First American Art Magazine No 10, Spring 2016

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

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

No. 10, Spring 2016

Wisconsin’s Effigy Mounds American Indian Art Magazine Brian Honyouti’s Carved Portraits Poetry of Tanya Lukin Linklater

Angela Babby Cliff Fragua Luis González Palma June Lee

DUSTIN MATER

BRENT GREENWOOD

MARGARET WHEELER

NELSON GARCIA

MIKE LARSEN

DANIEL WORCESTER

S AT U R DAY, M AY 2 8 N A T I V E

A M E R I C A N

BRENDA KINGERY

A R T I S T S

from across the country will gather in Sulphur, Oklahoma for the world’s fastest-growing Native art market. Welcome!

JOANNA UNDERWOOD BLACKBURN

W E S T M U S KO G E E AV E . , S U L P H U R , O K • 5 8 0 - 2 7 2 - 5 5 2 0

Shan Goshorn

www.shangoshorn.com

It is the mothers, not the warriors, who create a people and guide their destiny.

— Luther Standing Bear (Oglala Lakota)

Vessel, 2015. Set of three Cherokee basket columns woven with paper splints.

Collection of the Denver Art Museum.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 1

FROELick GaLLERY

Rick BaRTOW Things You Know BuT CannoT Explain a retrospective exhibition and fully illustrated catalogue examines his work since 1979.

Organized by the Jordan Schintzer Museum of art, University of Oregon. 2016 tour dates include: January 15 to april 30, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa august 14 to December 31, iaia Museum of contemporary Native arts, Santa Fe Rick Bartow, Buck, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 72˝x 72˝ photo: Rebekah Johnson

Froelick Gallery represents contemporary artists including: Rick Bartow, Wiyot Joe Feddersen, Colville Victor Maldonado, Purépecha lineage Gail Tremblay, Mi’kmaq and Onondaga 714 NW Davis, Portland, OR 97209 503.222.1142 FroelickGallery.com

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 3

V i c to r i a

Adams

Heard Museum Indian Market • March 5th & 6th • Phoenix • Booth # K-04 Victoria Adams • 505-670-6532 • info@victoriaadamsjewelry.com Sorrel Sky Gallery • 125 W. Palace Ave. Santa Fe • 505-501-6555 • sorrelsky.com 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

American Indian and Western Art Live Salesroom Auction April 8, 2016 10:00 am ET Including items from the collection of Lieutenant James L. Ritchie (1938-2015), Toledo, OH. Bid in person, by phone, absentee or live online.

View Catalog online early March at cowans.com or request a printed catalog by emailing “FAA416” to catalogs@cowans.com

Always Accepting Exceptional Consignments Contact American Indian Art Director Danica M. Farnand indianart@cowans.com 513.871.1670 x215 6270 Este Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45232

Pictured: Plateau Pony Beaded Hide Dress $15,000 - $25,000 To be offered April 2016

cowans.com

Arctic and Indian arts for the 21 century st

26 Maine Street Kennebunkport, Maine 207 967-2122

Celebrating Generations of Wabanaki Basket Makers in Maine

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

6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Issue No. 10, Spring 2016 FEATURES

48

DEPARTMENTS

Those Who are Above, 22 Those Who Are on Earth: Effigy Mounds of Southern Wisconsin America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

Recent Developments

16

Seven Directions Tom Farris (OtoeMissouria-Cherokee)

18

An “Indisputable Source”: A Short History of American Indian Art Magazine Gloria Bell (Métis)

30

Exploring Native Graphic Design Not Another Mascot Article Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa)

20

A Historical Continuum: The Portraits of Brian Honyouti Zena Pearlstone, PhD

32

Guest Column Is It a Copy, Or Is It a Copy?: The Claim of Copyright in Copies of Copies Kevin R. Kemper, PhD, LLM

“I Write For My Family”: A Conversation with Tanya Lukin Linklater Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

38

54

90

In Memoriam John Trudell (Santee Dakota) Staci Golar

89

Calendar

92

ARTIST PROFILES Angela Babby: Oglala Lakota Glass Artist Mary V. Bordeaux (Sicangu Lakota)

48

Cliff Fragua: Jemez Pueblo Sculptor Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

54

Luis González Palma: Mestizo Photographer Rosa Cays (Chicana)

60

June Lee: Seminole Textile Artist Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole)

66

REVIEWS 60

66

Art Exhibit Reviews

72

Book Reviews

81

Music Review

85

Report

86

COVER: Angela Babby (Oglala Lakota), detail of Wanagi (Ghost), 2012, vitreous enameled glass on tile board, 20 × 16 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

Wanagi (Ghost) is part of a series based on the 1865 photograph of Medicine Bottle (Mdewakanton Dakota, 1831–1865), a wicasa wakan, holy man. He was sentenced to hang by a Fort Snelling military tribunal for his participation in the 1862 Dakota War, despite the court’s lack of jurisdiction and witnesses’ testimonies that they did not see Medicine Bottle kill anyone in the war. Joel Emmons Whitney took the photograph of Medicine Bottle as he awaited execution at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. His countenance conveys a chilling sense of despair.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 7

WORKSHOPS AND FESTIVAL Issue No. 10, Spring 2016 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online) Owners: America Meredith and Mary Ellen Meredith (both Cherokee Nation) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD Marketing Director: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Circulation Manager: Melissa Dominguez Copy Editors and Proofreaders: Rosa Cays (Chicana), Staci Golar (CornishWelsh-American), and Ronda Rawlins Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Great Basin Representative: Melissa Melero (Fallon Paiute-Modoc) Great Lakes Representative: Kelly Church (Odawa-Ojibwe) Editorial Advisory Board: heather ahtone (Choctaw-Chickasaw) James Bialac, JD Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw) Maggie Ohnesorgen (Mestiza) Paula Rivera (Taos Pueblo) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole) Ken Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho-Seneca) Advertising Representative: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Contact: ads@firstamericanartmagazine.com Social Media: Jacquie Archambeau (Cherokee Nation), Melissa Dominguez, Staci Golar (Cornish-Welsh-American), Cathy Short (Citizen Potawatomi) International distribution by Disticor Magazine Distribution Services.

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

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

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

#iamtheIdyllwild

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

Questions About Subscriptions?

Subscription services, changes of address, and wholesale inquiries, email: circulation@firstamericanartmagazine.com or visit www.firstamericanartmagazine.com/subscriptions.

Letters Policy Letters to the editor are welcome and may be emailed to us at: info@firstamericanartmagazine.com or mailed to: First American Art Magazine, Attention: Editor 1000 Cordova Place #843, Santa Fe, NM 87505

www.firstamericanartmagazine.com Facebook: FirstAmericanArt info@firstamericanartmagazine.com Pinterest: FirstAmArt ads@firstamericanartmagazine.com Twitter: FirstAmArt circulation@firstamericanartmagazine.com First American Art Magazine is a Papyrus font-free publication.

8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

15_

58th Annual Heard Museum Guild

Celebrating the Art of Pottery March 5 & 6, 2016

Media sponsors:

2301 N. Central Ave. Phoenix, AZ

|

602.252.8840 x2276

|

heard.org/fair

From the Heard Museum Collection, Clockwise from Lower Left: Noreen Simplicio (Zuni), jar, 2002. Diego Romero (Cochiti), miniature bowl, 1998. Jason Garcia (Santa Clara), ceramic tile, 2009. Al Qöyawayma (Hopi), canteen, 1989.

Karen Abeita (Tewa-Hopi/Isleta), jar, 1999. Preston Duwyenie (Hopi), jar, late 1990s. Wanda Aragon (Acoma), jar, 1989.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

15_FirstAmericanArt_FullpageFAIR2016.indd 1

| 9

12/14/15 1:35 PM

Editor’s Greetings

A

FRIEND OF MINE, A. F. McILROY, once said, “If it’s written, it’s wrong.” I take his statement as a note of caution. With storytelling, oral history, conversation, or public speaking, the discussion is alive and fluid and can take new directions based on response.

Writing is a commitment; the words cannot be taken back.

On the other hand, writing spans years and even centuries and can cross the planet.

The corpus of writing about Native art is growing at a brisk pace with multiple perspectives represented, but we know that much of Native art history has never been written down, and much that has been recorded should be questioned for accuracy and bias. In academia, a reader is expected to read critically and question the material and the sources.

When writers are hurried and copy whatever has been previously written without fact checking, mistakes are repeated and amplified. A writer incorrectly said that T. C. Cannon was Choctaw as well as Kiowa and Caddo, and this mistake entered the literature. James Luna was erroneously described as a drug and alcohol counselor, and that gaffe snowballed.

“I have to say there is fear on our part as artists as how we are seen,” writes Luna.1 Allowing yourself to be interviewed, reviewed, or otherwise discussed in print takes a leap of faith. The writers and editors at First American Art Magazine strive to be worthy of that faith.

Journalists don’t always regard arts journalism as the most serious genre, but for us—the artists, collectors, scholars, curators, and other art professionals—this is our lifeblood, and we take it extremely seriously.

We strive to follow the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics and cite our sources, fact check, admit errors (hence, the “Errata” section, a necessary component of all serious periodicals), and keep advertising and editorial content separate. Avoiding conflicts of interest is a greater challenge, since the Indigenous American art world is an intimate community, and many of us wear many hats: writer, artist, curator, collector, and much more. We created “reports” as an alternative to reviews, for when the author is involved in the event being discussed in some manner.

The Seven Directions column reflects the authors’ personal opinions, so we encourage them to share projects in which they are involved. No one can be truly objective, but we try and remember to keep at the bigger picture in mind.

At First American Art Magazine, we take our commitments to truth seriously and strive to provide you, our reader, with an independent source for polyvalent perspectives of the Native art world guided by honesty, equity, and respect.

—America Meredith 1. James Luna, email correspondence with the author, January 12, 2015.

1 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Errata In “March of the Land Writers: Unsanctioned Indigenous Street Art Interventions” in FAAM Issue No. 9, the image of the blue, Northwest Coast bear on page 22 was misattributed to Baker and was actually painted by Larissa Healey aka gurltwentythree. In the same issue on page 80 in footnote number 2, Northwestern University was incorrectly listed as Northwest University.

Clarification Rachelle Dickenson, curator of Reading the Talk, identifies as British-Irish-Cree. In Matthew Ryan Smith’s review of the show on pages 78 and 79 of FAAM Issue No. 9, we identified her simply as “Cree.” While our writers are encouraged to share any of their ethnic backgrounds they deem appropriate in their biographies, in our articles and reviews we focus on the Indigenous tribal affiliations from the Americas. Exceptions we make are listing nationalities from the Americas and Chicano, Mestizo, and Métis heritage.

We list tribal affiliations because these are paramount to this publication’s mission.

For the reader who requested “more cowbell,” we’ll do you one better.

Unknown Tairona artist, Bell with Feline Deity, ca. 900–1500 CE, gold, Colombia, 2.1 × 1.1 × 1.3 in. Collection of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, 57.2288 (CC0).

Letters to FAAM Kathleen Wall Thank you so much for First American Art Magazine [Issue No. 8, Winter 2015]. I wanted to say that the back cover with Kathleen Wall’s art is so cool. Something told me to open the back page, and one day I am going to visit the Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry! Turquoise is my favorite, and it says the museum space is devoted to Native American jewelry and related traditions. That sounds awesome.

Rhonda Meredith Houston, TX

Cleaning Silver Jewelry The article in the last issue about cleaning silver jewelry [Issue No. 9, Winter 2015/16] featured Hopi overlay pieces with blackened areas. If the method used for cleaning silver was used on the Hopi overlay, it would totally wipe out the patina. No chemicals, even household cleaners, should ever be used … only a rouge polishing rag. We’re just sayin’!

Paulette & Fred Mares Southwest Traditions Estes Park, CO

Lineal Descent I am trying to deal with how I present my art, being authentic to myself while still staying within compliance of the IACA [Indian Arts and Crafts Act]. I see that you list an artist and his tribe, but I did notice an exception: you listed one name and then “Cherokee descent.” I assume that was the case because, though he is Cherokee by blood, as am I, he lacks tribal membership.

Is that correct?

I am really trying to maintain my right to self-identify without having legal consequences for being who I am. I have been doing a lot of research on the topic, but finding that there is very little to no case law. Being Indian often means being the only ethnic group that is required to prove who we are.

Wado, Sarah via email

Identifying someone as “of descent” requires a direct lineage to reference. It is problematic to become the source for justifying or authentication.

I also recognize that there are people for whom their relationships to their identity have been truncated by previous generations. There are and have always been people who are members of our community who are not enrolled but are recognized by the community. As for the IACA, the language is clear and I support compliance—one should not claim something that is not verifiable.

—heather ahtone It’s good to remember that no laws prevent anyone from being an artist. People can create whatever art they want. The 1990 American Indian Arts and Crafts Act states who can exhibit as a Native American artist, which is defined as an enrolled member of a federal- or state-recognized tribe or a designated tribal artisan. Placing a tribal affiliation next to one’s name is assuming responsibility and accountability to that tribe. Artists, whether we like it or not, reflect upon our communities.

As Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi-Muscogee) says, “Artists are the ambassadors.”

Tribal membership and Native identity are complex and contested. While the AICA law considers members of state-recognized tribes to be Native American, many organizations don’t.

State-recognized range from the Chinook Tribe (which gained federal recognition in 2001 only to have it taken away the next year) to the CherO-Creek Intra Tribal Indians, whose members offer no proof of Indian heritage.

Cherokees, possibly the best-documented ethnic group in the United States, are unique in that non-Cherokees who claim to be Cherokee vastly outnumber actual Cherokees, and as the US Census indicates, this number keeps increasing.

In the United States, Native Americans have to prove their identity because being Native American is not just an ethnicity; it’s a political status. Tribes have sovereign rights that extend to their citizens. Becoming a US citizen requires proof of identification, as does becoming a tribal member. Whenever something could be gained by falsely claiming to be Native—land, money, scholarships—certain non-Native people have done so, for over a century.

Some tribes have blood quantum requirements, residency requirements, or simply close their rolls at certain points. There are instances

in which a person can enroll but their sibling cannot; or parents can enroll but their children cannot. People are disenrolled, and some tribes reserve the right to ostracize members who engage in criminal activities. Bradley Kahlhamer is a well-known artist of Native American descent who was adopted out so does not know from which tribe he descends. Several of our writers have Native heritage but choose not to publicly identify in that way.

Regarding case law, United States of America vs. Terry Lee Whetstone was filed on September 9, 2015, in US District Court for the Western District of Missouri. Whetstone pleaded guilty to falsely representing himself as a Cherokee artist. He was sentenced to three years’ probation and has to disclose he is not Cherokee or Native American.

You are correct that FAAM uses “descent” to describe someone who is not an enrolled tribal member but is of Native heritage. This subject is topical in that Matthew Ryan Smith reviews NMAI’s Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians in Popular Culture in this issue.

The organizers didn’t vet the people included in the exhibit, so we did extensive genealogical research on the musicians mentioned in the review. The exhibit includes people who are known to have no Indian blood. Johnny Cash, like so many Americans, grew up being told he was Cherokee, but as an adult, he researched his genealogy and discovered he wasn’t Cherokee or any other tribe—a fact he freely admitted.1 That did not stop him from being an outspoken advocate for Indigenous rights. It was never verified whether Link Wray had any Shawnee blood as he claimed, so we use the term self-identified.

First American Art Magazine strives to be as accurate, open, and honest on the subject of tribal affiliation and Indigenous descent as possible. We comply with the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act and the 2008 Cherokee Nation Cherokee Artists Act, while acknowledging that some people have Indigenous descent but do not qualify as Native American artists under these laws.

—America Meredith We welcome your letters to the editor! If we print your letter, we will send you a free copy of that issue.

Please email your letters to us at info@firstamericanartmagazine.com or mail letters to First American Art Magazine 1000 Cordova Place, #843 Santa Fe, NM 87505.

1. Leigh H. Edwards, Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 107–108.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 11

THINK CHEROKEE YEAR ‘ROUND To Preserve, Promote and Teach Cherokee History and Culture

Experience the Cherokee way of life when you visit the Cherokee Heritage Center. Immerse yourself in the living 1710 village, Diligwa, and explore cultural artifacts, art and history in the museum’s galleries and genealogy archives. Discover the legacy that defined a nation.

DON’T MISS THIS YEAR’S ART SHOWS TRAIL OF TEARS ART SHOW & SALE 4/9 TO 5/7 Enjoy and purchase authentic Native American art presented in one of the country’s most prestigious multi-tribal art shows.

CHEROKEE HOMECOMING ART SHOW & SALE 8/27 TO 9/24 Don’t miss this exclusive exhibition and sale of modern and traditional art, set amidst the pageantry of the Cherokee National Holiday.

CHEROKEE NATIONAL TREASURES ART SHOW & SALE 10/1 TO 11/5 Don’t miss this event featuring exquisite artwork from treasured artisans who keep Cherokee culture and art thriving.

21192 S KEELER DR, PARK HILL, OK 74451 (888) 999-6007 • CHEROKEEHERITAGE.ORG 1 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

“5:00 Friday” Troy Jackson, Cherokee Nation

Connoisseurship & Good Pie Ted Coe and Collecting Native Art

From the Ralph T. Coe Foundation at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian Santa Fe, NM through April 17, 2016!

The Ralph T. Coe Foundation for the Arts is open to the public the first Friday of each month, 1 to 3 pm. For other times, please call for an appointment.

Experience the Coe Foundation collection through our on-site and intimate exhibitions, and open storage.

1590 B Pacheco Street Santa Fe, NM 87505 www.ralphtcoefoundation.org • (505) 983-6372

W

W

Cottage, 2000. Irene Desmoulin (1920-2013), Odawa, Manitoulin Island, Ontario.

7.25 x 7 in. Birchbark, quills, sweetgrass, and dye. Photo by Addison Doty.

Wheelwright Museum

OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 13

Contributing Writers GLORIA BELL (Métis) is a writer and researcher based in Vancouver, where she is pursuing her PhD in art history at the University of British Columbia. She worked as the web editor for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and as an intern at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. Her current research is focused on the relationships between the Vatican and Indigenous arts, specifically the 1925 Pontifical Missionary Exhibition in Rome. Bell has heritage ties to the Métis at Red River Settlement and Cree in James Bay. She is a Vanier scholar and holds a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

MARY V. BORDEAUX (Sicangu Lakota) lives in Rapid

City, South Dakota. She graduated from the University of Arts in Philadelphia with a master of fine arts degree focused on museum exhibition planning and design. She received her associate’s and bachelor’s degrees in museum studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Bordeaux is the museum curator and director of cultural affairs at the Indian Museum of North America located at the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills. She is a member of the South Dakota Arts Council Board. Previously she served as director and curator of the Heritage Center at the Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

Oklahoma, where he taught in the Native American studies program and lectured in the School of Art and Art History. Hale is a former curator of private, corporate, and nonprofit art collections and has written and lectured for several publications and museums.

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

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

MICHELLE LANTERI is a freelance writer and master of arts

student in art history and Native American studies at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. She holds two bachelor of arts degrees in media studies and art history/museum studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For two years, she served as a curatorial assistant at Greenhill, a contemporary art center in North Carolina. Lanteri’s current projects are an exhibition focused on Hopi arts and culture that will open at the New Mexico State University Museum in April 2016, and her thesis centered on the musealization of Native American artworks.

worked with a variety of publishing companies, magazines, and authors over the last 25 years. A second-generation native of Arizona, she is an Arizona State University graduate, has traveled in Spain and Mexico, and has worked in film, education, art, and other exciting sectors. Cays has lived in the Pacific Northwest, Los Angeles, and Santa Fe, and now happily resides in historic Jerome, Arizona. She’s been with First American Art Magazine as a copy editor/proofreader since Issue No. 5.

DOYLE LOGAN JR. has collected rare books for over 58 years (since high school), and specializes in Western Americana, the fur trade era, the Southwest, and American Indian books. Doyle and his wife owned a rare book store and coffee house in Dallas, Texas.

For three years, he also reviewed books about the Southwest and American Indians for Southwest Book Views out of Santa Fe. Doyle has sold American Indian fine art for the last 20 years, has written a book-length history of American Indian painting, and judged at the American Indian Art Festival in Dallas for several years. He now lives in Salina, Kansas.

SUZANNE NEWMAN FRICKE, PhD (Ashkenazic-

THOLLEM McDONAS is a peripatetic pianist, keyboardist,

STACI GOLAR (Cornish-Welsh-American) holds a bachelor’s

MELISSA MELERO (Fallon Paiute–Modoc) is a mixed media artist living in Hungry Valley, Nevada. She founded the art group Great Basin Native Artists in Reno and currently works as a full-time artist. Melero has a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a bachelor of science degree from Portland State University in Oregon. She exhibits her art throughout the United States.

ROSA CAYS (Chicana) is a freelance writer and editor and has

American), wrote her art history dissertation at the University of New Mexico on 20th-century Native American pottery. She teaches art history at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. In 2012, she along with Beverly Morris (Aleut) and Charlie James curated Octopus Dreams: Works on Paper by Contemporary Native American Artists, which traveled to six sites in Russia and to 516 Arts in Albuquerque.

In 2014, two museums in Russia displayed As We See It: Photography

by Contemporary Native American Artists, curated by Dr. Fricke and India Young, who are preparing the catalogue. She curated a third show, Woven Together: Celebrating Spider Woman in Contemporary Native American Art, which also traveled throughout Russia. degree in art from Eastern Oregon University and a master’s degree in arts administration from the University of Oregon. She completed an arts management internship at Crow’s Shadow Institute of Art on the Umatilla Reservation, and went on to work at SWAIA/Santa Fe Indian Market and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She served as the associate director of the International Folk Art Market | Santa Fe. Her writing has been featured in the Santa Fean, Santa Fe New Mexican, Native Peoples, Bead and Button, and other publications. A lifelong advocate of the arts, and an artist herself, she believes in the transformative power of art and in those who create it.

SCOTT W. HALE, ISA AM, is an art academic, adviser, and

accredited appraiser for Native American Art Appraisals, Inc., with offices in Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Tulsa, and New York City.

He pursued his master’s and doctoral studies at the University of 1 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

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

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

ZENA PEARLSTONE, PhD, is professor emerita of Native American art history at California State University, Fullerton. Her most recent book Hopi Gold, Hopi Silver: 12 Contemporary Jewelers was published in 2014, and she is currently writing a book on Hopi carver Brian Honyouti.

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

MATTHEW RYAN SMITH, PhD, is a London,

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

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

LYDIA SOCTOMAH (Passamaquoddy) is a student at

the University of Maine in Orono. She received a Winds Scholarship in 2012 from and has written for Whisper n Thunder online magazine. She is apprenticing with her grandmother Molly Neptune Parker (Passamaquoddy) to study their tribe’s basketry and language with support from the Belvedere Fund of the Maine Community Foundation and the Maine Arts Commission.

NEEBINNAUKZHIK SOUTHALL (Chippewas of Rama

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

MARY JO WATSON, PhD (Seminole Nation of Oklahoma), is director emerita and regents’ professor of art history at the School of Art and Art History of the University of Oklahoma. She earned her BFA in art history, MLS in Seminole aesthetics, and PhD in philosophy from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Watson’s curatorial practice spans decades. She serves on the Seminole Tribal Arts Council and several Native art committees for organizations such as the Oklahoma History Center and American Indian Cultural Center and Museum. She was inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Heritage Society’s Hall of Fame in 2014. Dr. Watson developed the current Native Art History Program at the University of Oklahoma.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 15

Recent Developments MUSEUMS The Museu de Arte Indígena (MAI) is opening in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. Founded by businesswoman Julianna Podolan Martins, the private museum has a permanent collection of 700 Indigenous Brazilian works of art.

The Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico, chose Caroline Jean Fernald to serve as its executive director. Fernald earned her master of arts degree and is a doctoral candidate in Native American art history at the University of Oklahoma.

Previously she interned at the Couse-Sharp Historic Site, which features the homes of artists E. I. Couse and Joseph Henry Sharp, in Taos.

The Saint Louis Art Museum hired Alexander Brier Marr as its new assistant curator for Native American art. Marr previously served as a fellow at the Portland Art Museum. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Rochester, where he is a doctoral candidate.

Donors are contributing more funding to the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Inuit Art Centre. The Bank of Montreal BMO, the fourth largest bank in Canada, donated $1 million toward the center’s construction, which is expected to be completed in 2017. The premiers of Nunavut and Manitoba have pledged to contribute $1 million to the center.

Inuit art collectors Barbara and Dudley Smith III donated $1 million to the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City, Michigan. Their donation will help the Inuit art gallery expand by 2,650 square feet.

her original handbag My Diné Life in Teec Nos Pos. Classification winners were Norbert Peshlakai (Navajo), jewelry; Delbert Silas (Hopi), katsinas; Bob Lansing (Navajo), pottery; Virgil Nez (Navajo), painting; and Penny Singer, three-dimensional art.

AWARDS and HONORS The United States Artists selected several Native artists for their 2015 USA Fellows. Visual artists included Frank Big Bear (White Earth Ojibwe) and Kade Twist (Cherokee Nation). Traditional artists included Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee), Da-ka-xeen Mehner (Tlingit-Nisga’a), Diego Romero (Cochiti), and Mary Louise Defender Wilson (DakotaHidatsa). A total of 37 artists, authors, and musicians were selected; each receives an award of $50,000.

The Fry Art Museum | Artist Trust Consortium awarded its 2015 James W. Ray Venture Project Awards to Allison O. Bremner (Tlingit) and Storme Webber (Alutiiq-Choctaw).

They both received $15,000 stipends to pursue specific artistic projects.

Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe) was among the 25 recipients of the Joan Mitchell Foundation 2015 Painters and Sculptors Grant Program. The award, announced in December, includes a $25,000 stipend.

The 2015 BC Creative Achievement Awards for First Nations Art were presented to Linda Bob (Tahltan-Tlingit), Rande Cook (Kwakwaka’wakw), Ya’Ya Heit (Gitxsan), Arlene Ness (Gitxsan), Laura Wee Lay Laq (Stó:lo), and Joe David (Nuu-chah-nulth), who received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

ART FAIRS Best of Show winner at the 2015 American Indian Arts Marketplace at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, California, was Corey Stein (Tlingit), and Glenda McKay (Ingalik Athabascan) won the Jackie Autry Purchase Award.

Classification award winners were Eva Salazar (Kumeyaay), basketry; Corey Stein, beadwork and quillwork; TahNibaa Naataanii (Navajo), clothing and personal attire; Susan Hudson (Navajo), diverse arts; Ernest Benally (Navajo), jewelry; Dawn Dark Mountain (Wisconsin Oneida), painter and mixed media; Tedra Begay (Navajo), photography; Nancy Youngblood (Santa Clara) and Dominique Toya ( Jemez), pottery; Robert Dale Tsosie (Navajo-Picuris), sculpture; Etta Peacock (Navajo), textiles; Mavasta Honyouti (Hopi), woodcarving.

Litchfield Park Native American Arts Festival in Litchfield, Arizona, awarded Penny Singer (Navajo) with Best of Show for 1 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

The Nonamuras and Penny Singer, with her best-of-show handbag, Litchfield Park Native American Arts Festival, 2016.

The Minnesota Historical Society selected Denise Lajimodiere (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), a birch-bark biter, and Holly Young (Standing Rock Dakota), beadwork artist, for its two-year Native American artists-in-residence program that includes a six-month paid residency at MNHS in St. Paul.

ART CENTERS The University of Virginia is creating a new research center dedicated to the Indigenous art of the Americas and Australia.

The college is hiring two curators and developing a residency program. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation contributed $815,000 toward the new center.

Racing Magpie, LLC, a grassroots arts organization, is developing a gallery, studio, workshop, and office space for Native and regional artists in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota.

PRECONTACT SITES Wisconsin State Assembly Bill 620 has been tabled indefinitely. The bill would have allowed private landowners to hire archaeologists to survey precontact mounds on their lands for evidence of burials. If no evidence of human remains could be found, the bill would have allowed the landowners to destroy the mound. The Ho-Chunk Nation said even testing for burials would be a desecration of the mounds, some of which date back over 2,000 years.

An adobe bas-relief mural was discovered at Huaca de la Luna near Trujillo, Peru. Ten dancers are portrayed on the 1.6-meter tall frieze, possibly including a representation of Lady of Cao, a fourth-century Moche leader. The adobe-brick temple was constructed between 2,000 and 1,300 years ago.

ARTIFACTS Alejandro Chu and fellow archaeologists discovered 29 quipus in an Inca food storehouse at Incahuasi, a 16th-century archaeological site south of Lima, Peru. Finding the knotted textile recording devices in the context of the foodstuffs they recorded will likely help researchers better understand the quipus’ code.

CRIME and LEGAL ISSUES Phil Lyman, country commissioner of San Juan County, Utah, was sentenced to ten days in jail for his role in the 2014 illegal ATV ride through Recapture Canyon, site of an 11th-century Ancestral Pueblo Great House and Basketmaker II sites dating from 750 to 950 CE. Lyman will serve three years of probation and pay a total of $97,000 in fines. The Bureau of Land Management closed the canyon to motorized traffic in 2007 after an illegal trail caused irreparable damage to the precontact sites.

A federal court judge ruled in December that the Navajo Nation could continue suing Urban Outfitters in US District Court under the 1990 Indian Arts and Craft Act. The Navajo Nation sued Urban Outfitters in US District Court in 2012 for its line of “Navajo Hipster” clothing and accessories. The Navajo Nation trademarked the name Navajo in 1943.

A German court found Leonardo A. Patterson, a Costa Rican antiquities dealer based in Munich, guilty for selling fraudulent artifacts and possessing illegal artifacts. Patterson’s passport was confiscated, and he was sentenced to three years of house arrest and probation, fined $40,000, and ordered to return Olmec wooden sculptures back to Mexico.

Art collector Reuben Setliff sued Larry Belitz in Fall River County Court in South Dakota. Setliff accused the dealer of selling artwork that was fraudulently represented as belonging to Lakota leaders, including Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Red Cloud, for $421,000. Belitz owns Sioux Replications, which creates imitations of historical Plains artwork.

Thomas Munson, the former superintendent of Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa, pleaded guilty to embezzlement and the theft of prehistoric human remains. He is serving ten consecutive weekends in jail, twelve months of home detention, and 100 hours of community service. He was ordered to pay over $100,000 to the National Park Service and publicly apologize to the tribes affected by his theft.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 17

Seven Directions Tom Farris

T

OM FARRIS (Otoe-Missouria-Cherokee) has been immersed in American Indian art his entire life. The child of passionate collectors, Farris spent a good deal of his formative years in various museums, galleries, and homes of artists and collectors.

While serving as assistant director of the Jacobson House Native Art Center, Tom advanced his curatorial practice. He developed and managed the Cherokee Art Market and then established his own contemporary and modern art space, Standing Buffalo Indian Art Gallery, in Norman, Oklahoma. He has had the honor of judging the Red Earth Festival, the Muscogee Creek Nation’s Council House Art Market, and the Cherokee Heritage Center’s Trail of Tears Art Show and Cherokee Homecoming Art Show.

As a painter and printmaker, Farris has participated in and received awards from several nationally acclaimed art shows, including Southeastern Art Show and Market (SEASAM), Artesian Arts Festival, and SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market. His work is in quite a few major private collections and in the Heard Museum’s permanent collection.

NORTH. I spent a good portion of my childhood in

Grand Forks, North Dakota. At the time, the athletic team at University of North Dakota was called the Fighting Sioux. My family was an outspoken advocate for changing the mascot. Now, 25 years later, I am happy to report that the university has conceded and changed the name of their team, although begrudgingly, to the Fighting Hawks. GO, HAWKS!

SOUTH. With the travel restrictions to Cuba being lifted, Americans have growing access to Cuban art and culture. A rich and diverse blend of African, Caribbean, European, and mainland North American cultures, Cuba has an impressive art scene that has thrived despite repressive governments.

Cuba is also home to the Havana Biennial, established in 1984 as a celebration of Latin artists, which is now a global event. bienalhabana.cult.cu

Tom Farris. Image courtesy of the artist/curator.

WEST. One category of art in which Natives have been

desperately underrepresented is filmmaking. While there have been some amazing films created by Natives, they are far from mainstream. The Sundance Institute is looking to change that through its Native American and Indigenous Program under the direction of N. Bird Runningwater (CheyenneMescalero Apache). The program offers Native filmmakers the opportunity to participate in workshops, film labs, and grant writing. Beyond fostering young, up-and-coming Indian filmmakers, the program supports Native films by featuring them in its annual film festival. sundance.org/programs/ native-program

EAST. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem,

Massachusetts, recently received a $750,000 grant to expand its Native American Fellowship Program, which gives American Indian students hands-on experience in the country’s oldest museum. I am exceptionally excited about this program’s potential as more and more items are repatriated back to the tribes to which they belong. It is imperative that Native people be in a position to properly handle and care for these sacred items. Also, having a new generation of Native curators and directors will more readily allow tribes the opportunity to be accurately represented in both historical and contemporary contexts. pem.org

1 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Rita Longa (Cuban, 1912–2000), Forma, Espacio, y Luz, 1953, sculpture, Cuban white marble, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba.

Photo: Tony Hisgett (CC BY 2.0).

Maori warriors perform a haka, Auckland, New Zealand, 2012. Photo: Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo. Image courtesy of the US Department of Defense.

ABOVE. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away … nerd culture was born. For anyone familiar with my work, you know that a good deal of my life has been influenced by what many would classify as “nerd culture,” i.e., comic books, sci-fi, etc. Star Wars has always been a huge cultural touchstone for me, and it is rare that Native culture and nerd culture cross paths, but this year it happened in a big way. In anticipation of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Pendleton Blankets released a collection of Star Warsthemed trade blankets to the delight of Native nerds like me.

The four-blanket collection wonderfully juxtaposes Native design with Star Wars imagery and made me a little jealous that I hadn’t thought of it first. pendleton-usa.com CENTER. Exhibit C art gallery is located in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown district, just a few miles from where I live, and is the newest Native American art venue in the metro area. Owned by the Chickasaw Nation, Exhibit C features the work of about a dozen active, Indian artists. The gallery provides a world-class venue for artists in all stages of their career and features artists and art displays that rotate every four months, keeping the gallery fresh. In addition to art, Exhibit C has a retail portion including the full line of Bedré Fine Chocolate, books by Chickasaw Press, and other unique gifts. exhibitcgallery.com | facebook.com/ exhibitcgallery

BELOW. For a long time I have been fascinated with

Maori haka and find the dances to be the ultimate expression of warrior culture. I have spent hours watching videos of rugby haka performed by the New Zealand All Blacks and marveled at Maori customs being translated to 21st-century athletics in an awesome display of a thriving Indigenous culture. Jonah Lomu, perhaps New Zealand’s most famous rugby player who recently passed away, was honored by former teammates and opponents performing a haka. It was one of the most evocative sports moments I’ve witnessed. It’s always interesting to see how Indigenous cultures from other countries compare and contrast to American Indian cultures.

Peabody Essex Museum. Photo: Cathy/PEM (CC BY-SA 3.0).

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 19

Exploring Native Graphic Design

Not Another Mascot Article

By Neebinnaukzhik Southall

S

PORTS ARE UBIQUITOUS in Indian Country and beyond: basketball, hockey, lacrosse …

Who hasn’t heard of rez ball? We have excellent Native athletes of all ages representing our people on both Native and non-Native teams at amateur and professional levels. Many of my relatives from Rama First Nation play sports.

There are plenty of die-hard fans to go around, too. Some proudly wear logos of their teams worked into beaded medallions. Like everyone else, Natives get into the rivalry. I know one sweet grandma from Cochiti Pueblo who yells at the TV when her teams are playing.

But most mainstream discussions about Native Americans and sports seem to revolve around negative depictions used in logos by non-Native teams. The effects of stereotypical and demeaning names, imagery, and chants have been widely debated. A less-considered aspect is how these names and images often fail from a design standpoint. What makes a good logo? Memorability, distinctiveness, simplicity, wide application, and relevancy. A good one isn’t trite, but for many sports logos that exist today, the same man may as well have posed for all of them—with feathers in his braids or wearing a headdress, regardless of geographic region. And many teams have the same names: Warriors, Indians, Chiefs, and Braves (or worse!).

Tomahawks and arrowheads abound.

What I wouldn’t give to see a ball-headed war club! From a branding standpoint, these choices do not set these teams apart as distinctive or memorable. Hundreds of teams are guilty of this, mostly at the high school level, but even certain infamous professional teams lack unique branding.

Native teams also fall into this trap.

Some conclude that all outsider references to Indigenous cultures are automatically wrong. Some refuse to acknowledge problems or make changes,

Six Nations Silverhawks logo by Tracey Anthony (Mississauga-Delaware from Six Nations), visionartworks.ca.

conflating the bad with the good. Both ideas privilege ignorant choices as the only options. Referring to Native American cultures need not be problematic. I argue for greater incorporation of Native visuals in sports, not only for Native teams, but non-Native teams as well—in a knowledgeable, respectful, and design-savvy way, of course.

When it comes to incorporating cultural references to represent Native teams, the value is readily apparent.

Many Native children begin playing sports at on-reservation schools. Virtually every tribe has at least one sports team.

Sports can build self-esteem, confidence, perseverance, and even cultural pride.

From the young women’s Team Kivalliq hockey jerseys, which denote the inuksuk1 from the Nunavut flag, to a variety of team uniforms in the Little Native Hockey League in Ontario, to participants in basketball competitions across the continent, clear references are made to specific communities and cultures. Many jerseys include Indigenous patterns, borders, and other motifs. These teams serve as proud ambassadors of their communities.

In Native hands, even a Native mascot, if done right, can work as a representation of power and pride. The Iroquois Nationals logo, an eagle dancer,

1. Stacked stone, loosely resembling a human, used throughout the Arctic to aid navigation.

2 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Design by Tracey Anthony (Mississauga-Delaware from Six Nations).

was designed by one of the founders, Oren Lyons (Onondaga Nation), a lacrosse player, painter, former commercial artist, traditional faithkeeper, and chief. Tracey Anthony (MississaugaDelaware from Six Nations) has depicted strong Iroquois men in his designs, such as the Six Nations Rivermen logo. And Daryn Smith (Seneca) used the human form in his Seneca Warchiefs logo. All these emblems were created specifically for their communities. Certain uniforms strongly convey a sense of pride. The Iroquois teams often allude to the Iroquois flag. And why not? Lacrosse, an Indigenous game, is strongly rooted in their history.

A reimagining of the Chicago Blackhawks logo as a raptor instead of a person by Mike Ivall (Ojibwe) from 2007 recently resurfaced and made the rounds on social media, reaching millions of viewers. For many, it proved there are obvious alternatives when it comes to mascots. As for Mike, he is now a photographer with OHL Images and designs hockey jerseys.

The Nike N7 program and N7 Fund, which promote health among Native youth through athletics, has shown how a major sportswear company can collaborate with Native people. Nike employee Sam McCracken (Fort Peck Sioux-Assiniboine) was instrumental in its creation. While Nike could expand its efforts to include more Native designers and artists in the creation of their shoe and apparel designs, the visuals used have often resonated with Native communities. Several Native graphic designers have also done work for N7. At Oregon State University, my alma mater, the Beavers men’s basketball team, including Joe Burton (Soboba Luiseño), played with special turquoise N7 jerseys in 2010.

In 2013, Nike released uniforms for five NCAA basketball teams, including Oregon State.

One significant collaboration among Natives and non-Natives involved minor league baseball team the Spokane Indians, the Spokane Tribe of the Spokane Reservation, and Brandiose, a sport design company. The company created two versions of a new logo

Seneca Warchiefs logo by Daryn Smith (Seneca).

Iroquois Nationals logo, originally designed by Oren Lyons (Onondaga).

in 2006, one exclusively in the Salish language. In 2014, they created jersey alternates for home games with the Salish word for Spokane, Sp’q’n’i, splashed across the chest and the Salish logo on the sleeve. These became the team’s primary home jerseys for 2015. Teams can build positive relationships rather than merely seek a stamp of approval from tribes.

In 2005, the now-defunct Chilliwack Bruins, a junior ice hockey team from British Columbia, recruited artist Stan Greene (SemiahmooChehalis-Nez Perce) to design a shoulder patch with a stylized bear in honor of the Stó:lo Nation, on whose traditional homelands the team resided. Sports teams have strong local followings, and what says local more than Indigenous, after all?

In 2010, the team released a third jersey featuring the design front and center at a special First Nations home game. The logo proved more visually iconic and relevant than their C logo.

The Seattle Seahawks logo was a hot topic in 2014. The Burke Museum speculated that the inspiration for the NFL team’s original logo was a

Chilliwack Bruins logo by Stan Greene (Semiahmoo-ChehalisNez Perce).

Kwakwaka’wakw transformation mask.

With the two images placed side by side, the resemblance became clear, and the inspiration has since been confirmed. The mask was located at the University of Maine’s Hudson Museum. With funds raised through Kickstarter, the Burke brought the mask to the museum to be exhibited in Here & Now: Native Artists Inspired. At the mask’s unveiling, artist and designer Andy Everson (Kwakwaka’wakw-K’ómoks) danced to welcome the mask. While the Seattle Seahawks have at times been criticized for using Northwest Coast formline instead of the Coast Salish design of the area, they have proved to be a popular team among Native Americans, inspiring many artistic renditions.

Adidas recently made waves by offering to redesign problematic identities for high schools. However, the caveat of contracting with them for three years for gear is likely cost prohibitive, despite interest. I challenge my fellow Native graphic designers: Let’s seize the opportunity, pitch our own talents, and show them what Native design is all about!

Seattle Seahawks fan art by Jeffrey Veregge (S’KlallamSuquamish-Duwamish).

Six Nations Rivermen logo by Tracey Anthony (Mississauga-Delaware from Six Nations).

Spokane Indians jersey and alternative logo, designed by Brandiose.

Ohsweken Aces logo by Tracey Anthony (Mississauga-Delaware).

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 21

Those Who Are Above, Those Who Are on Earth Effigy Mounds of Southern Wisconsin

By America Meredith Southern Wisconsin has the highest concentration of effigy mounds in the world, most dating from 700 to 1100 CE. Eighty percent of these earthworks, shaped to represent animals or other forms, have already been destroyed. The Ho-Chunk Nation, neighboring tribes, government agencies, nonprofits, volunteers, and private landowners are working together to preserve these sacred, ancient art forms.

W

HEN MY FRIEND Linda Lomahaftewa, the HopiChoctaw printmaker, and I were visiting the gift store at the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio, we came across Cyrus Thomas’s 1894 map, “Report of the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology.” She and I had previously explored monumental mounds in the South, from Spiro in Oklahoma to Kituwah in North Carolina. Then we visited earthwork sites in Ohio. We were aware mounds were widespread throughout the Eastern Woodlands, but this map surpassed all of our expectations: almost every major riverbank in the Eastern and Central United States and Southeastern Canada appeared to once have been lined with precontact, humanmade earthworks.

Quick research revealed that Wisconsin boasted innumerable sites accessible to the public. There are two reasons for this: the vast numbers of mounds in Wisconsin and that Wisconsites have diligently worked to save these mounds from destruction.

Through a mutual friend, we met George Hushi Greendeer, a Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin.1 We told Greendeer our plan to visit, and he said to contact him.

Greendeer serves as legislative aide for the Ho-Chunk Nation’s District 5 and as Institute of American Indian Arts alumni council member, so he travels frequently, reaching out to widespread communities.

He’s outgoing, and his enthusiasm is contagious. His highly traditional Ho-Chunk and Iowa family imparted an extraordinary depth of historical and cultural knowledge to Greendeer.

Taychopera: The Four Lakes Some outlying effigy mounds can be found in Northern Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois. Different cultures have made effigy mounds (such as the Great Serpent Mound or Louisiana’s Poverty Point Bird Mound), but Southern Wisconsin has the greatest concentration of effigy mounds in the world. Of the 15,000 mounds recorded in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) identifies 3,200 as effigy mounds.2 As Robert A. Birmingham, an archaeologist and senior lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Waukesha, wrote, “At one time, mounds were so densely arranged around the lakes and beyond that they formed one giant ceremonial landscape.”3

1. The Ho-Chunk are also known as Winnebago, an Algonquian name for the tribe.

2. Robert A. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth: The Effigy Mound Landscape of Madison and the Four Lakes, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 5.

3. Ibid., 106, 108.

2 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

ABOVE: Eagle Effigy Mound followed by a Buffalo Effigy Mound on Frank’s Hill, Eagle Township, Wisconsin, part of the Shadewald I or Elder Mound Group.

Offerings were left at the head of the mound. Photo: Craig Wilson, Kite Aerial Photography, fromakite.com.

OPPOSITE: Effigy mound, possibly a bear, at Hudson Park, Madison, overlooking Lake Monona. Photo: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation).

The oldest known mound in the state dates from 500 BCE. The earliest mounds were conical mounds, hemispheric shapes usually holding burials.

Older mounds tend to be larger than more recent ones. Linear mounds— long, straight formations—were built next, followed by the effigy mounds.

Birmingham describes the time of effigy mounds as “an explosion.” These earthen effigies were built for four centuries, then their construction abruptly stopped, while conical mounds continued to be built years afterward.

Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, sits in the center of the four lakes, the heart of effigy mound culture. These lakes, Mendota, Monona, Waubesa, and

Kegonsa, all fed by the Yahara River, are collectively known as Taychopera in Ho-Chunk.

Lomahaftewa and I flew into Madison and, armed with a stack of guidebooks, began exploring on our own—a challenge due to the sheer number of mounds. We stopped in city parks around the lakes, including Lakeland Avenue, where the bronze sculpture inspired by Ho-Chunk artist Harry Whitehorse commemorates the mounds. Then we drove to Outlet Mound in neighboring Monona.

The 60-foot-wide, eight-foothigh conical mound called the Outlet Mound is the last remaining earthwork of a group of 19. The oldest surviving mound in the Four Lakes region, it dates

back 2,000 years to the time known as the Early Woodland period, prior to bows and arrows or agriculture. Charles E. Brown (1872–1946), an impassioned advocate for preserving the mounds, conducted salvage archaeology prior to the site’s destruction (due to subdivision construction) on two linear mounds and a fork-tailed bird effigy mound at the site.4 Limestone or fieldstones were arranged at the core of the earthworks. Brown found a knife and potsherds in the style of Illinois Hopewell, part of a tradition with a vast trade network spanning the Eastern Woodlands, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian coasts of the Great Lakes, from 200 BCE to 500 CE. After Outlet Mound, Lomahaftewa and I ventured further out to the Lewis

4. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth, 58, 63, 165.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 23

The Outlet Mound at Ridgewood and Midwood Avenues, in Monona, Wisconsin, is the largest remaining mound from a group of 19. This conical mound dates back 2,000 years.

Group in nearby McFarland. Though steered by our cell phone’s GPS and a guidebook, we still circled the area several times before finding a small road leading straight up to a water tower. The hill was actually a drumlin, a formation of sand and gravel left by ancient glaciers. Two small conical mounds at the apex of the drumlin were immediately recognizable, but amid the trees and undergrowth, the linear and canine effigy mounds were difficult to trace. We said “hi” to two fifth graders sitting on a log drinking from Thermos mugs. They informed us they were also looking for mounds. Calf-deep in undergrowth, I momentarily wondered how ubiquitous and venomous the local snakes might be. But, then I noticed a rise in the plants in a geometrically precise line—the linear mound! That provided orientation to the canine effigy mound.

Effigy mounds are conceptual art—they aren’t a spectacle. You cannot see the entire shape while standing on the ground. While they may span hundreds of

feet, many of the mounds are low, rising only three or four feet above the earth’s surface. Like so much precontact artwork, the whole has to be visualized after studying the work from many angles.

Hallowed Ground in Sauk County The next day, Greendeer graciously arranged for us to meet him and Bill Quackenbush in a coffee shop in the town square of Baraboo, Sauk County, to the west of the Four Lakes. Greendeer and Quackenbush are distantly related by blood, but Quackenbush is Greendeer’s nephew in Ho-Chunk kinship. Hailing from Black River Falls, Quackenbush serves as the tribal heritage preservation officer and cultural resources division manager of the Ho-Chunk Nation. He also carves flutes, geocaches, and serves on several state boards. He has a very wry sense of humor, which must help him in his work with a range of government

5. Richard L. Dieterle, “Boulders of Devil’s Lake,” Hocak Encyclopedia, 2005, web.

6. Quotes from George Hushi Greendeer and Bill Quackenbush come from personal communication in July 2015.

2 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

entities. The four of us climbed into Quackenbush’s pickup truck and sped off to Devil’s Lake State Park.

The name Devil’s Lake is a misinterpretation of the Ho-Chunk name Te Wákąčąkra, which translates to “Spirit Lake” or “Sacred Lake.”5 The bottom of the lake is unfathomably deep and Ho-Chunk oral history states that the water spirit and thunderbird once battled there. “This is a healing lake with no river in or out,” observed Greendeer.6 Previously owned by a farmer, the lakeshore bears a massive, forked-tail bird mound. Tall prairie grasses and flowers cover the mound. In the quest to find the best practices for preservation, groups stopped mowing the mounds, since the weight of riding mowers damaged them over time, and the blades could shave off earth as well as plants. A new trend was to seed the mounds with endemic prairie plants; however, Greendeer pointed out that not all the plants were actually native. In their zeal to remove trees, several conservation groups removed

shade canopies and opened the mounds to takeover by pernicious, invasive species such as Rosa multiflora, which forms spiny thickets that are difficult to remove.

Greendeer and Quackenbush were both a little skeptical that the bird originally had two tails. Apparently, the forked tail could not be seen by ground-penetrating radar (GPR). GPR and Lidar are two remote-sensing technologies that have revolutionized archaeology, allowing sites to be studied without being excavated. Unfortunately, it was too late for the bird effigy, which was almost destroyed by plowing, though later reconstructed.

Local tribes don’t reconstruct the mounds, however. “The Ho-Chunk traditional courts say not to create new mounds,” said Quackenbush. This ruling extends to repairing damaged mounds, such as the Spirit Lake Bird Mound.

Birds of many types are represented in the effigy mounds. Some represent thunderbirds, one of the most common effigy shapes, while others are believed to be eagles, pigeons, geese, and even swans.

Other common shapes include bears and water spirits, which correspond to the most important clans. Ho-Chunks have twelve clans divided into two moieties: “Those-who-are-above, and Those-whoare-on-earth.”7 As Michael Schmudlach, a member of Wisconsin Historical Society Board of Curators, wrote: The Thunder (Wakąja), Warrior (Woonąǧire Wąąkšik), Eagle (Caaxšep), and Pigeon (Ruucge) clans belong to the upper moiety, while the Bear (Hųųc), Buffalo (Ceexjį), Deer (Caa), Wolf (Šųųkjąk), Elk (Hųųwą), Fish (Hoo), Water Spirit (Wakjexi), and Snake (Waką) clans belong to the lower moiety.8 This dual moiety system is found among the Menominee and many Dhegiha Siouan tribes, such as the Osage. People from one moiety marry a partner from the other moiety. Historical Ho-Chunk villages reflect this social organization with upper moiety living on the southwest side and earth moiety living

Earthmaker, or Creator.11 Water mammals (otters and minks) have been identified as well, but other shapes defy ready recognition. European-Americans in the 19th century interpreted some as “turtle mounds,” but these are now thought to be aerial views of bears or panthers.

Panthers, Puma concolor—rare now in Wisconsin— common were historically.

The panther mounds with extraordinarily long tails, however, are water spirits, as are the horned snakes—powerful spirit beings that live under lakes and can control weather. They exist as a complementary force to the thunderbirds.12

The Last Man Mound

Harry Whitehorse (Ho-Chunk), Let the Great Spirit Soar, 2009, bronze cast of woodcarving.

Photo: A. Meredith.

on the northeast side.9 Many Ho-Chunk and archaeologists agree that effigy mounds relate to clans.

“Mounds were ceremonial sites, celebrating the spirit being and clan totems of the ancient Ho-Chunk tradition,” wrote Kathleen Tigerman, an English professor at University of Wisconsin, Platteville..10 Although not all effigy mounds contain burials, many do, so it’s possible that members of the upper and earth moieties were buried differently. People may have been buried in an effigy of their clan.

Clans don’t explain all the effigy mound shapes, however. In the 1850s, the prolific surveyor Increase Allen Lapham (1811–1875) mapped a cross mound, the cross being a sacred symbol of

The effigy mound that truly sparks the public’s imagination is the Man Mound dating from 1000 CE, during what is known as the Late Woodland period.

While other human effigy earthworks have been destroyed, this last, surviving example is in Baraboo.

Quackenbush and Greendeer had arranged for Robert Nurre, a member of the Sauk County Historical Society and the volunteer caretaker of the mound, to meet us. It was obvious that Nurre loved this site; he overflowed with enthusiasm for sharing the history of this mound. He gave us maps, brochures, and even bandannas bearing the silhouette of the mound.

First surveyed in 1859 by William H. Canfield, the Man Mound measured 214 feet long.13 The human figure appears to be walking with feet in profile and arms hanging loosely. The two extensions protruding from its head are likely a horned headdress.

In 1907, the Sauk County Historical Society, Wisconsin Archeological Society, and Wisconsin Federation of Women’s Clubs purchased the site from a farmer to save the mound. Historian H. E. Cole helped clear the brush to create a park, and in 1908, the preservation of the mound was commemorated with an historic marker and a celebration.

Nurre and Quackenbush discussed the continued preservation of the mound.

7.

Tom Jones, Michael Schmudlach, Matthew Daniel Mason, Amy Lonetree, and George A. Greendeer, People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho-Chunk Families by Charles Van Schaik, 1879–1942 (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014), 115.

8. Ibid.

9. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth, 35.

10. Kathleen Tigerman, ed., Wisconsin Indian Literature: Anthology of Native Voices (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 49.

11. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth, 24.

12. Robert A. Birmingham and Leslie E. Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 107.

13. Charles E. Brown, “The Preservation of the Man Mound,” Wisconsin Archeologist 7, no. 4 (October–December 1908): 139–140.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 25

Nurre planted porcupine needlegrass, Hesperostipa spartea, to cover the mound.

He collects seeds to keep propagating the native bunchgrass. Not wanting to damage the earth with mowers, Nurre had laboriously cut the weeds by hand in the past. Now controlled burns are used to clear vegetation. Historically, tribes used “fire as a management tool,” said Quackenbush. “You burn in the spring, then there’s no soil disturbance.”

Construction of the road in 1908 had cut through the feet of the Man Mound. To highlight the figure’s original contour, Nurre asked the dairy farmer across the way for permission to paint the road and grass white where the legs and feet once laid. “The white road makes people stop and think,” said Nurre.

In order to draw even more attention to the unique earthwork, he helped organize Man Mound Day on July 20, 2014, and invited the community. The state archaeologist office and other groups shared exhibits, a temporary viewing stand was set up, and Nurre even dressed up as William H. Canfield to demonstrate surveying techniques and answer questions. “I’ve been trying to make people aware of the mound,” said Nurre.

By engaging the local community, they become invested in its upkeep.

Wild speculation abounds about the meaning of the Man Mound, especially since horned men figure strongly in European cultures. However, two Ho-Chunk elders informed Charles Brown that the human effigy related to the “warrior or hawk clan.”14

A Brief History of the Ho-Chunk in Wisconsin People have been living in what is now Wisconsin for at least 13,500 years—first in the southwestern corner not covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet.15 As glaciers retreated in the warming climate, the people archaeologists call Paleo-Indians moved farther northwest. Those of the Siouan language family were once a single group. But instead of Siouan languages, they should be called Ho-Chunkian, said Greendeer. “Ho-Chunk translates as

ABOVE: Robert Nurre of the Sauk County Historical Society discusses the Man Mound with George Hushi Greendeer and Linda Lomahaftewa in Greenfield, Wisconsin.

RIGHT: Man Mound historical marker with the shape of the mound. Both photos: A. Meredith

‘People of the Big Voice’, but it’s really ‘People of the Parent Speech.’ ” He described an ancient village, Mogašuuc, or Red Banks, at the site of Green Bay, Wisconsin, that was so large, it took four days and four nights to walk the length of the settlement. Archaeologists have long tried to reconcile Red Banks with archaeological records, but they have focused on a 17th-century incarnation. They do admit the area around Green Bay contains numerous precontact settlements.

Archaeologists divide pre-Columbian history of the region in the Paleo-Indian period ending in 8000 BCE, the Archaic (8000–500 BCE), Early Woodland (500 BCE–100 CE), Middle Woodland (100–500 CE), and Late Woodland (500–1250 CE).16 The effigy mounds were built during the Late Woodland period. This coincided with the Medieval Warm Period, a climatic change that proved ideal for northern

agriculture, especially with maize being introduced around 800 CE. While the people who made the mounds are commonly called “effigy mound culture,” early 20th-century researchers Charles Brown, Paul Radin, Arlow B. Stout, and Robert L. Hall (Stockbridge-Munsee) all believed the Ho-Chunk built the effigy mounds. Robert Birmingham suggested that the effigy mound builders were a “confederation of closely related tribes” and wrote, “It is also quite likely that the Ho-Chunk are among the descendants of the effigy mound builders …”17 which is likely since the Missouria, Otoe, and Iowa descend from the Ho-Chunk.

The effigy mound builders share common cultural traits. Communities had seasonal homes for the summer

14. Paul Radin, “Some Aspects of Winnebago Archeology,” American Anthropologist 13, no. 4 (October–December 1911): 527.

15. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth, 42.

16. Ibid., Spirits of Earth, 43.

17. Ibid., 15.

2 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

George Hushi Greendeer, left, and Bill Quackenbush, right, at the head of the Man Mound. Note the white silhouette of the effigy’s feet. Photo: A. Meredith.

and winter, although more intensively agricultural villages were likely occupied year round. Their style of pottery, called Madison Ware, was impressed with textiles, cordage, and stamps.

The surge of effigy mound construction slowed by 1050 CE and all but ended by 1100 CE. Mississippian people from the Illinois area entered Wisconsin around this time. Perhaps influenced by newcomers, Southern Wisconsin experienced a cultural shift to what archaeologists called the Oneota culture.

Quackenbush sees it as locals having to “adapt and change.” The Mississippians left Wisconsin around 1250, but Oneota culture continued into the mid-17th century. Prior to European contact, around the 16th century, the Missouria and Otoe tribes split off, became separate tribes, and migrated into Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. Another group split off from the Ho-Chunk, settled in Iowa, and became the Iowa tribe.

At the time of European contact in the early 17th century, the Anishinaabeg, Dakota, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee all lived in Wisconsin.18 Widespread warfare throughout the Great Lakes region during the 17th and 18th centuries forced tribes from the east, such as the Sauk, Meskwaki, Kickapoo, and several Anishinaabe peoples, to migrate to Wisconsin.

After the 1830 passage of the Indian Removal Act, the Ho-Chunks were forced to cede all their lands in Wisconsin and Illinois in exchange for a reservation in Iowa. Many refused to move to Iowa; others returned to Wisconsin on their own. The Ho-Chunk experienced a total of 11 removals to several states.

Ultimately they settled on a reservation in Western Nebraska and formed the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. But throughout this period, Ho-Chunks kept returning to Wisconsin. “They hid in the woods,” Greendeer told us. Finally, in

1874, the government allowed American Indians to participate in the Homestead Act. The Ho-Chunk claimed land and reestablished their tribe in Wisconsin,19 becoming the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Caring for Their Recovered Land An intertribal organization that shares best practices for earthwork preservation doesn’t exist—yet—but the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO), of which Quackenbush is a member, holds annual conferences to share different approaches to protecting sacred and historical sites.

“Among tribes, there’s an agreement not to repair mounds,” said Quackenbush.

“There is a reason why they quit making mounds.”

18. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth, 14.

19. James W. Parins, “Ho-Chunk Removal,” in Encyclopedia of American Indian Removal, vol. 2, ed. Daniel F. Littlefield Jr. and James W. Parins (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011), 97–98.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 27

However, “the Ho-Chunk Nation is buying back the ancestral mounds that remain,” wrote Tigerman. In addition, “they welcome contact with the landowners who wish to preserve mounds or donate them back to the Ho-Chunk Nation.”20 The tribe has a 14-county service area but no reservation, so obtaining land is of paramount importance.

Previously, private landowners were afraid their land would be taken from them if they reported that it held mounds, but, through extensive public outreach, the Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Heritage Preservation is earning the trust of farmers. Now “farmers will tell the tribe, not the state, where the mounds are,” said Greendeer.

“Every opportunity we have to visit private land, we take it!” exclaimed Quackenbush. The individual earthworks are important to Ho-Chunk history, but so is the entire cultural landscape.

One site the Ho-Chunk Nation owns is Kingsley Bend Mound Group in Newport, Columbia County. It is a site with 23 surviving earthworks of a known 30. Through a grant, the tribe partnered with Natural Heritage Land Trust to purchase a 17-acre buffer zone around the mound site where the tribe now cultivates basswood and tamarack. An archaeologist had previously chopped down thousands of trees, any species other than oaks.

Quackenbush thinks it would be best to “quit cutting our sacred trees.” Without a protective canopy, water erosion takes its toll on the steep hill at Kingsley Bend.

The surviving mounds include conicals, linears, and bird, bear, and water spirit effigies. The conical mound atop the highest point is visible from the Wisconsin River to the southwest.

Mounds were constructed not just along lakeshore lines but also near artesian springs and rivers. Rivers were the main transportation routes.

Greendeer and Quackenbush both stressed that the Ho-Chunk have been highly mobile people. They navigated the waterways via dugout and birch-bark canoes and were familiar with a wide area by means of oral history and landmarks.

Rocks served as landmarks, for instance, and were moved to facilitate foot traffic across streams. It is highly ironic that any explorers believed the Americas to be an untouched wilderness, when human intervention was everywhere. Early tribes simply worked with the natural landscape rather than against it.

Effigy mounds are no exception.

Birmingham wrote that the earthworks were built “following natural contours of the land itself and blending seamlessly into the natural terrain.”21 Amy Rosebrough, an archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society describes the earthworks as “topographically sensitive grammar”22 and notes that animal effigies were sculpted so their legs ran down slopes and, when near rivers, their heads faced downstream. The builders used hills and other natural landscapes to create the illusion of movement.

American architect Frank Lloyd Wright—interestingly enough, born in Richmond, Wisconsin, in the heart of the effigy mound territory—coined the term “organic architecture,” for integrating human-made construction with the whole of the surrounding environment. This is precisely what the effigy mound builders did by harmonizing mounds with natural landforms, water, and celestial bodies, in an aesthetic and spiritual manner.

The conical mounds that predated many of the effigy mounds were typically built at high elevations. Greendeer explained, “They were buried on the hills to be closer to the heavens.”

During the effigy mound era, mounds were constructed in single intervals and not amended later, as was commonplace in monumental mounds farther south that were built in layers over centuries. “Sites containing effigy mounds were used for hundreds of years as ceremonial centers by generation after generation,” wrote Tigerman.23 People returned to the mound sites but constructed more mounds, as opposed to adding to the preexisting ones.

They held ceremonial significance beyond burials. Many believe that the positioning of mound groups trace movements of the Sun, Moon, Morning

20. Tigerman, Wisconsin Indian Literature, 10.

21. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth, 16.

22. Ibid., 60.

23. Tigerman, Wisconsin Indian Literature, 49.

2 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Star, and Evening Star, and important events such as equinoxes. The formation of the mounds, which almost seem like writing upon the land, could also echo constellations.

Another site owned by the Ho-Chunk, Eagle Township, is just north of Muscoda, Wisconsin. It is home to magnificent effigy mounds, including numerous giant eagles on different properties. As Greendeer drove us to the site, he pointed out that Muscoda comes from the Ho-Chunk word for “pipe stem.”

Without Greendeer, we would not have had permission to visit the mounds, but when we arrived at the gate, it was locked.

After thinking we might not be able to gain access, Lomahaftewa cracked the code that allowed us to drive in through the cornfields to the mounds. The land contains a village site and the McClary Mound Group 4, which once had over a hundred mounds. Looking at the series of conical mounds, I couldn’t help but think how the mounds marked time, maybe not in the way of a calendar, but definitely as a visual record of the tribe over centuries.

Preserving the Earthworks for Future Generations Tragically, most of the mounds of Wisconsin have been destroyed. Urban development and farming have taken their toll. Mounds were covered by buildings and roads and plowed. However, the network of groups collaborating to preserve the mounds is vast, diverse, and longstanding in their commitment to their cause. The accomplishments of the many Native and non-Native activists can be seen in the hundreds of mounds that survive.

Turn-of-the-century maps by individuals such as Increase Allen Lapham and others help today’s researchers locate mound sites and have proven an invaluable tool in protecting the earthworks.

Archaeologist Charles Brown worked tirelessly in the early to mid-1900s to save more than 200 mounds. “No single person did more to document and preserve the mounds of

Increase Allen Lapham (1811–1875), Plate XL, 1851–1852, engraving, from The Antiquities of Wisconsin (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1855).

Madison and the Four Lakes than Charles E. Brown,” wrote Birmingham.24 Brown founded the Wisconsin Archeological Society in 1903 and served as museum director at the Wisconsin Historical Society from 1908 to 1944. Witnessing wanton destruction of the earthworks, Brown helped pass the state’s first historical preservation law in 1911.

Brown encouraged incorporating earthworks into the parks and sanctuaries of Wisconsin. For example, four linear and a goose and two water spirit effigy mounds are preserved in the Forest Hill

Cemetery, where Brown is interred.

I witnessed another example of this while exploring the grounds of the Mendota Mental Health Institute where there were once three groups of more than 50 mounds dating between 1000 BCE and 1000 CE. The surviving Mendota State Hospital Mound Group and Farwell’s Point Mound Group include bird, panther, bear, water spirit, and other effigy, linear, and older conical mounds.25 The conical mounds still bear indentations from 19th-century excavations. A unique, walking deer mound has all four legs.

Incredibly, the hospital grounds hold the largest eagle effigy mound in the world, with a wingspan that measured 624 feet in 1910. When we visited, the sleek wings of two monumental bird effigies rose up from the clover-strewn lawn in perfect symmetry, as the last rays of the setting sun shone through the oak leaves.

The tranquility of the ancient earthworks permeated the hospital grounds. I felt mentally healthier after spending time with them. As Thomas Hopinkah, a member of the thunder clan and of the Ho-Chunk traditional court, points out, “Any place where these are built is not an ordinary place.”26 In recent years, sand mines have posed a threat to the cultural landscape.

“Sand mines are detrimental,” asserted Quackenbush. “They don’t follow federal regulations.” Late last year, Wisconsin State Assembly Bill 620 was introduced, which would have allowed landowners to probe the mounds for human remains and, if none were found, destroy the mounds.

Thankfully, in January 2016, this bill was tabled indefinitely. The battle was won but the war continues.

The local archaeological community is committed to preserving mounds and only excavated nonburial sites, such as villages and campsites. However, education and outreach are paramount. Tribes, nonprofit historical societies, archaeologists, private landowners, and city, county, state, and federal government agencies all have to work together to preserve these ancient sites.

Robert Birmingham claimed that these “cosmological maps of their builder’s worldview—are equivalent as world wonders to the megalithic landscapes of Europe and the Nasca Lines of Peru.”27 The Ho-Chunk Nation wrote, “The Ho-Chunk people believe that the disturbance of these sites, for whatever reason, constitutes desecration … These structures must be preserved with respect and dignity.”28 The earthworks speak to a deep knowledge of the land, the water, the heavens, history, and the spiritual that is the core of what it is to be Indigenous.

24. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth, 98.

25. Birmingham and Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, 197.

26. Tigerman, Wisconsin Indian Literature, 49.

27. Birmingham, Spirits of Earth, 205.

28. “Save the Mounds,” Ho-Chunk Nation, 2015, web.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 29

An “Indisputable Source” A Short History of American Indian Art Magazine

By Gloria Bell

This fall, American Indian Art Magazine printed its last issue after 40 years of publishing.

How has Native art history developed since 1975, when this iconic periodical first launched?

F

ROM ITS INCEPTION in 1975, American Indian Art Magazine (AIAM) became a crucial resource for art historians, curators, artists, collectors, and general readers interested in research on Native arts of the Americas. It was a quarterly, independently published journal from Scottsdale, Arizona, headed by Mary Hamilton, a passionate supporter of Native arts.

The magazine featured articles by prominent art historians, anthropologists, and curators, including Bill Holm, George Horse Capture (A’aninin), J. C. H. King, Gerald McMaster (Plains Cree-Blackfoot), Ruth Phillips, Judy Thompson, and Robin K. Wright.

Features were written on a variety of topics in the Native arts, like Haida artist Charles Edenshaw’s argillite carvings, Iroquois moccasin quillwork, Métis floral beadwork, Plains ledger drawings, Pomo basketry, and Pueblo pottery and jewelry, to name but a few. Memorable articles on Native artists were published. “Scholder on Scholder” (Spring 1976) and “Swift Dog: Hunkpapa Warrior, Artist and Historian” by Ron McCoy (Summer 1994) stand out, as well as reviews of work by Carl Beam (Anishinaabe) and Dana Claxton, a Hunkpapa Lakota multimedia performance artist and filmmaker. The field of Native art history grew alongside this publication.

Although the final issue of AIAM was published in August 2015, its legacy continues and raises many questions for the continuance of publications that

being challenged by other editorial tactics found in magazines such as the Inuit Art Quarterly.1 The editorial team of the magazine, however, did not aim to be theoretically rigorous or politically engaged, but rather sought another goal. The magazine wanted to serve as a resource, inspiration, and stepping stone for scholars and those curious to learn more about Native art. Anthropologist and contributor to the magazine Candace Greene reflects,

showcase Native arts and the diverse voices of those working in the everexpanding field of Native art history and Indigenous studies.

AIAM had an important role in not only publishing academic inquiries but also general-interest articles on Native art, both historical and contemporary, with an emphasis on the material qualities of the individual “objects” (a colonial-legacy term that I think is better replaced by “cultural belongings”). Exhibition and book reviews, legal briefs, and listings of items sold at auctions known as the “Auction Block” were all reported in AIAM. The editorial slant created an intensity of focus on historical art objects—rather than an emphasis on theoretical concerns or political and social contexts—considered an “old-fashioned” approach that was

While online museum databases have now opened up a rich resource of visual material for those wishing to study collections, they cannot begin to fill the niche AIAM offered for learning about their history and meaning. It provided sustenance for more than a generation of Native art studies, during the critical period that the “new art history” was opening up to non-Western materials; anthropology was rediscovering material culture; and Native people were becoming increasingly engaged with materials that had left their communities generations ago.2 If we look back to the 25th issue of AIAM in the year 2000, there was a brief history and outline of the publication’s mandate. It was “devoted exclusively to the great diversity of art forms produced by Native peoples of North America in prehistoric, historic, and contemporary times.” In the article, the editors note the evolving complexities between the art market and Native art history as a discipline.

1. See the informative and inspirational essay by Dr. Janet Berlo and the response by Mary Hamilton, in: Janet Berlo, “20 Years of IAQ and a brief comparison with, and responses from, two other indigenous arts magazines,” Inuit Art Quarterly 21, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 16-24.

2. Candace S. Greene, email message to author, November 16, 2015.

3 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Anthropologist and editor Tobi Taylor wrote, “Despite vast fluctuations in the Native American art market and shifts in art-historical paradigms, the magazine has held to its mandate: to celebrate Native American artistic achievements.”3 AIAM was also devoted to showcasing material in public rather than private collections. It published many Native American Art Studies Association (NAASA) papers, thus promoting thinking in the field. Selected papers from the 1992 NAASA meeting were published together in a single issue.

AIAM publisher Mary G. Hamilton was honored with the 2001 NAASA Lifetime Achievement Award. Candace Greene noted in the presentation speech, It [the magazine] not only links us to each other, but also forges a connection between scholars and a wider audience, extending our educational role beyond the classroom or the exhibition hall, serving to broaden public awareness of and appreciation for Native art. In short, it has become an essential part of our world.4 She continues to shed light on the importance of AIAM to the discipline: “Is there a bibliography in the field that doesn’t include a citation to an article published in American Indian Art Magazine?”5 The magazine also provided the only peer-reviewed journal for Native art history that had a strength in its quality and quantity of color illustrations, ensuring it as an excellent visual resource. The diversity of articles, from scholarly pieces to general-interest articles, promoted a sense of community regarding research and an awareness of Native American cultural belongings in collections across the world. However, it was limited in its scope, excluding articles on film and performance arts.

For Professor Janet Berlo, PhD, who teaches art history and visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester, it remains an “indisputable source” for those studying Native arts.

Looking Forward Throughout my graduate-level art history and Indigenous studies, I have meditated on the evolution and trajectory of Native art history. AIAM stands as a valuable visual record of Native American art scholarship. With its emphasis on formal analysis, it illustrated a particular approach to the field. The discipline is now transitioning to more diverse and alternative readings, methodologies, and approaches, away from the academic hard line of formal analysis, made popular by art historians such as Heinrich Wölfflin (Swiss, 1864–1945). Interestingly, Native art history has a burgeoning sister field in Indigenous studies, which has influenced its development. The fields have grown in tandem and are moving toward more complex understandings of Native art that increasingly incorporate Indigenous perspectives.

At the 2015 NAASA conference in Santa Fe, scholars discussed the state of Native arts publishing. A peer-reviewed

arts journal for scholars in the Americas is definitely needed. Current journals include the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Indian Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Native Studies, Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas, NAIS: Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and Wicazo Sa Review.

In alliance with Indigenous studies and the need for more diverse opinions to be expressed—namely those of Indigenous peoples—First American Art Magazine is dedicated to reaching a broad, diverse audience. It fosters dialogue that promotes a plethora of perspectives on art for an all-encompassing audience that includes scholars, collectors, artists, and tribal leaders.

The necessity for new, peerreviewed, Native arts journals is an encouraging sign for Native art history.

It is evidence of its health and everexpanding relevance in a world where arts and cultures of Indigenous peoples remain essential to understanding our histories and futures.

I would like to thank Dr. Janet Berlo, Dr. Candace Greene, Dr. John P. Lukavic, and others for sharing their perspectives. I am open to receiving further comments and suggestions about this article at any time at gjbell2@gmail.com.

ABOVE: Back issues of American Indian Art Magazine. Photo: Melissa Dominguez.

OPPOSITE: Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso) on the cover of AIAM Winter 1995. Photo: Gloria Bell (Métis).

3. Tobi Taylor, “Introduction: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary,” American Indian Art Magazine 26, no. 1 (2000): 52–53.

4. Candace S. Greene, 2001 Lifetime Achievement Award Speech, Native American Art Studies Association 12th Biennial Conference (Portland, OR, October 27, 2001), web.

5. Ibid.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 31

A Historical Continuum The Portraits of Brian Honyouti

By Zena Pearlstone, PhD

A

RT HISTORY, as well as history, may repeat, even if artists have not been influenced by or have not seen the previous works. Here I explore one possible example of this phenomenon.

One could contemplate whether this circumstance is more likely to occur among Native American artists.

In 2006, Allan J. Ryan and I authored About Face: Self-Portraits by Native American, First Nations, and Inuit Artists.1 While working on the book, we noted that a number of the self-portraits did not portray a realistic face; some completely eliminated the face or features.2 These faceless selfportraits led us to reflect on identity and how it is represented. I began to consider the absence of recognizable facial features in Native American portraiture in general, particularly in Plains Indian ledger paintings and drawings where exact facial likenesses are seldom, if ever, present.

Mainstream art audiences, drawing on their familiarity with European and Euro-American portraiture, are accustomed to people being represented in a realistic or naturalistic fashion. However, in many non-European artistic systems, as Janet Catherine Berlo notes, “physical likeness was not the primary means of establishing identity in visual representations. Instead, a host of emblems and signs, including tattoo, dress, and other forms of ornament, served as markers of identity.” Before the middle of the 19th century, few Native American artworks can “reliably be identified as [portraits or] self-portraits,” and many of the early depictions appear in ledger drawings where there is little interest in physiognomy.3 This information resonated with me as I am in the midst of writing

ABOVE: Big Back (Cheyenne, 19th century), Indian Courting Scenes, ca. 1882, engraving of pencil drawing, Plate IV from Our Wild Indians by Richard Irving Dodge (Hartford, Chicago: A. D. Worthington and Company, 1890).

OPPOSITE: Brian Honyouti (Hopi), What Should I Make? or Cross Legged Clown, ca. 2000, cottonwood root, oil paint, stain, varnish, 7 × 5 in., collection of Steve and Gloria Cowgill. Photo: Addison Doty. Image courtesy of the Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

a book on the carvings of Brian Honyouti (Hopi), one of the few Hopi artists to attempt portraiture. His portraits, like some in the self-portrait book and most in ledger drawings, shy away from naturalistic faces and rely on dress, ornament, and signs to identify the portrayed. In Honyouti’s carvings, as in ledger drawings [such as Cheyenne artist Big Back’s Indian Courting Scenes], the focus is on relationships and locations.4 People and places seen in ledger drawings include supernatural elements on attire and architecture. It is Honyouti’s wont to represent the faces of his subjects as Hopi miraculous beings, katsinam, and those generally referred to as clowns, who visit the Hopi mesas and instruct the Hopi people on how not to behave.

The Pottery Buyer is Honyouti’s portrait of Alexander E. “Al” Anthony

Jr. (page 34). In the 1990s, Honyouti and his brother Ronald both dealt with Anthony, who launched Adobe Gallery in Old Town, Albuquerque, in 1978 and later opened the gallery in Santa Fe. Anthony always appeared in highly elaborate sweaters, slacks, and loafers, all of which appear in his portrait, and, as Anthony deals primarily in antique Southwestern pottery, Honyouti shows him admiring such an object. Some of the Honyouti portraits, like this one, are quite specific as to the person represented, even though Anthony is shown here as a Piptuqa, a being who acts as a “skit actor, and visits the Hopi clowns in the plaza during a [katsina] performance to carry out a farcical morality play.”5 Although the facial features do bear some resemblance to those of Anthony, it is unlikely that

1. Zena Pearlstone and Allan J. Ryan, About Face: Self Portraits by Native American, First Nations, and Inuit Artists (Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 2006).

2. See About Face, Illustrations 4, 19, 25, 31, 33, 37, 39, and 42.

3. Janet Catherine Berlo, “The Idea of Likeness,” in About Face, 59.

4. I am not suggesting a direct correlation. Honyouti was never influenced by ledger drawings. He is, in addition, little aware of the work of other contemporary Native American artists.

5. Hopi Dictionary Project, Hopi Dictionary/Hopi Lavàytutuveni: A Hopi-English Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect (Tucson: University of Arizona, Press, 1998), 414.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 33

anyone would easily recognize him from the face alone. Honyouti recalls, however, that during one of art dealer Martha Struever’s tours to Hopi, he was working on this sculpture of Anthony, showed it to the group, and asked if anyone recognized the person portrayed. Struever guessed

correctly, based on her identification of Anthony’s clothing and the vessel he held. The Feathered (or Water) Serpent depicted on the base further personalizes the work, as it is the logo for Anthony’s book publishing company, Avanyu Publishing, Inc.

Brian Honyouti (Hopi), The Pottery Buyer, ca. 1990s, cottonwood root, oil paint, stain, varnish, 10½ in. high, collection of Roger Stevenson, Reno, Nevada. Photo: Roger Stevenson.

3 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Kwikwilyaqa (Mocking Katsina) appears in a carving called The Photographer (opposite page), a portrait of the award-winning photographer Jerry Jacka, who has taken pictures of the people and sights of the Southwest for more than 50 years. Kwikwilyaqa is a katsina whose actions are inherently amusing; he imitates or mimics anyone who is near him despite the victims’ desperate attempts to get rid of him. Honyouti drew on this supernatural being for the portrait because of the prominence of the eyes and mouth. Kwikwilyaqa, who often causes discomfort to other katsinam and to people in the audience by rigidly mimicking their behavior, here imitates the actions of a photographer. Jacka/Kwikwilyaqa adjusts the “lens” on his tubular eye as one would adjust a camera, in this case to capture a representation of the Koyaala (a clown) in his hand. He carries a roll of film in his pocket. As elsewhere, Honyouti accentuates the Hopi appreciation of double meanings in verbal and visual punning.

Clothing and ornament are important means of identification for Honyouti. So are place and location, elements often underscored in Honyouti’s representations to help tell the story at hand, just as they do in many ledger artworks. In the captivating ledger drawing by Making Medicine, or St. David Pendleton Oakerhater (Southern Cheyenne, ca. 1847–1931), Indian Prisoners at Fort Marion Being Photographed (ca.

1876–1877) the artist carefully locates the event inside the walls of the fort that frame the scene.

Will He Buy? (2010), Honyouti’s portrait of James Barajas wearing a bolo tie with an HM symbol (Heard Museum), gives a clear notation of place (opposite page). Barajas is the assistant manager and buyer for the Heard Museum Shop in Phoenix, and Honyouti places him atop the Museum’s Steele Auditorium. On the carving, the building’s façade

Honyouti accentuates the Hopi appreciation of double meanings in verbal and visual punning.

ABOVE: Brian Honyouti (Hopi), detail of The Photographer, ca. 2002, cottonwood root, oil paint, stain, varnish, 11½ in. high, collection of Jerry Jacka, Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: © Jerry Jacka Photography.

LEFT: Brian Honyouti (Hopi), Will He Buy?, 2010, cottonwood root, oil paint, stain, varnish, 10 in. high, collection of James Barajas, Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: Jewel Clark.

mirrors the original in having the corresponding number of arches and windows. The sides of the carving show the museum’s complex porticos above, which are Hopi cloud symbols.

On the back of the base is a scene of the Phoenix terrain with a smoggy sky.

As with the Anthony portrait, it would be difficult to identify Barajas from his face alone. It is the setting and the jewelry that make it uniquely Barajas.

At times Honyouti does note that he has attempted a likeness of a face, as in a carving of the baseball great, Joe DiMaggio (page 36). Again, the face would not be easily identifiable as

DiMaggio without the other elements seen in the carving. Honyouti configured DiMaggio as a Koyaala with horns emerging from his cap. Tucked into the rear of his belt is an image of a brightly blonde Marilyn Monroe. The position of the Monroe doll mirrors the behavior of the clown chief who, when he first enters the plaza, carries a doll in the back of his breechcloth. This is said to be the clown’s sister, signifying the essential role of females in continuing the existence of the people.

Around the base, Honyouti illustrates Yankee Stadium and, to complete the baseball experience, a glass of beer and a hot dog are painted on the bottom (below the base). Honyouti sees this as “an iconic composite of a part of America:

baseball, DiMaggio, Yankee Stadium, plus the American sex symbol.”6 For good measure he includes the Koyaala, a Tewa clown, who is seen by many non-Hopiit as the Hopi clown.

In Honyouti’s self-portraits, location sometimes becomes paramount.

Smoking Kwikwilyaqa (2001) plays on the artist’s role as “the originator” by putting Kwikwilyaqa directly into Honyouti’s space. Honyouti says, This came to me when I needed an idea. Since I don’t usually have access to a car, I have to walk over to the post office in Hotvela every day. One day I had just passed Ronald’s on my way home carrying my Hotvela Co-op Store grocery bag when I said, I’ll just make the doll imitating me. As I call it, imitating the Creator.7

6. Brian Honyouti, email message to author.

7. Brian Honyouti, email message to author, November 30, 2009.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 35

Red Dog (Oglala Lakota, 19th century), Red Crow, 1884, ink and crayon on paper, 5¼ × 7.625 in., South Dakota.

TOP: Brian Honyouti (Hopi), The Composer, 1990, cottonwood root, oil paint, stain, varnish, 6 × 4 in, collection of Dan E. Wolfus, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Zena Pearlstone.

BOTTOM: Brian Honyouti (Hopi), Joe DiMaggio, ca. 1985–1990, cottonwood root, oil paint, stain, varnish, approximately 11½ in. high, collection of Elaine and Hal Sterling, South Orange, New Jersey. Image based on a painting by Andy Jurinko in turn based on a 1949 photograph in Eyewitness: 150 Years of Photojournalism by Richard Lacayo and George Russell (Time Books, 1995), page 85. Photo: Robin Wasserman.

3 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Kwikwilyaqa/Honyouti is seen traveling between Hotvela and his home in Paaqavi, two villages on Hopi’s Third Mesa. He is not able to drive due to his poor eyesight, and this daily trip is much of his world.8 Around the base of the carving he represents some of the scenes he sees in this limited space: a view of his workshop, the post office and Hotvela store, his brother Ronald’s trailer, and the dirt road that leads out of Hotvela. In the carving, he uses the katsina’s protruding mouth as an invitation to have a cigarette. The figure is wearing a t-shirt his daughter Angela gave to him.

The image on the shirt is a Gary Larsen cartoon of dinosaurs smoking and is captioned, “The real reason dinosaurs became extinct.”

As the artists of ledger paintings address their profession or place, often as warrior and too often as captive, Honyouti addresses his vocation as artist. In What Should I Make? (on page 32), the viewer now sees Honyouti as a Piptuqa addressing his thoughts to what he should be making for sale, reflecting on what he should do next, but deciding in trickster mode. As with Smoking Kwikwilyaqa, viewers can ask if What Should I Make? is foregrounding the art, the artist, or the commerce, but what he is clearly representing is an image of himself identified through clothing and place. The carving is a self-portrait but one specific to the moment. He shows the Piptuqa in the clothes he was wearing when he did the carving, a dremel tool on the table, a wood burner in the hole in front, his Phoenix Suns coffee cup.

With Procrastinator, he sits again with the items that identify him: his large cup of coffee, cigarette, and ashtray.

But rather than working on the carving to wow buyers, he is wasting his time playing Tetris games on his Gameboy.

The Wood Chopper (1999) places Honyouti at his home in Paaqavi, Third Mesa (opposite page). Here he transforms himself into a Koyaala as he records an actual event. One 8. Honyouti is albino and legally blind. His eyesight has worsened over the years.

Brian Honyouti (Hopi), Wood Chopper, 1999, cottonwood root, oil paint, stain, varnish, 12 in. high, collection of Ron Pecina, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo: Brian Honyouti.

winter when he was outdoors chopping wood and using his foot to steady the log, he hit part of his boot with the axe. The Koyaala thus appears with a piece of his moccasin removed by an axe stroke. Honyouti notes that there

are times when he wants to carve but nothing comes to mind. At these times he may latch on to something that happens in his daily life—like wood chopping, just as ledger drawing artists recorded their activities at the Fort

Marion prison.

The most moving of Honyouti’s works are those portraying his family, especially his father. The Composer (1990) refers to his father’s musical abilities (opposite page). Clyde, who constantly sang katsina songs and composed them for dances, had found a toy rocking chair and intended to make a Kooyemsi to sit in it. Honyouti kept the rocker after his father died, but the little chair was shattered in a fall.

In 1990, Honyouti revived Clyde’s vision and made this carving with his dad as a Kooyemsi and his rocking chair in mind. The Kooyemsi sits with his hands behind his head and one leg resting on the other.

Negating the importance of face and likeness, Honyouti notes that the bushy mustache and pipe “are just silly ‘add-ons’ and have no significance.”

To the figure’s right is a large drum; on top is a pencil and a stack of blank sheet music, the latter of which place the figure in the non-Hopi world, as this would surely be the carving’s final home when sold. Honyouti sees the Clyde/Kooyemsi figure as “thinking of words to a tune, possibly humming a melody, or asleep, dreaming of a scene that might inspire a song.”9 Since the early 20th century, Hopi carvers have increasingly used their carving skills to go beyond the manufacture of tithu for ceremonies and to make katsina-like artwork for the marketplace. Honyouti has expanded his oeuvre to include personal representations. His Hopi carving style merges with events and individuals in his life to become his way of autobiography, what Berlo calls social identity.10 Through these artworks, his audience is invited to learn about his business associates, his teaching colleagues, and about himself and his family, just as ledger paintings illustrate personal accomplishments and the life of the individual.

9. Brian Honyouti, email message to author, August 23, 2010.

10. Berlo, “The Idea of Likeness,” in About Face, 59.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 37

“

I Write For My Family A Conversation with Tanya Lukin Linklater

T

ANYA LUKIN LINKLATER is Alutiiq and hails from the Native Villages of Port Lions and Afognak of Southern Alaska. Currently based in Northern Ontario, she is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice incorporates elements of choreography, dance, performance, video art, film, and writing. Linklater’s performative work redresses Alaska Native forms of expression within contemporary aesthetics to investigate themes of cultural loss, domesticity, and political resistance.

Site-specific performances such as Mapping Resistances (2010) witnessed the artist respond to the Oka Crisis—the pivotal land dispute between Mohawk peoples and the township of Oka in the province of Quebec—by embodying the spirit of Alutiiq women and translating their presence through a series of actions, rhythms, and meditations. More recently, Linklater has further centralized the female body to explore the ways that Indigenous knowledge and experience inscribes itself across generations to produce cultural memory and renewal.

While her work often culls from visual art, language, and the physical body, one could argue that poetry and poetics is the backbone of her practice. These texts are often employed instrumentally to examine the ways that the human body expresses spiritual and emotional states of being. In addition to showing her work in venues such as Western Front in Vancouver, the Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art in Chile, EFA Project Space in New York City, and the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe, Linklater’s poetry has been featured in numerous publications (and exhibitions) including BlackFlash Magazine, C Magazine, and Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art. She was awarded the K. M. Hunter Artist Award in Literature in 2013 and has been

3 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

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

”

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD supported by the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. This year, she is staging performances at Remai Modern Art Gallery in Saskatoon, Phi Centre and DHC/ ART in Montreal, and the Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, in addition to installing new work at Art Gallery of Alberta as part of a two-person exhibition with her husband and Sobey Art Award winner, Duane Linklater (Cree). I interviewed Tanya to ask her about the politics surrounding her work and the cross-pollination between writing and visual art.

I’d like to begin by discussing your educational training and background. You earned an undergraduate degree in the arts from Stanford University, where you were awarded the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and Louis Sudler Prize in Creative and Performing Arts, a master’s degree in education from the University of Alberta, and are currently pursuing a PhD in cultural studies at Queens University. Can you discuss what your dissertation topic engages and how it is reflective of your earlier education, if at all?

As you mentioned, my undergraduate degree is in English, and my research at Stanford University focused on Native American women’s poetry, poetics, and performance. At University of Alberta, I focused my graduate course work on Indigenous pedagogies, cinema and pedagogy, and Indigenous research methodologies. My master’s research began ten years of research-creation centered on traditional Alaska Native performance by investigating movement forms, language, and song. This research often led me to engage with anthropological and ethnographic texts that document Alaska

ABOVE: Tanya Lukin Linklater (Alutiiq), Slow Scrape performance still, 2015, in collaboration with Ziyian Kwan for the exhibit Reading the Line, curated by Pablo de Ocampo at Western Front, Vancouver, BC. Linklater responded in movement to installed, two-dimensional artwork and the gallery’s architecture.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Natives’ precarious relationship to the field of anthropology and museums, dating to the early 20th century. Museum collections across the world hold our objects, yet our former relationship to many of these cultural objects is no longer fully understood. Anthropology is often turned to as a source of cultural reconstruction but is fraught with a difficult history.

My doctoral work is an investigation of art writing as a practice. I intend to write a series of essays about contemporary Indigenous artists who are engaging with ideas of insistence and perhaps translation in their work.

Your visual practice remains interdisciplinary and dynamic, and you continue to employ video, performance, photography, and installation. What is the philosophy driving this body of work?

My early artistic practice insisted on a continuum of performance and translated my concerns, including (but not limited to) resurgence and futurity through contemporary art and performance. Insistence and translation continue to be central to my work, but these concerns are complicated by

everyday, lived experience. I am compelled by process and the idea of translation across forms.

As a respected poet, your work has been featured in numerous publications both in Canada, the USA, and in other international venues. Can you provide a sense of when you began writing poetry?

I began writing poetry as a young person at Stanford University. At the time, I read poetry but did not study creative writing formally or develop creative writing as a practice. I wrote monologues for a few years, here and there, as I was interested in performance. In Edmonton I joined poets Anna Marie Sewell and Marilyn Dumont informally in a writing group that took place at Anna Marie’s kitchen table.

We worked like this for a couple of years until an opportunity arose with the Edmonton Poetry Festival to develop a larger-scale project. The Honour Songs Project consisted of writing and performance workshops we coordinated in the City of Edmonton, as well as performances and installations of text/textiles as art objects. This was a turning point in some ways for me, but it wasn’t until 2012 that text became more prominent in my practice, building on my methodology SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 39

ABOVE: Tanya Lukin Linklater (Alutiiq), Slow Scrape performance still, 2015, in collaboration with Ziyian Kwan for the exhibit Reading the Line, curated by Pablo de Ocampo at Western Front, Vancouver, BC. Linklater responded in movement to installed, two-dimensional artwork and the gallery’s architecture.

Image courtesy of the artist.

of using text as movement scores for choreography in live performance and video. Strengthening my writing practice was the focus of a mentorship with Layli Long Soldier, a phenomenal poet I met at Bard College in 2011. We met weekly via Skype—connecting across the distance between Tsaile, Arizona, and Nipissing First Nation in Northern Ontario. Out of this mentorship came two long poems, “The Harvest Sturdies” and “the the,” catalyzing the development of a series of live performances in galleries, videos, and installations for the past three years. If I think about the women I’ve learned from, they are Indigenous women poets with deep connections to their ancestral homes and to the communities that they live in today.

policies Indigenous peoples have survived in North America.

These histories are mostly absent from K–12 education.

Indigenous women poets reflected their refusal to be erased or rendered invisible while grappling with the attempted genocide in North America and intergenerational trauma.

These poems were connected to writings by women of color, and I recognized a shared experience. In the last few years, my writing has responded to political events in the world: the attempted assassination of Malala Yousafzai, the girls’ education activist, and Chief Theresa Spence’s (Attawapiskat First Nation) 44-day hunger strike on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, for treaty rights. My writing has become more specific.

While it’s often an overlooked question, especially for mid-career writers, it’s quite a significant one: why did you begin to write, and write poetry specifically?

How would you describe your poetry to others that may not have read it or are interested in reading and experiencing it?

Growing up, I didn’t see reflections of Indigenous people in television, films, books, or everyday news. I didn’t see my experiences reflected as a girl who grew up in the ’80s in poverty during Reaganomics. In Native American studies courses in the 1990s, I learned about the histories and

In some ways the work is sparse. The poems use everyday language, which is possibly more accessible to the reader.

Sometimes the poems directly quote women interviewed. The poems make sense of or interrogate the space between words. I reckon with the white space on the page or the space between

4 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Take the time and space to be a writer.

It takes deep dedication to write in a thoughtful way. language as an idea, a place, possibly a place of potentiality.

Sometimes the poems become clearly visual, referencing beadwork, a hide being stretched, or the smoke used to color hide in a canvas tipi. These visual images are connected to the content of the poems.

with dancers for live performance or video? How will the text function as a visual art installation with different materials? I see poetry as a substrate of my visual arts practice, generally.

I apply ideas of visual composition to many of the poems I construct.

I’m curious to know if you can speak to some of the themes undercutting your current work in both your writing and art practice?

As a writer myself, I often wonder what other writers struggle with. For me, it’s doing justice to the artist or artwork I’m discussing. What do you find most difficult when writing?

Themes include personal memory, historical memory, Indigenous women’s experiences, labor on the land, Indigenous language, poverty, pedagogy (learning), the ideas of home, distance and diaspora, and Indigenous concepts of orality—our ways of passing on knowledge—and relationality, knowing how to be a kind, ethical person in relation to the world, informed by lived experiences. More recently, I’m compelled by the complexity of our lives as Indigenous peoples: the specificity of our experiences, which counter reductive ideas that can come to dominate our imaginations.

Who is your audience, or, better yet, who do you imagine your audience to be during the process of writing? Who do you write for primarily?

It’s a difficult question, but perhaps first and foremost I write for my family. My dad reads a great deal in our village in Alaska, especially during the winter. He encourages me to write, and I wonder if the work partly reflects his generation’s experiences. I write for the women in “The Harvest Sturdies,” Agnes Hunter from Peawanuck, Marlene Kapashesit and Lillian Mishi Trapper, my relatives in Northern Ontario, who shared their experiences tanning hides, beading, and sewing. I write for my sisters, literally and figuratively, and I write for youth. I think that a good effect of this writing is potentially offering different ideas of Indigeneity to readers of published works distributed more widely in online poetry journals, as well as the audiences of my visual arts projects in galleries.

I’m interested to know if your visual practice informs your writing work (and vice versa) in any way?

Considering that you often cross over between disciplines and expressions, I assume that there is some leakage here.

If so, how does it materialize?

Perhaps it is my lack of academic training when it comes to creative writing that allows me to look at the text from the perspectives of visual artist and choreographer. I think of the text in utilitarian ways: How will the text function as a movement score or movement structure to be communicated

I often find establishing the structure of the work, with its own internal logic, difficult. Establishing the structure often goes hand in hand with the content of the work.

Once we were young and looked to others for guidance.

Do you have any advice for young writers?

Read poetry, short stories, the long journalistic article, and novels. Develop a daily writing practice. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t write every day. Seek mentors or writing groups. Edit rigorously. Reflect. Think about the concepts that you are writing about. Ask yourself what ideas you may be replicating. Don’t publish too soon; develop your work.

Take the time and space to be a writer. It takes deep dedication to write in a thoughtful way. Read Layli Long Soldier, Joan Kane, dg okpik, Orlando White, Marilyn Dumont, Leanne Simpson, and Joy Harjo.

What are your plans for the near future? Do you have any exhibition or writing projects underway, and where should the reader expect to encounter them?

Currently I’m editing a new video for an exhibition curated by Wendy Red Star at Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery, Weber State University in Utah. I’m in the midst of development of a new installation for a two-person exhibition, A Parallel Excavation, curated by Ociciwan Collective at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton. I’m in research and development of performance for a series, Affinities, Variations, and Scenes, in conjunction with the first retrospective of Joan Jonas in Canada at DHC/ART in Montreal. This project, curated by Barbara Claussen, will include Joan Jonas’s They Come to Us without a Word, which was installed in the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year. I was privileged to see this work and look forward to responding to Jonas’s body of work.

Finally, from the last question from the “Proust Questionnaire”: What is your favorite motto?

Ask an Elder.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 41

44 days

At twenty-one days, on the eve of the new year on unmelted river, I watch until night, afraid of what might come. Fortyfour days. She relents, stays with us. She is not spent, she continues. Now that number and she know one another.

—Tanya Lukin Linklater

Nokom Her hands that cradle caribou hide, sinew, all manner of beads, fur – my hands crouch inside the space she presses between her fingers, inside the space resting at her palms.

Do you remember when you asked me to be your grandmother?

I bend at the waist, wrap my arms around her shoulders, resting against the wheelchair, Yes, my sound to her ear.

—Tanya Lukin Linklater

4 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

45th ANNUAL TRAIL OF TEARS ART SHOW & SALE

APRIL 9 - MAY 7, 2016 Don’t miss this exclusive opportunity to participate in Oklahoma’s longest running Native American art show featuring more than $16,000 in prizes.

Application deadline is March 23, 2016.

To receive an application, email chc@cherokee.org.

21192 S KEELER DR, PARK HILL, OK 74451 (888) 999-6007 • CHEROKEEHERITAGE.ORG

44th Annual Trail of Tears Art Show, Grand Prize “Warriors Doorway” Bill Jr. and Demos Glass, Cherokee Nation SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 43

Wichita Tribe

at the Artesian Gallery 100 West Muskogee Street Sulphur, Oklahoma 73086 margaretroachwheeler.com mahota@cableone.net

One-Day Workshops February 26. Martha Berry. Beadwork March 25. Margaret Wheeler. Rigid Heddle Weaving May 6. Karen Berry. Finger Weaving May 27. Margaret Wheeler. Natural Dyes June 24. Leandra Spangler. Netless Knotting

Weaving Co-op High-End Handwoven Items

Fortune Huntinghorse Jewelry

Wichita Tribe

Phone # 971-242-9772 www.Fortunehuntinghorse.com 4 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Jacki e Sevi e r Northern Plains Studio mixed media, pastel, and embossing Look for new work at the Heard Museum Guild Fair & Market Phoenix, AZ, March 5 & 6, 2016 Gathering of People, Wind and Water Rapid City, SD, July 16, 2016 or online at

www.NorthernPlainsStudio.com

Nelda Schrupp Pheasant Rump Nakota Jeweler and Sculptor

PERIDOT NECKLACE

Wigwam Indian Art Show Wigwam Resort, Litchfield, AZ, Feb. 12–14

Heard Museum Guild Fair Phoenix, AZ, March 5 & 6

Jay Contway and Friends Hilton Garden Inn Great Falls, MT, March 17–20

RUBY AND PEARL NECKLACE

neldaschrupp.com

BREASTPLATE NECKLACE, 24 × 5 IN. SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 45

benjamin harjo jr. american indian artist thunder being, 2015, gouache on Arches paper, 6 × 6 inches

benjaminharjojr . com

ADVENTURE AND INTRIGUE FROM COVER TO COVER. What You’ll Learn May Surprise You. •

A Guide to the Cherokee National Museum Newspaper Collection

•

Records of the Moravians, Volumes 1-6

•

The Development of Law and Legal Institutions Among the Cherokees

•

The Life and Times of Reverend Stephen Foreman Enjoy these and many other hard-to-find books on Cherokee history and culture.

21192 S KEELER DR, PARK HILL, OK 74451 (888) 999-6007 • CHEROKEEHERITAGE.ORG

4 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

KESHi the zuni connection 227 don gaspar santa fe, nm 87501 505.989.8728

keshi.com

s

Troy Sice: Chrysocolla Bear with Dove & Fish

since 1981

fetishes

jewelry

pottery

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 47

PROFILE

Oglala Lakota Glass Artist

Angela Babby

By Mary V. Bordeaux

G

LASS IS AN ENTICING MEDIUM that can be strong and stable as well as fragile and unpredictable. Angela Babby of Billings, Montana, creates stunning pieces of enameled glass art that appear light and airy. Her works balance in composition with color, realism, and abstract thought. Angela pays exacting attention to detail when she paints each little bead or quill on a dress or moccasins. The primary designs are painted with enamel onto the glass, which is then heated in a kiln. Angela creates additional design elements by cutting the glass into specific shapes and using the mortar to create the lines to mimic geometric designs used by historical Lakota women in parfleches or quillwork.

Her highly complex process can be stressful and requires hours and hours of planning, preparing, and creating. Angela writes, “Each artwork that I create cycles through three different mediums: stained glass, enameling, and tile work.”1 She sketches out her design, transfers her image to cardboard, cuts the pieces of cardboard, and transfers these shapes to the glass, which is cut and ground into individual pieces. She paints glass pieces with vitreous enamel (finely powdered glass mixed with a liquid binder) that melt into the glass surface when heated in the kiln to temperatures higher than one thousand degrees Fahrenheit, creating a glass-on-glass piece.

Finally, Angela adheres the painted and unpainted glass pieces, by hand, to a tile board and mortars the spaces in between.

The kiln-firing can change the colors of the enameled glass. Sometimes it can create the lifelike look and depth she wants, and other times the outcome is completely different.

While trying to achieve the right look can be time intensive, Angela says she learns something new each time, even when the enamel does something she did not expect. To her, the unexpectedness brings magic to the artistic process.

We all have instances in our lives when the universe seems to tell us where to go and makes our decisions for us.

As I sat with Angela to get to know her better and hear about how and why she creates her glass mosaic art, she reminded me that sometimes things are just meant to be and of the importance of reconnection to what makes us whole. Not just what makes us whole, but where we may have made mistakes, how we learn from our past, and how we make better choices moving forward in life.

She and I sat together for a few hours talking through her movement into to the arts, her leap to a weatherproof art form, and her inspirations for her subject matter. Angela 1. Angela Babby, “Native Arts Gathering,” Facebook, July 6, 2015.

4 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Angela Babby. Image courtesy of the artist.

uses her art not only to reconnect with her culture and past but also to reconnect us all to our pasts and the lessons they hold for us. Angela said to me she was not a “rambler” when it came to speaking, but her unforgettable artwork speaks volumes.

Pilamaya, Angela, for your thoughts and inspiration!

Did you go to art school?

I did. But I didn’t start out studying art; I studied everything in between. Everyone expected me to become an engineer or an architect. I spent a lot of time studying geology, microbiology, everything but art, but every time I went into something new, I would see myself in this little office or lab and I couldn’t do it.

ANGELA BABBY

Bring the People, 2015, vitreous enameled glass on tile board, 28 × 38 in.

My parents had moved to Montana, so I moved to Billings and started studying art. I immediately knew that I had found my path. After I graduated, I thought I needed to be in a big city to pursue an art career, so I moved to Seattle where I learned to frame pictures.

Coincidently around that same time, my dad was putting together a genealogy book. After reading it, I had new knowledge of the people from my past, like Woodpecker, Shot in the Eye, Walks as She Thinks, and Red Cloud. All these people began to inspire my work.

Later I moved to Portland, Oregon, where I went to work for the Bullseye Glass Company and learned all about stained glass.

After a health scare that I attributed to the chemicals used in glass manufacturing, I moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to try to pursue an art career full time—thinking it was now or never.

Were you working in glass at that first Heard Fair in 2002?

That’s when I started my own painting/mural business. As I got older and found myself up on ladders and 25-foot scaffolds painting ceilings, I began thinking, “I don’t think I can do this for much longer.”

Realizing the mural painting business wasn’t forever, I started looking into different options. I took a pottery class because it was outside the realm of everything I had done. I was only able to make it to two classes, but there was this girl in the class that looked at my work and said, “You should apply to the Heard Show.” I had never heard of the show, looked into it, and then applied. I was accepted into the show.

I wasn’t. I worked primarily in watercolor and acrylic and was painting mostly flowers and plant life for subject matter. It was rainy that first year. The outdoor conditions caused me to have to reframe a bunch of my work and … to think I needed a more durable medium.

I started to work with glass as it made my images waterproof and gave them a three-dimensional, semi-surreal feeling that I loved. I appreciate the limited control that I have over outcomes; it always creates unexpected effects.

What is the process of making a piece?

It’s a labor-intensive process. When I get an idea, I start with sketches on tracing paper, and when that’s perfect, I transfer SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 49

PROFILE

Independence Day, 2007, vitreous enameled glass on tile board, 24 × 20 in.

it onto cardboard and cut out each piece—minus the mortar lines—and transfer it onto different kinds of glass.

All the pieces are then cut out, and the sides are ground to a 90-degree angle so that each piece matches up. From there you can just use the glass in the color that it is or you can enamel it.

The enamel comes in powder form and is mixed with a medium to make it a liquid, but as it dries it becomes powder again, so it’s very fragile at that point.

After it is fired, it is glass on glass and it’s ready to be adhered to tile board, and then the mortar is applied.

In each step there are things that can go wrong, and it’s all so tricky. It’s a guessing game in the beginning, but you guess better and better every time.

You learn to accept surprises and learn patience, as sometimes things just have to be done over and over again.

Your process is connected to the title of the exhibition you had at the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings.

gain while carrying out the creation of my artwork. It requires isolation and contemplation, and it’s blissful when I get a chance to focus.

Could you talk a little more about the exhibition and the subject matter of your works?

Yes, I am so excited to have had the exhibition there. I just love museum shows! They bring all my early works back together that I haven’t seen for years … and then they light it in such a way that it’s unrecognizable. It’s so amazing!

What I am trying to do is to look inside myself and figure out what in the modern world is important to me. It seems history keeps repeating itself over and over again. The subjects that have come up recently deal with how people want to forget about the past.

The title of the show is Hanbleceya, the Lakota word that translates to “crying for a vision.” I chose the word, as it reflects my decade-long search for the occasional nuggets of knowledge I

In fact, at my museum show there was this guy who was talking about, “Why don’t Indians just move on? Just get over it, move on, and go forward.” I said, “Would you say that to a Holocaust

5 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

ANGELA BABBY

What has happened in the past has an effect on each and every person that is alive! did, not too long ago, here in America.

So, what I am trying to do is focus my work on those repeated histories.

I like studying the people in particular.

That’s what I find the most inspiring: studying the history and finding out what happened and then bringing it up in an aesthetically pleasing way, focused on people.

Then someone gets sucked into the aesthetically pleasing picture, and then they find a whole story there. It might not be a pretty story, but it’s a truthful story.

Can you talk a little more about that?

My focus on glass started with the very first mosaic I created based on a tiny image of Medicine Bottle that I found in a book. I stumbled upon this image of him awaiting the gallows for his role in the 1862 Dakota Uprising.

His face perfectly expressed the pain and suffering of First Peoples as their way of life was stripped from them.

This photograph inspired me to begin experimenting with the age-old technique of kiln-fired glass enameling to capture the detail of his face. I always wanted to revisit this image using my enameling techniques.

Kiksuyapi 1862 (Remember, Don’t Forget), 2012, vitreous enameled glass on tile board, 18 × 14 in.

survivor? Of course not! What has happened in the past has an effect on each and every person that is alive!”

My grandfather was sent to Haskell Indian School, and because of this, my generation didn’t learn about our culture. The government did that with the intention of taking away our culture, and it was very effective.

When he returned home from boarding school, he married my grandmother, who worked at the Pine Ridge Indian Hospital. She had to quit working because she got married. So then they were down to one income during the Great Depression. A priest at Holy

Rosary Mission told him, “You will do better in supporting your family if you leave Pine Ridge,” and so my grandfather went to work for the BIA at Fort Peck Reservation.

My dad and his brothers got an education on various other reservations, wherever my grandfather was transferred. Their kids, myself included, became even more disconnected from our culture and heritage.

There are so many people this has happened to, and it wasn’t until recently that I started to realize that. We keep doing the exact [same] horrible things to people throughout the world that we

In 2011, I was asked to participate in a group exhibition at the All My Relations Arts, a gallery in Minneapolis, reflecting upon the 150th anniversary of the 1862 United States–Dakota War. I made two 14-by-18-inch artworks and had the gallery choose between the two.

One had the purple face and was titled Wanagi (Ghost), the artwork the gallery chose, and the other was very similar to the first Medicine Bottle, with the floating figures in the background, and was called Kiksuyapi 1862 (Remember, Don’t Forget). The latter went on to win best of classification, first place for mixed media, and best of division at the 2012 Santa Fe Indian Market.

The emotion in his face tells a tale of despair; it portrays the impact of the SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 51

PROFILE

many wrongs imposed by Manifest Destiny on Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Early last year, a tribal leader from Shakopee, Minnesota, saw one of a series of miniatures of this image I had made in a gallery and purchased it for a new museum they will be opening next year. He commissioned a portrait of Sakpe Da, also known as Little Six, for the museum.

Little Six was with Medicine Bottle in Canada when the 1862 war was reaching a close. On December 26, 1862, by the order of Abraham Lincoln, 38 leaders were hung simultaneously in the largest mass execution in US history. Medicine Bottle and Little Six were drugged and kidnapped in Canada and brought back to face the same fate, creating the phrase “38 plus two” often used to talk about the 40 who were executed.

I find these two early photographs to be two of the most powerful ever made.

These images drove my explorations in glass and caused my interest in historical and figurative themes, and they sparked my interest in studying the way different colors and patterns in the same image affect the way it is perceived.

Art is uniquely powerful in that an image can absolutely stick in someone’s head forever. That is what I am ultimately shooting for. I want to make something someone can’t forget about, and every time they think about it, the story is brought to the forefront again.

Little Six (Sakpe Da), 2015, vitreous enameled glass on tile board, 8 × 6 in.

One of those images for me is your piece with Russell Means …

Movement] was in Pine Ridge and during the occupation of Wounded Knee, my family was being protected by the police because my dad was the BIA area director in Aberdeen, South Dakota, overseeing the reservations.

Oh yes! His pose in that piece is quintessential Lakota! But that piece is also really weird to me … when I start to approach a work of art, I come into it thinking what interests me and thinking about composition and balance. I added the poster of Red Cloud to balance out the composition and to express how people relate to each other … but then all this other stuff came up … In the 1970s, when AIM [American Indian

So, I am creating this piece, and my dad says to me, “You are going to regret that.” But later my dad was telling me about the struggles that Red Cloud had as a leader and that half the people believed him to be a sellout. I think Russell Means has some of the same struggles; Red Cloud and Means are both polarizing figures. My dad struggled with Russell and was so upset with him for some of the things he did

5 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

during occupation, both at Wounded Knee and the BIA building in DC. Then I found out my dad and Russell were babysat together as young children and played together!

Anyway, I wouldn’t have found out about any of this from my dad if I hadn’t created this piece. We [my dad and I] were able to have a conversation we might not have had if it wasn’t for the artwork. In the end, he told me, “That is your most important piece of work.”

I believe that art has the power to change minds without people being aware of it.

ANGELA BABBY

Puppy Love, 2014, vitreous enameled glass on tile board, 16 × 20 in.

Is that your hope or goal, to help people have those hard conversations?

My goal is to create something that matters … Even if it only matters to a few, it still makes it a worthwhile way to spend my short time here in the world.

Some of my favorite artists dealt with some difficult subjects in beautiful ways that gave me hope.

Who are some of your favorite artists?

Gustav Klimt, Pablo Picasso, T. C. Cannon, Fritz Scholder, and Kehinde

Wiley are some of my inspirations.

Their work deals with death, aging, war, hate, and prejudice. It’s the way in which they did it that really appeals to me. Their work is attractive and their titles tell you what they were thinking about. Looking into their work seems like a journey into their heads.

Kehinde makes these wonderful works based on masterpieces of the past but uses people from today as the subjects.

Looking at these works affects the viewer at a subconscious level. I think they have the power to address one of our biggest problems: prejudice and fear. By putting street people in his works surrounded by beauty and often

on a pedestal, he makes us consider the individual as a human being, as good and important as any other.

This is what I am getting at with my work. Showing people as their vulnerable selves creates a connection to the viewer. If you get to know someone, it takes away fear. I love locking down current events as they happen and bringing up the past to show that we have made certain mistakes before. We need to look at how we dealt with problems before to try to figure out how to make better decisions in the future.

angelababby.com SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 53

PROFILE

Jemez Pueblo Sculptor

Cliff Fragua

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

C

LIFF FRAGUA is a New Mexico-based sculptor working in glass, bronze, and stone. Fragua attended the Institute for American Indian Arts from 1973 to 1975 and studied under the direction of Chiricahua Apache sculptor Allan Houser in 1974. On his own, Fragua studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in the summer of 1974. In 1986, after leaving school, he attended a stone-carving workshop in Pietrasanta, Italy. Sixteen years later, Fragua was awarded a major commission by the State of New Mexico to create a sculpture of Po’pay, the celebrated Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo leader who took up arms against Spanish colonizers in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

The resulting ten-foot-high marble statue was installed in the National Statuary Hall in the US Capitol in Washington, DC, and remains the only statue executed by an Indigenous person in the hall.

Fragua has earned numerous awards, grants, and bursaries, including the Indian Arts and Crafts Association’s Indian Artist of the Year Award in 2005. He served as president of the Indigenous Sculptor Society in 2004 and 2005, and is currently the founder and owner of Singing Stone Studio in Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico.

Fragua’s body of work combines customary Pueblo materials with marble, alabaster, granite, bronze, and glass.

He draws from the sacred and the sublime for his iconography; consequently, his approach to making art is steeped in the spiritual relationship between his hands and the material.

I had the opportunity to discuss past works and upcoming projects with Fragua.

I’d like to begin by discussing your family, which is made up of artists. How did their dedication to art making influence you?

Yes, my mother is a potter, and my sisters are potters as well. I come from a family of potters. Now there are six generations of potters in my family, starting from my great-grandmother to my daughters and granddaughters.

However, I took another path … I became a painter then eventually a sculptor.

Soon after you graduated, you studied stone carving at the Pietrasanta Stone Workshop in Italy. I’m curious to know what the differences are in education between an Indigenous institution, a mainstream American institution, and a European institution.

5 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

ABOVE: Cliff Fragua.

OPPOSITE: Rainbow Blessings, 2015, chlorite, 30 × 10 × 8 in. Unless otherwise indicated, all photos in this article by Stephen Lang, stephenlangphotography.com.

There is a big difference. When I was at IAIA, they didn’t have a full curriculum dedicated to the Native perspective.

European approaches to the arts were taught, yet there was a move to change this while I was there, to offer an art curriculum through a Native perspective. They were able to change it, but during the time I was there, that movement was only starting.

Was this the time that you started to shift focus to stone?

Yes, I was studying painting when I first arrived there, but during my second year I decided to take three-dimensional

CLIFF FRAGUA

art to help with my two-dimensional form. So I took jewelry, ceramics, and traditional techniques, and I also took sculpture classes. Sculpture is the one that held my interest above all the other arts I studied.

What kind of paintings were you making initially?

They were a mix of watercolor, acrylic, and oil, but I just wasn’t finding the right approach. Personally, I just wasn’t getting it right. That’s why I took three-dimensional art. Sculpture was [what] I felt more comfortable with and had more of a connection with.

I’m wondering if you could talk a little about how each institution approached art making— was one more theoretical than another, one more classical than another, one more experimental than another?

At IAIA I wanted to study more about the Native arts, and being in a class with mostly Native American students helped me to understand what other perspectives were out there among Native people. I felt very good about being among Native people who saw the conflict in the European approach to art as opposed to the Native approach to art. There is no [Jemez language] word for “art.” So, the identity of the Native artists becomes stronger and more concrete when they’re among other Native artists who have the same feeling and approach to their work.

Arguably, your most well-known work is the ten-foot-tall marble sculpture of Po’pay permanently installed in the National Statuary Hall in the US Capitol in Washington, DC. I was contacted by one of the commission members, and he suggested that I apply, and so I got the information and sent in photographs of the artwork, my résumé, etc. Then the commission selected me as one of the artists—I think they selected four others. They asked to see what our sculptures would look like, so I went ahead and did a sculpture of Po’pay out of alabaster. Out of the five proposals, mine was selected. This process was approved by the state legislature; however, the money had to be raised privately. So the commission had to do all the fundraising, and they didn’t receive any money from the state. So about 2002, 2003, we were able to raise enough money to purchase the block of stone, which came from SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 55

PROFILE

Eastern Tennessee. The reason why I chose the marble was because it had a color that was actually closer to Native skin color. When you go to National Statuary Hall, the sculptures are mostly made out of bronze or marble, and all the marble in the collection is white marble. I didn’t see any other colored marble.

That’s a very important point you make. To me, there is something to be said for not only including a marble statue of a Native person in the National Statuary Hall, but also having this sculpture display Indigenous skin tone as well. This can be seen as a symbolic gesture that inserts Native forms of representation and identity into this predominantly white, and white marble, hall. It’s a subtle reclamation of space through form and color; it’s political. What is it like to be the only Indigenous sculptor to have a work in that hall?

It is quite an honor to be selected for this prestigious commission. I was surprised that there were no Native artists represented in the entire collection of the Capitol, whether it’s sculpture or painting. But it was due time that Native artists be included, and it took the State of New Mexico to do that.

I’m interested in your process—from the beginning of a sculpture to its end. You’ve mentioned that the sound and color of a particular stone often determines how it will be sculpted. Can you discuss this process?

Yes, generally when I select stone, I like to tap it. If it rings, it tells me that the stone is solid. If it doesn’t, there are imperfections that may cause problems later on. I knew that Tennessee marble [for the statue of Po’pay] was good and for the most part solid. It’s a hard marble. When I received it in the studio, it took at least a year just to plan how to carve the piece. When I decided how to do this, I just went ahead and started cutting straight through the stone.

You have to remember that this is a spiritual process. Not only did I request a blessing of the stone, there was also a ceremony that involved the receiving of the stone, a blessing for beginning work on the stone, and another blessing to send it on its road to final installation. And in fact, there were two blessing for that; not only in my community of Jemez Pueblo, but also when it was delivered to Ohkay Owingeh where Po’pay was from. Then, when it was finally delivered to the US Capitol, there was another blessing during the unveiling. It was full of blessings; it was just a thing that the Pueblo people here in New Mexico would do to ensure that the sculpture arrived safely and that no harm would come to it. Everybody involved also received a blessing, so we could all take pride and feel that there’s good fortune in this whole project. Everybody benefits.

5 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Po’pay, completed 2005, Tennessee marble, 84 in. tall, collection of CVC Emancipation Hall, US Capitol. Photo: Architect of the Capitol.

CLIFF FRAGUA

There were no Native artists represented in the entire collection of the Capitol … But it was due time that Native artists be included, and it took the State of New Mexico to do that.

I carve stone out of my own inspiration. My inspiration comes from my own encounters that I have in my life.

Whether it’s that which has occurred in my life or even just looking at a piece of stone and seeing an image in it. When I carve, I generally look at the stone, and if I perceive an image, I go ahead and release that image. Other times I have ideas in my head, and I attempt to create a sculpture from that idea. When I carve it, it can either come out as abstract or representational. I generally don’t know what it will be when I first begin. I compromise with the stone. We give and take.

I suggest an idea, and if the stone likes it, it will accept it, and I will continue working with it. If it decides on its own that it wants to be something else, then it will tell me. Generally it’s something that’s distracting that will show up in the stone, and then I make changes or alterations or modifications.

I like working that way. I look at stone as being here long before us. I regard the stone as a teacher, and I am just a student.

Autumn Corn Dancer, 2014, various laminated marbles, turquoise, steel pins.

When I was carving the stone, it took about two years to carve the entire piece. Towards the end, it was winter, late winter, nearly early spring. The weather at that time was really fierce, a lot of rain, a lot of snow, a lot of sleet, a lot of wind. I thought it was really powerful. I felt like there was a connection with the carving of Po’pay and with Po’pay himself, and with the whole environment and the whole

spirit that goes with the environment.

It all came together to make a real powerful statement. Even that which occurred in 1680 still continues, that spirit still remains. I felt that there was a lot of power behind it.

I’m wondering if I could talk about your smaller sculptural works.

What kinds of themes are you interested in exploring with these?

As I understand it, IAIA developed a student exchange program with the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975. RISD constructed a glass studio on the grounds of IAIA, which offered you your first foray into glassblowing. You returned to glassblowing in the spring of 2009.

What has this experience been like?

And what kinds of glass are you producing?

During the time RISD was at IAIA, I was just exposed to glassblowing—I didn’t participate in any of the process, but it held my interest. I decided at that point I would work with glass, but it wasn’t until many years later that I had the opportunity to do so. I met Adam Frus, a glass artist in Phoenix.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 57

PROFILE

We talked about our work and exchanged ideas. We both agreed that we would teach each other our practice—he would teach me glass, and I would teach him stone—and that’s how I was able to get into a glass studio. So I relied on him to get me through the basics of glassblowing.

How is your approach to glass different than sculpture? Is there a difference between the two media?

Oh yes. Glass involves fire, and fire is sacred among Native people. So when I go into the glass studio and the kilns and the furnaces are going, I say a prayer to the fire out of respect and to ensure that no harm comes to me. I’m also asking the fire spirit to help me in achieving what I wish to achieve. With stone, I know that fire has a lot to do with the forming of stone, and the ways that stone is made through the earth. I also say a prayer to the stone, because we believe that when you take the stone out of the earth and create an image, you not only create the image itself, but you create the spirit of the stone. You’re helping it to bring the spirit out of the stone. The elders always told me to be careful and protect myself to make sure no harm or misfortune falls upon me, so I would request medicine men to create prayer feathers for me or do blessings to make sure that everything goes well.

You are the owner and operator of Singing Stone Studio. How did the studio come about?

When I left IAIA, I went back to Jemez Pueblo. I was young, and I had also become a father, so there was a responsibility for caring for my family and supporting them, being responsible. But I didn’t have a job. I had to find work, but at the same time I didn’t want to forsake my art, so I continued to work with sculpture.

I remember one time an elderly man walked by when I was working outside. He asked me what I was doing, and I told him I was making sculptures. He asked me, “What are sculptures?” I tried to explain to him what sculpture was about. I don’t think he fully understood it. For him, the only carving he was familiar with was the animal carving we use for hunting, for planting. His understanding was that you take the stone from the earth because it is its own entity, its own spirit. What you’re doing is altering that spirit to become what the image is going to be.

So, if you take the stone and create a bear or create a mountain lion, what you’ve done is create the spirit of that bear or that mountain lion, and if you’re not careful it could turn on you. So when I explained to 5 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

CLIFF FRAGUA

How do cultural practices, specifically Pueblo tradition, affect your current work, and how do you bridge ancestral conventions with the present day?

Well, I like to create sculpture that has a Pueblo feel, but I will not create any sacred images. I will not exploit sacred images. I know where to draw the line. I encourage other artists to do this. We can use other forms and approaches that still teach and express our views, as opposed to exploiting what’s sacred to us to try to make money.

Sometimes it just causes a lot of misrepresentation, it gets confusing, and it also encourages stereotypes. I have to be careful about how I want to express myself, because I don’t want people to get the wrong idea and think this is the way that all Native people are. I’m trying to express myself as an individual artist.

I’m curious to know what your major influences are, your inspirations? Artists? Books? People? Films?

In the beginning, it was the works of the Aztecs and Maya peoples, and then as I started studying more about sculpture, it was Art Deco and the Art Nouveau periods. Then I started looking at the work of Antonio Canova and Gian Lorenzo Bernini and other European sculptors; later, more contemporary forms such as Constantin Brancusi and Henry Moore. I liked those artists’ approach; I could really identify with them. Of course, there are other cultures, too: Japanese culture, some of the Aboriginal people in Australia, as well as Indigenous cultures. I started looking at some of the carvings and sculptures that came from Native America.

Finally, what can we expect from you in the near future?

ABOVE: The Caterpillar Doesn’t Know It’s Becoming a Butterfly, But It Knows a Change Is Coming, 2015, Italian alabaster, 41 × 13 × 8 in.

OPPOSITE: Spirit of the Clay, 2015, Tennessee marble, 45 × 12 × 12 in.

him about sculpture, he didn’t understand how you can take a thing from nature and turn it into artwork. When he tried to understand this process, it gave me clarity of what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to approach my art.

I bounced around from location to location, trying to find a good working studio. During that time around 1980, 1981, I had a really good opening and made good sales. With that money, I was able to begin construction on my studio. With the help of my father, we laid the foundation and put up the walls. We completed a studio. It was small, about 40 feet by 20 feet with a 10-by10-foot office area, but it’s expanded over the years. Now my studio not only includes an area for stone carving and clay work, but also for gallery space.

Right now, I’m just an artist who makes a living off his artwork. I do keep my eyes open for any calls for artists or any commissions that may be out there. For the most part, I just want to make my work and progress in it.

A reason why I make different work and don’t stay in one genre is I feel artists need to open their eyes to other things out there. One of the things that I’m looking toward understanding better is the use of mosaics in Native culture; also, the use of shell work. In my art I’ve developed a process called lamination, which is basically the gluing together of stones. There’s a lamination process in wood where woodcarvers glue pieces of wood together and make works out of that. I’m doing the same thing in stone. I’m starting to see how it also ties in with early Indigenous techniques, so I want to learn more about it and develop a genre of lamination with a Pueblo approach.

singingstonestudio.com SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 59

PROFILE

Mestizo Photographer

Luis González Palma

By Rosa Cays

T

HE VERY FIRST PHOTOGRAPH I saw by Luis González Palma was a reproduction of Joven Alado, a striking sepia portrait of a young boy with bird’s wings as earmuffs, his body wrapped in a wrinkled, shiny, black cape up to his chin. His eyes stared directly back at me from my friend’s kitchen table where he was representing his creator for an upcoming exhibit. I picked up the postcard and took a closer look. I noticed straightaway that only the whites of the boy’s eyes were not the reddish-brown tint of the sepia image.

It worked. It got my attention and made me want to hold the young boy’s gaze.

Something about the photo felt very familiar to me. Perhaps it was simply that this boy looked like he could be my son, but it was something more, something deeper. I stared back at him. It was as if the winged boy was daring me to embrace and learn more about my own Latin American lineage.

Indigenous Inspiration To appreciate the photographic portraits of Luis González Palma, one need only have an inkling of respect for humanity.

This is what he captures in his intimate, close-up portraits of individuals, many of Maya and mestizo heritage. The term mestizo means mixed in Spanish and is generally used throughout Latin America to describe people of white European and Indigenous heritage.1 During the colonial period, the Spanish developed a complex system of racial hierarchy used for social control

communities’ customs. Despite local differences and more than 30 living languages, they share a culture and history of an accomplished society.

The Maya legacy is profound. The peak of their civilization was during the Late Classic Period (250 CE to 900 CE), when their civic and artistic endeavors included distinctive writing and calendric systems, corbeled vault construction, polychrome ceramics, and public architecture that included palaces, pyramids, and ball courts.6 The cyclical nature of life was at the core of Maya belief, with no notion of birth or death, which influenced their interpretation of the gods and the cosmos and inspired their efforts in mathematics, astronomy, and architecture.7 Luis González Palma. All images in this article courtesy of Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona.

to determine a person’s standing in society.2 Numerous terms—mestizo, pardo, mulato, and zambo—were created to distinguish these racial mixtures, called castas.3 Like so many Indigenous civilizations, these people have had more than their share of historic suppression. The beauty and reverence in González Palma’s obra (work) sheds light on the Native people of his homeland, Guatemala.

Close to eight million Maya people live in Southern Mesoamerica today.4 In Guatemala, more than 40 percent of the population are of Maya heritage.5 While many are socially active in contemporary ways of the 21st century, many maintain their

Growing Up in Guatemala Luis González Palma was born in Guatemala in 1957, the birthplace of his parents. His father was of Spanish heritage, bestowing mestizo origins to his son. As Luis approached adolescence and adulthood in the 1970s and early 1980s, Guatemala saw the worst violence of the civil war, in particular the Guatemalan army operations known as Plan Victory 82, Plan Firmness 83, and Plan Operation Sofía. The army’s goal was to do whatever it took to eliminate insurgency. In three years, the army destroyed 626 villages, killed or “disappeared” more than 200,000 people, displaced about 1.5 million, and forced 150,000 others to seek refuge in Mexico. During those years, artistic production dwindled down to a few

1. Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, “ ‘Mestizo’ and ‘mulatto’: Mixed-race identities among U.S. Hispanics,” Pew Research Center, July 10, 2015, web.

2. Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1967), 53–54.

3. Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds, The Course of Mexican History, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 195–196.

4. “Maya Today,” MesoAmerican Research Center, web.

5. An additional 0.2 percent of the population is non-Maya Indigenous, and 59.4 percent is mestizo. “Guatemala: People and Society,” CIA World Factbook, web.

6. “Classic Period,” MesoAmerican Research Center, web.

7. Joshua J. Mark, “Maya Civilization,” Ancient History Encyclopedia, July 6, 2012, web.

6 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

LUIS GONZÁLEZ PALMA

Virginal, 1993–2011, hand-painted photograph on Hahnemühle watercolor paper, 41¾ × 41¾ in., edition of 5.

social salons and solitary experiments by artists in their studios.8 At a young age, González Palma was mesmerized by the sacred images in Baroque paintings and sculptures in the Catholic churches of Guatemala.

The emotional intensity captured in these creations are what he strives to capture in his own portraits.9 He studied architecture and cinematography

at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and graduated in 1985.

He soon turned to photography after shooting staged portraits of dancers and actors with someone else’s camera.10 “I was always drawn to art— to painting and drawing. Photography was a technique that at a certain point gave me a sense of direction,” says González Palma.11

His interest in art, painting, and photography led him to train harder in these fields and to connect with other Guatemalan artists. In 1987, he and painter/printmaker Moisés Barrios embraced the country’s dissident voices of art and opened la Galería Imaginaria in the city of Antigua, Guatemala. César Barrios, Daniel Chauche, Sofía González, Erwin

8. Emiliano Valdés, “Collectivity and Revolution,” Guggenheim Blogs, October 22, 2014, web.

9. Amit Singh, “The sepia spectacle of life,” Fotoflock by Epson, October 28, 2015, web.

10. “Luis González Palma: NO TITLE,” Noorderlicht, 2002, web.

11. All quotes in this article, unless otherwise noted, are from the author’s email interview with Luis González Palma, December 2015.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 61

PROFILE

Guillermo, Pablo Swezey, and Isabel Ruiz were among the artists at the gallery, along with curator Rosina Cazali. Today, this group of artists is credited with formal experimentation and the introduction of curatorship as a formal practice in Guatemala.12 By the late 1980s, the self-taught artist was well on his way to becoming one of Latin America’s most important postmodern photographers. González Palma’s first solo exhibition, Autoconfesión, was in 1989 at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art in New York. Other solo exhibitions from 1990 to 2000 took his artwork to cities and countries across the world: Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Chicago, Texas, Spain, Belgium, Scotland, Canada, Poland, Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba, and Brazil, to name a few.

In the late 1990s, González Palma was part of Colloquia, an initiative aimed at discussion, promotion, and dissemination of contemporary art in Guatemala. After several stays in Europe and a final return to Guatemala in 1998, he moved to Córdoba, Argentina, in 2001. This is where he works and lives now with Graciela De Oliveira, a multitalented artist and scholar, and their teenaged sons, Julian, Sebastian, and Alitzeel Anahi.

Less than a decade after becoming a photographer, Luis González Palma had received attention and accolades fit for a renowned artist. By 1996, he had solo exhibitions at significant institutions such as Mai de la Photo in Arles, France; Scotland’s FotoFeis International Festival of Photography; and Fotofest in Houston, Texas. He was one of a few young photographers included in the critically acclaimed, illustrated, historical survey of Latin American photography, Canto a la realidad: fotografía latinoamericana, 1860–1993, organized and published by the Casa de America in Madrid, Spain.

Unique work from the Möbius series, 2014, hand-painted photograph printed on canvas, 20 × 20 in.

El Arte de González Palma Luis González Palma paints asphaltum on his photographs to achieve the rich, sepia quality for which he has become known. For him, the color itself is symbolic and “has connotations related to the passing of life in an eternal time.”13 He learned about aging his images in this way from friends in Mexico who used the material to age furniture. Little did González Palma know at the time that asphaltum, a brownish solution of oil or turpentine mixed with asphalt, was the emulsion used on the first photograph 150 years before.14 Once the photograph is painted over, González Palma carefully removes the asphaltum from the whites of the eyes and sometimes other highlights in the image, like roses, feathers, or crowns. He incorporates props and costumes as symbolic gestures, also

12. Emiliano Valdés, “Collectivity and Revolution,” Guggenheim Blogs, October 22, 2014, web.

13. Amit Singh, “The sepia spectacle of life,” Fotoflock by Epson, October 28, 2015, web.

14. K. Mitchell Snow, “La inquietante mirada de Guatemala,” Américas 48, no. 3 (May–June 1996), via OPACudea.

6 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

important in his artwork. It is this treatment of his images and the intensification of his subject’s gaze that has become González Palma’s signature style in his portraiture. He captures the essence of what it is to be human: I am very interested in a face charged with true human power, with a fierce intensity in the eyes that at the same time reflects human fragility/dignity, beauty/pain, and tenderness/strength … portraits where the viewer can recognize him/herself at some point, regardless of race or nationality.

He still works with a film camera and in the past has printed on watercolor paper or other unusual materials, even stone. He also uses gelatin silver processing on Kodalith prints, occasionally adding gold leaf and resin to achieve the essence of passing time, harking back to his childhood influences of religious paintings in the local churches.

LUIS GONZÁLEZ PALMA

Unique work from the Möbius series, hand-painted photograph printed on canvas, 20 × 20 in.

González Palma often has family members and friends sit for him, people with whom he has an emotional connection and who can work with him in the collaborative process. He makes his subjects equal to the viewer, simultaneously revealing their strength and vulnerability through their steady countenance. His hope is for “the observer to discover himself in this internal, silent glance … to become aware that we all share a common destiny.”15 His use of symbols is romantic and regal rather than confrontational.

“Of course my work is political,” says González Palma, “but more in the sense to question and reflect on ideas and concepts related to hierarchies of observation, preconceptions of how we perceive others, and memories of personal and social relationships.”

In more recent works, the artist has folded, torn, sewn, taped, collaged, and otherwise manipulated his images.

In one series from 2004 called La Luz de la Mente (The Light of the Mind), he painstakingly re-created the perizoma, or loincloth, of Jesus Christ depicted in classical paintings by Velázquez, Rubens, El Greco, and others. Each photograph, some in sepia, some in silver gelatin, is numbered. The perizoma is suspended on strings that González Palma does not bother to hide, with drips of resin (conceivably symbolizing the blood of Christ) in some of the images. Perhaps my own Catholic upbringing came into play, because I recognized the subject right away, immediately intrigued and saddened by the images. What impelled him to create these photographs?

I wanted to explore the mantle of modesty in the most important European paintings of the crucifixion and make connections with the sacred experience and emptiness. There is never an objective, really. You make what you make for some mysterious reason.

The artist has also collaborated with his partner and wife Graciela De Oliveira on several projects, including Jerarquías de Intimidad (Hierarchies of Intimacy, 2002–2008), a study of the complexity of relationships and intimacy: el encuentro, el duelo, la anunciación, la separación (the encounter, the duel, the annunciation, and the separation). González Palma creates fictional and metaphorical scenarios that explore “beauty as a political power; religious experience loaded with love and pain … in which healthy bonds are scarce, given the complexity of emotions.”16 De Oliveira’s powerful titles deepen their meaning.

The 2009 Tu/Mi Placer (Your/ My Pleasure) was another collaboration between De Oliveira and González Palma, who look again at the workings of intimacy and the veiled cruelty of the past that surfaces at each stage of a relationship. The striking images are wrought with loneliness and beauty, symbolically conveying the complexities of love.

In his latest series Möbius, he has repurposed earlier portraits and painted geometric shapes over them, a reference to the early 20th-century Latin American Concretism, an art movement focused on abstraction (versus figuration).

“My intention,” says González Palma, “is to reconcile two principle forms of representation in Latin America in the 20th century, figurative work and geometric abstraction … to use my photos from the 1990s and alter them with acrylic paint with clear references to the geometric abstraction movement.”

Asked what other influences have shaped his work, González Palma cites countless artists, including painter Francis Bacon, whose work I consider to be disquieting and rather the opposite of his. I had to ask Luis what it was about Bacon’s work that impressed him: I love everything about Bacon’s work.

For me, he is one of the major creators

15. “Declaración de Artista,” Luis González Palma, web.

16. Ibid.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 63

PROFILE

La Sombras de Su Niñez (The Shadows of his Youth) from the series Jerarquías de Intimidad, La Separación (Hierarchies of Intimacy, the Separation), 2004, mixed media collage diptych with Kodalith film, gold leaf and red paper embedded in resin, each panel is 34 × 34 in, edition of 10.

in the history of Western art. He came to terms with the abyss to face his own demons and hell of existence. At the same time, he generated dialogues between the abstract and the figurative and played with unprecedented forms of portraiture.

Critics have described much of González Palma’s work as nostalgic, haunting, mysterious, hypnotic, surreal.

He once said that sadness is more profound than happiness in the human condition—and what seems to emanate from his artwork. I challenged him on this thought: There is deep sadness and profound happiness. They’re both different, but happiness is totally ephemeral, volatile … it quickly disappears. In sorrow, we are aware that we are beings destined for death without a possible alternative. We are dying little by little and need to find some way to alleviate this situation.

But in the end, González Palma feels that it is the viewer who ultimately decides the outcome of his work.

From the beginning, he has challenged the viewer to look into the fixed, powerful gaze of his subject, to question perception and preconceived ideas, to let

go of social and cultural constructs and the way we react to the world around us. For him, the artistic process has been to create images that invite the observer to consider them through “emotional contemplation” and permit other ways of understanding.17

El Éxito de González Palma Luis González Palma achieved recognition in his photographic career early on and continues to do so. His work is included in several public and private collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Daros Foundation in Zürich, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, also in Paris. Other institutions that have collected his work are the Fondazione Volume! in Rome, Luis Angel Arango Library in Bogota, Fogg Museum at Harvard University, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Hokuto, Japan. This is the short list.

His work has been published in various other tomes on photography, as well as in monographs focused on his work alone, including El silencio de la

17. “Declaración de Artista,” Luis González Palma, web.

18. Lisa Sette in discussion with the author, December 2015.

6 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

mirada (Peliti Associati, 1998) and Poems of Sorrow (Arena Editions, 1999). A more recent book chronicling the evolution of his work was published in 2014 by La Fábrica, Madrid, simply titled Luis González Palma, which he co-authored with Francisco Najera and Laura Catelli.

Twenty years ago, González Palma’s photographs sold for as much as $12,000, which surprised even him at the time, and they continue to hold if not surpass their original value. One collector/dealer I know regrets not paying closer attention to González Palma back in the 1990s, specifically because he wishes his own remarkable art collection included a photograph or two by the artist.

Phoenix gallery owner Lisa Sette certainly recognized the significance of Luis González Palma’s photographs 20 years ago and exhibited his body of work El Circo: Envenenado de las Estrellas (The Circus: Poisoned by the Stars) in October–November 1995.

“I was drawn to the hauntingly beautiful Maya faces,” says Lisa Sette.

She sensed that González Palma took the photographs with a “certain respect for the subject,”18 which has been a

LUIS GONZÁLEZ PALMA

Annunciation—Variation 10, 2007, archival inkjet print mounted to Sintra, 20 × 20 in., edition of 15.

controversial topic over the years, with some critics claiming the artist exploits his subjects. If anything, González Palma has revealed the true majesty of the Maya, aware of his own privileges and racism toward him. “The Indians are a marginal people in Guatemala, just like I am a marginal person in the First World. So I try to balance things.”19 Lisa Sette Gallery is now the main representative for González Palma’s work in the United States and Canada.

She kicked off the new relationship last fall, almost exactly two decades after El Circo, with a retrospective titled An Intimate Complicity: Luis González Palma’s 20 Years of Looking Beyond. Asked how

things were going, Sette and the artist agree that it’s going well.

“Luis is a joy to work with,” says Sette. “I thrive on relationships that involve deep, conceptual ideas and seamless execution, both of which Luis excels at.”

“The relationship is good, respectful, and undoubtedly professional,” says González Palma.

Sette moved her gallery to a beautifully renovated, subterranean building in midtown Phoenix in summer 2014. Designed by famous architect Al Beadle, it could not be more fitting for the architect-turned-postmodern photographer to be represented in such a classic structure.

My partner and I were fortunate enough to catch González Palma’s exhibit last November and were happy to make the two-hour drive to Phoenix to see not only this man’s work but to also see Lisa Sette’s new gallery. Greeting us as we walked down the stairs from the parking lot was Las Ventanas de su Vestido, a powerful portrait of an Indigenous man looking toward the sky from his underground surroundings. It was the perfect introduction to the real work of Luis González Palma.

gonzalezpalma.com lisasettegallery.com

19. Elizabeth Culbert, “The Postmodern Romantic: An Interview with Luis González Palma,” Rain Taxi, 1998, web.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 65

PROFILE

Seminole Textile Artist

June Lee

N

By Mary Jo Watson, PhD

ATIVE AMERICANS’ USE OF TEXTILES to make and adorn clothing is a long-held artistic and aesthetic expression. In the 19th century, the tribes in the Southeastern United States adopted cotton cloth and replaced animal hides with interesting interpretations of European styles of clothing.1 Incoming traders provided the cloth, which heralded dramatic changes—none more so than those made by Florida Indians. The Seminoles and Miccosukees were increasingly fond of the trade cloth offered by European and later American traders.2 They showed ultimate creativity that culminated in their distinctive patchwork.

June Lee is a master Seminole patchwork artist living in Oklahoma. Her ancestors were removed from Florida to Indian Territory in the mid-19th century. As a young woman in the mid-20th century, June Lee became curious about her predecessors and her language, which was lost through her boarding school experience. She wondered about the Seminole clans and their tribal stories, and what arts the Florida tribes created that were absent in the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Because of her intellect, her dexterity at sewing, and her brilliant sense of color, she became one of the first of several Seminole women in Oklahoma to become proficient and ultimately expert in the art of Seminole patchwork.

What Is Patchwork?

Seminole patchwork is a process of machine sewing. Automatic electric machines having replaced the portable, hand-cranked and foot-pedal machines initially used by the Floridians.

Originally cloth was torn into long strips and sewn together, sometimes called a band.3 These were then cut on the bias and recombined into patterns. This is not quilting.

When the designs are completed, they are then sewn on a larger background piece such as that seen in June’s red dress on page 70. The patchwork patterns are typically sewn horizontally to the plain fabrics. Rickrack might be sewn along the tops or bottom of skirts.4 Art writer Betty Evanoff pointed out that “some of the designs require as many as nine one-inch pieces to make one small inset and thus, a long skirt can easily contain over 4,000 pieces.”5 Brilliant colors and intricate designs are the hallmarks of Seminole patchwork. Many of these appliquéd designs represent clan symbols. Although the colors yellow, red, and blue are used most frequently, purples, greens, bright pink, and infinite

June Lee. All photos in this article by Ann Sherman, Oklahoma City, annshermanphoto.com.

numbers of other high-intensity colors are used, as are white and black, on occasion. June Lee made an exquisite wind clan design in white and black, which was exhibited at the Jacobson House Native Art Center in Norman, Oklahoma, in the 1990s.

Today, sequins, metallic cloth, and other innovations are seen on both Florida and Oklahoma patchwork dresses.

Sketches and photographs from the late 19th and 20th centuries show Indian women and men in Florida wearing European-style clothing but little patchwork. During the latter part of the 19th century, traders introduced Singer

1. John Reed Swanton, The Indians of the Southeastern United States (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), 440.

2. For a study of the traders, see: Harry A. Kersey Jr., Pelts, Plumes, and Hides: White Traders among the Seminole Indians 1870–1930 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1975).

3. Edmond A. Harjo, Seminole Patchwork Design (Ada, OK: Seminole Bilingual Education Project, East Central University, ca. 1974).

4. Ibid.

5. Beverly Rush and Lassie Wittman, The Complete Book of Seminole Patchwork: From Traditional Methods to Contemporary Uses (Seattle: Madrona Publishers, 1982), 6.

6 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

JUNE LEE

Patterns, handmade pincushion and patchwork strip on June Lee’s work table.

Sewing Machine Company’s hand-cranked sewing machines into South Florida, and the evolution of a new artistic aesthetic commenced.

Some early photographs documenting this developing art form were shot by Anthony Weston Dimock and his son Julian. They took a five-year hiatus from New York and the world of finance, where both men had made and lost several fortunes. They toured Florida by boat and visited the trading posts, settlements, and the Indians who traded there.6 They photographed several thousand images of the Indians in Southern Florida from 1905 to 1910. These were published in magazines throughout the world and are now stored at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The Dimocks’ photographs of Seminole and Miccosukee people in their handmade clothing help establish a tentative timeline of the development of patchwork.

One of the photographs shows “Tommy Charley with Seminole women and children at Charley Tigertail’s camp, The Everglades, Florida, 1907.”7 In this image, the women are wearing ankle-length skirts with a single row of patchwork, blouses that flow from neck to waist with rows of coins at the

midsection, and piles of bead necklaces. Another shot of a lovely young Seminole lady, perhaps Ruby Tigertail, features a blouse with a single row of patchwork appliqué. In this regal image, her hair is piled high on her head with bangs that go back to her ears. Her countenance is serene as she looks directly into the camera.8 Another photograph of the wife of George Osceola with Frank Brown at Miami John Tiger’s camp (1910) reveals one single row of patchwork around the lady’s shoulders.9 Patchwork appliqué slowly grew in popularity and complexity as additional rows appeared in the 1920s into the 1930s. At this time, two non-Indians, Episcopal Deaconess Harriet Bedell and Alice Lee Marriott of the US Indian and Craft Board, investigated ways to help the economically depressed Florida Indians. Deaconess Bedell wrote in 1941 that “each woman has a sewing machine …”10 However, not all Seminoles sewed patchwork. Many non-Indians were visiting the camps where the Indians lived and Deaconess Bedell was concerned that only the crafts were to be displayed, “not the Indians.”11 Both Bedell and Marriott worked hard to help patchwork become a source of income for Florida Indians.

6. Jerald T. Milanich and Nina J. Root, Hidden Seminoles: Julian Dimock’s Historic Florida Photographs (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011), 9.

7. Ibid., 102.

8. Ibid., 104.

9. Ibid., 174.

10. Dorothy Downs, Art of the Florida Indian: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Seminole and Miccosukee Indian Art (Hollywood, FL: Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Florida, 1989), 7.

11. Ibid.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 67

PROFILE

Seminole Nation of Oklahoma During the mid-19th century, approximately 3,000 Seminoles and Miccosukees were removed from Florida, banished to Indian Territory, and eventually settled into what is now Seminole County in central Oklahoma.12 Prior to removal, they fought three Seminole Wars in which all tribes in South Florida fought the United States government. Living conditions were extremely hard for all the people in Florida. When the US forces captured enough Indians and their allies, they would expel them from Florida on ships. At Tampa Bay, some Seminoles were shipped to New Orleans up the Mississippi and across the Arkansas River to Fort Gibson, Indian Territory.

I have visited Fort Gibson many times and stood on what was left of the old landing site. Removals commenced in 1836 and finally ended in 1858 when the US government finally gave up.

The US government had not provided any land for the Seminoles in Indian Territory. Only after ten years of living on Muscogee Creek land in eastern Oklahoma were they provided space.

They settled in what is now Seminole County in central Oklahoma.

Due to lack of provisions promised by the government, life was hard. But the industrious Seminoles soon cultivated crops and built a council house in the town of Wewoka—this name translates to “barking water”—which became the capital of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. They established a sovereign government by 1866.13 Early images of Seminoles in the first half of the 20th century show all were dressed in Western-style frontier clothing.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Seminoles, like many Native American tribes, began reclaiming their culture and heritage. For the Oklahoma Seminoles, one major cultural component was missing: patchwork. Miraculously, a

Patchwork skirt, hand-appliquéd cotton and rickrack on polyester satin.

great many of the folks retained some of their customs and culture including language, dances, and songs.14 By the late 1960s, the famous pianist and World War II code talker, Edmond A. Harjo, a fullblood Seminole, published a slim booklet on Florida patchwork designs. Harjo worked for the Seminole Bilingual Education

Program in Oklahoma but also spent time in Florida where the Brighton Indian Reservation employed him.15 I am confident that this booklet did not receive much circulation outside the schools where he worked, which included Strother, Bowlegs, Justice, Sasakwa, and Pleasant Grove elementary schools and Wolf High School. It was

12. W. David Baird and Danney Goble, The Story of Oklahoma (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 139.

13. The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma has an excellent website at seminolenation-indianterritory.org. The site covers both historic and current events.

14. James H. Howard and Willie Lena, Oklahoma Seminoles: Medicines, Magic, and Religion (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 3, 4, 7, 157.

15. Edmond A. Harjo, Seminole Patchwork Design, brief biography, inside cover.

6 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

JUNE LEE

Details of patchwork skirts, cotton appliqué and rickrack on cotton.

by chance that I found the booklet at all.

Southeastern Indian patchwork was rare in Oklahoma in the early 20th century, when a few Seminole missionaries brought back men’s patchwork “big shirts” and jackets from Florida.

Postcards with photographs of Seminole Indians were popular tourist souvenirs from South Florida. These images are important to collectors today.16

June Lee’s Life Experience June Larney Lee, a beautiful and vivacious woman, is one of the first few Oklahoma Seminoles to take up the challenge of patchwork. She is among the many women and men who struggled to regain traditions after the 1950s. Seminoles may have been forced to move but they never forgot Florida.

June creates an exemplary portrait of the

culture of the Oklahoma Seminoles. She helped introduce the Florida patchwork into the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.

June is a fullblood born in Seminole County on June 20, 1933. Her family lived in the Strothers community, eleven miles north of the town of Seminole.

June’s parents were Ryder and Haney Micco Larney. Her paternal grandparents were Willie Yamie and Hattie Harjo Larney, and her maternal grandparents were Tallahase and Mulleana Micco.

Because her mother died when she was six years old, June knew little of her family history until her adult years.

After her mother’s death, June’s life is a study in extreme contrasts and is representative of the ultimate fruition of governmental programs, particularly in education. However, her life story is also a testimony to her intelligence, perseverance, and inquiring mind, which eventually led her to reclaim her cultural history and to become a woman prominent in the Seminole Nation and in all of Oklahoma. She is an acclaimed artist, recognized in the state and on a national basis.

In 1939, with her father traveling with his job and unable to care for his children, and her mother and grandparents all deceased, June and her younger sister Hattie Larney Daniel were sent to Eufaula Indian Boarding School. June remained there from the first through eighth grade without any travel back to Seminole County. She has no recollection of her earliest years at Eufaula—a condition she attributes to her early inability to speak the English language.

Well, I don’t remember any of this. All I remember is crying when I got there, and I don’t even remember how we grew up until I was about ten years old. I don’t remember anything there, until I got a little bit bigger. That’s when I guess I could talk English and relate to the other kids there.17 June does remember the rigor of government school. She recalls being regimented by bells all times of the year.

As an adult, she refused to do laundry on Monday or Tuesday and she would never iron on Wednesdays or Thursdays, the

16. See Emmett H. L. Snellings Jr., Seminole Views: A Postcard Panorama of America’s Only Unconquered Tribe (Highland City, FL: Rainbow Books, 2007).

17. Mary Jo Watson, “Oklahoma Indian Women Artists” (doctoral dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 1993), 263.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 69

PROFILE

days the school required the students to work. No academic classes stand out in her memory, but the boarding school’s work details were something she loathed. Of all her classes, the sewing class, taught by a Choctaw lady, was her favorite.

After graduating from the eighth grade, June returned home for the summer and was sent to Chilocco Indian School in Northern Oklahoma to continue her education.

She dropped out, returned to Strothers, enrolled in Strothers High School, and dropped out from there. She describes her life between ages 16 and 18 as an unhappy time in her life. Later, she married, as did her sister, and they both had children. Her boarding school experience did not teach her how to be a loving parent. “I told my sister, ‘You know, you and I were raised different. Nobody put their arms around you and said, ‘I love you. You did a good job.’ None of that.

We grew up without that.”18 This description of school is not unlike other students’ experiences in government boarding schools. Although June described the difficulty of developing her parenting techniques, she succeeded and now has a close, loving relationship with her family.

By the time she left boarding school, she could no longer speak the Seminole language. On returning home, she continually sought out information about her family members and asked the older folks at church for more information concerning the Seminoles. It was difficult, but she learned how to cook Seminole Indian foods and regained her proficiency in the Seminole language with help from members of the Hitchitee Indian Methodist Church in north Seminole County.

In the 1960s, June made her first patchwork dress. She had little success finding information about patchwork in Oklahoma. She heard that patchwork designs sometimes represented clans. Many historians write that patchwork didn’t initially contain tribal symbolism, but over time a clan symbolism developed.

A breakthrough came, thanks to Seminole matron Sanna Spencer. June recalled a big dinner at Sanna’s place south of Lemon Tree in the Strothers community, one summer in the late 1940s. Spencer explained who belonged to which clan—the sweet potato, alligator, or bird clans, to mention a few.

In the 1960s, June’s daughter Vicky wanted to compete to be the Seminole Nation princess and needed a dress. June still had no examples or written materials on patchwork construction or design. She recalls how she learned about patchwork: I learned how to make them by looking at a postcard—little tiny pictures. It took me a long time to figure out what those [designs] were on a postcard. I just kept moving my magnifying glass.

Somebody remembered that I liked that patchwork and brought me this postcard they got in the mail.19 Since making that first dress, June persistently researched, sewed patchwork, consulted with visiting 18. Mary Jo Watson, 263.

19. Ibid.

7 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Red voile cape and patchwork skirt, ca. 1970s, hand-appliquéd cotton and rickrack on cotton. Skirt is 39 in. long and 79 in. diameter at hem.

JUNE LEE

Voile cape with cotton, rickrack, and lace, ca. 2000s. Patchwork skirt, ca. 2000s, with hand-appliquéd cotton and rickrack on cotton. Collection of author.

patchwork makers from Florida, and increased her knowledge of Seminole artwork. Over the years she learned to make many of the older designs, and her repertoire includes clan symbols such as sweet potato, wind, broken arrow, everlasting fire, lightning, alligator tracks, beaver teeth, deer tracks, bird, and rain. Using these named designs isn’t necessary, according to June, and some Seminole women simply make designs

because the geometric patterns look pretty, and they like experimenting with color combinations.

During the mid-1970s, June received an order for a Seminole dress with the request that the color be red.

The result was a bold and brilliant voile cape with a long cotton skirt in the dominant color of bright red. Seventeen colors are used in the skirt, including the rickrack, with variations of the

same hue and a variety of cultural and individualized designs presented (see photo on previous page). The skirt softly gathers at the waist with a self-covered elastic band. Five horizontal fields of red alternate between four patchwork bands of various heights and colors, flanked by rickrack. The bottom patchwork design is a “lightning” pattern, and next from the bottom is a family pattern.

Over the next several decades, June made dozens of dresses, purses, bags, potholders, men’s shirts, jackets, children’s clothing, and other items adorned with patchwork. Her work is shown at the Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival in Oklahoma City and throughout Oklahoma and in the Southeast region.

In the early 2000s, I purchased the blue-and-yellow dress pictured on this page. The four rows of rickrack provide striking contrast to the cape’s navy blue, V-shaped neckline sewn to the lemonyellow voile. Floral, white lace flows around the entire bottom of the cape and sets off the color combinations.

Three-inch-tall patchwork step patterns, framed by a field of light tan, encircle the skirt halfway down its length. The ascending pattern of the 32 repeated designs convey a refined sense of rhythm. Dramatically slicing through the yellow sections from top to bottom is brilliant red and orange piping that may allude to lightning. The patchwork patterns are June’s adaptations and creations.

From the 1960s forward, June taught dozens of students how to make patchwork. She continues to create patchwork designs today that incorporate her extensive experience of working in this singular process of Florida and Oklahoma Seminoles and Miccosukee Indians. June’s sewing is exquisite, her color designs bold, and color combinations unlikely—but they harmonize in ways that surprise and delight.

June Lee is beloved by many and has the respect of many people in Oklahoma and elsewhere. She is a role model and an educator. In many ways, her life is that of the quintessential Indian woman of the 20th and 21st centuries.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 71

REVIEWS

Brantford, Ontario

Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians in Popular Culture Woodland Cultural Centre

C

URATED BY the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians in Popular Culture examines the presence and influence of Indigenous peoples in Western popular music since the early 20th century. This close involvement in the worlds of jazz, blues, rock, and pop music is not confined to music alone, as the exhibition underlines how many of these artists broke down barriers of fashion, design, sexuality, and visual art. Defying stereotypes and destroying conventions, these individuals and groups carved out national and international audiences in popular music and popular culture. They employed the nuances of Native life as a spiritual force driving lyric and beat, and also as the subject matter for their songs. Others became deities in their own right, transcending mere popularity to achieve icon status.

Upon entering the exhibit, viewers encounter a large, 75-minute video projection featuring live performances and interviews from some of the finest Native musicians. It reads as a broad, sociocultural overview of this complex (and complicated) history. On screen, Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) performs “Cripple Creek” on PBS’s Sesame Street; Louis Armstrong trumpets alongside trombonist “Big Chief ” Russell Moore (Pima); and musician Robbie Robertson (Mohawk) and the Red Road Ensemble do “It Is A Good Day To Die.” Jimi Hendrix is in there, too, with his autobiographical “Castles Made of Sand.” Hendrix’s family said his paternal great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee from Georgia, though this claim is problematic because the name of his grandmother is not listed on the 1835 Cherokee Census of Georgia. Regardless, Hendrix claimed Native identity and subsequently inspired generations of Native musicians. His recognizable and often imitated appearance could be described as gypsy-Native-bluesman;

he exuded sex and swagger and had the chops to back it up. In fact, Rolling Stone magazine lists Hendrix as number one in the “Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”

More proof that Indigenous peoples have played a major role in popular music in the last 100 years.

The second room is somewhat text heavy, though it is alleviated through several comfortable listening stations located in the center of the space. On the walls are the names of performers and musicians, from Mildred Bailey (Coeur d’Alene), the “first lady in big band and jazz,” to the legendary Charlie Patton (Choctaw descent), considered by many the father of the blues, who influenced other iconic bluesmen such as Robert Johnson. Vinyl album covers and quotes from the artists themselves also cover the walls. It’s a comfort to see Link Wray (self-identified Shawnee descent) as a strong contributor to this rich history as well. His 1958 instrumental hit “Rumble,” with its signature twanging and crunching guitar, was banned in New York and Boston for potentially

instigating violence among youth (as it goes, sex among youth was also a crucial component of such collective hysteria).

In musical tradition, however, Wray’s dynamic use of power chords had a lasting influence on punk and metal, so much so that it earned him a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination in 2013. Other notable musicians also grace the gallery’s walls: the band Redbone, Jesse Ed Davis (KiowaComanche-Muscogee-Seminole), Oscar Pettiford (Choctaw-Cherokee descent), Peter La Farge, and Illinois Jacquet.

The third and final space in the exhibit shows material by Randy Castillo (Mestizo), Stevie Salas (Mescalero Apache), Rita Coolidge, and Robbie Robertson. Objects from the Woodland Cultural Centre’s own collection are on display, including a beautiful guitar donated by Robertson himself. Though he is perhaps best known for fronting the Canadian/American group The Band, as well as working with Bob Dylan, he is also well recognized in Canada and throughout Native communities for his solo work. His 1994 album Music for the

Jesse Ed Davis, Jesse Davis, Alco Records, 1970. Cover art by Davis’s father, Jesse Ed Davis II (Comanche-Muscogee-Seminole, 1921–1977).

7 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

REVIEWS

Native Americans, which includes the songs “Ghost Dance” and “Skinwalker,” drew heavily on his experiences of childhood summers spent at Six Nations of the Grand River reserve. Incidentally, Six Nations is a short, 15-minute drive from the Woodland Cultural Centre itself.

Grounding the exhibition in the relationship between Robertson’s personal history and the Woodland Cultural Centre is a strong point to end on. Not only does it bring local context to an exhibition organized and distributed by an American institution, but it also provides a point of reflection: Modest beginnings can make for enduring legacies.

—Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

Denver

Super Indian: Fritz Scholder 1967–1980 Denver Art Museum

I

N 1958 IN A NOW INFAMOUS EVENT, one of the Yanktonai Dakota painter Oscar Howe’s works in his Tohokmu (Dakota for spider web) style was rejected by the Philbrook Indian Annual’s jurors for being “non-traditional.” It was thought that Howe’s abstract painting borrowed from other, non-Native, painters and that doing so somehow compromised the artwork’s indigeneity. In other words, they didn’t think Howe painted like an Indian. It is little surprise then, yet appropriately ironic, that one of Howe’s students, Fritz Scholder (Luiseño, 1937–2005), faced similar criticism despite Scholder’s occasional insistence that he was not Indian, even though he was.

The question of Scholder’s Luiseño identity has long vexed audiences. It has been the subject of many essays and interviews with the artist, as well as museum exhibitions, most recently the National Museum of the American Indian’s 2009 exhibit, Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian.

So, it is an interesting inversion that John P. Lukavic, associate curator of Native arts for the Denver Art Museum, creates by looking at Scholder not as an Indian painter but rather as a painter of Indians. In Super Indian: Fritz Scholder

1967–1980, Lukavic focuses on the period of Scholder’s work when he painted the Indian subjects for which he is best known for, and for which he garnered the most divergent receptions from both Native and non-Native audiences alike.

Imagery of Native people by non-Natives has permeated the American consciousness since its beginning, and early American artists like Charles Bird King and George Catlin gave rise to later artists like Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, all of whom built their careers on their Indian representations. Even small towns and villages, like Santa Fe and Taos and their immediate access to Pueblo communities, became art colonies with luminaries like Robert Henri, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe all offering their own interpretations of Native peoples and cultures.

Such imagery was so pervasive that before World War II, the figure of the American Indian was the epicenter of American art history.

But after studying with Howe, Scholder went on to study with non-Native painters like Gregory Kondos and Wayne Thiebaud and painted non-Native subjects, adopting the Abstract Expressionist style in vogue in American painting after World War II. Such style, he remarked, was responsible for his inclusion in the Southwest Indian Art Project, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1961 and 1962: “The Rockefeller project wanted an Indian who painted non-Indian subjects. I was it.” Scholder’s landscapes of this period demonstrate similar concerns with his later figurative work: rich, thick, uneven, horizontal lines of color on color, merely suggesting a vanishing horizon. After graduating with an MFA degree from the University of Arizona, such work (and perhaps his ancestry) led to his appointment as part of the faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in 1964, all without ever painting an Indian (even though he had: one in high school, in a two-dimensional Flatstyle typifying early 20th-century “Indian painting”).

Lukavic begins the exhibit with a large, white wall bearing Scholder’s declaration in stenciled, red lettering: “I vowed to myself that I would not paint Indians.

Then I saw the numerous over-romanticized paintings of the ‘noble savage’ …

and decided that someone should paint the Indian from a different context.”

Directly opposite the signage hang two 1980 silk-screened portraits of the artist

by Andy Warhol—the same image but with different colored backgrounds and neckties. Through such positioning, the words and the images construct the timeline for the exhibit, spanning from Scholder’s first Indian portrait to some of the last Indian paintings he completed before turning to other subject matter in the 1980s.

Adding to the paradox, Lukavic notes it was through his students’ supposed failures that Scholder found his greatest success. Teaching his students about artists, from Francisco de Goya and Paul Gauguin to Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol (all discernible influences on the artist), Scholder, in his self-contradictory fashion, encouraged them to apply contemporary painting techniques to Native subjects.

Discouraged by their output, Scholder did that which he said he wouldn’t and painted Indian No. 1 (1967), a bust-portrait of a male Native wearing a single raised feather in his braided hair. The facial features are distinct and proportionate compared to the later works, but Scholder’s use of color, for which he would become famous, is in full effect: almost fluorescent oranges, pinks, and greens explode in contrast atop one another.

Beyond the seminal painting, viewers are presented with different sections of the exhibit, each exploring themes and techniques central to this period of Scholder’s work. The first, Confronting Stereotypes, reflects on the history of Native imagery and Scholder’s reaction to it. End of the Trail (1970), reinterprets James Earle Fraser’s tragic pose, but in lines and colors absent from the original sculpture, while Matinee Cowboy and Indian (1978) highlights the problems inherent in the representation of others: although shaking hands, the figures are suspect of one another, separated by a field of yellow juxtaposed against the green ground and blue sky. Though abstractions, these figures are contextualized, moving from vague, apolitical forms to unmistakable political statements.

Scholder resents the way Indians are imaged, and he seeks to change it.

The next section, Native Pop, considers the Indian’s role in popular SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 73

REVIEWS

Installation view of Super-Indian: Fritz Scholder 1967–1980. Photo: Scott W. Hale.

culture and Scholder’s role in Pop Art. Too often depicted by other artists as tragic victims of the 19th century, Scholder’s Indians are not relics from the past but people living in the present.

The figure in Indian at a Gallup Bus Depot (1969), wearing a cowboy hat and boots, could be from yesteryear if not for the electric, upright, shooting arcade game he leans against. The same is true for the figure in Walking to the Next Bar (1974), whose urban setting is signaled by the parking meters. But perhaps no image in the entire exhibit so firmly entrenches Scholder as a Pop artist as Super Indian No. 2 (1971). The Pueblo Buffalo Dancer, in full regalia, sits with his right arm resting on his leg and a double-dip ice cream cone in his left hand, extended just enough so as if not to drip (but drip what: ice cream from the cone or paint from the canvas?) onto himself. Yet, what makes the artwork so striking is the Pop sensibilities of its colors: the thin, blue band of the horizon line is distinguished by the purple ground and brown sky, and yet it is to the neon pink, strawberry ice cream to which the eye is drawn. Placing the painting on a cadmium yellow wall underscores Scholder as a colorist as much as a figurist.

Still, for as much as his palette stimulates the visual sense, it is Scholder’s figural works that provide the emotional resonance of his Indian paintings. The third section of the exhibit, Psychological Portraiture, groups the single-figure Indian paintings, each with their distorted faces seemingly in anger, fear, or pain, as evidenced by titles like Mad Indian (ca.

1968), Monster Indian (1968), and Insane

Indian No. 26 (1973). Dark Indian (ca.

1970) is a black figure on a white background, with flashes of red and orange layered underneath. His face is almost unrecognizable but for a smattering of white paint intimating teeth, and a splash of cobalt blue to differentiate the left eye. Insane Indian No. 26 is the most challenging portrait, for while the facial elements (eye, nose, mouth) are more pronounced, they are much more grotesque, with paint smeared across the canvas in an expressive gesture.

Another Scholder quote in red stencil on a yellow wall unites the paintings in this section: “But beauty isn’t cute or pretty.

Sometimes ugly can be beautiful.”

A similar uneasiness is created in the Dark Subjects section. Scholder’s colors and figures combine for the most disturbing images of the Indian series.

Indian Dying in Nebraska (ca. 1972) is the most abstract painting in the exhibit, with swirls of color floating in green space, and only faint traces of Plains beadwork patterns in red and blue, and a white skull.

A much more controlled work, Massacre in America: Wounded Knee (1972), references the historical injustice while alluding to the future uprising. Its space is fixed by a horizon line at the top of the canvas, positioning the viewer to look down into an unmistakable grave with unidentifiable contents other than contorted, amorphous forms of pinks and reds.

The last section, Printwork: Extending His Practice, should not be regarded as an afterthought. Scholder also produced monotypes and lithographs as both studies and variants for the Indian series, and they demonstrate the same

7 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

concerns as do the paintings. Indian at the Bar (1971) engages stereotype and casts a reflection of popular culture: only the Coors can is rendered in color while a jawless head sits on a body with one arm.

But grouped together, segregated from the paintings, the prints do not interact and relate with the other works and, consequently, don’t scream quite as loud.

Nonetheless, Super Indian provides a tight focus on a fast-moving target: a comprehensive review of a critical period in a controversial artist’s career. Unfettered by questions of identity, the exhibit presents the work of an artist at the height of his powers, radiant of the artistic era into which he was born, or, as Lukavic writes of Scholder, “He was first and foremost a colorist who used figurative art to test the limits of what paint can express.”

Super Indian: Fritz Scholder 1967–1980 showed in Denver before traveling to the Phoenix Art Museum and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. A 145-page, full-color, and richly illustrated catalog with essays by Lukavic, Kent Logan, Donald Montileaux (Oglala Lakota), John Gritts (Cherokee Nation), Jessica L. Horton, Brad Kahlhamer, Erick Berkemeyer, Theodore Waddell, and David Bradley (White Earth Ojibwe), is available through the Denver Art Museum shop.

—Scott W. Hale

Phoenix

Frida Kahlo: Her Photos Heard Museum

T

HE EXHIBIT Frida Kahlo: Her Photos features more than 240 images of the artist and her world.

Locked up in the Blue House (La Casa Azul) in a trunk, cabinets, and a bathroom for more than 50 years after her death in 1954, Frida’s collection of photographs became available to the public in 2007. Much of Frida’s life was spent in the Blue House in Mexico City, including long periods when she was bedridden.

Her collection of photographs helped her stay connected with family and friends and served as inspiration for her paintings. Mexican photographer, art historian, and educator Pablo Ortiz

REVIEWS

Monasterio curated this traveling exhibit by the Frida Kahlo Museum.

The exhibit reflects the Heard Museum’s expanded mission that still emphasizes the Southwestern American Indian tribes while expanding their scope to include other Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The positive response to this change was reflected in the high attendance of many Hispanic families at the opening reception. Heard Museum curator Janet Cantley explains Frida’s enduring appeal as a culturally iconic artist and as someone who found a meaningful way to deal with suffering and pain.

The two-level exhibit at the Heard Museum clearly shows the eye of an architect in the pleasing use of color and shape.

Wall text is in both Spanish and English, increasing its accessibility to a diverse range of museum visitors. Photographs in the exhibit include some taken by Frida, along with images taken by Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti, Nickolas Muray, Man Ray, Edward Weston, and other prominent artists. Throughout her life, Frida worked with photographers such as Tina Modotti and sought their advice to strengthen her own skills.

Frida was introduced to photography at an early age. Her maternal grandfather, Antonio Calderón Sandoval (Purépecha, b. ca. 1847), had a photography studio in Morelia, Michoacán.

Guillermo Kahlo, Frida’s father, was also a professional photographer. She was very close to her father and accompanied him when he photographed buildings in celebration of the centennial of Mexico’s independence from Spain. His fascination with self-portraits, several of which are part of the exhibit, is a trait he clearly passed on to Frida. In one, father and daughter pose with almost military stiffness. They face the camera directly and intensely, yet they appear withdrawn and moody. Guillermo said of his daughter, “Frida is the most intelligent of my daughters. She is the most like me.” Frida’s strong sense of self followed a lifetime of posing for photographers, beginning with her father. She explained how she posed: I knew the battlefield of suffering was reflected in my eyes. Ever since then, I started looking straight into the lens, without winking, without smiling,

determined to prove I would be a good warrior until the end.

The exhibit’s six themes provide windows into Frida’s life experiences: Origins; The Blue House; Politics, Revolutions, and Diego; Her Broken Body; Loves; and Photography. Origins contains family portraits, Victorian in composition. The Blue House was the location for many photographic sessions and central to Frida’s social life; photos in this section highlight friends and family.

Especially striking in terms of the times and the role Frida played is Politics, Revolutions, and Diego, which includes images of Mexican revolutionary leaders like Emiliano Zapata (Nahua descent) and Soviet leaders Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. Her Broken Body is perhaps the most difficult to view. These photos remind one of Frida’s accident, surgeries, pain, and long periods of being bedridden. Frida’s Loves includes photographs of family, friends, lovers, and her husband Diego Rivera. Photography is full of images given to Frida by famous photographers, each a window into their differing worldview. Several of the photographs illustrate Frida’s habit of manipulating images by cutting pieces out, writing notes on the photograph, or even leaving a lipstick kiss behind.

Taken together, these photographic glimpses of what was important to Frida provide a new way of looking at her life

as an artist and her passion for Mexico.

Throughout the exhibit, visitors will recognize the connection between some of the images and Frida’s paintings: an anonymous photo of a dead child and The Deceased Dimas (1936); a photo of a black cat with arched back by Martin Munkácsi and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940); and a photo of Frida in bed, her back bare, by Nickolas Muray and Tree of Hope, Stay Firm (1946).

Frida Kahlo is an icon in the Mexican art world—for her art, the passion she had for Mexico and its people, and the way she overcame the constant pain and misfortunes of her life in such a productive and evocative way. Frida once said, “I am not sick. I am broken … but I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.” The interconnectivity of her life events, photography, and painting is evident in one of the most arresting of Frida’s photographs on display. The disturbing image is of a broken cart and horse, with a rag doll thrown from the cart onto the ground. It is reminiscent of Frida’s accident at the age of 18, when a streetcar that ran into the bus she was riding crushed her pelvis, broke many of her bones, and set the stage for a lifetime of pain, orthopedic braces and corsets, and failed surgeries.

Janet Cantley explains the impact of the photography exhibit as a representation of the same qualities seen in Frida’s paintings, her “courage and resilience

Nickolas Muray (Hungarian-American, 1892–1965), Frida Kahlo Lying Down, 1946, gelatin-bromide on silver paper.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 75

REVIEWS

in the face of pain, devotion to Mexico and pride in its Indigenous past, strong political consciousness, and attachment to people and [the] need to remain in their memory.” Frida Kahlo: Her Photos is an intriguing new look at Frida’s world and reveals how much posing for photographs, taking photographs, and collecting photographs inspired her.

An accompanying exhibit, Las Favoritas de Frida: Selections from the Heard Collection, features items from the Heard Museum’s collection of Mexican art, including clothing, pottery, jewelry, and other Mesoamerican and Latino art.

The Heard worked with a group of nine artists, the Phoenix Fridas, who draw inspiration from Frida’s life and art, to make the selections and comment on their relevance. Heard librarian Betty Murphy, Books and More manager Lynn Bullock, and Janet Cantley compiled a wide selection of downloadable resources about Frida Kahlo for anyone interested in knowing more about her.

Frida Kahlo: Her Photos closes at the Heard Museum February 8, 2016, and will travel to Palmerston North, New Zealand; São Paulo, Brazil; and Bendigo in Victoria, Australia.

—Cathy Short

Portland, Maine

You Can’t Get There From Here: 2015 Biennial Portland Museum of Art

W

ABANAKI TRANSLATES to “The People of the Dawn.”

They are referred to this way because they are the farthest east and the first Native American tribes to see the sunrise. The Wabanaki Confederacy consists of five tribes: the Abenaki, Mi’kmaq, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and the Maliseet. For centuries, the Wabanaki tribes have been known for their exquisite artwork. One art form that was specifically sought after was their baskets.

Wabanaki baskets differ from the baskets of other tribes across the United

Theresa Secord (Penobscot), left and Mark Bessire, director of the Portland Museum of Art, in front of Secord’s baskets. Image © Portland Museum of Art, Maine. Used with permission.

States. They are traditionally made from brown ash, sweet grass, and birch bark, which are resources commonly found in New England. Each tribe has different styles that make their works easily distinguished from one tribe to another.

Over the years, Wabanaki basket forms have evolved. Basketry has adapted.

Younger artists have tweaked the basket styles to appeal to the audiences of 2015.

A select few Wabanaki basket makers re-created historical basket forms—each basket reflecting their individual style and personality—for the 2015 Portland Biennial. The Portland Museum of Art has hosted this exhibit for 25 years, which recognizes Maine artists who create unique, contemporary arts. This year was the first time since the show debuted in 1998 that Wabanaki basket weavers were included and that Indigenous artists from the state were recognized as contemporary artists by the museum.

This year, not one but four Wabanaki artists were selected for this prestigious exhibit: Theresa Secord (Penobscot), George Neptune (Passamaquoddy), Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), and Sarah Sockbeson (Penobscot).

Each artist has exhibited throughout the country for years; however, they have never had the honor of presenting their artwork at an exhibit such as the Portland Biennial, so close to home.

A classic Wabanaki basket has a standard shape (most often circular), designed for day-to-day use and storage. The basket

would typically not be dyed; it would be whitish brown like the ash (depending on how old the ash is) and include sweetgrass in the weave and on the binding. However, the basket designs changed as recently as 150 years ago. When settlers visited Maine, Wabanaki baskets were extremely sought after, making the tribal members more inclined to beautify their works.

As the years passed, basket lids became more decorative and their shapes differed from artist to artist. The splints were dyed more vibrant and contrasting colors. All of these adaptations can be seen at the Portland Biennial.

Currently, baskets woven by different artists can be spotted and differentiated with ease. Some artists develop a particular weave they use to construct their baskets. Others design basket toppers such as flowers or birds that are unique to them and their families.

Dwindling resources play a major role in the current status of Wabanaki basketry. Due to factors such as climate change and the emerald ash borer, a beetle, certain resources are at risk for extinction.

The emerald ash borer has been moving closer and closer to Maine, destroying brown ash trees1 and forcing artists to consider alternative materials. Artists have experimented with materials like cedar.

The exposure the Portland Biennial brings to the Wabanaki artists will not only benefit the artists within the show, but also the artists who regularly attend shows alongside these select few. More exposure

1. Brown ash or Fraxinus nigra, more commonly known as black ash, is unique among ash trees in that its growth rings are not strongly connected to one another and can be pounded apart to form splints suitable for basketry.

7 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

REVIEWS

to Wabanaki artists will ultimately help each tribe continue their traditions and become more popular among the younger generation. Over centuries of exposure to other cultures, the Wabanaki tribes have suffered cultural deprivation and neglect.

Tribal members practicing their culture is not as common as it once was. The development of contemporary baskets will appeal to today’s youth and grasp their attention, which will lead to a wider interest in continuing cultural practices.

This would hopefully inspire more involvement in community activities and ceremonies. And this would allow tradition to thrive, a goal of each Wabanaki tribe.

—Lydia Soctomah Joe Allen (Fallon Paiute-Shoshone), Duck Decoy, tule reed and tule cordage.

Reno

Tule Duck Decoys and Endangered Sheppard Galleries, University of Nevada, Reno

T

HE TWO SOLO EXHIBITS of Joe Allen (Fallon PaiuteShoshone), Tule Duck Decoys, and Emily Arthur (Eastern Cherokee descent), Endangered, at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), premiered as part of National Native American Heritage Month this past November.

Tule Duck Decoys, curated by Paul Baker Prindle, director of Sheppard Contemporary and University Galleries, features about a dozen of Joe Allen’s duck decoys in various sizes, from miniature to actual size, displayed in Plexiglas cases throughout the gallery. All of the ducks are made from cattail, tule, and greasewood, and are intricately woven to resemble a typical Mallard or canvasback duck.

Tule duck decoys have been used

by Native peoples of the Great Basin for hunting waterfowl in the high grass and marsh areas for thousands of years. In 1911, archaeologists found ancient tule duck decoys and other tule weavings in Lovelock Cave near Fallon, Nevada, after they were first discovered by miners collecting bat guano. Dating between 400 BCE and 100 CE, these are the oldest known duck decoys on the planet.

Native peoples have seasonally inhabited Lovelock and surrounding caves for at

least 6,000 years. Tule, the bulrush reed that grows in the same environment as the cattails, has been used to weave baskets, shoes, hats, clothing, seasonal housing, boats, and duck decoys.

Joe Allen, 37, lives on the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Reservation near Fallon, Nevada, where he creates the decoys. He learned his craft from family members. He also apprenticed with his cousin Martin George (Fallon Paiute-Shoshone), who also studied under his Paiute relatives.

Allen says he makes the ducks mostly for collectors from all parts of the world, but also for displays at regional museums and for hunters wanting to use the decoys in the customary fashion. He says it is great to see that something so ancient is still being used, in so many ways, over such a vast span of life and time of his culture.

The Numu (Paiute) people identify themselves by where they live in the Great Basin and by the food they eat.

The Fallon Numu call themselves the Toi Ticutta, the Cattail Eaters. Cattails grow along the marsh range near the Fallon Reservation. Called Stillwater Marsh, it is an important waterfowl migration stop along the Pacific Flyway.

Today, the marshland near the Fallon reservation has been turned into the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1948, a once popular stop for birders and the like. The marshes have decreased significantly over the last century with local farming, water diversions, and drought. Artists like Joe Allen who work with native plants sometimes have to travel elsewhere to collect the

tule, cattails, and greasewood to create the decoys and other weavings.

Also on exhibit in the Sheppard Gallery at UNR is Emily Arthur’s Endangered. Arthur is assistant professor of printmaking at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her ethereal serigraphs and etchings on paper stem from her environmental concern for animals and their loss of habitat. Informed by her recent residency at Moore Laboratory of Zoology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, the imagery of gnatcatcher birds, deer, butterflies, and coastal sage are layered with fragile color tones, with pale data and base maps of the ecosystems telling a visual story of the landscape and its future.

As part of the exhibit’s programming, Nancy Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache), associate professor of art history and visual arts at Occidental College, gave a talk titled “Global Indigeneities in Art.” Mithlo discussed the presence of Native artists at the Venice Biennale in Italy and Re-Riding History: From the Southern Plains to the Matanzas Bay. Emily Arthur, together with Marwin Begaye (Navajo) and John Hitchcock (Comanche), co-curated Re-Riding History, a 72-artist traveling exhibit. This group show responds to the imprisonment of Indigenous Southern Plains peoples and their journey from Fort Sill to the military complexes in St. Augustine, Florida, from 1875 to 1878.

Emily Arthur’s catalogue for Endangered can be found on the university’s website.

—Melissa Melero SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 77

REVIEWS

Santa Fe

The Games We Play Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery

T

HE GAMES WE PLAY was a group show at the Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery near the Poeh Cultural Center in the Pueblo of Pojoaque (Po’se awe geh) in Northern New Mexico from August 20 to October 31, 2015. Artists included Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara), Bob Haozous (Chiricahua Apache), Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti), Rose Bean Simpson (Santa Clara descent), Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara-Lakota), Tony Abeyta (Navajo), Kevin Pourier (Oglala Lakota), Fritz Casuse (Navajo), and Ginger Dunnill (Native Hawaiian).

In this seriously enjoyable show, the artists investigated the multiple significances of the verb play, from board games to psychological head games and political games. How do games reflect our values? How do games emphasize certain values? Do the games emphasize competition where the winner is a hero and the loser shamed, or do the games emphasize cooperation, enabling stronger bonds between individuals of the community?

In Roxanne Swentzell’s piece Checkerboard Clown, all the pieces belong to the clown, not to the different opponents. So, in the end, there is nothing to win by crushing the other side. It becomes a momentary reality in which two people participate with the character clown.

Swentzell explores gender dynamics, the challenges between us as well as the love between us, nature versus technology, and humans’ effect on global climate change with her chess set The Games We Play.

Rose Bean Simpson’s Drawn Card is a customized deck of cards, which brings intimacy to the game. “A deck of cards is a utilitarian object that exists in the space between agency and chance … It beckons anxiety, flirts with excitement, fills the spaces in time, creates connections between people, and settles differences,”

she wrote in her artist statement. Each card is a miniature illustration that could be framed on a wall. I would love to play a game with these cards but at the same time would be quite distracted by each one—in good ways!

Spoils Of War by Cannupa Hanska Luger and Ginger Dunnill is a chess set with ceramic pieces on an antique Corona folding table. This piece questions the value of war: what is lost versus what is gained. The pieces look like cracked eggshells on pedestals at first, but are actually broken bottles cut to resemble chess pieces. They are disconcerting but also lovely miniature sculptures each one of them.

Luger’s Deer Hunter (The Game You Only Lose Once) is a three-dimensional, steel, line “drawing” of a pistol hanging from the ceiling. A lone, porcelain bullet waits ready to be discharged. Deer Hunter references the 1978 film and Russian roulette, a very ghastly game but a game nonetheless.

Rise n Fall/Fall n Rise is a Jenga-like stacking game with blocks made of pine and acrylic by Watermelon 7 (Isleta).

This piece is a great reminder to look deeper into ordinary objects and not let our habits of observation guide us

unconsciously. “Jenga was originally a Swahili game about conceptualizing building a solid home,” states the artist, “teaching and metaphorically co-creating a community of stability.” The top of the 57 bricks are painted in the “sacred colors of the four directions,” writes Watermelon 7 in his artist statement.

They are “arranged in distracting abstractions to make concentration a challenge.” The bottom of the bricks are inscribed with depictions from the Maya calendar. “Community faces destruction to create itself anew … We can manifest opportunities to be engaged in creation.”

Consumer Pac-Man by Kevin Pourier is a buffalo horn inlaid with pipestone (catlinite), gold-and-white mother of pearl, turquoise, orange sandstone, and zebu shell. The sculpture is a beautiful rendition of an ugly object. A very interesting play of contrasts, it toys with the mind in intriguing ways. “PacMan is all about consumerism,” writes Pourier. “Gobbling up all you can until the gremlins catch up with you! In this version, those gremlins are Integrity, Destruction of the Earth, Being Human, and Karma.”

Urban Indian Hunting Ground Game

by Tony Abeyta immediately grabbed my

Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan-Arikara-Hidatsa-Lakota), Deer Hunter (The Game You Only Lose Once), 2015, porcelain and steel.

7 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

REVIEWS

attention. The sculpture of metal, vintage buffalo hide, vintage darts, dartboard, synthetic human hair dyed with chemical pigmentation was splayed out on the wall. One of the most serious games in the show, this piece critiques present-day folly that all too often replaces necessary skills, ritual, and relationships integral to survival of the individual and culture.

The Shooter by Fritz J. Casuse is a vibrant jewel of a piece, made of sterling silver, steel mesh, and crystal glass marbles. Ginger Dunnill’s Pillow Fight is a backgammon set intended to “give a moment of connection with a fellow human being.”

As with her own artwork, Swentzell deals with important issues in her curatorial practice in elegantly simple and playful ways. She writes, “I enjoy creating works that are interactive and encourage self-reflection and consciousness. I am honored to have this opportunity to ask these questions of myself and to ask the viewers to notice more deeply the games we play. In doing so, may we consciously choose our next move wisely.” She has certainly achieved these intentions. I left this exhibit a couple of feet higher than when I entered, both in joy and a heightened sense of my place in the world.

—Thollem McDonas

Santa Fe

Fall Group Show Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art

C

HIAROSCURO CONTEMPORARY Art’s Fall Group Show presented audiences with an unassuming exhibition of works by Australian Aboriginal, American Southwestern, and Native American artists—including sculptures by Rose Bean Simpson (Santa Clara descent), painted drawings by Emmi Whitehorse (Diné), mixed media drawings by Rick Bartow (WiyotYurok), and jewelry by Yazzie Johnson (Diné) and Gail Bird (Kewa-Laguna).

A refined, two-story house with wood floors and white walls, Chiaroscuro disguises its grandeur through an informal

atmosphere, as demonstrated in its front and back entrances and galleries warmed by natural light. Encompassing both levels of the Chiaroscuro house, the Fall Group Show (October 14–December 12, 2015) was an exhibition rooted in aesthetics, where the artworks, when seen as the house’s residents, beckoned audiences through both their eccentricities and distinguishable personalities.

compositional space communicate those of a landscape; the artist’s palette choices of reds and yellows hint at the experiences during a season change, perhaps referring to the days when summer changes into fall. Whitehorse’s visual language includes spirals, half-moons, and scalloped, linear, and petal-like forms. These forms also connote musical qualities, like elongated and staccato (short) notes, or acts of

These works put forth the existential and open-ended question, “What keeps us from seeing?”

Works by Simpson and Whitehorse primarily filled one of the downstairs galleries. The first of Simpson’s sculptures I examined, Neptune (2014), created in ceramic, leather, and mixed media, portrays a 33-inch-tall woman made of cream-colored clay, whose pose is reminiscent of a ballet dancer in fifth position. Her arms are held overhead, represented by just one continuous arch, absent of hands and elbows. The female figure does not have feet as we know them. She balances on a V-shaped form where Simpson replaced the V’s point with a flat bottom. Indicative of a meditative moment, the woman wears a subtle smile on her face, her eyes closed.

An etched, white leather disc sits on top of one slightly larger disc, affixed to the woman’s temple. The leather in this work suggests support, as there is a white leather strip wrapped around the bicep of the woman’s right arm, and others twisted around her torso, left leg, and base. Overall, this female form evokes strong senses of feeling, believing, and rising. She has a mesmerizing quality and a peaceful composure that, through reflection on her presence, one may shift into a contemplative state and empathize with this being’s affective and physical place in time and space.

Whitehorse’s Tusk Shell (2015), oil and chalk on paper mounted on canvas, is a compelling symphony of abstract iconography in variations of red, white, black, brown, and yellow. This palette effectively evokes levels of musical pitch through differentiations in color value.

Moreover, the warm tonalities of the

growth and migration sustained by the glowing and muted harmonies of the background’s golden gradation. Despite its dimensions of 51 by almost 79 inches, Whitehorse’s playful screen of biomorphic motifs comes across as a detail of a larger, macrocosmic entity. As Whitehorse mentioned in one of Chiaroscuro’s online videos, her iconography, like that of Tusk Shell, gives viewers an experience of the depth and complexity of the ongoing movement and fluctuation in the earth’s environment.

Two studies and two more largescale works by Whitehorse were exhibited in this room. Interestingly, the studies, including Study for Walk-About V (2012), Blue Pond (2015), and one larger painted drawing, Charting a Walk-About (2014), provided counterpoints of blue-toned coolness to both Tusk Shell and Red Top (2007), an epic harmony in a palette of reds.

This room also housed three more of Simpson’s sculptures. The first of these, The Secret of Flight (2015), is a terracotta and black-patterned ceramic male bust (33 inches tall), posed back to back with a much smaller, white clay child whose stability is reinforced by black strips of leather around the chest and stunted arms. As Simpson discussed in another of Chiaroscuro’s online videos, this work portrays a narrative of healing, listening, and closeness.

Adjacent to The Secret of Flight were two of Simpson’s 6½-inch-tall, mask-like ceramics constructed of amalgams of layered clay strips, which continuously overlap one another to form facial SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 79

REVIEWS

Emmi Whitehorse (Diné), Tusk Shell, 2015, oil and chalk mounted on canvas, 51 × 78½ inches, Courtesy of Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, Santa Fe.

structures. Identity 3 (2015) is a near-black ceramic face that appears to be blind, one eye covered with white clay lattice tied on with two strips of leather strung through a white clay bead. The black dotted, white ceramic face of Identity 4 (2015), next to Identity 3, is also sightless. In this work, Simpson wrapped a wide strip of black leather around the forehead, which serves to hold several finger-like clay forms (some white and some tan) over the eyes.

These works put forth the existential and open-ended question, “What keeps us from seeing?”

In an art historical context, Whitehorse’s painted drawings create conversations with the abstraction of three 20th-century painters—Mary Morez (Diné), Helen Frankenthaler (American), and Wassily Kandinsky (Russian). Morez’s densely patterned landscapes, Frankenthaler’s gestural color gradations, and Kandinsky’s song-like, visual vocabulary intersect with Whitehorse’s practice. Simpson’s sculptures form a dialogue with the organic, abstracted figures of two

20th-century sculptors, Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache, 1914–1994) and Henry Moore (British). Houser’s female beings, with their emotive expressions and curvature, and Moore’s open, subtractive forms compositionally relate to Simpson’s style. Thus, a consideration of Simpson and Whitehorse in global contexts reflects that of the Chiaroscuro’s heterogeneous range of artists and media in the Fall Group Show.

On the note of diversity, in the same room as Simpson and Whitehorse’s works, a case near the front desk housed a stellar selection of jewelry created by artists Yazzie Johnson and Gail Bird.

One of Johnson and Bird’s necklaces is a slate blue, double-strand, Tahitian pearl rope, with each pearl measuring between 11.7 and 12.8 millimeters. The necklace features six satellites (embedded charms)—each made of 18-karat gold and inlaid with a stone, namely black star sapphire, blue chalcedony, etched onyx, and mohawkite. Even more exciting, on the verso of each satellite is a carved pictographic symbol. Here I must

8 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

thank Chiaroscuro for the ample media information and closer look at this work.

The Fall Group Show at Chiaroscuro was well designed, with a balanced mood of sophistication and comfort. The subtle track lighting, spacious installation style, including the placement of Simpson’s The Secret of Flight in the front windowsill, successfully complimented the art in this exhibition. One criticism I have is that some biographical details, namely the artists’ cultures and birth years, were absent from the artwork labels. However, the gallery’s website features artist profiles that offer insightful background information to viewers. And unfortunately, the drawings by Rick Bartow had not been selected to share the downstairs gallery with Simpson, Whitehorse, Johnson, and Bird’s works.

Installed in a second-floor space, I found Bartow’s drawings just as I was leaving.

But, this happenstance gives me yet another reason to return to Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art. —Michelle Lanteri

REVIEWS

Book Reviews Catalogue

Conversations: Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship 2015 Ashley Holland and Jennifer Complo McNutt, editors Eiteljorg Museum, 2015

T

HE BOOK Conversations: Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship chronicles the ninth annual Contemporary Art Fellowship given by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. One of the larger awards available for a living Native American artist, the fellowship gives five Native American artists each $25,000. In addition, the museum holds an exhibition of their work and purchases pieces by each artist. Since the award’s inception, some of the most illustrious names in the field have been chosen, including Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache, 1914–1994) and Jaune Quick-toSee Smith (Sqelix’u-Métis-Shoshone).

In 2015, the chosen artists were Mario Martinez (Pascua Yaqui), Luzene Hill (Eastern Band Cherokee), Brenda Mallory (Cherokee Nation), Da-ka-xeen Mehner (Tlingit-Nisga’a), and Holly Wilson (Delaware Nation-Cherokee). The jurors were Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Julie Buffalohead (Ponca), and Mindy Taylor Ross.

Mario Martinez was the invited artist

in this year’s fellowship. Born on the Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation outside of Tucson, Arizona, Martinez now lives in New York City. His work reflects both rural and urban views on life. Martinez, an abstract painter who received an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute, describes his work as part of an “aesthetic transformation,” taking raw emotions and processing them into a visual form. His piece The Conversation (2014), which was purchased by the Eiteljorg, lent its name to this year’s exhibit. For curators Jennifer Complo McNutt and Ashley Holland, this piece, like all the art being shown, demands engagement, since “all the artists were having a conversation of sorts, either with themselves, with their culture, the past, or in hope of the future.”

Martinez’s use of pure abstraction in his paintings allows him to address spiritual issues without being too revelatory. As McNutt explains in the catalogue, the suggestion of flowers and animals in Martinez’s painting reflect the intertwinement of Yaqui and Catholic religious life.

For example, the Deer Dance is performed during Lent and calls for the renewal of the world at springtime, with flowers as spiritual blessings and reminders of Christ’s blood.

Luzene Hill combines performance with installation to reflect on the violence against women, using lyrical abstraction to approach such a difficult topic. She prefers “fragile and capricious” materials that are easily altered and destroyed—paper, beeswax, and charcoal. In Retracing the Trace (2012), Hill adopts the form of the quipu, knotted cords used by the Inca as a recording or mnemonic device, to “metaphorically map her own journey,” as described by Martin DeWitt. Using the Inca system, the knots on the red cords represent the numbers 1 through 3,780, the estimated number of unreported rapes that occur every day in the United States.

Hill piles the cords on the floor and uses her body to create a negative space in the pile, like a crime-scene outline. Then she picks up each cord and affixes it to the wall of the gallery. The body disappears slowly until the floor is blank, an empty reminder of the women who are gone.

Brenda Mallory considers natural life cycles, of plants from seeds to harvest, as well as of human life, from birth to puberty to death. Using natural materials, she cuts the canvas into strips, coats them with wax, and bolts the pieces together to create

a curved, undulating, three-dimensional surface. Mallory identifies with her heritage though her family did not follow Cherokee practices. Her parents assimilated into the larger culture that created what heather ahtone (Chickasaw-Choctaw) describes as “cultural infertility.” Like 78 percent of Native Americans, she does not live on her tribal land, describing herself as “an out-ofstate Cherokee.” For her, the disconnection is part of a larger state of isolation, which can be seen in her work. With pieces bolted together, Mallory brings together separate elements in an attempt to heal and rejoin what has been torn.

Da-ka-xeen Mehner’s art, as described by Aldona Jonaitis, encapsulates the complexities regarding identity, often using his own face in his work in various media, including photography, concrete, and rawhide drums. The artist uses himself to suggest layers within identity through transformation and to evoke historic Tlingit transformation masks that open to reveal another face, offering a peek into deeper issues hidden inside. In 7/16th, Mehner photographed just his chin and his distinctive half-white/half-black goatee, affected by a birthmark. The juxtaposition of colors reflects the artist’s heritage, Tlingit, Nisga’a, and non-Native.

Margaret Archuleta’s discussion of Holly Wilson’s bronze-cast figurines relates the figures to stories from the artist’s family.

Wilson often depicts the figure of a girl in a red dress, which reminds the artist of her own childhood when her mother made her clothing and she had the freedom to run wild. Other figures wear elongated bird-beak masks that obscure part of their faces. “Masks … are necessary to traverse identities of everyday life,” says Wilson.

For the artist, the figures hold secrets and, as identified by the title of one of Wilson’s pieces, Secrets Are Burdens. Wilson’s small figures combine narratives that are both sacred and mundane, suggesting but not telling hidden information.

This year’s winners of the Eiteljorg Fellowships illustrate the high degree of artistic skill and intellectual complexity of thought in the Native art world today. Like the Turner Prize given to a top contemporary artist in the United Kingdom, awards like this continue to encourage artistic production by Native American artists.

—Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 81

REVIEWS

Catalogue/Monograph

Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist Kathleen Ash-Milby and David W. Penney, editors Smithsonian Books, 2015

K

AY WALKINGSTICK (Cherokee Nation) was born in 1935 and raised in and around Syracuse, New York.

Her mother was Scotch-Irish, and her father was Cherokee. After receiving her degrees and honors from highly regarded schools in the East, WalkingStick began her artistic career in New York, not in the Southwest or the home of her tribe, Northeastern Oklahoma.

In the 1970s, WalkingStick’s hardedged abstraction was popular in the New York art scene, yet today she defines her recent work as realistic. She has always been labeled a landscape artist.

Kevin Gover (Pawnee), director of NMAI, writes: For her entire career, Kay WalkingStick has been rewriting the narrative about Native peoples through her artwork, which has defied categorization. These seeming contradictions and complexity are part of being an American Indian today, and what makes her an American artist.

Our nation itself is built upon diversity of culture and expression. WalkingStick’s background and art reflect this same richness and diversity.

In the 1970s, the artist had challenges being taken seriously by male

artists and collectors, so she joined the few woman artist groups in Manhattan to be able to show her work. Today, Kay WalkingStick is one of the foremost American Indian artists. For 45 years, she has created richly textured, visceral paintings. In 1995, she became the first American Indian to be included in the essential art history survey text, H. W. Janson’s History of Art. The National Museum of the American Indian is now celebrating her distinguished career. This retrospective exhibit, Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist, will continue through September 18, 2016. While some consider her an American Indian artist, this exhibit positions her within the canon of American art.

The accompanying catalogue includes 15 essays, each examining different perspectives on WalkingStick as a person and an artist. They range from academic to down to earth. Each author sees Kay WalkingStick differently, but then each essay covers a different period in her art career. The one thing universally agreed upon is Kay WalkingStick is a great American artist.

Like the work of all emerging artists, WalkingStick’s early endeavors in New York during the 1960s and 1970s provided the foundation for all that followed. She found inspiration in the art of Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, and George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe, 1919–2000).

George Morrison was a strong influence, especially on her landscapes. The two artists shared success in New York and were leaders in Native Modernism.

Morrison flourished in New York from 1943 to 1970. WalkingStick, who lived in New York State most of her life and now lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, had her first solo exhibit in 1969 and still shows in New York on a regular basis. Her standing as an important and influential Native artist emerged nationally and internationally during the mid-1980s and early 1990s.

After seeing an image of Moses WalkingStick (Eastern Band Cherokee) of North Carolina in an edition of the Saturday Evening Post, the artist thought he must be a relative. She changed her last

8 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

name from Walkingstick to WalkingStick, capitalizing the S like it was in the publication. Her mother supported her daughter’s Cherokee heritage by consistently educating her about her ancestry.

Although WalkingStick’s artistic style has not all been American Indian influenced, her culture has always been important to her. She once explained, “What does my heritage have to do with my art? It is who I am. Art is a portrait of the artist.… My identity as an Indian is crucial.”

WalkingStick once asked her father to name American Indian heroes of the past. The first hero he named was Chief Joseph (Nez Perce, 1840–1904). After researching Chief Joseph’s history and role in the Nez Perce War, she was inspired to create her Chief Joseph Series (1975–77): 32 abstract panels, each with four vertical bow shapes, two large and two small. In each panel, the shapes are in a different position. This series was the true beginning of her career.

WalkingStick began her series of diptychs in 1985, what became her identifiable style. Her subject is usually a landscape, with two panels side by side featuring abstract and representational views. She once said, I want my paintings to be seen as ideas about landscape … The paintings are not meant to be pictorially descriptive of a specific landscape … And, to me, the earth is sacred.

Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist details her life and philosophy, which is what drives her to paint. The magnificent reproductions in the catalogue capture the color rendering of her paintings and sketches. Approximately 145 art reproductions and 13 intimate family photographs illuminate the volume.

The exhibit itself features more than 70 of her most notable paintings, including diptychs, drawings, small sculptures, and notebooks. The vast majority of the work is loaned by the artist. This offers a chance to see work that has not been readily available in the past.

Kay WalkingStick is a worthy addition to the list of recent retrospectives, solo exhibitions, and monographs highlighting groundbreaking American Indian artists in history.

—Doyle Logan Jr.

REVIEWS

Catalogue

Native Fashion Now: North American Indian Style Karen Kramer with Jay Calderín, Madeleine M. Kropa, and Jessica R. Metcalfe Peabody Essex Museum/Delmonico Books—Prestel, 2015

T

HIS HANDSOME, oversized volume accompanies the exhibit Native Fashion Now, a jaunty survey of Canadian and American Aboriginal fashion design. The exhibit is positioned as “the first largescale traveling exhibition of contemporary fashion representing designers from across the United States and Canada.” To bill any Native art event as “the first” is to throw out the gauntlet, but I believe they are correct. NMAI’s 2007–2010 Identity by Design: Tradition, Change, and Celebration in Native Women’s Dresses was ambitious; it traveled and featured contemporary American and Canadian Native fashion but only from the Interior West. Other recent exhibits of Indigenous fashion shows haven’t traveled, but Native Fashion Now is slated to hit Oregon, Oklahoma, and New York, after its debut in Salem, Massachusetts.

The copious color plates feature work from the show as well as historic and modern images. Curator Karen Kramer provides a background in Native fashion beginning with Lloyd Kiva New

(Cherokee, 1916–2002), who launched a multimillion-dollar fashion design company in the 1940s and 1950s and collaborated with some of the top Native artists of the time. I was excited to learn about Frankie Welch (Eastern Band Cherokee), having grown up seeing her Cherokee syllabary scarves. It was surprising to discover that she “outfitted five different first ladies and designed ties for seven presidents,” as Kramer writes.

A 1970s dress by Juanita Lee (Kewa) and 1980s dress by Margaret Wood (Navajo) illustrate continuity in Native design. It’s thrilling to see Indigenous fashion reclaim its history—an effort spearheaded by Jessica Metcalfe (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), who earned her doctoral degree researching Native fashion design history.

Metcalfe, Jay Calderín, and Madeline Kropa provided commentary— casual and humorous in tone—on the individual artworks, which were up and down in quality. This is an eclectic introduction to the burgeoning Native fashion scene.

For major, intertribal art shows, the prevailing practice is to divide the works into themes defined specifically for the exhibit and catalogue. Newly defined themes break away from the legacy of anthropologic categorization of Native art and, instead of activating well-worn preconceptions, encourage a fresh look at the art. The four themes or categories of Native Fashion Now are Pathbreakers, Revisitors, Activators, and Provocateurs.

Pathbreakers are defined as designers who “blaze trails and tear down the boundaries between different kinds of fashion.” Revisitors “refresh long-held culturally significant beliefs and images, making them exciting and relevant for new generations.” Activators, represented by streetwear and other embellished, mass-produced items, are those for whom “fashion is a creative means of performing identity.” Finally, Provocateurs are defined as designers of “sophisticated, conceptual projects” that “push the boundaries between art and fashion.”

The exhibit casts an extremely wide net and defines fashion to include clothing and accessories such as The Guardian— Bringer of Thunder, Lightning, and Rain, an award-winning sculptural handbag

by Orlando Dugi (Navajo) and Troy Sice (Zuni), and parasols such as those by Teri Greeves (Kiowa-Comanche) and Patricia Michaels (Taos), star of Project Runway’s 11th season. A dizzying abundance of striking jewelry and even Rico Worl’s (Tlingit-Athabaskan) skateboard decks were included in the show.

No conversation about contemporary Native fashion can ignore misappropriation of Native designs by non-Native designers. When does appropriation—the hallmark of postmodernism—become misappropriation?

The catalogue features provocative images of Cher’s 1972 feathered headdress designed by Bob Mackie and plates of a Ralph Lauren jacket and a garish Northwest Coast-inspired dress by Isaac Mizrahi. Clothing like the Navajoinfluenced Ralph Lauren jacket can be found in any American shopping mall, but taking something so ubiquitous and banal and placing it on display, adjacent to original works by Navajo designers, demands a fresh look and reassessment of the jacket.

Jay Calderín writes an almost apologetic account of Syrian-JewishAmerican designer Isaac Mizrahi’s Totem Pole dress, which clearly portrays the pursed lips of Dzunukwa, the Kwakwaka’wakw cannibal woman.

Calderín writes, “Totem pole designs … are not considered sacred per se.”

However, Rico Worl, owner of Trickster Company, refuses to place clan designs on his streetwear, because those designs don’t belong to an individual; they belong to the clan. In respecting its property laws, Worl is accountable to his tribal community. Mizrahi is not.

Strategically placed on the obverse side of the page with Mizrahi’s dress is a kimono designed by Toni Williams (Northern Arapaho). What to make of Native Americans appropriating designs of other cultures? This summer, protesters criticized Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts “Kimono Wednesdays,” in which museumgoers were encouraged to try on kimonos. The protest was met by a counter-protest of Japanese-American and Korean-Japanese women who supported Kimono Wednesdays. Even protest organizer Loreto Ansaldo said, “We never said people who aren’t Japanese can’t SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 83

REVIEWS

wear a kimono.”1 A non-Japanese artist constructing a junihitoe with Imperial clan symbols might be a different story.

Text reveals that Sheridan MacKnight (Hunkpapa Lakota-White Earth Ojibwe) created the designs on Williams’s kimono, honoring her own Japanese-ScottishLakota-Ojibwe daughter. The fine points of intent, intellectual property, sacredness, and community standards have to be considered when discussing misappropriation. Native Fashion Now doesn’t dictate how the audience should feel, but introduces the concepts in ways that prompt deeper questioning.

Many of the works were awe-inspiring in their creative vision and technical mastery, especially the mind-bending beadwork of Jamie Okuma (Luiseño-Shoshone-Bannock) and Orlando Dugi. Bethany Yellowtail’s (Crow-Northern Cheyenne) dresses are exquisite: Old Time Floral Elk Tooth Dress, which is anything but old-fashioned, and Project 562 Yellowtail Shift Dress, a collaboration with photographer Matika Wilbur (Swinomish-Tulalip).

I wish there was more information about the works by D. Y. Begay (Navajo), Lisa Telford (Haida), and Margaret Roach Wheeler (Chickasaw), who all wove the textiles in their garments. I definitely would have rather read about Jamie Okuma’s adroit ensemble featuring elegantly defenestrated pants, spiked purse, and jacket made from holographic, Italian lambskin than a mass-produced t-shirt sporting a decades-old bumper sticker slogan. Perhaps the impetus to include the t-shirts is to inspire younger Native people to try creating their own designs, since today all it takes is a CafePress or Zazzle account.

Fashion is the arena where Native Americans are making their mark on today’s popular culture. Indigenous designers are creating wearable art never seen before and have the technical mastery to realize their visions. Native Fashion Now jumpstarts the conversation and casts a powerful spotlight on this exciting, fertile field of creative expression.

—America Meredith 1. Stephanie McFeeters, “Counter-protesters join kimono fray at MFA,” Boston Globe ( July 19, 2015), web.

Survey

Traditional Weavers of Guatemala: Their Stories, Their Lives Deborah Chandler and Teresa Cordón Thrums, 2015

T

HE MAINSTREAM AMERICAN narrative of North American history typically locates the United States and Canada as the center of the continent. Subsequently, scholarship on the topic often emphasizes the influence of Northern Europe on the formation of “America,” which results in the displacement of the other 21 countries and dozens of possessions and territories that comprise North America.

By constructing history that overlooks the majority of places that make up the whole, the richness of numerous cultural heritages gets lost.

In the recent publication Traditional Weavers of Guatemala: Their Stories, Their Lives, authors Deborah Chandler and Teresa Cordón assert the central place that Guatemala—and her Indigenous peoples—claim in the cultural heritage of North America.

The title of the book identifies the topic clearly: it is a written record of “traditional” weavers in Guatemala today.

By traditional, one assumes Chandler and Cordón refer to weaving methods that connect with Maya ancestors. The authors highlight 20 artists, 19 of which are Maya:

8 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

twelve weavers, three embroiderers, two spinners, one jaspe (pronounced HA-spay) tie-dyer, one net/looper, and one basket weaver. In terms of demographics, 14 of the weavers are women, six are men, and they range in age from 33 to 89.

The authors explain that their method for choosing the 20 artists from “more than half a million weavers” in Guatemala began with speaking with everyone they knew who works with fiber artisans of any kind. The purpose of this approach was to accurately capture the range and variety of textile techniques from every region in the country, regardless of potential language barriers.

Ultimately, Chandler and Cordón conversed with each featured weaver personally, taking into account not only the technical aspects of the weaving, but also the memories of each artist’s life that took shape not in “linear form, with a clock and calendar in hand” but rather through stories.

Chandler and Cordón speak with technical expertise about weaving— particularly Guatemalan weaving—and include in-text explanations and a glossary for those readers unfamiliar with specific terminology and techniques. For example, before being introduced to the story of Tomasa Siquina Chanchavac, a K’iche’ weaver who ties jaspe, readers learn that jaspe is a “sophisticated tie-dye technique performed on yarn before it’s woven” and that the term can refer to “the final cloth or the process used to create that cloth.” One page describes the many steps involved in jaspe.

Unlike many weaving jobs in Guatemala where men do one thing and women another, jaspe dying is not gender specific. Siquina Chanchavac, 67 years old at the writing of Traditional Weavers of Guatemala: Their Stories, Their Lives, learned the art of jaspe from her second husband. Her grandfather and her father (who abused her and her mother) were also jaspe tiers.

As a child, Siquina Chanchavac’s job was to prepare the threads for tying, but she did not learn anything more from her abusive father. Like most of the featured artists, she endured many hardships throughout her life but gives thanks for her work. When questioned

REVIEWS

about her visit with the authors and their project, Siquina Chanchavac said, “It makes me happy because it recognizes me as an artist.” Worth noting, this gracious attitude comes from a woman who earns what would translate to about $26 to $39 a week from her work.

Meeting and conversing with Siquina Chanchavac and the other 19 featured artists presented logistical challenges, but the authors successfully overcame these. According to Chandler, to meet with each artist, she and Cordón “traveled to nine departments (like states or provinces), traversed altitudes from 770 to 2,770 meters (2,500 to 9,000 feet), conversed in eight languages besides English (with interpreters as needed), drove right to the front doors of some and hiked beyond where our four-wheel-drive vehicle would go for others.”

The success of this book roots itself in not only the commitment, dedication, and follow-through of the authors but also their expertise on the subject.

Deborah Chandler, who has previously published works in the field of textiles, moved to Guatemala full time in 1999.

She has been weaving since the 1960s and spent nine years as the director of Mayan Hands. Teresa Cordón is from the eastern part of Guatemala, and since 1998, she has provided both education and markets for the work of Maya artists. Throughout the text, it is clear that both women support the individuals behind the works as they painstakingly convey their stories. In addition, through a variety of breathtaking photographs by Joe Coca, images support the narrative of the artisans, their work, and their culture.

As dedicated experts in the field of weaving who care very much about the individual artists who create the work, both Chandler and Cordón shine.

In addition, they are knowledgeable about the history, geography, and culture of Guatemala. This translates to an aesthetically pleasing book pieced together like a beautifully woven work of art in which the narratives and talents of the individual stand out.

Ultimately, the lofty aim of the book is successfully achieved; the authors assert the significant place that Guatemala and her Indigenous people holds in the

narrative of North America, and challenge the reader further. Chandler and Cordón state on page 9: “What we hope you will gain from the stories is the beginning of an understanding of a world probably very different from your own …” that results in “mutual respect between cultures” as “the foundation of a stronger and healthier world.” Both women model this mutual respect between cultures through their methodology, which gives readers something to strive toward in a world that could use a little more hope.

—Jean Merz-Edwards

Music Review My Soul Remainer Laura Ortman Self-produced, 2015

M

y Soul Remainer is the most recent solo album by Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache). It’s her third solo album in collaboration with co-producer Martin Bisi, independently published through Bandcamp, an online music-sharing platform. This is an excellent addition to her trilogy.

I’ve followed Ms. Ortman’s work not only through her two previous solo albums, Tens Of Thousands and Someday We’ll Be Together (also published through Bandcamp), but also through her collaboration with filmmaker Martha Colburn as well as longtime projects Stars Like Fleas and The Dust Dive, two Brooklyn-based bands. I’ve eagerly anticipated her new work for quite some time. Her output maintains a remarkable consistency, all the while being able to keep the ideas and approaches fresh, joyful, mysterious, personal, and uniquely her.

Ortman has long been a mainstay in and around New York City and plays in a variety of venues and communities, as well as in her residency at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. She has collaborated with many artists in the Southwest, most recently through her residency at MoCNA in Santa Fe in 2015. Among other honors and awards, she was also granted a Robert

Rauschenberg Residency in Florida. In 2008, she founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed the 1914 original score live accompaniment to photographer Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

A monster violinist, composer, vocalist, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and phonographer, Laura Ortman brings it all together in her solo work.

She plays every instrument on My Soul Remainer, with each of her musical, artistic, humanistic, and cultural interests affecting and complimenting each other: from the violin to her voice to the world.

While listening to Ms. Ortman’s newest recording for the first time, I wrote my immediate response to each moment. Afterward, I realized this flow of thought was my most honest response to her work and so decided to include it exactly as it came out: This album slowly seeps into my being: wonderfully haunting qualities, a warm sonic fog enveloping the ears.

Layers of undulating sound enticing us into the nuances; elegant balance of consonance and dissonance, momentary glimpses into memorized worlds of the unknown.

It is music by which to navigate the interstellar as well as the interpersonal.

Abrupt voices disturb the serene with a new continuation of the same dream.

Slipping into dark warmth, an embrace with the unknown, in the womb of the universe. Sounds disappear from my ears but continue sliding into my imagination.

The animals fall to silence, an organism of individuals making room for the new old.

Sweet anticipation of what never comes, revealing it as the gift and awareness of my breath. Now it comes, after I don’t need it anymore; feels better than it would have had it come sooner. Tongue, lips, mind, carousel. No rush, be not do, rituals, sacred/secular/profane/profound in parallel universes, sound flows backwards, everything intertwined in simple complexity. Lyrical distortion, drone meditations not too fixated, simultaneous tension and release. Sentimental triumph, who wins? Ancient, baroque, futuristic.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 85

REVIEWS

Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), My Soul Remainer, 2015, album cover art.

Like waking up in front of a silent TV at 2:37 in the morning with your dog. Or falling off the roof in slower and slower motion, knowing that you will never hit the ground. You disappear from yourself through the gaze of others. Insects are fairies and they outweigh us. On Earth. In Earth. Wind breath. The reward. Sweet hypnotism.

During my initial listening, I ignored the words and focused on the sonic aspects of Ortman’s voice and its interaction as an instrument with all the other sounds. The next time through I had the lyrics in front of me, and I realized what a marvel they become in tandem, how well the music expresses her words and vise versa.

For instance, from “Man Under the Moon”: And the moon shines bright my darlin’ And the stars carve light tonight Waves of wind When like we started Blows that fire giant ball upright.

I appreciate how naturally she spins the personal with the universal, the human realm with the superreal and the surreal. These lyrics convey that these realities/perspectives are coexisting simultaneously, always have, and always will, like the uncertainty principle and ancient wisdom.

—Thollem McDonas

Report Santa Fe

Acting OUT: A Symposium on Indigenous Performance Art Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and New Mexico Museum of Art

A

CTING OUT: A Symposium on Indigenous Performance Art highlights the growing interest in this art form among Native Americans. Organized by the staff at IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) and funded by the New Mexico Humanities Council, Acting OUT offered an opportunity for a comprehensive exploration of performance art by Indigenous artists.

The symposium was shaped by the need for Native performance artists to meet and to discuss their work with each other. Held on December 3–5, 2015, it included panel lectures, discussion

8 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

sessions, workshops, videos, and performance.

The symposium opened with introductions by Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation), director of MoCNA, and Della Warrior (Otoe-Missouria), director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

Dr. Marcia Crosby (Haida-Tsimshian), art historian and curator, moderated the panel discussion that followed, “Performing for the Camera,” which included artists Anna Tsouhlarakis (Navajo-Muscogee) and Merritt Johnson (Mohawk-Blackfoot), and art historian Dr. Kate Morris from Santa Clara University. To offer a range in the field, the symposium screened videos from different artists. Three workshops with small groups led by noted performance artists explored practical applications. Guillermo Gómez-Peña (Chicano) taught a workshop on “Words,” Rebecca Belmore (Ojibwe) on “Actions,” and members of Postcommodity on “Sound and Performance.”

On Friday, the symposium held two panel discussions, beginning with “Performing the Body,” which explored the role of the physical self within the role of performance. Andrea Hanley (Navajo), public programs and membership manager at MoCNA, moderated while performance artists Adrian Stimson (Siksika), Lori Blondeau (Cree-Saulteaux), and sisters Gloria and Muriel Miguel (both Guna-Rappahannock) of Spiderwoman Theater engaged in the discussion. Stimson explores his bodily limits in his work, such as sewing seven feathers to his chest and crawling across the hot desert landscape of Burning Man for 45 minutes while wearing a 50-pound buffalo costume.

Blondeau also tests the limits of her body in her work—she ate 14 McDonald’s hamburgers in five minutes during her MFA thesis at the University of Saskatchewan.

Gloria and Muriel Miguel described the work from Spiderwoman Theater, which gave its first performance in 1976, in terms of larger issues of sexuality, violence, racism, sexism, and aging. Muriel Miguel stated, “You need curiosity, you need passion,” which she demonstrated by expressing a range of emotions from joy to fear to anger using only her face and her body,

REPORT

As a medium, performance art is often difficult to understand, yet, as seen in this symposium, it is a powerful means to communicate difficult ideas. with no words, conveying the depth of experience that comes from live performance. On Saturday, the Miguel sisters also discussed their process for writing, which combines Indigenous aesthetics with personal stories.

The afternoon panel “Taking Place” focused on how defining space and time defines performance art. Moderated by Dr. Lara Evans (Cherokee Nation) from IAIA, MoCNA curator Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish) and artists Peter Morin (Tahltan) and Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Métis-Cree) considered how artists relate to locations. Hopkins described traveling to the US-Mexican border for Postcommodity’s Repellent Fence, 26 tethered balloons ten feet in diameter with stylized target designs (originally designed to repel birds, though not particularly effective in that capacity).

The balloons floated 50 feet in the air and crossed the border for a stretch of two miles, with 13 balloons in Mexico and 13 in the United States.

This piece articulated the arbitrary nature of national borders and the oversimplification of border politics. The social events surrounding the lifting of the balloons offered a moment to consider the potential to find common ground between the two countries.

Peter Morin’s work brings the Tahltan practice of singing into the contemporary art world. An artist and assistant professor at Brandon University in Manitoba, Morin combines two- and three-dimensional art with performance, as seen in an exhibition he organized of his mother’s photographs and artifacts.

He sang to each image, unwrapping them one at a time, waking the pieces up. The songs honor the ancestors, using “a white shaman to fix white problems.”

L’Hirondelle is an artist, musician, and activist who creates works outside gallery/museum settings by playing music for birds and drawing in chalk so her pieces disappear without harming the environment.

After the workshops and panel discussions, the symposium put theories to practice with performance pieces by James Luna (Luiseño), Sheila Tishla Skinner, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Rebecca Belmore, followed by a panel discussion moderated by art critic Lucy Lippard.

Luna, recently an artist in residence at IAIA, performed a road trip to “Santa Fake” with Skinner, a land of faux mysticism and crystal culture, where the desire for an encounter with something spiritual remains unfulfilled.

Gómez-Peña, the first Chicano artist to win a McArthur Fellowship in

1991, gave a spoken-word performance that considered the role of the artist and the need for forgiveness in the world to create peace.

Belmore brought the audience into her work. She placed paper masks under every seat with a chief ’s headdress, which she wore herself, and instructed the audience to wear theirs while she projected her head onto a large screen and recited lines from noted Native leaders.

In the panel discussion after the performances, the three artists laughed and joked with each other, often intentionally ignoring the questions posed by Lippard, especially questions about identity politics, preferring to discuss the artistic side of their work over the political.

Acting OUT reflects the rising interest in performance art by Indigenous artists worldwide. As a medium, performance art is often difficult to understand, yet, as seen in this symposium, it is a powerful means to communicate difficult ideas. The immediacy and intimacy of performance art offer a connection to the audience not possible in any other media. If the past few decades are an indication, the future holds more artists and audiences for this medium. —Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

Acting Out publicity, 2015.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 87

Do you love art?

Join us in exploring the world of Native art—ancient, historical, and contemporary. Read online content or subscribe today at FirstAmericanArtMagazine.com

info@firstamericanartmagazine.com | (505) 473-0149 | We have words for art!

8 8 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

IN MEMORIAM

John Trudell

A

February 15, 1946–December 8, 2015

T 3:41 P.M. on December 8, 2015, a post appeared on John Trudell’s Facebook page. It read: My ride showed up.

Celebrate love, celebrate life.

In that instant, thousands of John’s fans learned that he had walked on, and seconds later, an outpouring of grief and remembrance began on social media.

The news of his passing hit mainstream news outlets next. The New York Times remembered him as an outspoken activist who “channeled his message of righteous defiance into poetry and songwriting.”1 While the national media attention cemented the magnitude of his work, poignant tributes poured in from friends and colleagues. Poet and policy advocate Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne-Hodulgee Muscogee) wrote, “When we read together … the raw truth and beauty of his work often left me almost too filled with emotion to continue.”2 “John roused an army of young Native spoken-word artists,” musician Joy Harjo (Muscogee-Cherokee) said, “And made it okay for a warrior to write poetry.”3 Alex Jacobs, Mohawk artist and poet wrote, “We all felt we knew him. He shared pain, courage, insight, and wisdom with all of us.”4 Trudell had an international following that, as his website says, reflected “the universal language of his words, work, and message.”

A Dakota member of the Santee Sioux Nation, Trudell was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1946 and grew up in small towns near the Santee Sioux Reservation. At 17, he dropped out of high school and joined the Navy. After his service, he attended San Bernardino Valley College in California, married his first wife, Fenicia “Lou” Ordonez, and thought he would have a career in radio.

His trajectory changed when, in 1969, he joined United Indians of All Tribes to occupy Alcatraz Island.

John Trudell on the set of TV show Cannabis Common Sense, 2009. Photo: D. Paul Stanford.

He found an authentic voice there and became the official spokesperson of the occupation. After the government failed to meet the demands of that protest, Trudell joined the American Indian Movement (AIM) and served as its national chairman until 1979.

While his first marriage had ended during the Alcatraz occupation, he married Tina Manning (Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute) in 1972, the same year he and others participated in the Trail of Broken Treaties, a cross-country protest demanding treaty rights be honored that culminated in the Bureau of Indian Affairs building occupation in Washington, DC. Seven years later, Trudell burned an American flag on the steps of the FBI headquarters in a different Washington protest, remarking “that the flag had been desecrated by the government’s behavior toward American Indians and other minorities, and that burning was the appropriate way to dispose of a desecrated flag.”5 No stranger to the FBI, Trudell had a 17,000-page dossier that included this telling one-liner: “He is

1. Bruce Weber, “John Trudell, Outspoken Advocate for American Indians, Is Dead at 69,” New York Times (December 9, 2015), web.

2. Suzan Shown Harjo, “Honor Lines for JT,” Indian Country Today (December 16, 2015), web.

3. Joy Harjo, “Tribute to John Trudell,” Indian Country Today (December 10, 2015), web.

extremely eloquent, therefore extremely dangerous.”6 A day after he burned the flag, his second wife Tina Manning, their three children, their unborn baby, and Tina’s mother died in a suspicious house fire in Nevada. While Trudell and others suspected government involvement, the cause of the fire was never determined.

Trudell turned to writing and spoken word to make sense of the world after his family’s death. He called it “lines that were given to him to hang on to.” A music and acting career took hold, where he recorded with such greats as Jesse Ed Davis, Kris Kristofferson, and others, and acted in feature films such as Thunderheart and Smoke Signals.

In 2009, at a dinner with an unlikely mix of people, I had the honor of meeting John. We were gathered to produce a benefit concert he and Jackson Browne were headlining for his organization Give Love, Give Life—a cause inspired by his former partner Marcheline Bertrand’s long battle with ovarian cancer.

I found John to be simultaneously reserved and talkative. He was real and direct and at the same time operated on an entirely different frequency. His eyes carried a long look of cynicism and loss but were tinged with deep thoughtfulness and compassion. They had seen things I can only imagine as a privileged white one.

The night I learned of his passing, I thought about that encounter, and it helped me to breathe past the seemingly endless nonsense in my newsfeed regarding nationalism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and everything else that comes from a place of fear. He, on the other hand, was fearless. It reminded me that there are always people fighting the good fight, people we need to hold up, give voice to, and remember, even when the media machines won’t.

May he rest in power and be remembered through our actions toward building a more just world. —Staci Golar

4. Alex Jacobs, “Remembering the Life and Legacy of John Trudell,” Indian Country Today (December 10, 2015), web.

5. Bruce Weber, web.

6. Denise Sullivan, Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music from Blues to Hip-hop (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011), 82.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 89

Is It a Copy, Or Is It a Copy?

The Claim of Copyright in Copies of Copies

Y

OU CANNOT CLAIM the copyright of a copy of a copy of a copyrighted craft unless you can coax the copyright owner into closing a compromise about commerce for the copyright.

Now say that seven times really fast.

The short version: If a copy is just a copy, then the copy is not copyrighted.

Or try this: The original work is copyrightable, but copies of that work are just copies. If you want the copyright, then buy it from the copyright owner.

Misty has been confused as you likely are right now. That’s why she regularly has coffee with her attorney, Ima. As an artist, Misty knows there is value in owning a copyright and in maintaining her professional and personal relationship with Ima. Imagine Misty creates a piece of pottery with a beautiful, unique image of a water bird flying along a river.

Now, suppose that Misty attempts to sell that art piece at the gift shop at her tribe’s cultural center. She has won numerous awards, including a nationally recognized award, for the piece of pottery with the water bird image. The piece has an asking price of $1,000, but she has a plan to make prints of the unique water bird scene to sell or display in galleries.

Let’s say a nontribal visitor who loves the water bird scene takes a great photograph of it and then posts it on social media. Then an entrepreneur sees the image of the photo on social media and downloads it into a software program that produces postcards. The entrepreneur sells the postcards—you guessed it—at the tribal gift shop.

The entrepreneur loves the image so

By Kevin R. Kemper, PhD, LLM much that he buys the pottery with the original image and then claims he has the copyright to all of it.

Misty is beyond furious. Ima pours coffee and invites Misty to take her usual seat on the sofa in her law office.

“How in the @#$& can those postcards be sold, and I don’t get any money from it?!” exclaims Misty.

Ima smiles. “I think we have a real case to sue on this one,” Ima says.

Misty stops and catches her breath. “This is going to be expensive,” she mutters to herself. “How so?” she asks Ima. From her lengthy experience as an attorney and as Misty’s friend, Ima knew to boil down the basics, to get to the bottom line.

“We prove in court that you own the copyright, and that the photograph and the postcards are just copies,” Ima says.

“You cannot get any better than a US Supreme Court case on point,” Ima says as she checks online to see if the case is still valid. She smiles because it is—for the most part.

Misty wants Ima to explain the case, which had involved a claim of copyright over the white pages of a telephone directory.

First, Ima says, the court reminds us “that facts are not copyrightable,” but “the compilation of facts generally are.” That is, making a copy of something is just that: a copy. The copyright owner owns the copyright.

The copier does not. To make something into something for which you have a copyright, then you have to own copyright to the original.

“Originality requires only that the author make the selection or arrangement independently (i.e., without copying that selection or arrangement from another work), and

If you want the copyright, then buy it from the copyright owner.

Misty wants to know more.

“Well,” she says, “I’ve been searching on the Internet and …”

Ima cringes, knowing that finding legal cases on the Internet can be dangerous.

Attorneys can sort out whether the cases are “good law,” meaning they are what courts would use to sort out the issues at hand. People without that skill may misinterpret the law.

“What did you find?” Ima asks.

Misty points to Feist Publications, Inc. vs. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).

9 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

that it display some minimal level of creativity,” the court says.

Ima also finds another case, Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. vs. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), where a federal district court held that color transparencies of art are not copyrightable under the laws of the United States or the United Kingdom.

Even the use of a photo in a poster—like Shepard Fairey’s famous Hope poster of President Obama based on a photograph by the Associated Press—creates some unique issues like fair use. That case settled, but attorneys don’t come cheap, as the saying goes.

Even though Misty’s situation has numerous details and nuances, Ima knows it is time for Misty to assert her rights in court. She prints off the proper forms for her to sign so Ima can represent her and start the lawsuit.

Ima reminds Misty that she had already registered her copyright after Ima had sent her a link at copyright.gov/circs/ circ40.pdf that explains the process.

“Before I go, one more question: What about his silly claim that he owns the copyright because he bought the pottery?” asks Misty.

Ima laughs knowingly. “Misty, you know that you own the copyright to the image, even though he bought the pottery with the image. He owes you a lot of money.”

Misty is still concerned about the cost of hiring Ima for litigation, but Ima explains that the value of the copyrights and the principle of the matter are worth the cost of defending them. She also says that it’s possible under federal statutes to ask the court to make the defendant pay reasonable attorney’s fees, though the defendant can make the same demand of the plaintiff if he wins. Because they are friends, Ima is willing to help her pro bono (at no charge), though many attorneys cannot afford to do that.

The bottom line is that the creation of art and the copyright of that art produce value for an artist.

Good attorneys who know intellectual property law and art law will be able to help artists in a copyright situation.

Before she leaves the office, Ima

Illustration by Roy Bony Jr. (Cherokee Nation). © 2015 Roy Boney Jr. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

sends an email to Misty with links to some helpful articles. One is by Steve Schlackman at artlawjournal.com/ visual-art-ownership. Another is the Copyright Crash Course from the University of Texas library system: copyright.lib.utexas.edu/whoowns.html.

The next time Misty and Ima

meet, we will learn about intellectual property issues about art based upon cultural images, like the water bird on pottery. Who owns the rights to images from a tribal culture? The tribe?

The artist? A museum that found and acquired the image?

Editor’s Note This column provides important information to educate readers about the laws of copyright and other intellectual property, art, media, and more. The fictional character of Misty as a Native American artist will encounter and overcome unique challenges with federal, state, and tribal law. Her fictional Native attorney, Ima, will guide and educate Misty. Along the way, we hope you learn the basics of copyright law, business law, art law, privacy, and more. Nothing in any of these columns should be construed as legal advice. You are encouraged to seek the advice of an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction if you have a specific legal question. Any resemblance to these fictional characters is merely coincidental.

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 91

CALENDAR

Tatanka’s Dream, Bryan Douglas Parker, bdparker@gmail.com

ENTRIES DUE 5.6.16

48th Annual

Red Cloud Indian

ART SHOW

June 5 - August 14, 2016 100 Mission Drive, Pine Ridge, SD 57770 I www.redcloudschool.org/ArtShow

NATIVE AMERICAN ART APPRAISALS, INC. SINCE 1936

Calendar February 4–May 6: Little Rock, AR Return from Exile: Contemporary Southeastern Indian Art at the Dr. J. W. Wiggins Gallery, Sequoyah National Research Center, University of Arkansas, Little Rock, 500 University Plaza | (501) 569-8336 | returnfromexile.org February 5–April 10: Anchorage, AK Kill the Indian, Save the Man at the Anchorage Museum, 625 C St., Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit-Unangax) solo exhibition | (907) 929-9200 | anchoragemuseum.org February 5–May 8: Oklahoma City, OK Native American Bolo Ties: Vintage and Contemporary Artistry at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NW 63rd St. (405) 478-2250 | nationalcowboymuseum.org

February 6–April 17: Phoenix, AZ Confluence: Inter-generational Collaborations at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Ave. (602) 252-8840 | heard.org February 6–May 8: Portland, OR Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave. (503) 226-2811 | portlandartmuseum.org February 12–14: Litchfield, AZ 6th Annual Wigwam Indian Art Show at the Wigwam Resort, 300 Wigwam Lane (623) 734-6525 | vermillionpromotions.com

February 12–May 6: Brantford, ON James Luna: Performagraphic at the Woodland Cultural Centre, 184 Mohawk St. (519) 759-2650 | woodland-centre.on.ca February 12–May 8: Toledo, OH Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection at the Toledo Museum of Art, 2445 Monroe St. | (419) 255-8000 | toledomuseum.org

February 14–December 30, 2016: Santa Fe, NM A New Century: The Life and Legacy of Cherokee Artist and Educator Lloyd “Kiva” New at Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC), 710 Camino Lejo (505) 476-1269 | indianartsandculture.org

(855) NAAA-INC EMAIL INFO@NAAAINC.COM VISIT WWW.NAAAINC.COM CALL

9 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

February 18–May 29: Montreal, QC De-colonial Gestures or Doing It Wrong? Refaire le chemin, Nadia Myre artist residency, at the McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke St. West (514) 398-7100 | mccord-museum.qc.ca

CALENDAR

February 19–21: San Rafael, CA 32nd Annual American Indian Art Show/Marin at Marin Center, 10 Ave of the Flags, presented by KR Martindale Show Management.

(310) 822-9179 | marinshow.com February 19–Ongoing: Taos, NM The Supernaturals: Contemporary Katsinas from the Collection at the Millicent Rogers Museum, 1504 Millicent Rogers Rd. (575) 758-2462 | millicentrogers.org

February 20–May 29: Palm Springs, CA Changing the Tone: Contemporary American Indian Photographers at Palm Springs Art Museum, 101 Museum Dr. (760) 322-4800 | psmuseum.org February 24–June 13: Stanford, CA Contemporary Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Big Horn at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, 328 Lomita Drive | (650) 723-4177 museum.stanford.edu February 27–September 28: Phoenix, AZ Personal Journeys: American Indian Landscapes at Heard Museum, 2301 North Central Ave. (602) 252-8840 | heard.org

March 1–April 23: Vancouver, WA Woven: The Art of Contemporary Native Basketry at Archer Gallery, Clark College, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way (360) 992-2246 | clark.edu/archergallery March 1–June 30: Oklahoma City, OK Red Earth Master Artist 30-Year Reunion Show at the Red Earth Art Center, 6 Santa Fe Plaza (405) 427-5228 | redearth.org March 3–April 30: Phoenix, AZ Nihiáłchíní éí bąąh: For Our Children at 1Spot Gallery, 918 N. 6th St., rear entrance | (602) 999-5582 | 1spotgallery.com March 5 & 6: Phoenix, AZ 58th Annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Ave. (602) 252-8840 | heardguild.org March 5–July 3: Edmonton, AB 7: Professional Native Indian Arts Inc. at the Art Gallery of Alberta, 2 Sir Winston Churchill Square (780) 422-6223 | youraga.ca March 5–July 3: Edmonton, AB Brittney Bear Hat & Richelle Bear Hat: Little Cree Woman (Sisters, Secrets, & Stories) at the Art Gallery of Alberta, 2 Sir Winston Churchill Square |(780) 422-6223 | youraga.ca

KR MARTINDALE SHOW MANAGEMENT PRESENTS

FEBRUARY 19-21, 2016 MARIN CENTER, SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA Over 150 Dealers and Artists selling antique American Indian, Pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial and Contemporary American Indian Art, including Jewelry, Beadwork, Baskets, Textiles, Carvings, Pottery, Sculpture, and Paintings.

marinshow.com info@krmartindale.com 310 822 9145 Opening Night Preview Benefit:

Sponsors:

This year The American Indian Art Show/Marin is being held in conjunction with the San Francisco Tribal & Textile Arts Show, bringing together two historic shows to create one of the major weekends of the year for American Indian and Tribal art.

This Summer: The Antique American Indian Art Show Santa Fe, August 16th-18th, 2016 WI NT E R 2 0 1 5 /1 6

| 93

Celebrating 30 Years of Selling Inuit Art

CALENDAR

March 12–December 4: New York, NY Unbound: Narrative Art of the Plains at the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, 1 Bowling Green | (212) 514-3700 | nmai.si.edu March 18–June 27: Taos, NM Storytellers: Teaching Heritage through Song and Story at the Millicent Rogers Museum, 1504 Millicent Rogers Rd. (575) 758-2462 | millicentrogers.org

March 31–May 6: Buffalo, NY Re-Riding History: From the Southern Plains to Matanzas Bay at the University of Buffalo Art Gallery, 201 Center for the Arts | (716) 645-6913 | reridinghistory.org

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

March 31–May 11: Olympia, WA SgwigwialɁtxw @20: Building upon the Past, Visioning into the Future, juried art show at the Longhouse Education and Cultural Center, 1102-D The Longhouse, Evergreen State College, 2700 Evergreen Parkway NW (360) 867-6718 | evergreen.edu/longhouse April 7 & 8: Cincinnati, OH Cowan’s American Indian and Western Art Auction online and in-person at Cowan’s, 6270 Este Ave. (513) 871-1670 | cowanauctions.com

April 9–May 7: Park Hill, OK 45th Annual Trail of Tears Art Show at the Cherokee Heritage Center, 21192 S. Keeler Dr. (918) 456-6007 | cherokeeheritage.org April 9–May 28: Warm Springs, OR An Eye for the Rez: Edward Heath Photography at the Museum at Warm Springs, 2189 Highway 26 (541) 553-3331 | museumatwarmsprings.org

April 13, 2016–February 2017: Cambridge, MA In Fine Feather: Selected Featherwork from the Peabody Collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, 11 Divinity Ave. (617) 496-1027 | peabody.harvard.edu April 30–June 18: Montreal, QC Culture Shift: Contemporary Native Art Biennial–3rd edition at Art Mûr, 5826 Rue St-Hubert (514) 933-0711 | artmur.com For more events, please visit our online calendar at firstamericanartmagazine.com/calendar. To submit events, email faamevents@gmail.com.

9 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

SP RI NG 2 0 1 6

| 95

Advertiser Index Victoria Adams | victoriaadamsjewelry.com

4

Alaska on Madison | alaskaonmadison.com

2

American Indian Art Show/Marin | marinshow.com

93

Cherokee Heritage Center | cherokeeheritage.org

12

Cherokee Heritage Press | cherokeeheritage.org

46

Chickasaw Nation Artesian Arts Festival chickasaw.net interior front cover

Classified Ads Advertise in First American Art Magazine! Classifieds provide affordable advertising solutions for art professionals and service providers. For more information, visit firstamericanartmagazine.com/advertise.

Cowan’s Auctions | cowanauctions.com

5

Orlando Dugi | orlandodugi.com

95

Exhibit C | exhibitcgallery.com

6

Froelick Gallery | froelickgallery.com

3

Shan Goshorn | shangoshorn.com

1

Grey Dog Trading | greydogtrading.com

17

Benjamin Harjo Jr. | benjaminharjojr.com

46

Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair | heard.org/fair

9

Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School redcloud.org/artshow

92

Home & Away Gallery | homeandawaygallery.com

6

Fortune Hunting Horse | fortunehuntinghorse.com

44

Idyllwild Arts | idyllwildarts.org

8

Inuit Images | inuitimages.com

94

Marlowe Katoney | facebook.com/Marlowe-KatoneyNavajo-Textiles-122647127838298 back cover Keshi the Zuni Connection | keshi.com

47

Mahota Studios | margaretroachwheeler.com

44

the arts and artists of tribal peoples. SEIAA, while a network of primarily

Museum of Contemporary Native Arts iaia.edu/museum

15

Southeastern tribal artists, is supportive of all federally recognized Native

Native American Art Appraisals, Inc. | naaainc.com

92

Noksi Press | noksi.com

96

Ralph T. Coe Foundation | ralphtcoefoundation.org

13

through our online directory, image gallery, exhibiting opportunities,

Jack Sabon | sabonart.com

47

art business workshops, forum for Native artists, interested community

Nelda Schrupp | neldascrupp.com

45

artists. For more information, contact Melissa Melero at (775) 424-3159 or

Jackie Sevier | northernplainsstudio.com

45

gbnativeartists@gmail.com and visit www.greatbasinnativeartists.com.

Southwest Traditions | southwesttraditions.com

13

Trail of Tears Art Show | cherokeeheritage.org

43

ORGANIZATIONS The Southeastern Indian Artists Association is a Native American-run, nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote and educate about

artists. Visit www.seiaa.org for more info.

Great Basin Native Artists, collective of Native American professional artists in Nevada and Eastern Sierra Nevada range, provides support

members to connect and interact, and an online presence for rural Native

INTERN/VOLUNTEER Internships at First American Art Magazine, LLC, available through IAIA or independently. Writing, graphics, or business focus. Volunteers needed for tabling/events. Contact us at: info@firstamericanartmagazine.com.

9 6 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Treasures of the Southwest | treasuresofthesouthwest.com 94 Wheelwright Museum | wheelwright.org

interior back cover

W

Wheelwright Museum

OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

www.wheelwright.org 704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505-982- 4636 or 1- 800 -607- 4636

W

Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry An Essential New Mexico Experience

The most important exhibition on Native American jewelry anywhere

The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, in collaboration with the Ralph T. Coe Foundation, presents:

Connoisseurship and Good Pie: Ted Coe and Collecting Native Art Through April 17, 2016 Support for these projects is provided in part by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers’ Tax; New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts; Eugene V. Thaw; Richard and Willa Sisson; and many private donors nationwide. Photos by Jonathan Batkin and Addison Doty. Photo at left © Ralph T. Coe Foundation for the Arts, Inc.

Marlowe Katoney Diné Pictorial Weaver | Heard Fair #C-32

chaikatoney@hotmail.com | Facebook: Marlowe Katoney Navajo Textiles Work available through Bahti Indian Arts, Heard Museum Shop, and the Museum of Northern Arizona