PREVIEWS
Torry Mendoza, Kemosabe Version 1.0, video still, 2008
Bill Eppridge, burned master print of Robert F. Kennedy Shot, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, June 5, 1968.
Six exhibitions, including Matterings by Rose Simpson and It Wasn’t the Dream of the Golden Cities, an installation by Postcommodity collective August 2, 2010 to January 2, 2011 Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 108 Cathedral Place, Santa Fe. 983-8900
Bill Eppridge: An American Treasure Show runs to September 26, 2010 Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Road, Santa Fe. 992-0810
After being closed for several months for major roof repairs, the Museum of the Institute of American Indian
Bill Eppridge are guaranteed to awaken memories of the sixties: family members
Arts is celebrating with a grand reopening, featuring six exhibitions offering to the public a “complex view
attending the funeral of a civil rights victim, the Beatles arriving stateside, marines
of contemporary Native art that reflects its diverse cross-cultural influences and explores its complicated
in Vietnam. By far, however, Eppridge’s name is associated with his pictures of
historical development through its educational programming.”
Bobbie Kennedy campaigning for the presidency. His photograph of RFK’s life
More than fifty images in color and black-and-white by eminent photojournalist
Look for local Santa Claran artist Rose Simpson in her solo show, Matterings, inaugurating the new Vision
bleeding out while a busboy tries to comfort him, in June 1968, is, like so many
Project Gallery. For this exhibition, Simpson works with clay to investigate her own creative process, unraveling
images from the late sixties, sadly iconic. Eppridge’s first professional assignment
the paradoxical inspirations of comfort and fear. Using video in his show Round Up: Recent Work, Torry Mendoza
was a nine-month, worldwide shoot for National Geographic. That story ran
investigates the dialectic of the “Hollywood Indian” compared to what indigeneity looks like in contemporary,
thirty-two pages. The magazine wanted to put him on staff, but on advice from
everyday life. In particular, he remixes a conversation between Tonto and the Lone Ranger, revealing a hierarchy
the soon-to-become Geographic editor, Eppridge went to New York City to
of master and servant. In the Main Gallery (West), Alaskan artist Nicholas Galanin explores the authentic versus
renew some friendships he had made at LIFE. Eppridge’s work in LIFE, beginning
the imaginary in terms of visual stereotyping of Native peoples, taking on the colonial gaze as manifested through
in 1962, was as epic as the times themselves.
photographic images by Edward S. Curtis and his “noble savages.” In the South Gallery and outdoors in the Allan Houser Art Park, a group of four young artists called Postcommodity, who maintain that “the Pueblo Revolt has not ended…[but] evolved,” presents a series of installation works that celebrates and memorializes indigenous local histories. In the Main Gallery (East), Dry Ice: Alaskan Native Artists and the Landscape explores the artists’ relationships to their changing Arctic land, as well as deflating the notion that their art and culture are “frozen in an ancient past.” Finally, running throughout the halls like the graffiti-inspired work it emerges from, is Apaches and Angels, a series of hand-cut stenciled works from Douglas Miles’ Apache Skateboard Team.
Birds on Pueblo Pottery August 9 to 31 Adobe Gallery, 221 Canyon Road, Santa Fe. 955-0550 Opening reception: Monday, August 9, 4 to 7 pm. Historic Zia Pueblo Polychrome Olla with Birds
Stylized birds paired with geometric elements suggest a katsina mask: The design chases itself around the flat shoulders of a clay vessel built near Zuni pueblo. This spectacular antique pot dates to just before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and is a marvelous example of the sophistication and aesthetic appeal of historic clayware, as well as a superb introduction to the exhibition Birds on Pueblo Pottery. In a recent piece, from circa 1910, unknown hands from the pueblo of San Ildefonso built and decorated a storage pot with a gentle floral motif, out of which flies a bird, its feathers outlined to suggest full wing and tail plumage. It’s entirely different from the style that would come to dominate the pueblo just a few years later: the black stone-polished ware of María and Julian Martínez that is recognized for its excellence around the world today. These are just a couple of examples of the historic polychrome pots to be found in this exhibition. The bulk of the objects shown are from between 1850 and 1930. A Pueblo-style reception is planned for the exhibition’s opening.
48| THE magazine
|august 2010