I also constructed something in an installation as well, so I deconstructed the idea of what these tents stand for now within America and our resistance to America—whether that’s fighting to survive in homeless encampments or fighting to survive in resistance camps. By deconstructing the tent, I was able to invite the viewing public to work

with me to figure out this problem and think about solutions. Oftentimes the public turns a blind eye to homelessness and other events surrounding tent cities or resistance camps. It’s rarely in the news or conveyed in the right light.

I definitely appreciate the way you are capturing the generosity, solidarity, and beauty that exists in the face of violence in a way that people can connect with in meaningful ways.

All of this work is an opportunity for me as an artist to be an activist—to really dedicate myself to art. I think art is transforming ideas and transforming the landscapes of the time we live in.

I want to move people from a place of misunderstanding or fear to a place of empathy and engagement. I think that is my true job as an artist.

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PROFILE

MVSKOKE PAINTER, TEXTILE ARTIST, AND SHELL CARVER

SANDY FIFE WILSON

By Stacy Pratt, PhD

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N THE LONG DRIVE from Oklahoma to the Santa Fe Indian Market, my aunt Sandy was fingerweaving.

She’d tied the end of a sash to the back of the driver’s seat, and all the way to our first night’s stop in Santa Rosa, her fingers braided yarn into patterns. Somehow, her conversation never wavered. She has been like this for as long as I remember: always making something intricate while managing the myriad duties of a Mvskoke woman.

Sandy was raised with seven siblings on our family’s allotment in the rural community of Dustin, Oklahoma. She attended and later taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, then at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School. After teaching 29 years, she retired in Morris, Oklahoma. Throughout her long career, she continued to do her own art—mainly fingerweaving and basketry—though she exhibited infrequently. In 2007, she began to incorporate shell carving and has become known for this revived precontact art form.

Sandy says, “Art can take you places.”

I spoke with her in Bixby, Oklahoma, about where it has taken her.

SP: What was it like growing up in an art family?

SFW: It was fun. When we were little, Mama [Carmen Fife] would let us do anything artsy we wanted to, and Daddy [Jim Fife] made sure we always had paper, colored chalks, pencils, and things. I used to sit and draw and draw. One time I was up on Mama’s bed, and there was a window ledge behind the bedstead about four or five inches along the top. I was up there drawing. When I got through, I got down and went in the other room, and nobody was there! They had all gone down to the creek [behind the house].

Mama always showed us things like colors, flowers, the rainbow, the sky, and we always had her art available. She didn’t lock away her artwork or her book of designs. She’d show us designs from the Southwest or different areas. Things from when she went to school in Santa Fe. She learned a lot, and then she passed that on to us without sitting us down and teaching us or anything like that.

In our house, one wall was papered with brown paper. Carole [her sister, Jimmie Carole Fife] had drawn an Indian head up there when she was little, right by the light. She said she got up one night and that was the only light, so she got up there and drew it while everybody else was asleep.

And Mama could do anything. We learned to adapt and use all kinds of different materials. Our neighbors always had paint-by-number, so they’d give us their old paints when they got through with them. We didn’t have brushes. Mama had a watercolor brush, I think, but it’s too soft for oil paints, so she showed me how to hammer down a matchstick and make

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a brush out of it. So, I used that as a brush to do my oil painting.

She just let us go and helped when we needed it, but she didn’t do it for us.

We are lucky.

I think so, too. We’ve all just grown up with art, I guess because Mama went to art school. She showed us real art. Daddy, too.

He got the newspaper every day. He always ordered Life, Look, and The [Saturday Day Evening] Post magazines, and we weren’t to tear them up or anything. We got to see the world that way, down at Dustin.

I was sick a lot when I was little, and one time Daddy drew a picture of a grey squirrel for me. He used to do things like that. I remember outside the kitchen—the screens on the window were loose on the bottom—and Mama would show us how to pull the thin wire out of the screen real gently, so it didn’t break, and then to bead with that wire. We’d make rings and things. I always remember that window screen where we used all the wire, all frayed across the bottom. Things like that.

SANDY FIFE WILSON

On the allotment, we have sandy land, and rocky, and then there is red dirt, and then there is black land, which is clay. If you go down to the creek, there’s a bank that’s full of shells, and then down by this other ditch there were red rocks that were hollow with sand in them. She showed me how to go to the black land and get some clay, and she said, “Soak it in this water,” so I soaked it for several days, and I’d mix it up, then I’d pour some more water in there, then I’d strain it and get all the dirt and the grass and rocks out. She showed me how to get the clay ready to make something.

When did you go to IAIA? In ’66. Phyllis [her sister, Phyllis Fife] went in tenth grade, the year after they opened. Then when she graduated, I got into tenth grade and I went. She was there taking museum studies when I was in high school.

What was that like?

I felt like I knew some of the staff and students already. Mama went to school on the same campus when she attended the Santa Fe Indian Arts and Crafts Teacher Program with Josephine Wapp and Allan Houser in the 1930s. Carole attended the Rockefeller Foundation’s Southwest Indian Art Project at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which was the pilot program for IAIA. She worked with Lloyd Kiva New, Charles and Otellie Loloma, and James McGrath. And Phyllis’s friends looked after me when I got there.

We studied tribes from all the different regions, their artwork, their environment, the supplies they used, the materials they used for their art, the difference in the designs, and the clothing from every region. We got to see so much, because Santa Fe is an art capital.

I had outstanding instructors, and there were all the supplies you’d need. You didn’t have to say, “Oh, I can’t do that because I don’t have this.” They had anything you’d want to use. Sometimes, if there was anything special somebody needed, they might even get that.

I studied 2-D and 3-D design, painting, and drawing, and I took a class in jewelry.

When I took printmaking from Seymour Tubis, I decided that was what I would major in. I loved the smells of the inks, the tacky sound of the inks being rolled on the surfaces, and the textures ... from gluing textures to a card to actually carving the wood or linoleum or etching by hand or with acids—it was all intriguing. I think that’s where I got my love of shell carving.

I really liked the intricacies of etching, the textures and values created by lines on the surface.

The institute opened a lot of doors. They have artists come in from all over, and you have so many opportunities like going to different studios, different pueblos, art shows. The dance troupe went to the Olympics in Mexico in ’68. We got to

above Various fingerwoven sashes, yarn, glass seed beads, shell disc. Both photos: Shelley Patrick (Mvskoke). All images courtesy of the artist. opposite Sandy Fife Wilson we a r i n g R i ve r ’s G i f t a n d fingerweaving.

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Five Civilized Tribes Museum bought it, and I guess it’s still there in storage or something.

And how did you end up at Woodstock?

I graduated in ’69, and then I was at home.

Bill Soza, who was always a leader and into everything at the institute, had stayed out in Santa Fe. He called and said, “Do you want to go participate as one of the artists at this art and music festival in New York?” He talked me into it, and they contacted Carole, too, about sending her work. I said, “Okay, I’ll go,” and they said, “We want you to bring your weaving, and you can demonstrate. Earl Eder and Kevin Red Star will be showing their paintings, and Patty Harjo will be doing bead work, and Delbridge Honanie will have his katsinas.” There were others, but I can’t remember all of them.

They said, “We’ve got two tipis, one for the girls, one for the boys.” They said, “We’ll fly you out here, and you’ll have a place to stay, and after the festival we’ll stay over an extra night at this dude ranch, and then fly you home.” So, I said, “Okay,” and we talked about it at the house, and Sharon [Mouss, her sister] said, “You’re not going by yourself. I’m going to go with you.” She said, “You might get lost or something,” because I probably would have, knowing me.

guide the president of Senegal on a tour of the institute.

above, left Choosing Sides, 2017, etched whelk shell, pigment. above, left Sacred Fire, 2015, etched whelk shell, pigment. Photo: Shelley Patrick (Mvskoke). opposite River’s Gift, 2017, etched mussel shells, copper beads, copper wire. Photo: Sandy Fife Wilson (Mvskoke).

I got to go to Wichita with Allan Houser, and I think there were three boys. We did jewelry, sculpture and pottery, and I did fingerweaving. We demonstrated at the Wichita Art Association. On the way back, we got to stop by his house and meet his mom and sister. We got to see his first carving. I didn’t take any sculpture [classes] from him when I was in school, but when I went out there to teach, he let me do a bronze sculpture, and he gave me the wax and showed me what to do. I did a little, about eight-inch stomp dance leader. I carved that all out of wax and everything. Then he showed me how to put sprues on it and cast it in bronze. To me, it looked pretty good. The

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We flew to New York, and the closer we got to the site, the more hippies we saw.

Everybody had beads and long hair and leather fringes and sandals and all this, and it got more and more. We got to the airport, and we took a train and a bus, and then Bill picked us up at White Plains or Bethel, New York.

We were all dressed up, because back then you dressed up when you went on a trip or went to an art show opening, anything like that, so we had on dresses and heels and had our hair up in beehives and looked real nice. We got in the car, and we went further and further. We passed these cars along the road and people walking and everything and traffic jams and found out they were all going to that same art and music festival.

All the art got there in the crates, but then as soon as we got there, it started raining.

SANDY FIFE WILSON

There were so many people, and we found out it was Woodstock, but we didn’t know what Woodstock was going to be either, we just knew some artists who were going to be there. When it started raining, we couldn’t get the art out, and it ended up being Woodstock music festival only. The art got knocked out because of the rain.

Most people don’t know that there was an art side to it. And they don’t know that Indians were there. Even in the movies, you never see the tipis.

We got these green performer T-shirts with the bird and the guitar on the back.

We wore those, and we’d go eat with the rest of the performers. We could go up on stage.

Did you?

I didn’t. I don’t know why I didn’t. I was watching, but Sharon went up there during Jimi Hendrix with Earl Eder and them. She was back behind [Hendrix], but all during the taping, every time you see him, they show him from the back, so, you never saw her, but on some of the other films, when they show him from the front, you see everybody on the stage. We went to the big tent and saw Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane and just a whole bunch of people.

It was peaceful. I felt safe walking from where we were down toward the stage.

It was just like an ocean of people, but nobody bothered you or anything. I guess they were just out of it, enjoying the music.

Sharon and I walked around all over the place. We walked into town, and people in the town were real friendly. It was hot, and they had their hoses and they’d spray you down or offer you things. Some of them had little tables out by their front gate and they’d give you Kool-Aid or drinks of water, different things. They were really nice, up there. Even though it turned out to be more than they expected. It was a good experience.

After that, we went to New York City. We stayed over with somebody else who was involved in it, one of their friends. We went looking at a lot of the sites before we came home. One of my favorites was the Guggenheim Museum, where I saw several of Van Gogh’s paintings.

The day after it was over, and everybody was gone, we went to Michael Lang’s trailer. He was 21 years old. He’s the one who put it on. It cost him a couple of million dollars. Anyway, we went to his trailer and called home, and Mama said, “Daddy said I hope you’re not up there where all those hippies are.” Sharon said, “Oh, we’re all right. We’re doing fine. We’ll be home tomorrow or in a couple of days.”

I remember [Lang] was just sitting there, bouncing this balloon up in the air. I thought, “He’s got no worries.” After that, there was nothing like it again, even though they tried. It just happened.

Back then, you had to send your rolls of film off to get them developed, and so we had borrowed [my brother] Bill’s good camera, and we’d taken a lot of pictures

of the stars and everybody and sent them off, and they accidentally lost them all. So, somebody’s got our pictures, and they’re good ones, too, because we could get right there with everybody.

Tell me about the Fife Collection.

The Fife Collection was Sharon, Phyllis, and I. Sharon was the business part, Phyllis was the creative designer, and we all did sewing. It started when Phyllis was in college. She learned how to do Seminole patchwork from Ioleta Smith from Dustin, so she started making some things and selling them. She made halter tops and skirts and dresses and pantsuits and everything else, and it got to be big enough that she needed a business. So, the three of us opened the Fife Collection in Henryetta [Oklahoma] in the ’70s. We had SUMMER 2018 | 69

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above Creek Double-Rim Basket, 2015, undyed binder cane, 14 × 14 × 5 in. Both photos: Shelley Patrick (Mvskoke). opposite Twined Creek Bandolier Bag, 2016, wool yarn, etched shell closure with double turkey design, fingerwoven strap with triple chevron and triple diamond patterns, handmade copper beads, shell disc beads, copper wire, pigment, 30 × 10 in.

that shop for quite a while and traveled all over doing fashion shows.

The other day, [the late Mvskoke playwright] Bob Hicks’s niece said, “We were going through Bob’s things and there was his ribbon shirt. It has a Fife Collection label in it.” She said it still looked good and everything. This summer I was demonstrating fingerweaving in Okmulgee, and this lady came in and said, “I have a dress you made. Let me go home and get it.” We closed the shop in like ’84 or ’85, so it’s been that long, but she came down and modeled it for me, and said, “This is a dress you made. I still wear it.”

People still ask, “Do you still do that?” I say, the shop’s closed, but we do still do some custom work. Carole still makes all kinds of things. Carole and Phyllis have designed clothes to go with Maya’s handbags. Maya [Stewart, her niece] will tell them what she wants, and they can just whip it up, put designs on it, anything. I

guess they get that from Mama, and 4-H Club, and Grandma, because Grandma Griffin [maternal grandmother] sewed at MGM Studios. She would send us boxes of scraps, and Mama would quilt with them or make clothes for us.

How’d you get into shell carving?

Sharon and I took a class at the College of the Muscogee Nation in 2007 taught

by Dan Townsend, the master shell carver from Florida. He showed us how to prepare the shells, and we got to trim, polish, and carve them. I like to put a lot of detail in my work, like crosshatching, or I’ll put shading in there with oil pigment and different things.

Some of the shells, like the big conch shell, you carve them out, cut them and clean the insides, and that’s what the Creeks used to use for their medicine dipper at the Green Corn Dance. Some historical things like that you can show to people

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to teach about the designs. A lot of these designs from the Southeast were spread all around, too. When you trade, somebody will see something, then they’ll catch on and start doing the same thing.

What about fingerweaving?

I took traditional techniques with Josephine Wapp [at IAIA], and she was a master fingerweaver. She knew different designs, what tribes used this and what tribes used that. First thing she told me was, “You’re Creek. The Creeks used the diamond designs, so this is what you’re going to do right now.” So, I learned that first thing from her. Mama went to school with her, so she knew her before, and Mama knew how to do a lot of these things, so she had taught me basic fingerweaving when I was about ten or twelve years old.

Now, I can weave all these different patterns. At the archives in England, Maya

SANDY FIFE WILSON

took a picture of a Creek bag with this strap with a design I hadn’t seen before.

So, I looked at it and figured out how to do it, and it’s pretty intricate. It took a while, but it’s fun to figure things out. I love puzzles and taking out knots, anything like that.

wider at the other end, and then you can either tie it or I have fixed them with a buttonhole and a big carved button. So, I use my shell carving with that, too.

I like creating new things, not just belts for ceremonies. I do sashes that you can wear anytime. Some of them I’ve designed, like the sling sash. It’s narrow at one end and

What are some things emerging artists need to know?

I still have more ideas, but I haven’t had time to do them all.

You have to start by being around some artists. Go work with other artists and see what they’re doing. Get involved, get to know people, and work on having something unique. You have to have your own angle. It’s kind of like The Beatles: you can’t serve one style all the time, you’ve got to change. Then when you change, others change, too. It’s evolving all the time. It’s not going to be the same.

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REVIEWS DALLAS

Hopi Visions: Journey of the Human Spirit Dallas Museum of Art

O

N VIEW through December 2, 2018, this exhibition embodies particular understandings of the continuum of the Hopi people as inscribed in visual artworks. Multiple perspectives are presented through curator Dr. Kimberly L. Jones’s object selections and contemporary artists Michael Kabotie (Hopi, 1942–2009) and Delbridge Honanie’s (Hopi, 1946–2017) painted stories in their six-panel, 5-by-48-foot mural that is the show’s centerpiece and subtitle. In two conjoined galleries with curvilinear walls, the Hopi Visions: Journey of the Human Spirit exhibition describes evolutions in Hopi culture as cyclical, mainly through a mixed group of historic Awat’ovi and Sikyátki pottery;

a trio of early 20th-century katsin tihu (cottonwood katsina figures); several 20th-century ceramics by Hopi artists; and the Journey of the Human Spirit (2001), the acrylic-on-canvas mural by Kabotie and Honanie.

In Hopi Visions, Dr. Jones has emphasized the centrality of Hopi emergence through the reiteration of circularity seen in the large amount of clay artworks she curated into the show. The spherical form of most of the historic and contemporary ceramics represents the makers’ continued honoring of the Hopi people’s origins from the sipapuni (place of emergence) into this world. This pottery is quite powerful in combination with the story of Hopi emergence visually portrayed by Kabotie and Honanie in the first panel of Journey of the Human Spirit.

Kabotie (Hopi name: Lomawywesa) and Honanie (Coochsiwukioma) created their mural during a 2001 residency at the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) in Flagstaff, Arizona. The residency program came out of the Hopi Iconography Project, a partnership between the MNA and the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. Kabotie and

above Michael Kabotie (Hopi, 1942–2009) and Delbridge Honanie (Hopi, 1946–2017), Journey of the Human Spirit—Hope: Confusion and Hope (Panel 6), 2001, acrylic on canvas, 60 × 96 in., collection of the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff. Photo: Gene Balzer. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

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Honanie had not collaborated since the early 1970s, when they were both part of the five-person collective, Artist Hopid, with Terrance Talaswaima (Honvantewa, 1939–1988), Neil David Sr., and Milland Lomakema (Dawakema). In an MNA residency video screening in a separate theater down the hall from Hopi Visions, Honanie explained that to fluidly produce this mural, he and Kabotie needed to become familiar with each other’s then-current styles of making art, since it had been so long since they had painted as a team. Through the work of Dr. Jones, Carrie M. Heinonen, MNA director, and Dr. Kelley Hays-Gilpin, MNA curator, the Dallas Museum of Art is the first institution outside of Arizona to show the Journey of the Human Spirit mural to public audiences.

Over the course of six panels, Kabotie and Honanie’s mural moves through many places and times in the Hopi people’s past, present, and future.

The first panel shows emergence. As the Hopi people joined the insects, plants, reptiles, animals, clouds, lightning, and stars, beings of corruption also entered the current world. Jumping ahead several centuries, the next panel portrays the Hopi people’s fight in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The scene recalls the Hopi people who took on partially shadowed identities to oust the oppressive Spanish priests who forced a Catholic church to be constructed on top of Awat’ovi, a sacred, ancestral kiva with murals that directly inspired Kabotie and Honanie’s Journey of the Human Spirit.

As one of two panels symbolically anchoring the middle place of the mural, the next canvas picks up right after the revolt. Through imagery, including the Squash Maiden and a Hopi mother pregnant with a pure child representing the old ways, this section speaks to the return of Hopi lifeways from the 18th century through the early 20th century.

These ideas extend into the following panel that features a light-and-shadow katsina portraying the positivity and negativity of humanity; corn and rainclouds showing regeneration; and a

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Buddha katsina invented by Kabotie and Honanie to address the universality of Hopi values found in intercultural exchanges worldwide.

In the fifth panel of the mural, corruption makes another appearance in the form of a contaminating process that takes place from the 1960s through 2005—a current issue when the artists painted this work in 2001.1 Peabody Energy mined coal from Black Mesa, pumped it as a slurry through a pipeline using millions of gallons of water daily from the Navajo Aquifer, and transferred the coal mixture into the main generating system. The company’s pollution and excessive use of water was damaging to the Hopi people in many ways. This mining process can be seen as a type of homicide. In this canvas, Kabotie and Honanie also show people poisoning themselves with drugs, alcohol, and fast food.

From here, the concluding panel shows visions of the present and future.

It features a female and male who have been taught the old Hopi ways by the water serpent, who had reappeared in the current world during the chaotic and disastrous events. An Apple computer symbolizes positive uses of internet-sourced information. An arc of spiritual symbols, like the signs for I Ching, Judaism, and Hindu, visualizes the artists’ notions of global communication and the universal harmony of values found in Hopi ways of being. This panel represents balance and the water serpent’s movement out of this world once the world is healed from the negativity of shadowed beings.

The entire mural anchors the back walls of the second gallery of the exhibition space. In front of the mural, two cases of historic pottery speak to ancestral creativity and the continuation of these legacy art forms, as seen in another case filled with contemporary ceramic vessels and a mid-20th-century kopatsoki (cottonwood headdress). The kopatsoki represents the matriarchal

orientation of the Hopi people and the seasonal cycle of ceremonial dances and activates a thematic dialogue between the three female katsin tihu in an adjacent case. The kopatsoki also relates to Path to Balance (2014), a drawing of the nine stages of life by Ed Kabotie (Okhuwa P’ing, Santa Clara TewaHopi), Michael Kabotie’s son whose voice can be heard narrating an analysis of Journey of the Human Spirit from a nearby video kiosk.

In the gallery closest to the exhibition entrance, the walls and case stands are painted yellow as a gesture to honor all beings and ripe corn. One case holding a pair of spherical, historic ceramics is placed in the center of the gallery, while the side wall is lined with three cases of historic ceramics, save for two late 20th-century works: a small butterfly jar by Rainy Naha (HopiTewa) and a petite canteen by Gwen Setalla (Aas-Ku-Mana, Hopi). Honoring water and winged insects, Naha’s whitegrounded artwork is skillfully designed with fine, smooth brushstrokes making up a pair of large, vibrant butterflies that carry the vessel’s front and back and are flanked by two dragonflies. In the theme of thankfulness of birds as messengers, Setalla’s tan-toned canteen is anchored at front and back by an intricate bird design surrounded by delicate, dark speckles signifying water and a pair of cornstalks at the vessel’s shoulders.

A short video in the gallery features Michael Kabotie and Delbridge Honanie and a self-portrait serigraph by Kabotie.

The two galleries are in a well-trafficked area at the entrance of the museum’s first floor, but the theater screening the extended-length video was too distanced from the exhibition.

Additionally, featuring two-dimensional artworks by contemporary Hopi female artists would have benefited the scope of the exhibition. Overall, it successfully presents concepts of circularity, female, life-giving strength, and regeneration.

—Michelle J. Lanteri

1. “Black Mesa coal mine,” SourceWatch, last updated September 2, 2012, web.

LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO

Defending Truth and Memory: The Path Towards Justice in Guatemala New Mexico State University Museum

“I

’M GOING TO TELL you a story,” stated former president of Guatemala Efraín Ríos Montt as he stood before the country’s Supreme Court in 2013, as seen in the photography exhibition, Defending Truth and Memory: The Path Towards Justice in Guatemala. This exhibition illustrates the impact of Guatemala’s 26-year civil war, which was particularly brutal toward the Indigenous population. The photographs

by Roderico Yool Díaz (Kaqchikel Maya)1 emphasize the contrast between the governmental officials in formal, grey attire, such as the president in his somber suit and tie, and the Maya women in brightly colored skirts and embroidered blouses.

Standing before a packed audience full of women wearing handwoven head scarves, Montt, who had risen to power after the 1982 military coup, was charged with genocide, including killing 1,771 members of the Maya Ixil people, displacing more than 29,000, and enabling 15 documented massacres that included rape and torture. In his first year in office, the government sanctioned some of the worst violations of human rights, which, according to a United Nations’ Commission for Historical Clarification, mainly targeted the Indigenous populations. Despite the evidence, in his “story,” Montt proclaimed his innocence and declared before the court that he had no knowledge of the military’s transgressions. The court disagreed and found Montt guilty; he was the first leader to be tried and convicted of genocide in the courts of his own country. He was sentenced to 70 years in jail: 50 years for genocide, and 30 years for crimes against humanity.

1. Please note, this exhibition includes images of human remains.

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The guilty charge was overturned only ten days later due to a procedural discrepancy when it was determined that his actions fell under the general amnesty declared in 1986 over the events in the civil war. A retrial began in 2017; the proceedings were behind closed doors and the president will not face prison time due to Montt’s advanced dementia.

Bridging politics, social justice, and the arts, the exhibition includes all 35 color photographs collected by Guatemala’s Centro Para la Accion Legal en Derechos Humanos (CALDH) for the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA). CALDH was

founded in the 1980s to fight for human rights in the face of Guatemala’s civil war. The New Mexico State University Museum is the first venue in the United States to show all the photographs.

“These photos capture the strength and beauty of the people’s struggle for justice,” says museum curator Anna Marie Strankman. Anthropology graduate student Kayla Myers brought the images to the attention of the museum. Before attending NMSU, Myers had spent a year working in Guatemala as a human rights accompanier with NISGUA, where she observed the fight to bring the government to justice. The museum worked

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with other departments at the university, including Gender and Sexuality Studies, International and Border Programs, the Department of Criminal Justice, and the NMSU Honors College to get the show to the United States.

While many professional photojournalists work in black and white, Díaz uses color to contrast the lives of the Indigenous populations and those in power. Díaz traveled to the museum for the opening to discuss his work. In his photographs, he documents the survivors of the genocide in Guatemala and the struggles faced by the Indigenous communities across the Americas. Díaz, born in Guatemala, photographed the atrocities committed by the military and the court proceedings of those charged with the genocide. One photo shows an Indigenous woman in the courtroom holding a copy of Sentencia por genocidio y delitos contra los deberes de humanidad contra el pueblo maya ixil, a book with a photo by Díaz of a woman testifying before the court.

The photographs in Defending Truth and Memory: The Path Towards Justice in Guatemala tell a powerful story, relating historical events that are unknown by many outside Guatemala.

Yet, the images are more than just documents. Full of color and life, the photos capture the human ramifications of the civil war and its brutality. They illustrate the efforts to learn and tell the truth about what happened, such as a group of Guatemalan Indigenous women holding a handmade quilt in which each square represents a different victim, reminiscent of the AIDS quilt. Many of the pictures in the exhibition show survivors holding photographs of the dead and missing or creating offerings like candles lit within a bed of flowers. One shows a courtroom full of Indigenous women listening to testimony translated into Mayan through headphones, hoping to hear governmental officials are held accountable for the rape, torture, and murder of Native peoples of Guatemala as the trial continues.

What moves these images beyond photojournalism is the effective use of color, highlighting the bright clothing and the vivid expressions of the survivors and their efforts to bring justice to their worlds. —Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

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LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO

Wendy Red Star: The Maniacs (We’re Not The Best, But We’re Better Than The Rest) New Mexico State University Museum

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N THE EXHIBITION, Wendy Red Star: The Maniacs (We’re Not The Best But We’re Better Than The Rest), Apsáalooke (Crow) artist Wendy Red Star pays tribute to her father, Wallace Red Star Jr., who started a rock band in the 1970s called the Maniacs. Wallace, on guitar and lead vocals, was joined by his brothers Wendell Red Star on bass guitar and Kevin Red Star (now a noted painter and printmaker) on drums. The Maniacs performed cover tunes by bands like Santana, James Brown, and the Allman Brothers, offering new music on the Crow Reservation. With the slogan “We’re Not the Best But We’re Better Than the Rest,” the band gained popularity during the years they were playing at local dances, parties, and tribal events. Though no recordings of the Maniacs are known to exist, perhaps this show will encourage someone on the reservation to dig through a box of cassette tapes to uncover a bootleg of a Maniacs show.

Wallace Red Star started learning to play classical guitar when he was only five years old, forced to practice scales by his father. After joining the Marines as a teenager, Wallace played in a rock band, the first version of the Maniacs.

While stationed near Los Angeles, he heard African-American performers and felt that he played with “no soul,” which inspired him to expand his practice.

When he returned home, he formed a new version of the Maniacs. Wallace and the other band members were ambitious.

They wanted not only to be famous; they wanted to be legendary. When Kevin left the band, they were joined by Aaron Red Star on drums, Cyrus Gros Ventre on rhythm guitar, and Tina Williams Heavy Runner as vocalist. In 1977, they competed in a local battle of the bands in Sheridan, Wyoming. As Wendy relates,

the Maniacs got a bad time slot late in the lineup. The audience yelled racist taunts and told them to go back to the reservation. But they ultimately roused the audience’s support and won the competition. Her dad described it as the best day of his life—even better than the day of his daughter’s birth, Wendy noted wryly.

The band ended abruptly with the untimely death of Wendell at the age of 22. Wallace was bereft; he buried his own guitar with his brother’s casket and never joined another band. When his daughter was born, Wendy Red Star became Wendell’s namesake. Though he did not continue to play publicly, music remained an important part of Wallace’s life. Wendy remembers connecting to her father through music. Her parents lived about one hour from each other and she remembers driving with her father with the radio set to an oldies station while he explained different aspects of the music, such as a walking bass or a shuffling rhythm.

Wendy Red Star was invited to create a show at the NMSU Art Gallery by its curator, Michelle Lanteri. Now an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in Native American Art History at the University of Oklahoma, Lanteri wrote her master’s thesis on Red Star’s work and saw how the artist incorporated personal narratives with historic shifts and how creatively she used exhibition spaces.

Wendy Red Star received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied with artists Nancy Rubins, Mary Kelly, Catherine Opie, and the late Chris Burden, all of whom mixed their personal lives with larger issues. She cites historic, family, and artistic photographs as major influences on her work, and the idea for this show began with family memorabilia. Red Star rescued boxes of slides from her mother’s basement, including images of her father’s life, which she printed for the exhibit. She also printed on cotton fabric, using the portraits to create memory star quilts. In the “merch” section, Red Star adorned

above Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke), Fall from the Four Seasons series 2006, archival pigment print on Museo silver rag mounted on Dibond, 35½ × 37 in. Both images courtesy of the New Mexico State University Museum, Las Cruces. opposite Roderico Y. Díaz (Kaqchikel Maya), Portrait, digital photograph.

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shirts, bags, mugs, and other items with band photos and with the Maniacs tangerine and lime logo from an original advertising poster.

At the NMSU Art Gallery, Red Star tells the story of her father’s life through different modes of representation. C ombining photography, sound recordings, installations, and a visual timeline, this show “create[s] a multisensory, immersive installation for viewers to experience.”1 The artist plays with different exhibition approaches. She created an illustrated timeline across the wall like one found in a history museum.

A display of record album covers looks like something out of a cultural museum; art objects on a white wall mimic an art museum; sound recordings are set up as if in an ethnographic museum. Even a diorama like one sees in an anthropology museum is displayed: a stage with drums, microphones, and guitars attended by an audience of mannequins in 1970s-inspired pant suits Red Star sewed using Pendleton blankets. To make the exhibition more personal, she included handwritten notes on the wall along the timeline to add discursive and personal details about her father’s life. For instance, Red Star noted that he joined the Marine Corps, because in Crow culture, men showed their abilities through their deeds as a warrior, such as counting coups or stealing an enemy’s gun.

Red Star cites artists Fred Wilson and Hank Willis Thomas as inspirations, especially for their use of museum space to raise questions about how historical narratives try to erase past atrocities, like in Wilson’s Mining the Museum (1992–93) at the Maryland Historical Society, in which Wilson reorganized the displays to offer a more inclusive perspective on history, one that acknowledges slavery, racism, and classism. In one, he added slave’s manacles to the case with fine silver vessels. Hank Willis Thomas conflates contemporary and historic images of African-American lives in his photos, such as a football player with chains around his ankle.

The show received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, which funded the programming: a public

conversation between the artist and the curator; a panel discussion with several curators including Lanteri on “Considering Contemporary Art;” several workshops on collaging personal and popular images; a screening of the film Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World; a lecture by visiting artist Cathy Crain; four weeks in a theater class using the exhibit to generate performance pieces; and a concert called “Indigenous ROCKers, RAPpers, and ACTivists” featuring Nataanii Means (Oglala LakotaDiné-Omaha), Tufawon (Dakota), and the Arcturians. Lanteri is putting together a print catalogue, which will be available this summer through the NMSU Art Gallery. —Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

NORMAN, OKLAHOMA

Fluent Generations: The Art of Anita, Tom, and Yatika Fields Sam Noble Museum

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S YOU WALK PAST the admissions desk and enter the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, your eye is drawn toward the end of the grand hall, where a bronze mammoth stands in a light-filled rotunda. To the right is an Orientation Gallery and the cavernous Hall of Ancient Life, which displays the museum’s paleontology collections. While the mammoths and the dinosaurs signal extinction, the gallery on the left signals something else completely, something that departs from what we expect to see in a natural history museum.

In this space, Fluent Generations: The Art of Anita, Tom, and Yatika Fields presents the diverse and vibrant works of American Indian artists—Anita Fields (Osage-Muscogee), her husband, Tom (Cherokee-Muscogee), and their son, Yatika (Osage-Muscogee-Cherokee).

In Fluent Generations, Daniel Swan, curator of ethnology, ceded authority and made space for each of the artists to curate a representative selection of their own

works. Although each of the retrospective selections are impressive enough to stand on their own, the placement of these multigenerational bodies of work within a shared space creates a deeper, more meaningful, aesthetic dialogue.

This show is about more than the work; it is also about their family and the way they utilize art to make a better world.

The introductory text panel for the show includes the following: The Fields family is comprised of extraordinary individuals, whose creative talents are not limited by medium, style, or outside expectations.

They explore the present, the future, and the past as vehicles to expand their own distinct creative expressions.

Together, Tom, and Anita have facilitated their family’s creative life journey by raising their three children in an “artful” world.

Although the Fields all work in distinct media—Yatika is a painter and muralist, Tom is a photographer, and Anita works in ceramics and textiles—all three of them speak about their artwork as visual stories.

Tom Fields’s photography reflects the depth of American Indian experiences and celebrates the everyday moments of life. A central theme and focus of the body of work assembled by Tom in this show is the people who are important in his life: his family, his friends, and his communities. He photographs people as a means to continue their legacy and to inspire future generations. Tom does not glorify his subjects but rather invites viewers to be inspired by the humanity of these individuals. Of these photographs, he states on a panel text, “I want my children to see and hear stories about their accomplishments and be inspired by them as I was.” His work presents heroes as accessible and their work as attainable.

Stands with Standing Rock is one of Tom’s most recent photographs in the show and was the most popular among visitors I observed during my visits to Fluent Generations. The photograph was taken in the fall of 2016 at the height of the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and captures members of the

1. “Wendy Red Star: The Maniacs (We’re Not The Best, But We’re Better Than The Rest),” New Mexico State University Art Gallery, 2018, web.

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left Anita Fields (Osage-Muscogee), Reconstruct, Conversation, Here, ceramics, pigment. Both images courtesy of the Sam Noble Museum, Norman, Oklahoma. right Yatika Fields (Osage-Muscogee-Cherokee), Sami Solidarity, oil on canvas, 72 × 48 in.

Lottie Shunkamolah Chapter of the Native American Church holding a #NoDAPL banner after a prayer meeting. While some members of the Fields family and the church congregation traveled to Standing Rock to support the Water Protectors in person, this photograph is representative of many folks throughout Indian Country who supported the Water Protectors from afar. Furthermore, it demonstrates how art can contribute to movements for ecological and social justice in meaningful ways.

One of the members of the Fields family who went to Standing Rock was Yatika, and Fluent Generations includes three paintings that were inspired by his time at the camps. Yatika’s vibrant and energetic work—most often on large canvases or on the sides of buildings— embraces abstraction and dynamism. His work demonstrates the physicality of his technique and a freeness of expression.

Fields encourages his audience to reimagine their relationships with the world around them and draws on his experiences from time he has spent at the Art Institute of Boston, in New York City, Oklahoma, Santa Fe, and elsewhere.

Yatika’s experience at Standing Rock, however, pushed him to think more directly about his art practice as a means to address global political issues. While at Standing Rock, he painted, photographed, and thought about ways to capture the generosity, solidarity, and beauty he saw in the face of violence in a way that would engage his audience in a more meaningful conversation. In order to move people from a place of fear to a place of empathy, Yatika pushed the boundaries of his previous work and included figures. Sami Solidarity exemplifies this new direction and depicts the international Indigenous solidarity evoked through the #NoDAPL

movement. While Sami Solidarity and his other paintings inspired by his time at Standing Rock still have the movement and the vibrant colors indicative of his previous work, they mark a significant and exciting shift in his practice.

With her husband and son’s work running along the walls of the gallery, Anita Fields’s intricately sculpted, hand-shaped clay pieces occupy the center of the space, a curatorial decision that is both practical and symbolic. Anita is deeply influenced by her family, her role as a mother, and her Osage upbringing. Her black-and-white ceramic sculptures reflect Tom’s black-and-white photographs, and her use of abstracted text imagery reflects Yatika’s graffiti-inspired murals.

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NORMAN, OKLAHOMA

Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting: The Art of Tonita Peña and Joe Herrera Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

T above Tom Fields (Cherokee-Muscogee), Fall Meeting, 2017, digital photograph.

Conversion, Here was inspired by a trip to Mexico and speaks to the Spanish practice of using Indigenous slaves to tear down their own religious monuments to build Christian ones in their place. As she explains through wall text, “A prehistoric clay figure sits on a stack of gold-leafed bars, representing the melting down of gold ornaments to ship back to Spain for the creation of gold bars. Despite all efforts to destroy an ancient culture, the figure indicates the continuation of Native people and their cultures.” This work intricately explores the entanglements of colonization, resistance, and continuity— themes that resonate throughout her work.

In giving each of the artists their own space to narrate their personal stories within the same gallery, this exhibition allows these works to speak to one another and to build a larger narrative about contemporary American Indian art and the role of museums in displaying this work. Fluent Generations disrupts the idea of multigenerational artist families working in single genres and shifts preconceived notions about diverse media and how the work can speak across disciplinary boundaries. Most notably, Fluent Generations is a contemporary art exhibit in a natural history museum.

I went into this show thinking that the Fields family’s work would be placed in conversation with historic objects from Sam Noble’s ethnographic collections. I certainly did not expect to walk into the

gallery and see a contemporary art show, which was a pleasant surprise.

When I asked Dan Swan about this, he talked about the museum’s mission and obligation to serve a dynamic and vibrant American Indian population. He explained, “I think it’s imperative that we bring contemporary forms of expressive culture into the museum.… If we are only going to embrace Native peoples in the past through our archaeology and ethnology collections, then I think we have violated our mandate and fallen short of our mission.”

By acknowledging the fluidity, ambiguity, and diversity of contemporary, expressive culture, natural history museums have an opportunity to go beyond the “we’re still here” trope of new museology. This technique, which is executed incredibly well in Fluent Generations, also delivers the “Native voice” so often called for within museums. Here, however, it is a visual voice—direct and unfiltered.

Anita, Tom, and Yatika’s discernible stories come together to form an evocative narrative that disrupts ideas of time and space and addresses themes of individuality, strength, beauty, violence, hope, dignity, and ambiguity. Unlike the exhibition across the hall, visitors will not leave this space thinking that American Indians—like dinosaurs and mammoths—are extinct.

—Jami Powell, PhD

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ONITA PEÑA, Quah Ah (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1893–1949), was a twice-widowed mother of three when she sold her first paintings to the Museum of New Mexico in the early 1920s. The Cochiti family who raised her also taught her to make pottery from the age of twelve, but it was her adult, artistic endeavors that provided a valuable economic means for her own family and came to define her identity as a professional artist. Her son, Joe Hilario Herrera, See Ru (Cochiti-San Ildefonso Pueblos, 1920–2001), an accomplished artist in his own right, began his training at his mother’s feet. In Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting: The Art of Tonita Peña and Joe Herrera, W. Jackson Rushing III, curator of the exhibition, provides a comprehensive study of the significant yet under-acknowledged contributions and influence of both artists on Native art and mainstream modernism during the 20th century.

Rushing creates an inviting visual journey in which Peña and Herrera’s paintings act to unfold the trajectory of their careers and lives along the length of the gallery walls. The exhibition begins with one of Peña’s earliest works on paper, a small watercolor, Comanche Dance (1920–21), depicting two figures.

The painting is, as Rushing explains, “drawn in pencil and covered in brushy washes.” Although emergent, it is still the painting I most admire in the exhibition.

It demonstrates Peña’s awareness of Western methods, but more importantly it represents her talent in drawing figures with great attention to detail, as well as her affection for dancers.1 Throughout 1. W. Jackson Rushing III, Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting: The Art of Tonita Peña and Joe Herrera (Norman: Fred Jones Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, 2018), 5.

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the 1920s and 1930s, as Peña’s artwork received national and international recognition, she continued to learn, experiment, and hone what became her delicate and extremely intricate, signature style. Deer Dance (n.d.), Basket Dancer (created before 1931) and Cochiti Corn Dance (early 1930s) exemplify it.

These three works, painted in the flat, stylized manner developed among her generation of painters, what would eventually become the “Studio-Style, all refer to the various Pueblo dances that Peña most often depicted.”2 Looking at these images, I could not help but be in awe of the prodigious precision with which Peña created each figure and the careful consideration she used to show the smallest details of her designs.

Perhaps the most striking of Peña’s artwork, or any artwork included in the exhibition for that matter, is Eagle Dance (1932–33), a mural-sized painting that stands over nine feet wide and almost five feet high and was exhibited at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1933. This painting represents four Eagle dancers accompanied by six singers and six drummers who all stand in perfect alignment against a golden background, as if perpetually suspended in a single moment of rhythmic motion. The colorful, geometric border references Pueblo iconography and surrounds the colorful figures, which helps to provide depth to the painting and may also function as a connection to the artist’s Indigenous heritage. Perhaps the elements Peña included in the border, like the dances she was known for painting, served to express to the world her personal ideas of selfhood.

Peña’s paintings dated after 1930 show a departure from her earlier work.

Although it can be said that Animal Dance (1935) and Kossa (n.d.) were painted in the flat style she helped to originate, they also illustrate a marked change in her personal style. Her backgrounds remain predominantly blank, but her figures look more richly modeled and her paint application more layered.

The exhibition’s transition from Peña to Herrera is shown in the

commonalities shared between mother and son: in their figurative style, their subject matter, and the detailed precision. Herrera’s descriptively titled Jemez (Home) Dancer with Drum and Koshare with Brown Shirt, and Moccasins fundamentally mirror Peña’s figurative stylization, yet his style is distinctly different. Herrera’s first teacher may have been his mother, but his formative years were also shaped by his uncle Julian Martinez (San Ildefonso, 1889–1943) and the painter Gerónima Cruz Montoya (Ohkay Owingeh, 1915–2015), who was Herrera’s art teacher at the Santa Fe Indian School from 1936 to 1940.

The most drastic, visual change in Herrera’s artwork can be seen in paintings he created in the 1950s. By then Herrera had already been introduced to modernism by the abstract painter Raymond Jonson at the University of New Mexico, and he had taken a keen interest in ancient pictographic art. Eagles and Rabbit (1950) and the abstract, untitled gouache displayed beside it are provocative examples of Herrera combining his interests into a new, radical style, a style he called “Abstract Symbolism.”3 In these two paintings, as Rushing states, it is “difficult to discern what parts might have been sourced from modern art or

top Joe Hilario Herrera (Cochiti-San Ildefonso Pueblos, 1921–2001), Germination, 1982, watercolor on paper, 25¼ × 30 in., collection of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection, Norman, Oklahoma. bottom Tonita Peña (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1893–1949), Kossa, n.d., watercolor on paper, 15¼ × 11 in., collection of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection, Norman, Oklahoma.

2. Ibid., 20.

3. W. Jackson Rushing III, “Exhibit Text,” Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting: The Art of Tonita Peña and Joe Herrera (Norman: Fred Jones Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, 2018).

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which were inspired by ancient historic Southwestern Indian art.”4 Herrera blends together swirling, geometric abstractions, pictographs, and the fragmented pottery symbols of animals, birds, serpents, clouds, and perfectly rendered craggy lines of lightning. The discernible objects seemingly fuse together in a timeless vision that represents both the past and the present—a continuum.

A highly successful component of the exhibition is the symbiotic exchange between Native and non-Native artists, especially for Herrera. One side of a free-standing wall features the paintings of artists inspired by Herrera, such as Michael Kabotie (Hopi, 1942–2009), Tony Da (San Ildefonso, 1940–2008), and Helen Hardin (Santa Clara Pueblo, 1943–1984).

On the other side, facing a collection of Herrera’s Abstract Symbolism paintings, are petroglyph-inspired paintings by the Santa Fe modernist painter Agnes Sims (1910–1990), who may have been inspired or advised by Herrera. Although there is no determination in this case as to who influenced whom, the resemblance between the groupings is significant.

Herrera’s 1950s paintings (and 1980s paintings) helped to revitalize interest in Native art in the mid-20th century.

However, Herrera’s artworks created in his self-defined “Abstract Symbolism” were not considered modern because he was a Native artist. In the category of Native art, his modernist stylization, as well as others, was panned for not being “Indian” enough. Regardless of his critics, Herrera, like his mother a generation before, received regional, national, and international accolades. This exhibition demonstrates that Herrera, also like his mother, continued to represent Pueblo culture and history through the use of new and different artistic methods until the end of his career.

Despite the many impressive paintings included in this exhibit, the one I was drawn to visit time and again was Herrera’s Initiation of a Young Koshare (1952). Herrera created it at the same time he was experimenting with his Abstract Symbolism. It is figurative, painted in a quasi-Studio Style, and represents the initiation of a young koshare, perhaps 4. Ibid.

even Herrera’s. Seven larger clowns painted with colored stripes and spots dance around the young initiate, who is also painted with stripes. The young dancer smiles with such enthusiasm that I cannot help but be inspired by his joy.

He gazes outward as if inviting us to join in the celebration.

This exhibition is the first retrospective of either Peña or Herrera.

The artworks in Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting, some of which have seldom been shown, are framed in a narrative that allows us to witness the history of Native art. Rushing, as he has done with other Native artists, situates Peña and Herrera in the broader scope of modernism, offering insight into their many accomplishments by inserting their stories into mainstream American art history. Rushing has created a space that pays homage to Native art and celebrates the extraordinary lives of a mother and son. —Tammi Hanawalt, PhD

RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA

Uncovering Ancient Mexico: The Mystery of Tlatilco Riverside Metropolitan Museum at Riverside Art Museum

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ITTING IN A WORKSHOP in Tlatilco, Mexico, about three thousand years ago, a potter made a small clay figurine that is now making a big impact in Riverside, California. Uncovering Ancient Mexico: The Mystery of Tlatilco is a unique blend of art and community that spans millennia.

The dainty clay figurine known as a Pretty Lady stands just over five inches tall and is the poster child for the exhibition produced by the Riverside Metropolitan Museum (RMM), now occupying a gallery in the Riverside Art Museum (RAM).

Outside on the lawn, a metal Pretty Lady welcomes visitors; she is a brand-new sculpture standing nine feet tall.

Knowing the importance of community outreach, RMM curator Brenda Buller Focht commissioned artworks inspired by Tlatilco objects.

Martin Sanchez (Mestizo) used 1,100 recycled tomato paste cans to construct his tremendous Pretty Lady. Known for his contemporary folk art made of found objects and recycled materials, Sanchez notes that this was his first commission, and that “connecting with ancient ancestry is exciting!”1 Outside the gallery, a papier-mâché interpretation of a Tlatilco piece adorns a wall. Mexico-born, Riverside-raised Cosme Cordova (Mestizo) created it. An artist who works in a variety of media, Cordova started working with clay three years ago and was especially inspired by the double-faced ceramic head in the exhibition. “This blows my mind! Did Picasso see this double face in Mexico?

Did that influence him? I’d like to find out about that,” he muses.2 A black-and-white hanging scrim with an archaeological excavation scene divides the large gallery. The first section, bright and white, contains Chicano artist Jaime Guerrero’s solo exhibition at the RAM, Contemporary Relics: A Tribute to the Makers. Featuring glassworks inspired

by Olmec masks, carvings, and colossal heads, this is a perfect segue to Uncovering Ancient Mexico: The Mystery of Tlatilco.

Reminiscent of a humid jungle, the Tlatilco exhibition’s cool teal wall color contrasts nicely with the tan clay objects.

Seven freestanding cases are filled with Tlatilco treasurers from three museums.

The RMM’s items were collected by the museum’s late curator Christopher L. Moser, and 34 of them are featured in the exhibition. Ceramics range from pots and roller stamps to whistles, while everyday objects include an animal bone needle and an obsidian spear point. As a Smithsonian Affiliate, the RMM borrowed nine items from the National Museum of the American Indian, including a small mask, an Olmec-style bottle, and two figurines depicting ballplayers.

The Los Angeles County Museum of

1. Martin Sanchez (artist), in discussion with the author, Riverside Art Museum, February 2, 2018.

2. Cosme Cordova (artist), in discussion with the author, Riverside Art Museum, February 2, 2018.

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Art lent eleven items, among them a ladle with an anthropomorphic handle.

Bilingual Spanish/English text panels, most with maps or photographs, provide background information.

Tlatilco is thought to be a somewhat urbanized society that controlled surrounding independent farming villages in the Valley of Mexico. The culture flourished from about 1200 to 900 BCE (about 3,000 years ago). Tlatilco overlapped in time with the Olmec culture of Mexico’s Gulf Coast, and the two groups interacted. Olmec-style bottles and several ceramic figures in this exhibition attest to that. Early knowledge of the lives of Tlatilco people primarily comes from items found in a brickyard, which led to four archaeological excavations between 1942 and 1969. Several human-like figures wearing clothing of the time are in this exhibition. One woman holds a child; she wears a necklace, earrings, and a decorated skirt. A male figure sports a simple loincloth, a headdress, and arm and knee bands. A tiny clay cradleboard holds a tinier baby. Round ceramic rattles and figures interpreted as dancers and ballplayers allude to music and activities such as ceremonies, sports, or entertainment. Today, the Tlatilco site lies under Mexico City’s suburbs.

The star of the show is the diminutive Pretty Lady. She wears a tall headdress and has pierced ears but is otherwise nude. This ceramic piece has remnants of red-painted designs on her face and hair. The focus is on her face, with fine features, large eyes and brows; her hands and feet, however, are nearly nonexistent. This type of miniature clay female, the epitome of Tlatilco cultural objects, is technically called a D2 figurine. Pretty Lady, according to guest curator Catharina E. Santasilia, “is not the terminology used by academics, but persists when looking at older records, and was included by Christopher L. Moser in his notes.”3 Two rare, larger versions of D2 are also on view, one from the National Museum of the American Indian (A23/4999) the other from the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.83.217.4); it is 21¾ inches tall.

In conjunction with the exhibition opening, Santasilia organized a one-day conference, a gathering of international scholars with presentations on current Mesoamerican studies. During a questionand-answer period, an unidentified woman in the audience remarked that the “Pretty Lady” title was disrespectful and asked that they instead be called “Women of Tlatilco.” Dr. Patricia Ochoa Castillo, conference speaker and curator, Museo Nacional de Antropoligía, Mexico City, answered that they were dubbed “Pretty Ladies” by Mexican archaeologist Román Piña Chán decades ago. Ochoa Castillo noted that they are thought to show the attributes of women and may be associated with fertility, and she felt that it was not disrespectful as they are, indeed, “pretty.” 4 An interesting addition to the exhibit is a short, animated film, 214 Figurines from Tlatilco and San Pablo, Central Mexico, 1200—900 BCE, a segment from The Form: Four Worlds, a digital project produced by Night Fire Films in 2018.

One thing this Pretty Lady is accomplishing in Riverside is public education. When thinking of Mexican heritage, the Tlatilco culture is usually not one that pops into mind. RMM educators created a hands-on children’s learning area, complete with three-dimensional, printed replicas of figurines. Pots can be uncovered in a mock dig, and visitors can create patterns by rolling a cylindrical stamp on paper. A Tlatilco activity guide and special curriculum for Riverside students, melding visual arts and social studies, was developed by Danielle Leland, Teresa Woodard, and RAM staff.

Adults are also learning about ancient Mexican culture as the large, tomato-can Pretty Lady is spreading her proud heritage throughout the city, because as Sanchez explained, “She is a traveling lady.” First installed at Riverside City Hall before taking up residence at the museum, she is scheduled to move to different parts of the city during 2018.

above Unknown Tlatilco artist, Standing Female Figure, 1200– 900 BCE, clay, pigment, 21¾ × 12 in., collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.83.214.4, gift of Constance McCormick Fearing.

Finally, Tlatilco’s influence on contemporary art can’t be ignored.

Sanchez appreciates the opportunity RMM provides by taking an interest in local artists. Cordova takes the ability to view ancient Mesoamerican art personally. “It’s really cool to bring this to the community, to make people aware of this art. I’m going to embrace it. I have my own style and will tweak it some, but I am definitely inspired to create more.”

Uncovering Ancient Mexico: The Mystery of Tlatilco is on display through December 30, 2018. Please note: some of the text panels include potentially disturbing images (black-and-white photographs of skeletal remains of people).

—Bryn Barabas Potter

3. Catharina E. Santasilia, email message to author, February 15, 2018.

4. Patricia Ochoa Castillo, comment in response to audience question, The Rise of Civilization in Mesoamerica Conference, Riverside Public Library, February 3, 2018.

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REVIEWS

SHAWNEE, OKLAHOMA

Mythic Beasts: Imagery in Kuna Textiles and Cocle Pottery Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art

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YTHIC BEASTS: Imagery in Kuna Textiles and Cocle Pottery, an exhibition co-curated by Delaynna Trim and Dane Pollei at the MabeeGerrer Museum of Art, features two distinct genres of art from two cultures separated by more than a thousand years.

The polychrome ceramics date from 700 to 900 CE (defined as the Conte period) while the molas date from the mid- to late 20th century. Initially, these two bodies of work—almost all of which are on loan from the Museum of the Red River in Idabel, Oklahoma—appear extremely different from each other, but commonalities can be puzzled out. The two genres feature representational but highly stylized animal imagery; hail from the same broad ecological and cultural region; and the textiles and ceramics share many similar formal qualities.

Mola is the Guna word for “blouse” or “clothing.” The older molas with two matching panels were likely part of a front-and-back blouse sold to art collectors.1 Through reverse appliqué, these rectangular, cotton textiles reveal designs from layers of cloth sewn underneath cuts in the top layer embellished by many intricate embroidery stitches. The ceramics are dishes, pedestal bowls, jars, and effigy bottles painted with images of or sculpted in the shape of animals, burnished to a high sheen with thick, black outlines and fields of warm colors. While exquisitely executed, the ceramics carry the specter of being grave goods removed from their intended resting place.

I don’t miss didactic text until it’s gone. Curators may minimize wall text to encourage viewers to engage directly with the formal qualities of the artwork

without outside interpretations; however, in this case, I was left with innumerable questions about the artwork. I had the luxury of time and resources to research Coclé ceramics and Guna molas, but many other visitors do not. Something immediately observable in both art forms is the prevalence of bilateral symmetry.

As the Walters Museum of Art states, “Binary opposition is a central precept of ancient Panamanian cosmology, which viewed the cosmos as the pairing of opposites: male-female, light-dark, spirit world-natural world.”2 The term mythic in the exhibition’s title is, of course, problematic due to its implication of being untrue or imaginary, and the inclusion of a mola depicting Adam and Eve, the first man and woman in Christian religion, casts a sharp focus on this issue. Many of the animals depicted in the Coclé pottery are quite tangible and indicated by closely observed anatomical details. For instance, the king vulture, Sarcoramphus papa, is identifiable by its “carbuncled” beak. Stingrays and hammerhead sharks appear uncanny or fantastical to landlocked audiences, especially when frontally portrayed.

Alluded to in the exhibition title, the animal symbolism of this larger cosmology is complex, but some ideas are shared between Guna and Coclé cultures.

Snakes, according to anthropologist Mary W. Helms, embody a “pure, undifferentiated life energy”3 among Indigenous peoples of Panama. The animal imagery on the Coclé pottery is mostly painted on the interior surfaces of bowls, but some of the imagery is sculpted in the round, such as an armadillo-shaped jar. Bird and snake depictions are also found in many of the molas. Supernatural creatures on both the ceramics and textiles include composite beings such as an “iguana shaman,” a humanoid figure with an iguana head and clawed hands and feet on a Coclé pedestal bowl, or traits of diverse animals, such as a griffin on a mola that combines avian and feline features.

Several of the more modern molas incorporate outside influences, such as elephants, Egyptian deities, Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger, the RCA Victor dog, and even the logo of RPC TV, a Panamanian television station. Panama is a hub of global commerce, so these molas not only illustrate outside influences upon

1. Traci Ardren, ed., From Ancient Art to Modern Molas: Recurring Themes in Indigenous Panamá (Coral Gables, FL: Lowe Art Museum, 2013), 6. Molas are so integral to Guna identity that Panama outlawed them from 1915 to 1925 to suppress Guna culture.

2. “Pedestal Dish,” The Walters Art Museum, web.

3. Mary W. Helms, The Curassow’s Crest: Myths and Symbols in the Ceramics of Ancient Panama (Gainesville: University of Florida, 2000), 12–13.

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Guna society but also the ability of Guna women to reinterpreting these logos into their own aesthetic.

Both the textiles and the ceramics come from Panama, an isthmus that bridges North and South America. The Guna women who sewed the molas lived on or near the San Blas Islands on the Caribbean coast of north-central Panama.

Coclé ceramics come from the Gran Coclé cultural region, which encompasses central Panama. Many of these sites are on the Pacific coast of south-central Panama. While the Guna people are not descended from the Gran Coclé people, these two groups likely spoke related Chibchan languages, some of which became extinct after the Spanish arrived in 1501. Living in a tropical climate, these different artists lived near warm beaches and interior savannas and rainforests fed by abundant rivers. Surrounded by some of the richest biodiversity in the Americas, the different artists drew inspiration from land animals, innumerable bird species, and marine and freshwater creatures.

The artists’ bustling environment shines through with busy designs, flowing lines, and brilliant colors of the work. Despite differences in materials, these artworks share related formal qualities, including colors, stylizations, mark-making, and bilateral symmetry.

For instance, effigy jars of an armadillo and a crocodile have sculpted heads and tails but bodies painted with perfectly mirrored, abstract designs, while several molas feature two-headed birds divided in the middle of the picture plane with heads facing right and left, embedded in a matrix of carefully balanced geometric designs. The ceramics are stunningly painted with pale buffs, luxuriant blacks, and plum clay slips, dominated by deep reds and oranges. These warm tones are echoed by this collection of molas, which, while punctuated with greens, yellows, and other vivid hues, are dominated by burgundy and brick-orange. Exceptions are the three molas that echo the more subdued black-on-buff on some ceramics.

While representational, the imagery on both art forms are stylized: many animals are reduced to outlines filled with color fields and surrounded by abstract shapes,

above Unknown Guna artist, Two-Headed Spirit Bird, Conte pedestal bowl, ca. 1945–2000, embroidery and reverse appliqué with dyed textiles, Panama, collection of the Museum of the Red River, 98.12.20, Idabel, Oklahoma. opposite Unknown Coclé artist, Iguana Shaman, Conte pedestal bowl, ca. 700–900, pigmented slip, ceramic, Panama, collection of the Museum of the Red River, 03.32.09, Idabel, Oklahoma. The background designs may represent stingray spines.

especially boxes filled with short series of parallel lines. Fluid contour lines and repeated calligraphic embellishments imbue the ceramic dishes, pedestal bowls, and sculptural effigies with a sense of motion. Repeating patterns that jump between light and dark values add to the energetic intensity of the molas.

Designs on the molas are formed not only by different colored fabrics but by embroidery, such as the chain-stitch and intriguing needlework in which repeated semicircles form sinuous lines. These resemble the feathery brushstrokes on the pots that appear to indicate animal hair or plumage. Bilateral symmetry dominates the composition of many molas and ceramics, and, indeed, dualism is a foundational hallmark of Panamanian cosmology.4 Stories of doppelgängers and the idea that souls have dual elements are common throughout the region.

Of course, great diversity remains in subject matter and execution with these different textile and pottery pie ces. Howe ver, explor ing t he similarities between these two bodies of

work—separated in time by more than a millennium, by the different ethnic backgrounds of their artists, and their different media and techniques—helps the audience of Mythic Beasts envision the larger cultural and aesthetic framework informing Indigenous Panamanian art.

What bridges these two genres through space and time is body art. Spaniards wrote about the body art of Indigenous peoples of Panama in the early 16th century, and the body art today, applied with jagua and achiote ink,5 share stylistic similarities with the precontact Coclé designs and the modern Guna designs.

A fascinating thread runs through this artwork. Pairing these two diverse genres challenges the viewer to reconcile their differences and propels the audience beyond simple, aesthetic enjoyment into reflection on the artists’ perspectives.

The exhibition elicits curiosity about Indigenous Panamanian aesthetics and worldviews and demonstrates both continuity and change.

—America Meredith

4. Richard George Cooke, “Observations on the Religious Content of the Animal Imagery of the ‘Gran Coclé’ Semiotic Tradition of Pre-Columbian Panama,” in Behaviour Behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity, ed. Sharyn Jones O’Day, Wim Van Neer, and Anton Ervynck (Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 2004), 120.

5. Ibid., 124.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts at 25 heather ahtone, Rebecca J. Dobkins, and Prudence F. Roberts Hallie Ford Museum of Art, 2017

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ONSIDERABLE ACADEMIC literature has been published on Japanes e, G erman Expressionist, modern Mexican, and contemporary Chinese printmaking, among many other geographically and period-specific printmaking topics. Apart from the work of the Inuit, there has been very little scholarship on Indigenous printmaking from the Americas. For this reason, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts at 25 is a milestone for Indigenous art, printmaking, and art history writ large.

The 159-page catalogue includes two essays: the first recounts the history of Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, the only professional printmaking facility located on a reservation, and the second offers the first overview of Indigenous printmaking in the United States.

Prudence F. Roberts justly emphasizes the critical importance of many individuals working together as key to the ongoing success of Crow’s Shadow.

In the late 1980s, James Lavadour (Walla Walla) sought to make art resources

accessible to his rural community in Oregon, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR).

He rented space from the local Catholic church and together with artist Phil Cash Cash (Cayuse-Nez Perce) started Crow’s Shadow in 1992. The space offered an array of workshops and collaborated with regional school groups. In 2001, Tamarind master printer Frank Janzen was hired and began doing print editions with artists, starting with Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne). To date, over 40 artists, mostly Indigenous, have visited Crow’s Shadow to print with Janzen; a complete listing is included in the book.

One of printmaking’s defining characteristics is an ability to create multiples. In medieval Europe, its primary purpose was to reproduce paintings. The prints functioned as advertisements to potential patrons for the original paintings but quickly became valued and collected for their own unique aesthetics. Likewise, modern Indigenous printmaking in North America initially emerged as a reproductive venture. 1 Water-based paintings by Kiowa artists were reproduced as pochoir prints in a series of portfolios beginning in 1929.

In 1950, Harrison Begay (Navajo, 1917– 2012) and Gerald Nailor Sr. (Navajo, 1917–1952) set up Tewa Enterprises in Santa Fe, though most of the work remained reproductions of paintings. ahtone and Dobkins pinpoint the University of Oklahoma (OU) as a center of growth for Indigenous printmaking starting just after World War II. This is credited to the roles of Oscar Jacobson, director of the art program from 1915 to 1954, and Emilio Amero, who taught printmaking at OU from 1946 to 1968. The development of the Kinngait Studios (part of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative) in the late 1950s in Nunavut, Canada, is more familiar to many, largely due to its production of an annual edition unified by a recognizable style. The authors differentiate the contexts in which modern printmaking was taken up: within academia and as part of a larger, renewed interest in the medium, versus a foreign medium brought to a rural community to help make it economically sustainable.

The development of Native-owned print shops, like Crow’s Shadow, was a significant move in establishing Indigenous printmakers within a global art market and arguably allowed artists more autonomy. Screen printing aligned seamlessly with Northwest Coast aesthetics and became widespread among Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw artists during the 1960s. Pacific Editions Limited was established in Victoria in 1968. Just five years later, Triple K Cooperative and Odjig Indian Prints advanced interest in Woodlands School screen prints from Western Ontario and Southern Manitoba, respectively.

The Institute of American Indian Arts and Tamarind Institute continue to be critically important centers for the proliferation of printmaking, especially for Indigenous artists. Many individual artists are also rightfully credited by the authors as the driving forces within these institutions and for their commitment to teaching and international collaborations. Footnotes direct the reader to existing publications on related topics, and the historical overview presents myriad jumping-off points for future research and exhibitions.

While there is always some loss in image reproduction—textures of paper and ink, embossing, etc.—the full-color plates in this catalogue are truly exquisite. Over one hundred images feature primarily lithography and monoprints, with some linocuts and screen prints (no intaglio). The range of approaches and styles range from painterly to geometric; some images are appropriated and others autographic.

Paper lovers will swoon over inclusion of paper type in every caption (not all prints are on Rives BFK!). Also included in the book are a glossary of printmaking terms and the Crow’s Shadow exhibition history from 2005 to 2018.

Though Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts at 25 may seem to focus narrowly on one rural print studio, it is in fact a foundational text for Indigenous art and art history in general, and highly recommended for art libraries and individual reference. —Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

1. The authors of this catalogue note that the use of matrices has been found at Olmec sites; a detailed account of ancient American printmaking has yet to be written.

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BOOK REVIEWS

The Writing on the Wall: The Work of Joane CardinalSchubert Lindsey V. Sharman, ed.

University of Calgary Press, 2017

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HE WRITING ON THE WALL: The Work of Joane CardinalSchubert is a superb publication that is at once personal and biographical, as it is art historical. Artist Joane Cardinal-Schubert, a member of the Kainai First Nation (Blood Tribe), was born in Red Deer, Alberta, in 1942, on historical territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy and Treaty 7 land.

This book gives the reader an understanding of the position of Canadian First Nations, Métis, and Inuit art in relation to mainstream Canadian art at the time of Cardinal-Schubert’s entrée into the art world in the 1970s. It also tells the story of how she became a First Nations artist and the vastly important strides she made during her lifetime to bring light to the still dark chronicles of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples by telling the stories of her own family and the Indigenous histories she studied.

The opening essay in this book, “I Am Out of the Woods Now,” by Mike Schubert, the artist’s husband of 44 years,

clearly outlines Cardinal-Schubert’s path to becoming an artist and the ensuing challenges that beset her early in her career. Before and during her time in art school, Cardinal-Schubert continuously researched her tribal and family history, learning more and more about her culture.

She paid special attention to the residential school history, an important focal point in her art in later years. According to Schubert, when Joane attended the Alberta College of Art (now, the Alberta College of Art and Design), “She went there as a white student artist.” It was during her time at the University of Calgary that other students tried to single her out for being First Nations and, since she had begun to paint the culture she was studying, she took on the moniker of “Indian artist.”

It can be argued through the numerous utterances in this book that she spent the majority of her life actively fighting for Native people to be seen as contemporary people, not relics of the past.

In this book, Cardinal-Schubert is remembered as being many things all at once. She was an artist who worked in varying media. For example, her BFA was in printmaking and painting, but she also worked in video, sculpture, installation, and performing arts. She was a curator and a lecturer. Cardinal-Schubert was also a staunch activist when it came to First Nation issues. One essayist writes that her work and her stories “combine the beautiful and the terrible.” Her paintings at once embraced the beauty of her cultural history and horrors wrought by settler policy and actions. She was also described as “difficult,” a label, to this day, often placed upon passionate, vocal, and intelligent Indigenous women who directly confront settler-colonial states in public spaces.

In these essays, the reader develops a keen sense of Joane Cardinal-Schubert.

She understood her life and work to move in circular motions, cohesive and linked, with her at the center. She is described as being someone who considered the absences at the (proverbial) table to be as important as those who were present, questioning the impact of such an absence. Cardinal-Schubert, who was undoubtedly a leader in her field, also maintained her Kainai knowledge of

how community worked as she attained her goals. Known as a tireless worker at the helm of many projects, she viewed her efforts not as that of an individual but as her part in the collective responsibility to awaken the world, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, to the potential and future of Indigenous peoples, as well as to the multiple oppressions that continued to hold them down.

… [S]he spent the majority of her life actively fighting for Native people to be seen as contemporary people, not relics of the past.

The book is replete with 63 high-quality images of CardinalSchubert’s art, pieces that are held across Canada in private collections, by her estate, or at museums. The works that illustrate this book vividly support the essayists’ recollections and stories and contextualize important points in the artist’s life, moments that drove her to react to the unjust, institutionalized systems of oppression, such as residential schools and First Nations, Métis, and Inuit spiritual materials held by Canadian museums.

Joane Cardinal-Schubert, LLD (Hon), RCA, achieved much success as an artist and garnered numerous awards during her lifetime. She was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA) and was awarded the Commemorative Medal of Canada, as well as the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal. The University of Calgary also bestowed her with an honorary doctor of laws. Although she died in 2009 from cancer, she remains a significant person in both Indigenous and Canadian art history.

The Writing on the Wall does a noteworthy job of demonstrating how Cardinal-Schubert’s personal life flowed into her work and contributes to the narrative of Indigenous and Canadian art history. Her journey to becoming a successful Kainai artist is worth knowing and reconsidering, especially in the era of Truth and Reconciliation.

—Yvonne N. Tiger SUMMER 2018 | 85

EDITORIAL

NUANCES OF CENSORSHIP The National Coalition Against Censorship panel discussion at the College Art Association’s Annual Conference, 2018, Los Angeles, California

By Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

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T THE 2018 COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION (CAA) conference, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) organized the panel, “Who Can Speak for Whom? Artistic Freedom and the Challenges of Dealing with Historical Trauma,” in response to the recent controversies over Dana Schutz’s painting, Open Casket, of the corpse of Emmett Till, an African-American teenager who was lynched in 1955, shown at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and the dismantling of Sam Durant’s Scaffold at the Walker Art Center. As the abstract stated, the panel proposed to “discuss the ethical issues involved in historical representation, and consider what artists and institutions can do to uphold artistic freedom, while also responding to demands for social justice.” Moderator and NCAC director of programs Svetlana

Mintcheva feared that “Free speech is no longer the good guy in the room” since artists are not free to explore all topics, regardless of differences in race, class, and culture between the artist and the subject. The panel posited the idea that limitations on artists in terms of what they can represent due to their race equals censorship. The panelists included artists Sam Durant and Vanessa Place and curators Anne Ellegood, and Pilar Tompkins Rivas1 chosen because they had been perceived as censored, though no censorship was shown. No one on the panel had their work removed or altered without their approval. No one was denied their right to speak. All faced criticism, but the works were designed to provoke strong reactions. For example, Place hoped to spark a dialogue about race by tweeting the entire text of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the

1. Naima J. Keith, California African American Museum, was scheduled but did not participate.

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Wind illustrated with a Mammy figure.

Though she lost speaking engagements, Place continued with her tweets and has received even more press and more speaking invitations, such as this panel.

For Durant, censorship took the form of removing a work of public sculpture that was causing pain. Mintcheva described Sam Durant as “doing the work of the angels,” addressing historic traumas in his work such as Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions to memorialize the Native Americans killed during the American Indian Wars. Scaffold is a wooden representation of original gallows used in the 1862 hanging of 38 Dakota men at Mankato under the orders of Abraham Lincoln. In his artist’s statement, Durant wrote, “I made Scaffold as a learning space for people like me, white people who have not suffered the effects of a white supremacist society and who may not consciously know that it exists. It has been my belief that white artists need to address issues of white supremacy and its institutional manifestations.” The sculpture was shown three times in Europe without controversy before it traveled to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, located near the tribal lands of the Santee, or Eastern Dakota. The tribe objected to having their trauma displayed without their permission or input and, with the help of tribal members, the sculpture was dismantled.

The artist blames the United States government for the controversy due to its unwillingness to address the sins of the past. He calls for vergangenheitsbewältigung, “coming to terms with the negatives of the past,” with a truth and reconciliation panel, as happened in Germany after World War II, in South

EDITORIAL

Africa after apartheid, and in Rwanda (1986), Durham states, “Indian penises after the 1994 genocide. While learning are unusually large and colorful.” The more about the role of the United States accompanying catalogue edited by in the history of Native American tribes Ellegood mentions his Native heritage is certainly a worthwhile goal, it is hard repeatedly. Ellegood argued that she to imagine how there could be a truth wasn’t “comfortable discussing Jimmie and reconciliation panel for an event as a white guy” in her catalogue because that took place over 150 years ago, and it would invalidate earlier scholarship by it was disheartening to hear Durant writers including Jean Fisher, Paul Chaat disavow any wrongdoing. He began Smith (Comanche), and others. Though his presentation with a quote from he is not enrolled and not recognized filmmaker Albert Maysles: “Tyranny is by any of the three Cherokee tribes, she the deliberate removal of nuance,” yet considers Durham’s Native heritage as a he seems unaware of his own lack of simple matter: “either you believe him, or above Execution Is Not Art. A protest sign nuance and his own tyrannical impulses. you don’t. And I do.” Ellegood explains against Sam Durant’s Scaffold sculpture on His approach to history demonstrates his lack of enrollment as the artist’s the perimeter fence of the Walker Art Center’s sculpture garden, June 2017. a sense of entitlement, that all events disdain not only for the system and for and all traumas are his to illustrate. The the United States government in general opposite Native Trauma Is Not Art, one of the effort behind Scaffold was flawed from and why he hasn’t been in the country signs that lined the perimeter fence around the Walker’s sculpture garden, June 2017. Both the beginning: if Durant planned to since 1995. photos: Lorie Shaull (CC BY-SA 2.0). reference an event in Dakota history, he Ellegood, too, realized that should have started with Dakota tribal Durham’s history is far more interesting Art Museum (PAM), announced in the governments, brought in tribal histo- if he is Native. She could have consulted session “Visualizing Genocide” why rians, and partnered with Native artists. the Cherokee tribal governments at any she left PAM, and France Trépanier Instead of countering “white supremacist point in her ten years of planning the (Mohawk), an artist and curator, released society” as he described it, he demon- show, though she argues in her defense an open letter of resignation from her strated that very power to control the that she met with a group of Native position as Aboriginal curator at Open narrative. artists “for over four hours and listened Space in Victoria, British Columbia.

Hammer Museum curator Anne and listened” to their complaints.1 She Both Dartt and Trépanier expressed a Ellegood focused on the controversy waited before publishing her response sense of marginalization and that their around her exhibition, Jimmie Durham: to the controversy in artnet.com. organizations paid lip service to an At the Center of the World. Durham, Arguably, both Durant and interest in Native arts and cultures but an artist who had been active in the Ellegood perpetuated censorship more then subverted their efforts.

American Indian Movement (AIM) from than they suffered from it. Both denied Artist Vanessa Place mused about the 1960s through the 1980s and on the Native communities the right to tell an image of a trout painted by Gustav International Indian Treaty Council in their histories as they would like to Courbet, “How does it know that it does the 1970s, had identified as Cherokee. and instead co-opted the narratives not know?” Certainly here the panelists Then in 1993, the artist himself issued a for their own purposes. To see Native did not seem to know what it was that statement denying that he was Cherokee Americans posited as the bullies by two they did not know. As they sat on the or American Indian, perhaps in response of the four panelists was incomprehen- panel, their expressions full of incredto the passage of the Indian Arts and sible, especially given the general lack of ulous indignation, it was hard not to Crafts Act in 1990 that required anyone representation of Indigenous peoples in see entitlement. Durant and Ellegood claiming Native heritage to be legally administrations and the representation believe they were entitled to use Native enrolled or a designated tribal artisan. within museums and galleries. cultures however they saw fit, without Though the exhibition does not name NCAC missed the actual instances repercussions. The idea of censorship Durham as a member of a Cherokee of censorship discussed at the CAA presented by this panel is exclusive and tribe, his continued claim to Native heri- conference. For example, two noted essentially imperialist, in which history tage is persistent. A number of pieces in Native American scholars stated and imagery can be conquered and the show use materials associated with publicly that they left their positions colonized. In a final act of unintended Indigenous arts, such as feathers, shells, because their administrations subverted irony, a session about censorship ended turquoise, and fur. Moreover, some of the their efforts. Dr. Deana Dartt (Coastal without allowing the audience to ask titles reference the Cherokee language, Band Chumash), formerly curator of questions or make comments. From my like Tlunh Datsi, and in his Self-Portrait Native American art at the Portland perspective, this is actual censorship.

1. 1. In June 2017, after Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World opened at the Walker Art Center, its second venue, and after the catalogue was available, Heid and Louise Erdrich (Ojibwe), Dyani White Hawk (Lakota), and Rosy Simas (Seneca) met with Ellegood and Olga Viso, who later resigned as executive director of the Walker Art Center. —Ed.

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THE SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM This museum profile is part of a new series presenting collections of Indigenous art to explore how they originated, who stewards them, and how accessible they are. Most museums with permanent collections keep more than 90 percent in storage due to space and conservation restrictions.

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

A

CASE OF 54 ANCIENT Mesoamerican ceramic sculptures, ranging in size from less than two to more than seventeen inches, presents an extraordinary range of stylistic approaches to the human figure. Some have exaggerated bodily features or dramatic facial expressions. Headdresses, earspools, and necklaces beautify nearly all (fig. 1).

The works date from 1200 to 300 BCE and are now part of the Saint Louis Art Museum’s (SLAM) permanent collection.

A catalogue about this part of its holdings states, “Although heavily weighted toward Mesoamerica (70 percent), the

by Nichole Bridges, department head in for Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and more than 700 Indigenous American works from north of the Rio Grande, administered by Alexander Brier Marr, PhD, assistant curator of Native American Art. Of the former, 196 items (.04 percent) are viewable online, while 121 items (27 percent) of the Native American collection are accessible this way; however, Marr reports that “digital initiatives are a key priority in the current strategic plan.” The Saint Louis Art Museum has reviewed its collection for NAGPRA compliance and has no outstanding claims to its holdings.

Alexander Brier Marr has been the assistant curator of the collection since January 2016. I recently talked with Marr, who generously shared his knowledge of the collection. We met at the BeauxArts-style building constructed in 1904 for the World’s Fair (also known as the collection is unusually well rounded for Louisiana Purchase Exposition), though every significant style, medium, culture, Marr noted that William Clark exhibited and time period of ancient civilization Native art in the area much earlier in his from Mexico to Peru; and from Olmec role as a federal Indian agent.2 He also and Chavín, to Aztec and Inca.” 1 mentioned that Caroline Roth was one of Located 15 miles from Cahokia the first to gift Native art to the museum, Mounds, SLAM sits on historic Osage including Washoe degikup (type of and other Siouan-speaking peoples’ land baskets) and a miniature argillite totem near the confluence of the Mississippi pole in 1920. and Missouri Rivers. Of the 34,000 In a relatively progressive move for objects currently in its encyclopedic 1932, SLAM’s first purchases of Native art collection, the museum has more than were Basket Dance by Tonita Peña (San 5,200 works by Indigenous peoples in Ildefonso) and Winter Dance by Velino the Americas. The works are divided into Herrera (Zia), both watercolor paintings. two categories: Ancient American Art— A decade later, the museum bought ten about 4,500 works currently overseen early 20th-century Pueblo ceramic

1. Lee A. Parsons, Pre-Columbian Art: The Morton D. May and the Saint Louis Art Museum Collections (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), xi. While useful in some ways, this book, a reflection of its time, is written from a Eurocentric perspective, and nearly all the objects appear lifeless in black and white.

2. Alexander Marr in discussion with the author, February 2, 2018. See also: John C. Ewers, “William Clark’s Indian Museum in St. Louis 1816–1838,” in A Cabinet of Curiosities: Five Episodes in the Evolution of American Museums, ed. Whitfield J. Bell Jr. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967), 49–72.

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opposite St. Louis Art Museum, main building, designed by Cass Gilbert, at night. Image courtesy of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Photo: Robert Pettus (CC BY 2.0). right, fig. 1 Unknown Tlatilco artist, Multi-faced Female Figure, early to middle formative periods (1200–300 BCE), ceramic with slip and pigment, Lake Texcoco, Mexico.

Photo: Andrea L. Ferber, PhD. below Installation view of the Danforth Gallery’s Native American art exhibit curated in collaboration with Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota). Image courtesy of the St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri.

bowls and ten Southwest textiles from the Denver Art Museum, which were seeding collections in North America and Europe.

Morton D. May, heir and chairman of the May Department Stores, began giving his major collection of art to SLAM in 1946. Ranging from Italian Baroque paintings to Maya sculpture and German Expressionist prints, this eclectic array substantially increased SLAM’s holdings in Mesoamerican and Northwest Coast cultures. One particularly powerful item from this collection is a Nuxalk frontlet made from wood, copper, abalone shell, and mirrored glass. Painted vibrant indigo and red with some black, Marr pointed out that the iridescent shell and reflective mirrors made the mask more striking when worn in performance by firelight. The May collection includes more than one hundred Zapotec vessels from Oaxaca.

Visitors can see a portion of the stunning sculptures on the museum’s lower level.

These complex, painted grey earthenware pieces depict seated deities bedecked

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with masks, elaborate headdresses, and earspools (fig. 2).

One particularly unusual item in the SLAM collection is a painted carving recently reattributed to Simeon Stilthda (Haida, ca. 1799–1889), which the museum purchased in 1976 (fig. 3). Only three others like it are known to exist. Generally, Northwest Coast art is based in formline design, but this figurative sculpture is notably naturalistic and depicts an emaciated spiritual healer lying on his back. While the 2004 museum handbook attributes the work to John Gwaytihl (Haida, ca. 1820– 1912) and describes it as “a ritual object that would have been placed on top of a person’s coffin,” Marr and other scholars are certain it was made for the market.3 This is just one example of how continuous research alters our understanding of objects and history.

Another large gift arrived between 2010 and 2015: the Donald Danforth Jr. Collection, which consists of 251 reservation-era personal items—clothing, bags, cradleboards—from Plains nations. A 2013 museum expansion allowed Marr’s predecessor, Jill Ahlberg Yohe, PhD (now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art), to design and curate a 1358-square foot gallery designated for this acquisition. Like decolonizing initiatives at other museums, Yohe established a collaborative program wherein an Indigenous artist is invited to curate from the collection and bring their own interpretation to the galleries. In 2012 Yohe partnered with Arthur Amiotte (Oglala Lakota), and in 2014 she worked with Wendy Red Star above, left Unknown Nuxalk artist, Frontlet, ca. 1870, wood, pigment, copper, abalone, mirrored glass, 8½ × 6½ × 8 in., collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, gift of Morton D. May, 272:1982. All three images courtesy of the St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. left, fig. 2 Unknown Zapotec artist, Vessel in the Form of a Seated Male Figure, early classic period (250–600 CE), ceramic with pigment, 16 × 12¾ × 105/8 in., Oaxaca, Mexico, collection of the St. Louis Art Museum, gift of Morton D. May, 179:1979. above, opposite, fig. 3 Simeon Stilthda (Haida, ca. 1799–1889), Shaman Figure, 1830–1880, alder or cedar with pigment, 22 × 9 × 7½ in., collection of the St. Louis Art Museum, 132:1976.

3. John Nunley, Saint Louis Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (St. Louis, 2004), 138; museum gallery text.

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(Apsáalooke). Marr chose Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) for the project in 2016. She, in turn, worked closely with specialists and elders at Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations to inform her curatorial choices. From 107 Lakota items, she chose to display an awl case, knife case, cradleboard, moccasins, and bags similarly adorned in glass beads (see page 89). Readers can learn more about this collection in the beautiful, full-color catalogue, Plains Indian Art of the Early Reservation Era: The Donald Danforth Jr. Collection at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

The East Building, the expansion with 21 galleries, showcases mostly contemporary art. Diffused, natural light from a coffered ceiling provides ideal viewing conditions (comparable to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas). Here, White Hawk’s painting, All That Glitters (2014), hangs next to Glenn Ligon’s text-based work, Study for Frankenstein #1 (1992), and across from Joan Mitchell’s lyrical Ici (1992).

Though the introductory wall text for the gallery incorrectly credits Europeans for

developing abstraction, the placement of White Hawk’s painting demonstrates its rightful standing: in dialogue with work by Julie Mehretu, Brice Marden, Sherrie Levine, and other contemporary artists. This painting is currently on loan, though SLAM has purchased or been gifted prints by Fritz Scholder (Luiseño), Wendy Red Star, and several Inuit artists, including Hannah Kigusiuq and Victoria Mamnguqsualuk. Some other contemporary Native artists in the collection include D. Y. Begay (Navajo), Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne), Susan Point (Musqueam), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Sqelix’u-Métis-Shoshone), Jessie Oonark (Inuk), and Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Ojibwe).

Marr looks forward to future collaborations with living artists and additional ways to bridge the contemporary and the historical. This very brief glimpse into a modestly sized art collection reveals how much research has yet to be done and the limitless potential for new projects and initiatives.

ADVENTURE AND AND INTRIGUE INTRIGUE ADVENTURE FROM COVER COVER TO TO COVER. COVER. FROM What You’ll Learn May Surprise You. What You’ll Learn May Surprise You. • “Cherokee Newspapers, 1828-1906: Tribal Voice of a People in Transition” •• “Cherokee 1828-1906: Voice ofVolumes a People1-7 in Transition” “Records ofNewspapers, the Moravians Among theTribal Cherokees” •• “Records of the Moravians Among theInstitutions Cherokees”Among Volumes “The Development of Law and Legal the1-7 Cherokees” •• “The and Legal Institutions Among the Cherokees” “The Development Life and TimesofofLaw Reverend Stephen Foreman” • “The Life and Times of Reverend Stephen Foreman” Enjoy these and many other hard-to-find books on Cherokee history and culture.

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SUMMER 2018 | 91

— MEMORIAL —

JAMES LUNA February 9, 1950 – March 4, 2018

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OCIAL MEDIA EXPLODED, and the world mourned in the days and weeks following the passing of James Luna. He was not only an active, prolific artist, but a gentle, sweet man who was beloved in the art and Native communities. With his passing came a flood of sentiments from family, friends, and admirers across the globe; photos and passages remembering his brilliance, his kindness, his humor.

A handful of recollections shared here attempts to capture what Luna’s life meant to us, as artists, as California Indian people, and as members of a world community transformed by his presence.

“James Luna is one of the most important contemporary Native artists of our day,” Jazz Halfmoon (Confederated Umatilla Tribes) writes. Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation), director of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, writes, “His art and contributions to the art world will live on in institutions and publications, but more importantly, he will live on in perpetuity in people’s minds and hearts.”

Internationally renowned performance and installation artist James Luna (Puyukitchum-Ipai-Mexican-American) was the most influential artist to come out of Native California in my lifetime. His iconic works often dealt with issues unique to the history of California Indians, giving voice to a misunderstood and certainly misrepresented reality of our contemporary lives. He confronted such issues as missionization and the colonial legacy of our mixed-heritage reality, a position fraught with conflict and the residual trauma of unhealed wounds. James found ways to draw them into the open, histories poignant and excruciating—grounded in his own experience—in ways that were liberating, empowering and usually hilarious.

His work to illuminate the genocide of the mission system manifested in a special issue of News from Native California, and that work continues today as several California Native artists and scholars plan an exhibition that honors his legacy.

Museums in California are especially blind to authentic Native histories and prone to glorifying the “primitive” Native, so the prime spot for debuting his most iconic work, The Artifact Piece (1987), was the Museum of Man in San Diego was. For the piece, he utilized his own body as the subject/ object. Wearing only a buckskin loincloth in true, “real Indian” top James Luna performing The Artifact Piece, Museum of Man, San Diego, California, 1987.

Courtesy of the IAIA Archives, MS 25-James Luna Archive, box 02f25-1, Santa Fe, New Mexico. bottom James Luna, 2014, Palm Springs, California. Photo: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation).

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fashion, he lay prone in a museum vitrine. At his memorial in March, his mother recalled her reaction to encountering this work at the exhibition’s opening. So shocked she was to find her son’s body on display, she shouted, “Peepers! What are you doing in there?!” The display included references to his scars and birthmarks as well as a few personal items—his wallet, car keys, and driver’s license—to complete the authentic, ethnographic diorama.

Best known, most memorable, and where Luna was truly in his element, were his live performances, however.

Countless stories about his performances recall them as heart wrenching, hilarious, poignant, and groundbreaking.

“James was amazing at turning raw anger into laughter and then back to anger, but in a way that purified it,” writes Lindsie Bear (Cherokee descent), former editor of News from Native California. “The setups had to be so meticulous, so that the moment he was creating seemed spontaneous and flawless. He was so collected that it was hard to remember how much of himself he revealed in his pieces. They were satire, but they were also heartfelt.”

Luna could be irreverent and downright silly at times, too, says California artist Monique Sonoqui (YaquiChumash). “There was that one time at the America Indian Film Festival when he came out playing the flute! Then I realized that it was a sausage he was ‘playing,’ and that the music was maybe a Carlos Nakai CD. The audience, a little slow, was still in awe of his amazing flute playing, when finally, he stops playing, [and] with the music still going, he [launches] the sausage into the audience,” she laughs.

“His homage to Payomkowishum scholar Pablo Tac through an installation he created at the Venice Biennale captured the continuity of Indigenous culture that survived colonization,” says scholar Yve Chavez (Tongva). “Luna’s dedication to his community and representing the lived experiences of Native peoples is inspirational. He will be greatly missed. Like James Luna, we will continue to push for greater representation of our communities and bring Native voices to the forefront of narratives about California’s first peoples.”

At times, it was through photography that he unsettled the Indian stereotype as Half Indian/Half Mexican (1991–2011), Luna’s statement on the absurdity of being of measurable, mixed-blood ancestry.

“Luna used photography to preserve performance actions into images that have a dramatic voice of their own. Luna is internationally renowned for powerful work that transforms gallery spaces into battlefields, confronting the audience with the nature of cultural identity,” says Alessandra Moctezuma (Chicana), a professor at San Diego Mesa College and director of the Mesa Art Gallery.

We are all still talking about you, reflecting, and laughing, Dr. Luna. Your humor, your insight, and your commitment live on through your work and the impact you’ve made on our work and our hearts.

—Deana Dartt, PhD

— MEMORIAL —

BAHE WHITETHORNE JR. February 21, 1977–March 26, 2018

K

above Bahe Whitethorne Jr. (Navajo) painting at 1Spot Gallery, Phoenix, 2016. Photo: Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa).

NOWN AS “BUDDY,” Bahe Whitethorne Jr. was a much-admired painter, illustrator, musician, and graphic designer from the Navajo Nation. He was of the Tsi’naajínii, Blackstreak Wood People clan, and born for Lók’aa’ Dine’é, the Reed People clan. His family includes jewelers, textile and ceramic artists, and painters—most notably his father, Baje Whitethorne Sr., who provided him with art supplies and encouragement throughout his childhood in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Whitethorne Jr. earned bachelor degrees in computer science from the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque and in graphic design from the Art Institutes in Pittsburgh.

From 2001 to 2009, Whitethorne worked as art director for Salina Bookshelf, Inc., a bilingual Navajo-English publisher. He later illustrated Seth Muller’s trilogy for young adults, Keepers of the Windclaw Chronicles: The Day of Storms, The Great Gathering, and The Mockingbird’s Manual.

In recent years, Whitethorne had pursued painting full time.

His love of anime influenced his works in oils, acrylics, watercolors, and airbrush. He constantly pushed his technique and cultivated rendering skills while keeping a street art/comic edge. He exhibited at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 1Spot Gallery, Prescott Indian Market, and other venues in the Southwest. Whitethorne shared his passion for art with Native youth. He spoke regularly at Navajo schools, taught plein air watercolor painting through Grand Canyon Youth, and painted an 18-foot-long mural at Tuba City Boarding School. He had also started working on a mural at STAR School, a charter elementary school in the Navajo Nation.

The artist’s many friends and admirers were stunned by his sudden passing this spring. Shonto’s Rock the Canyon Art & Music Festival will honor him at this year’s event in late May. Buddy Whitethorne leaves a remarkable legacy in his corpus of paintings, illustrations, and murals that will continue to inspire new audiences.

—America Meredith SUMMER 2018 | 93

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May 3–31: Seattle, WA Reflections of Our Ancestors: Lillian Pitt & Dan Friday at Stonington Gallery, 125 S. Jackson Street | (206) 405-4040 | stoningtongallery.com

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May 4–June 10: Kansas City, MO Porfirio Gutiérrez (Zapotec): Rituals at Travois, 310 W. 19th Terrace.

Reception: Friday, May 4 | (816) 994-8970 | travois.com May 4–June 23: Bemidji, MN Indanishinaabekwew: I am an Anishinaabe Woman, solo exhibition for Hillary Kempenich, at the Watermark Art Center, 505 Bemidji Avenue North | (218) 444-7570 | watermarkartcenter.org May 4–September 3: Phoenix, AZ Dear Listener: Works by Nicholas Galanin at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue | (602) 252-8840 | heard.org | dearlistener.org May 5–June 16: Montreal, QC Contemporary Native Art Biennial, 4th edition, at Art Mûr, 5826 St-Hubert | +1 (514) 933-0711 | baca.ca May 12: Seattle, WA Native Art Market at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, 17th Avenue NE and NE 45th Street | (206) 543-5590 | burkemuseum.org Gomeo Bobelu, pin/pendant. actual size

227 don gaspar, santa fe, nm 505.989.8728 www.keshi.com since 1981 fetishes jewelry pottery

May 12–August 7: Treviso, Italy Post Colonial Frames/Landing Americas at B#Side Gallery, Vicolo Isola di Mezzo, 3/5 | +39 375 5532009 | bsidewar.org May 12, 2018–January 6, 2109: Los Angeles, CA Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain at the Autry Museum of the American West, 4700 Western Heritage Way (323) 667-2000 | froelickgallery.com | theautry.org

May 13–August 12: Denver, CO Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at the Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th 3/17/18 4:37 PM Avenue Parkway | (720) 865-5000 | denverartmuseum.org

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May 13–October 7: Santa Fe, NM Memory Weaving: Works by Melanie Yazzie and Peshlakai Vision at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 704 Camino Lejo (505) 982-4636 | wheelwright.org May 17–October 29: Cody, WY Native Nations Now at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, 720 Sheridan Avenue | (307) 587-4771 | centerofthewest.org May 18–20: Bar Harbor, ME Abbe Museum Indian Market in downtown Bar Harbor (207) 288-3519 | abbemuseum.org May 18–October 8: Victoria, BC Arts of Resistance: Politics and the Past in Latin America at the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, 6393 NW Marine Drive +1 (604) 822-5087 | moa.ubc.ca

appraisals for Insurance, Estates, Donations, Divorce Identification of Items • Inventory of Collections appraisals of rugs, basketry, pottery, jewelry, paintings, sculpture, graphics

Leona M. Zastrow, PhD 505-466-8581 ✠ epicinc@earthlink.net americanindianartappraising.com

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May 19, 2018–April 7, 2019: Indianapolis, IN Harry Fonseca: The Art of Living at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 W. Washington Street. Reception: Friday, May 18 | (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org May 20: Minneapolis, MN For Directions, a five-gallery art crawl, hosted by All My Relations Arts, 1414 E. Franklin Avenue | (612) 235-4970 | allmyrelationsarts.com May 20–September 16: Los Angeles, CA Decoding Mimbres Painting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard | (323) 857-6000 | lacma.org May 25 & 26: Sulphur, OK Fourth annual Artesian Arts Festival, sponsored by the Chickasaw Nation, in Artesian Plaza | (580) 272-5520 | chickasaw.net

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May 25–27: Santa Fe, NM Native Treasures Indian Arts Festival, hosted by the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, at the Santa Fe Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street | (505) 216-0683 | nativetreasures.org May 26 & 27: Flagstaff, AZ Zuni Festival of Arts & Culture at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 3101 N. Fort Valley Road | (928) 774-5213 | musnaz.org May 26–July 27: Brantford, ON Gichitwaawizi’igewin: Honouring and the 44th annual Indigenous Art (formerly called the First Nations Art Exhibition), juried art show, at the Woodland Cultural Centre, 184 Mohawk Street +1 (519) 759-2650 | woodland-centre.on.ca May 26–August 19: Winnipeg, MB SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 300 Memorial Boulevard | +1 (204) 786-6641 | wag.ca June 1–3: Oneida, WI Woodland Indian Art Show & Market at the Oneida Radisson Hotel & Conference Center, 2040 Airport Drive. Free admission.

(920) 490-3985 | woodlandindianart.com June 1–July 31: Kansas City, MO Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan-Arikara-Hidatsa-Lakota): Life Is Breathtaking at Travois, 310 W. 19th Terrace. Reception: Friday, June 1 (816) 994-8970 | travois.com June 3–August 12: Pine Ridge, SD 50th annual Red Cloud Indian Art Show at the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School, 100 Mission Drive (605) 867-5491 | redcloudschool.org/ArtShow June 3: Santa Fe, NM What’s New in New: Selections from the Carol Warren Collection at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, 710 Camino Lejo (505) 476-1269 | indianartsandculture.org June 8–10: Oklahoma City, OK 32nd annual Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival at the Cox Convention Center, 1 Myriad Gardens | (405) 427-5228 | redearth.org June 8–September 9: Norman, OK Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Avenue | (405) 325-3272 | chickasawartists.com June 9, 2018–February 3, 2019: Minneapolis, MN The Horse Nation of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 Third Avenue South, (612) 870-3000, and All My Relations Gallery, 1414 E Franklin Avenue, (612) 235-4970 redcloudschool.org/horsenation June 14–September 9: Seattle, WA Double Exposure: Edward S. Curtis, Marianne Nicolson, Tracy Rector, Will Wilson at the Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Avenue (206) 645-3100 | seattleartmuseum.org June 15–17: Crazy Horse, SD Gift from Mother Earth Art Show, art market, at the Crazy Horse Memorial, 12151 Avenue of the Gods (605) 673-4681 | crazyhorsememorial.org June 16–August 12: Toronto, ON Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak at the Art Gallery of Toronto, 317 Dundas Street | +1 (877) 225-4246 | ago.ca June 17–September 9: Calgary, AB Alex Janvier: Modern Indigenous Master at the Glenbow Museum, 130 9th Avenue SE | (403) 268-4100 | glenbow.org June 19–July 2: Idyllwild, CA Native American Arts Festival at Idyllwild Arts, 52500 Temecula Road (951) 659-2171 | idyllwildarts.org SUMMER 2018 | 95

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June 21–November 25: Thunder Bay, ON Mino-bimaadiziwin: Christi Belcourt, also featuring the art of Isaac Murdoch, at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 1080 Keewatin Street +1 (807) 577-6427 | theag.ca June 23 & 24: Okmulgee, OK Council House Art Market at the Muscogee Creek Nation Council House, 106 W. 6th Street. Open to all tribes | (918) 549-2434 | creekfestival.com June 22–24: Indianapolis, IN Eiteljorg Indian Market & Festival at the Eiteljorg Museum, 500 W. Washington Street | (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org June 30 & July 1: Flagstaff, AZ 85th annual Hopi Festival of Arts & Culture at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 3101 N. Fort Valley Road | (928) 774-5213 | musnaz.org June 30–July 18: Santa Fe, NM Contemporary Traditions, solo exhibition of David Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo) at Singular Couture, 66 E. San Francisco Street. Reception: Saturday, June 30, 2:00–5:00 pm | (505) 575-6751 | singularcouture.com July 6–8: Collinsville, IL Cahokia Mounds Contemporary Indian Art Show at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, 30 Ramey Street | (618) 346-5160 | cahokiamounds.org July 12–October 21: Toronto, ON Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental at the Art Gallery of Toronto, 317 Dundas Street | +1 (877) 225-4246 | ago.ca

(855) NAAA-INC EMAIL INFO@NAAAINC.COM VISIT WWW.NAAAINC.COM CALL

July 8: Bar Harbor, ME Native American Festival and Basketmakers Market at the College of the Atlantic, 105 Eden Street | (207) 288-3519 | maineindianbaskets.org July 13 & 14: Rapid City, SD 4th annual Native POP: People of the Plains, A Gathering of Arts & Culture in Main Street Square | (605) 394-4101 | nativepop.org July 14 & 15: Prescott, AZ Prescott Indian Art Market at the Sharlot Hall Museum, 415 W. Gurley Street | (928) 277-2013 | sharlot.org/festival/prescott-indian-art-market July 14–October 7: Tulsa, OK T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America at Gilcrease Museum, 1400 N. Gilcrease Museum Road | (918) 596-2700 | gilcrease.org July 21 & 22: Newburyport, MA Third annual Cultural Survival Bazaar at Market Square and Inn Street, 10:00 am–5:00 pm | (617) 441-5400 x15 | bazaar.culturalsurvival.org July 27–October 12: Anadarko, OK Phyllis Whitecloud, solo exhibition for this Kiowa-Ponca regalia maker, at the Southern Plains Indian Museum, 801 E. Central Boulevard | (405) 247-6221 | doi.gov/iacb/southern-plains-indian-museum July 28–July 7, 2019: Santa Fe, NM Action/Abstraction Redefined at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 108 Cathedral Place | (505) 983-1666 | iaia.edu/museum July 28–October 2019: New York, NY Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean | Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean at the National Museum of the American Indian, 1 Bowling Green | (212) 514-3700 | nmai.si.edu July 28 & 29: Tiverton, RI Cultural Survival Bazaar at Tiverton Four Corners Arts Center, 3852 Main Road | (617) 441-5400 x15 | bazaar.culturalsurvival.org July 29, 2018–January 20, 2019: Denver, CO Eyes On: Julie Buffalohead at Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway | (720) 865-5000 | denverartmuseum.org For more events, visit our online calendar at

FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM/CALENDAR 96 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

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You think hobbies, we Think Cherokee.

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21192 S. KEELER DR., PARK HILL , OK 74451 (888) 999-60 07 • CHEROKEEHERITAGE.ORG © 2018 Cherokee Heritage Center. All Rights Reserved.

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Wheelwright Museum OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

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Memory Weaving: Works by Melanie Yazzie

704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, NM 87505 1- 800 -607- 4636 • www.wheelwright.org

PESHLAKAI VISION

MAY 13 – OCTOBER 7, 2018

Support for Memory Weaving: Works by Melanie Yazzie and Peshlakai Vision is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and many other donors. Photos: Addison Doty.