Encyclopedia of Native American Artists (Artists of the American Mosaic)

Encyclopedia of Native American Artists

Recent Titles in Artists of the American Mosaic Encyclopedia of Jewish American Artists Samantha Baskind Encyclopedia of Asian American Artists Kara Kelley Hallmark Encyclopedia of Arab American Artists Fayeq S. Oweis

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NATIVE AMERICAN ARTISTS

Deborah Everett and Elayne Zorn

Artists of the American Mosaic

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut

•

London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Everett, Deborah, 1951– Encyclopedia of Native American artists / Deborah Everett and Elayne Zorn. p. cm. — (Artists of the American mosaic, ISSN 1939–1218) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–313–33762–8 (alk. paper) 1. Indian artists—United States—Encyclopedias. 2. Indian artists—Canada—Encyclopedias. I. Zorn, Elayne. II. Title. N6538.A4E94 2008 709.2’397—dc22 [B] 2008008989 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2008 by Deborah Everett and Elayne Zorn All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008008989 ISBN-13: 978–0–313–33762–8 ISSN: 1939–1218 First published in 2008 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

We dedicate this book to the artists we have written about, and to the community of artists from indigenous cultures. For my mother and father, who have been the inspiration for my love of other cultures. (D.E.). For Gav (E.Z.).

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Contents Preface

xi

Introduction (by Deborah Everett)

xiii

Acknowledgments

xix

Eugene Alfred (by Deborah Everett)

1

Kenojuak Ashevak (by Deborah Everett)

3

Rick Bartow (by Deborah Everett)

7

D. Y. Begay (by Elayne Zorn)

10

Rebecca Belmore (by Deborah Everett)

14

Frank BigBear (by Deborah Everett)

17

Lorenzo Clayton (by Deborah Everett)

21

Jesse Cooday (by Deborah Everett)

25

Thomas Joshua Cooper (by Deborah Everett)

27

Bonnie Devine (by Deborah Everett)

31

Jimmie Durham (by Deborah Everett)

34

Sheojuk Etidlooie (by Deborah Everett)

39

Joe Feddersen (by Deborah Everett)

45

Nicholas Galanin (by Deborah Everett)

49

Jeffrey Gibson (by Deborah Everett)

52

William J. Grant (by Deborah Everett)

55

Darren Vigil Gray (by Deborah Everett)

57

David Hannan (by Deborah Everett)

61

Sheldon Harvey (by Elayne Zorn)

64

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James Havard (by Deborah Everett)

67

Faye Heavyshield (by Deborah Everett)

70

Grace Henderson and Family (by Elayne Zorn)

72

Maria Hupfield (by Deborah Everett)

78

Terrol Dew Johnson (by Elayne Zorn)

83

Brian Jungen (by Deborah Everett)

87

Brad Kahlhamer (by Deborah Everett)

91

Sonya Kelliher-Combs (by Deborah Everett)

95

Hastiin Klah (by Elayne Zorn)

99

Zacharias Kunuk (by Deborah Everett)

103

James Lavadour (by Deborah Everett)

107

Carm LittleTurtle (by Deborah Everett)

110

Truman Lowe (by Deborah Everett)

112

Jason Lujan (by Deborah Everett)

117

James Luna (by Deborah Everett)

120

Mario Martinez (by Deborah Everett)

125

Victor Masayesva, Jr. (by Elayne Zorn)

127

Alan Michelson (by Deborah Everett)

132

George Morrison (by Deborah Everett)

136

Nadia Myre (by Elayne Zorn)

140

Marianne Nicolson (by Deborah Everett)

143

Jessie Oonark (by Elayne Zorn)

147

John Pangnark (by Deborah Everett)

153

Julia Parker (by Elayne Zorn)

155

Edward Poitras (by Deborah Everett)

158

Jane Ash Poitras (by Elayne Zorn)

161

Jereldine Redcorn (by Deborah Everett)

167

Bill Reid (by Deborah Everett)

170

Jolene Rickard (by Deborah Everett)

173

Diego Romero (by Deborah Everett)

176

Pitaloosie Saila (by Deborah Everett)

181

Ramona Sakiestewa (by Elayne Zorn)

184

Contents

Jim Schoppert (by Deborah Everett)

187

Theresa Secord (by Elayne Zorn)

190

Tanis Maria S’eiltin (by Deborah Everett)

193

Pamela Shields (by Deborah Everett)

196

Duane Slick (by Deborah Everett)

199

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (by Deborah Everett)

202

Leon Polk Smith (by Deborah Everett)

205

C. Maxx Stevens (by Deborah Everett)

208

Jennie Thlunaut (by Elayne Zorn)

213

Gail Tremblay (by Elayne Zorn)

216

Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (by Deborah Everett)

219

Marion Tuu’luq (by Elayne Zorn)

223

Kay WalkingStick (by Deborah Everett)

227

Star Wallowing Bull (by Deborah Everett)

230

Marie Watt (by Deborah Everett)

233

Emmi Whitehorse (by Deborah Everett)

237

Richard Ray Whitman (by Deborah Everett)

240

Charlie Willeto (by Deborah Everett)

243

Steven Yazzie (by Deborah Everett)

247

Glossary

251

General Bibliography

261

Index

263

A color image section follows page 124

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Preface All artworks are collective in that the people who create them come from particular times and places, and inevitably respond to what has preceded them. This volume is part of a series that highlights art made by people in the United States and Canada whose ancestry is non-Euro-American. Indigenous North Americans have made important contributions to the field of art for centuries, yet have been severely under-recognized and under-represented. This book seeks to make information about a diverse selection of Native artists and their work accessible to a broad audience. When approaching the work of almost any indigenous people, it is essential to recognize one’s own cultural biases—in terms of aesthetic sensitivity, as well as interpretation of data. The authors are not Native, and it is inevitable that our positions as non-Native art critic and anthropologist influence our discussions of the artists’ work. Together, however, we have spent more than four decades working with, researching, and writing about Native peoples (in North and South America), and both of us have been trained extensively in the fine arts. Everett has written primarily about painting, sculpture, and installations, and Zorn about the fiber arts, though both have trained in, and have researched, and written about other media as well. We believe that our varied yet complementary perspectives have made this volume stronger. The majority of the biographies present original research about the artists and their works. Although it has not always been possible to speak directly with the artists or their families, much of the information here has been gleaned from personal interviews and studio visits, as well as study of museum collections, and viewings of exhibitions. It has been a privilege and a delight to speak with these gifted individuals about their lives, as well as to view many of their works firsthand. Additional material has been gathered from a wide variety of print and Internet sources. It is our hope that readers will want to learn more about these striking artists and to seek out their work. At the same time, we want to remind our audience that museums and galleries do not display their entire inventory at one time. When planning a visit, it may be best to call ahead to ensure that work by the artist in question is accessible.

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Introduction Amidst a plethora of texts on artists of Native American heritage, this book is among a few focusing on the modern era. In biographical form, it presents material on artists with a broad spectrum of media and styles, from diverse indigenous nations and climates in North America (the United States and Canada). Its intention is to furnish a sampling of the striking creativity issuing from Native sources in our time. The choice of seventy entries for this book has been a daunting task for the authors—given the thousands of indigenous artists working during the twentieth century and into the present. It is impossible, of course, for a group of this size to function as a thorough survey, since the selection here represents only a small segment of the list of notable artists of Native backgrounds. Among the criteria for inclusion are the depth of artistic achievement, impact on other artists, and the rarity of the artist’s vision. In particular, numerous artists of overarching prominence have not been treated individually because of the abundance of information readily available on them. Rather than duplicating the existing literature, our goal is to augment it while introducing readers to the range of art and artists from Native American cultures. As part of a series on artists from specific ethnic backgrounds, this book seeks to offer some insights into the influence of heritage on individuals. The profiles not only provide specific biographical accounts, they also reference aspects of cultural experience that have affected the development and personal philosophies of the artists. This volume has much in common with other books in the series, but at the same time, it is hoped, it will reveal facets of Native American experience that are fundamentally different from that of any other group in North America. Among the important differences is the aesthetic pre-disposition of the Euro-centric heritage of most non-Native people in the United States and Canada. From that cultural viewpoint, art and design are discrete endeavors— with different demands and often different audiences; artists and artisans have been acculturated to accept that separation, so that whatever they make is generally tailored to one category or the other. But in many aboriginal cultures, there is often little (or no) boundary between art and craft—human creativity

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Introduction

takes many forms, and all may have equal intrinsic value. Simultaneously, most Native people have always had the core value of living within a framework of beauty, so that objects made for useful purposes, tended to be beautiful as well. In this context, however, ‘‘beautiful’’ implies more than just visually satisfying—it points toward something deeper, closer to ‘‘meaningful’’ (as in Renaissance philosophies equating ‘‘truth’’ with ‘‘beauty’’). Because of these differences, non-Native readers may need to adjust their aesthetic boundaries, if they want to fully appreciate indigenous objects. At the same time, it is important to make the distinction between formal excellence (the quality of being well-crafted and aesthetically appealing) and content or ‘‘meaning’’ (the aspect of ‘‘art’’ that goes beyond pleasing the eye and engages the mind). Although the two properties can be inseparable, one may just as easily exist without the other. The word ‘‘art’’ cannot be applied to pottery, for instance, that is merely visually striking or even unique—the object must transcend appearance to evoke larger concerns, as Greek vases generally do—and, as we attempt to show, Native ceramic work often does. Readers may also be surprised at the kinds of objects and styles covered here. The assumption that art from Native American cultures is limited to categories like Kachina figures or beadwork is a mistaken one. Although traditional arts continue to be a vital, ongoing part of the culture (and are avidly being collected), there are countless Native artists creating vibrant contemporary art in media such as painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance art. Their styles run the gamut from abstract to conceptual, Pop to cartoon-based, and hyperrealist to neo-Expressionist. Furthermore, the influence on an artist by his or her nation or culture area may not coincide with viewer expectations. For instance, one might assume that Native American sculptors would tend to come from the Northwest Coast—where for centuries vast forests have driven the carving of dazzling totemic forms. However, many gifted sculptors like Lorenzo Clayton (Navajo), have a heritage that encompasses little if any sculpture. And even within cultural genres, there are surprises, like the figured ceramics of Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo), whose surface imagery has a Pop style and layered sense of space—making his work seem more about painting than pottery making. Additionally, Native artists have a variety of outlooks on the relationship between their ethnicity and their profession. Some see themselves and their work as dedicated to the preservation of their culture through its artistic traditions—although what is ‘‘traditional’’ may have a wide range of definitions. On the other hand, contemporary artists may not identify themselves as ‘‘Native artists,’’ because of the risk of being categorized or stereotyped, or the desire to merely be seen as an artist without reference to ethnic identity.* Still others take a position somewhere between the two. Readers should also be aware that indigenous nations referenced in the text generally have more than one name: often the name given by outsiders (such *In regard to the phrase ‘‘Native American Artists’’ in the title of this book, the authors apologize for any discomfort or offense that this may cause; the title of the book was determined by the wording of other books in this series.

Introduction

as ‘‘Eskimo’’), versus the name used by the group itself (in this case, usually ‘‘Inuit’’). Additionally, there may be more than one pronunciation and/or cognate as well (depending on various geographic and historical factors, as well as regional or personal preferences), so that one artist may declare ‘‘Chippewa’’ heritage, whereas another may say she is ‘‘Ojibwa,’’ although both refer to the Anishinaabe nation. In even broader terms, most Native communities in the United States are officially recognized as ‘‘tribes,’’ while often identifying themselves as ‘‘nations’’; in Canada, Native groups are generally referred to as ‘‘First Nations,’’ with the exception of the Inuit people, who represent a distinct cultural aggregate. Many of the current differences between one artist’s outlook and another’s began to surface during the twentieth century—a time of tremendous change in indigenous life and art. Before then Indian art was almost universally approached by non-Natives as a matter of ethnology, with the implication that objects were the natural consequence of their culture of origin. Artworks were treated as examples of a tribe’s response to life and the world, as though each piece differed only slightly from the next—and therefore was not considered the product of an individual intellect. Exhibitions of Indian art often gave very little space to each work, cramming unrelated articles into small cases as if they were specimens. There was generally no attempt to identify the artists behind each object, and even when information was available, it was often sketchy or incorrect. However, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, all that was about to change. Around 1875, a group of Plains resistance fighters, who had been imprisoned by the U.S. cavalry, began to work with colored pencil on ledger paper, creating what is seen by many as the first modernist work by Native artists. These startlingly fresh, animated images gained considerable attention and were dubbed ‘‘ledger art’’—though they actually came from a long tradition of Plains pictorial narrative, in which warriors recounted their battles in pigments on animal hides. Shortly after, Hopi potter Nampeyo began making striking wares based on designs from ancient potsherds found near her village. Reports of her talent spread rapidly around the country, and her work soon became the object of feverish collecting. By 1919, Maria and Julian Martinez (of San Ildefonso Pueblo) had created a stunning new style of black-on-black pottery—furthering widespread regard for Native creativity, and recognition of individual artists by the art establishment. One of the major turning points in the course of Native art came in 1932, when the Santa Fe Indian School established an institution known as ‘‘the Studio School,’’ directed by Dorothy Dunn. It was a great step forward as the first dedicated program of formal art training for American Indians; however, it failed miserably at encouraging individualism and experimentation. Dunn wanted all her students to use a flat, decorative style inspired by Plains and/ or Southwestern traditions, and she launched a generation of artists who took that approach—including Pablita Velarde, whose work is well respected. On the other hand, anyone who wished to explore a different route was censured as lacking ‘‘authenticity.’’

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Perhaps the exhibition of that era that had the greatest impact was ‘‘Indian Art of the United States’’ at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in 1941. It contributed greatly toward shifting Native art from the status of artifact or craft to that of fine art, but was nevertheless tainted by an air of condescension that limited its effect. Overall, however, the 1930s and 1940s were a period of celebration of Native art. From exhibitions like the one at MOMA, to murals by Native artists for WPA (Works Progress Administration), to New Deal projects for restoration of Alaskan totem poles—indigenous art seemed to be everywhere. On the heels of that trend, a generation of modernist painters and sculptors came to the fore, including Oscar Howe, George Morrison, Allan Houser (who received a Guggenheim Fellowship), and others. During the 1960s and 1970s, Native artists became increasingly influenced by contemporary movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. The leading painters of that period included T. C. Canon, R. C. Gorman, and Fritz Scholder. In 1962, the groundbreaking IAIA (Institute of American Indian Art) was founded in Santa Fe. Conceived during a series of progressive conferences supported by the Rockefeller Foundation (1959–1962), it aimed at promoting modern Indian art in a more effective and systematic way. The core of the plan was self-determination, with a curriculum geared toward indigenous teaching methods and a faculty composed of Native American artists. At that time (the 1960s and 1970s), the Native world was becoming increasingly visible to outsiders. The AIM (American Indian Movement) was gaining nationwide attention, as it pursued and publicized indigenous causes. Simultaneously, many distinguished volumes were published about Native issues and culture, and Kiowa/Cherokee author N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn (1969). In 1972, Art in America, one of the premier journals of contemporary art, focused its entire summer issue on ‘‘The American Indian’’—and influenced the thinking and professional course of many indigenous artists. Another watershed exhibition, the now famous ‘‘Decade Show,’’ was presented in New York City in 1990. Held at three prominent institutions (the New Museum, the Studio Museum of Harlem, and the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art), the show included artists from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, and it firmly cemented multiculturalism as a part of the larger art world. Native performance artist James Luna presented an impressive work in that show that launched his career as a contemporary artist. Nevertheless —as noted in a piercing essay on American Indian art by distinguished critic Amei Wallach—what that exhibition accomplished for ‘‘African-American and Latino-American artists has not, for the most part, happened for Native Americans’’ (Wallach 16); in other words, indigenous artists generally continued to be marginalized. That same year, another major event profoundly affected the lives and work of Native artists: the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (1990). This law surfaced in the U.S. Congress as an attempt to keep non-Native people from claiming Indian descent and exploiting the high market value of ‘‘Indian art.’’ It required that individuals who ‘‘exhibit[ed] their work as Native art must be able to produce proof of their identity’’ (Rushing 127). Obtaining such evidence involved

Introduction

procedures like formal registration as a member of a recognized tribe and ‘‘blood quantum’’ (the process of documenting one’s Native ancestry to meet a legally set minimum fraction of one’s heritage). This new rule, although providing some protection against ‘‘Indian impersonators,’’ resulted in an onerous definition of ‘‘Indianness’’ that was set—once again—by outsiders. At the same time, support for Native art was increasing in the form of exhibition opportunities within a number of important venues. Notable among those institutions were the Heard Museum (Phoenix), the IAIA Museum (Santa Fe), the Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, Massachusetts), the Eiteljorg Museum (Indianapolis), and the National Museum of the American Indian, created in 1989 in both Washington, D.C., and New York City, from the former Heye Foundation Museum. The vibrant contemporary shows and artist fellowships fostered by these and other institutions were paralleled by smallerscale initiatives in a number of galleries sprinkled across North America. The Canadian government became a particularly strong proponent of its indigenous artists, establishing programs and artists’ cooperatives in Inuit communities, while funding large, well-mounted exhibitions of work from First Nations. These steps toward greater visibility for Native artists were hardwon, coming after many years of concerted efforts on the part of numerous individuals. But they are beginning to bear fruit. At the time of writing this book, a few Native artists have become internationally known and respected in the larger, contemporary art world, including Rebecca Belmore, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Jimmie Durham, Brian Jungen, and Brad Kahlhamer. Most of them are represented by galleries of major art world stature, and others, such as Frank BigBear and Truman Lowe, have been written about in leading mainstream periodicals. In 2007, Art News, a major cultural magazine, ran a lively article on the current indigenous art scene, while an important non-Native space, the Aldrich Museum in Connecticut, exhibited contemporary work based on Indian culture (with half the participants being Native). Many observers feel that now is the moment when general audiences are starting to connect with art made by indigenous individuals. Through this volume, the authors hope to contribute to this burgeoning awareness of the Native presence in American culture. We especially seek to provide a deeper grasp of the scope of talent with indigenous roots, and to stimulate our readers to look for the powerful work of these stunning artists. Deborah Everett Bibliography Rushing, Jackson. Native American Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 1999. Wallach, Amei. ‘‘Storm Signals.’’ In Into the Fray, 14–28. Indianapolis: Eiteljorg Museum Publications, 2005. See also General Bibliography Section at back of book. A Note about Usage: We employ the terms ‘‘American Indian,’’ ‘‘Native American,’’ and ‘‘Indian,’’ interchangeably, as they are all misnomers of one type or another, and there is no truly accurate word or phrase that describes the ‘‘ethnic identity’’ of individuals of indigenous descent in North America.

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Acknowledgments The authors would like to especially thank Kristin G. Congdon for suggesting this project. Another special thanks goes to Nan Brown, a creative and wise patroness of the arts, for bringing us together to work on this book as well as for her many helpful suggestions. Both the authors are deeply grateful to Debra Adams, the Greenwood editor of this edition, whose support, guidance, and counsel got us through the entire project and made it a reality. Her assistant Carrie Lett, has also been immeasurably helpful, especially with the myriad details of collecting and organizing images and reproduction permissions. We also thank everyone at Greenwood Press who helped this book take its final form. Many people have helped us with our research. We thank the curators and colleagues whose input and advice (as well as assistance with images) have been invaluable including, John Addison, Laura Addision, Kathleen AshMilby, Barbara Beroza, Todd Bockley, Joshua Buckno, Raquel Chapa, Jerrie Clark, Catherine Fitzgerald, Robert Gardner, John Grimes, Kara Kelley Hallmark, Ann Lane Hedlund, Greg Hill, John Houston, Aldona Jonaitis, Richard Klein, Susan Krane, Jennifer Complo McNutt, Pat Nietfeld, Carmen Robertson, Nancy Rosoff, Leslie Boyd Ryan, Lou Stancari, Rebecca Trautman, Richard Townsend, and Gary Wyatt. Most of all we are grateful to the many artists with whom we spoke and visited for their input and the opportunity to see their work. Additionally, we appreciate the assistance of the many librarians and archivists who have helped immensely in locating artists and information, including Kenlyn Collins, Betty Murphy, and the Librarians at the University of Central Florida. Images came from many individuals and organizations, and we are grateful to the institutions, galleries, and artists who provided them.

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A Eugene Alfred (b. 1970), Tlingit/Tutchone (Athabascan) Printmaker and Sculptor. Raised in the mountainous grandeur of the Yukon, Eugene Alfred has given striking new form to the material culture of his ancestors. He reconfigures traditional imagery with fluid shapes and rhythmic pattern to engage the fastmoving world of the present. Both a sculptor in wood and a printmaker, Alfred reinvents Northwest Coast art for the discerning contemporary viewer. Born in the village of Mayo, Alfred is descended from multiple generations of artists. His grandmother was particularly well known for her beadwork, and was exhibited in both galleries and community shows. As a child, the artist spent most of his summers with his grandparents, ‘‘living on the land: hunting, fishing, and gathering food.’’ It was a period, he says, of both stimulation and tranquility. Alfred also spent considerable time with his Uncle Martin —an artist confined to a wheelchair who was continually drawing. His Uncle Martin was an extremely accomplished draftsman, and the young artist was fascinated with watching him work, memorizing his elder’s technique for future translation into his own images. Alfred remembers learning to draw on cardboard when he was in kindergarten. Since his family didn’t have much money, he also began to make his own toys as a child—carving wood into trucks, boats, and even small figures. Looking back now, he feels that the peaceful atmosphere of his grandparents’ home helped him develop the patience necessary for carving, especially for large projects demanding monumental commitments of time. Alfred always dreamed of attending art school, and when he was only fifteen, he took a class with renowned Tlingit wood-carver Dempsey Bob. Bob’s work extended the scope of traditional imagery, often through his figures’ streamlined features, his reduced usage of form-line design (see Glossary), and the addition of new curves and angles that shifted the look of compositions. These innovations clearly had an effect on Alfred, whose own masks would later reveal clean lines and focused expressions that echo his teacher’s work. After finishing high school in the city of Whitehorse, Alfred attended the Kitanmax School of Northwest Coast Indian Art near Hazelton, British Columbia, where he studied painting, carving, design, and silkscreen printing. His coursework was directed by Gitksan (Tsimshian) artist Ken Mowatt,

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Eugene Alfred

who is highly regarded for his expressiveness and sensitivity to form and figures, as well as his innovative imagery. In 1995, Alfred received his four-year diploma from the school with concentrations in multiple disciplines of Northwest Coast art. Even before his graduation, however, Alfred had begun to exhibit his work. In 1993, he participated in a group show at the Yukon Arts Center. And in 1994, he represented Yukon First Nations at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, British Columbia; he also demonstrated his skills then for a thirty-minute documentary called ‘‘Arts from the Arctic.’’ Throughout that summer, he had fruitful exchanges with both visiting and local artists who were showing their work in Vancouver and Victoria. By 1998, Alfred was included in a group exhibition at the IndianerMuseum in Zurich, Switzerland, and soon after, his work was picked up by Spirit Wrestler Gallery in Vancouver, along with other galleries in British Columbia and the Yukon. Alfred’s carved masks, whether human or animal, often yield a strong impression of individual temperament and character. Their expressions tend to evoke deep reflection, with foreheads that seem ‘‘knitted’’ in thought. There is a remarkably peaceful and introspective quality about the gaze, seeming to stare at the viewer while looking beyond surface appearances. And although the masks often portray a pair or trio of eye-catching faces, there is always a vibrant central persona who looks as though it might speak to you at any moment. The artist’s relief-work panels are immensely elegant as well, with a refined sensibility that suggests Japanese influence. These works strike a satisfying balance between plainer areas of bold figural gesture, on the one hand, and substantially worked patterns, on the other. Like the masks, his figures reveal an affecting sense of animation and psychological depth. Equally, if not more stunning are Alfred’s masterful prints. His serigraph Raven and Human, for instance, is a dazzling image of contained energy and ‘‘worlds within worlds.’’ It reveals the mask-like face of a man, and his outstretched hand, sandwiched like a vignette within the larger configuration of the bird’s body. The great creature’s head and wings seem to cradle his small human bundle, while together, their concentric curves create a swirling mass of energy. Similarly, the artist’s print Salmon’s Journey presents a hypnotic vision of fish carried along by (and embedded in) a continuous flow of waves—whose lapping rhythm becomes inseparable from its cargo. These implications of a fluid world—with all aspects intensely interwoven—reach an even more complex resolution in Two Eagles, where an S-shaped composition of a larger and a smaller eagle form the continuous loop of an infinity symbol. Alfred’s works have achieved an impressive international stature—being displayed in eminent public institutions, like Canada’s Senate building, and in esteemed private collections, including that of the Emperor of Japan. His work is continually extending its reach toward a wider audience, as his imagery expands the vocabulary of Northwest Coast art in contemporary terms. Deborah Everett

Kenojuak Ashevak

3

Where to See Alfred’s Work Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, ON NONAM (Nordamerika Native Museum) (formerly Indianer Museum), Zurich, Switzerland Spirit Wrestler Gallery, Vancouver, BC Yukon Permanent Art Collection, Whitehorse, YT

Bibliography Spirit Wrestler Gallery. Fusion: Tradition and Discovery. Vancouver: Spirit Wrestler Publications, 1999. ———. Mini-Masterworks. Vancouver: Spirit Wrestler Publications, 2006. http://www.preferrededge.ca/EugeneAlfred.htm http://www.spiritwrestler.com/catalog/index.php?artists_id=217

Kenojuak Ashevak (b. 1927), Inuit Printmaker and Sculptor. In the year 1970, Canada issued a stamp for the centennial of the Northwest Territories, and the tiny figure adorning it took the public by storm. It was an elegant, long-feathered bird, whose riveting gaze could stop viewers in their tracks. The stamp’s Enchanted Owl came from a print by Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak—who was quickly thrust into the spotlight, making Inuit art an overnight sensation. Kenojuak (best known by her first name, as the Inuit did not use surnames till 1970) was born in Ikerrasak, Northwest Territories, where she lived the nomadic life of her ancestors. She moved with her family from camp to camp, according to the season and the migration of game animals. It was a hardwon existence in a beautiful but stark environment—where scarce resources and dangerous conditions reduced and reconfigured communities. At an early age, Kenojuak experienced the deaths of several close relatives, including her father, ‘‘a spirited and impulsive man,’’ who died after a quarrel with neighbors who judged him a ‘‘threat to the [camp]’’ (Blodgett 8). Soon after, her mother remarried, and Kenojuak went to live with her beloved grandmother, who taught her the Inuit art of sewing garments from sealskins. Despite pain and difficulty, the artist remembers her youth with great warmth. In later Kenojuak Ashevak. Enchanted Owl. 1960. Stonecut on paper years the artist would recall, (print). 24 in.  26 in. © Dorset Fine Arts/Kenojuak Ashevak. ‘‘My childhood adventures Photo courtesy of Dorset Fine Arts.

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included the endless pursuit of small birds and animals in the hope of capturing them at last. My uncle Niviaqsi, as yet unmarried, carved small toys out of driftwood which lay scattered along the shoreline. Miniature figures, boats and sleds gave me hours of enjoyment’’ (Blodgett 10). These early fascinations proved deep and lasting, becoming central features of Kenojuak’s work—from a fondness for birds as subjects, to the sense of intimate, doll-like worlds. Kenojuak’s silent, glacial homeland was also the site of dream-like occurrences and mysterious natural forces. In a place where night-skies erupt with northern lights and deep snow erases all reference points, there is much about reality that feels enigmatic and capricious. Kenojuak still remembers eerie scenes from her early years. ‘‘Often we children wandered over old gravesites where human bones lay scattered on the rocks . . . . We feared the spirits of the ancient dead and whistled to blow away the supernatural beings . . . .’’ Another time, ‘‘ . . . [while] traveling . . . along the floe edge . . . of deteriorating sea-ice, . . . I suddenly saw a creature with long black flowing hair swimming away from us . . . . We had caught a glimpse of the legendary Talelayu, goddess of all the creatures of the sea . . . ’’ (Blodgett 10). At the age of nineteen, Kenojuak married a local hunter named Johnniebo, according to the wishes of her family. Shortly afterwards, however, she developed tuberculosis and was hospitalized for three years in Quebec City. While there, she suffered a series of health crises, but her worst difficulty came when she learned of the deaths of her two children from spoiled meat and illness. Shortly after, nearly dying, Kenojuak had a dream of her father, as if he materialized to support her, and she still attributes her recovery to that vision. Soon after, she felt strong enough to enter the hospital’s crafts program, making dolls and sealskin bags with her own beaded designs. Eventually, Kenojuak returned to her husband, and together they lived a traditional life in numerous camps on Baffin Island and the surrounding area. During the 1950s they moved to Keakto near Cape Dorset, where they met James Houston, a nonnative government administrator who was organizing an indigenous arts program. He and his wife Alma encouraged both Kenojuak and Johnniebo in their artistic endeavors—urging them to carve in stone and draw, as the next step toward a fully developed, self-sustaining, career. Kenojuak’s initial response to the new media was one of trepidation. She later told biographers that her ‘‘heart started to pound’’ when the Houstons first ‘‘approached me to draw on a piece of paper.’’ She continued, ‘‘I was trying to do my best to say something on a piece of paper that would bring food to the family. I guess I was thinking of the animals and beautiful flowers that covered our beautiful, untouched land’’ (Hessel 155). Historically, the Inuit people neither had paper nor created drawings. But once the idea was introduced, it caught on rapidly. It soon evolved into printmaking and became an official program of the Canadian government, creating work and income for the northern region’s indigenous people. Kenojuak’s drawings, along with those of other Inuit artists, were rapidly converted to prints for sale to outside individuals and institutions. Her first print, Rabbit Eating Seaweed (1958), was a dream-like image from a design she had previously created on a sealskin pouch.

Kenojuak Ashevak

From the beginning, Kenojauk’s work has pulsed with a sense of the marvelous. From hypnotic portrayals of seals and walruses, to ‘‘night spirits,’’ ‘‘bird humans,’’ and other fabulous beings, the imagery lives and breathes a kind of Arctic surrealism. Rabbits may have three heads or bears walk inside the bodies of birds. Owls may sprout foliage or sea lions carry knives. Many animals appear in the process of elongating their appendages or morphing into something else. The mysterious and the otherworldly know no bounds in this oeuvre. Rendered in fluid lines and exquisite contours, these images comprise an oddly intoxicating world, with a logic entirely its own. Since the issuing of her first print, Kenojuak has remained one of the most active contributors to the annual Cape Dorset collections. For the 1959 catalogue, several more drawings by Kenojuak were made into prints. Additionally one of her pieces became part of a group of Inuit drawings exhibited in Ontario that year, where they generated tremendous excitement among audiences. By 1962, Kenojuak’s work was becoming recognized, and Canada’s National Film Board produced a documentary called Eskimo Artist: Kenojuak —in which both she and Johnniebo appeared. By now they had another daughter and an adopted son, and in 1966 they moved to Cape Dorset so that their children could attend school. Once there, the couple worked together artistically until Johnniebo died suddenly from an internal blockage in 1972. Unlike most artists of her generation, who depict scenes from community life, Kenojuak has continually ‘‘taken things from out of [her] thoughts and out of [her] imagination.’’ She has also said that her main concern in making images, aside from creating work to support her family, was to make something ‘‘pleasing’’ (Blodgett 42). In other words, Kenojuak’s focus is aesthetics and the life of the mind, rather than the ‘‘realism’’ of documentation, or the story line of narrative. Perhaps the most important and individualistic feature of Kenojuak’s prints is the vibrance and intensity of the life forms portrayed. They are assertive and self-assured. They stare out at the viewer with a wide-eyed and inquisitive gaze. They don’t decorate the page—they take control of it, energizing every inch. Even when her images involve complex and interwoven groupings, they never result in confusion. Each element remains vital because of the balance and clarity of her arrangements. Although especially famous for her centralized, emblematic images with flat forms, Kenojuak has experimented artistically throughout her career. She constantly introduces new compositions and different kinds of figures, while varying the relationships between visual elements. At times she uses overlapping forms, producing a sense of shallow, but perceptible, depth. She has even employed ‘‘foreshortened’’ figures, and ones that are modeled as volumetric entities. Aside from her iconic, single-figure compositions, she is also known for her allover networks of linked creatures, with surprisingly organic interconnections. Perhaps most intriguing is the perceptively captured mood of each work, from playful to menacing, revealing her deep sensitivity to the lives of animals. As Kenojuak’s reputation grew, she began to receive invitations to work and exhibit in other countries. In 1970, she was commissioned to create a mural for

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the World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan, and Johnniebo collaborated with her in the construction of that work. Since then, Kenojuak has traveled to numerous cities in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia for the openings of her exhibitions or ceremonies where she received awards. Despite her acclaim, she remains as engaging and open as she was in her youth. Although she now owns a wooden frame house rather than an igloo, she continues to live her life in the Inuit way—traveling to summer campsites with her family to hunt and especially to fish, her favorite pastime. Over the years her prints and sculpture have appeared in more than 100 solo and group shows throughout the world. Her work holds a respected place in the permanent collections of numerous museums and institutions, ranging from the Tate Gallery in London to the Vatican in Rome. She has received honorary degrees from a number of universities, has been awarded the Order of Canada, and was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, among other honors. She is both the best known and most loved of all Inuit artists and continues to attract an ever-widening audience, through the richness and depth of her vision, as well as the warmth of her humanity. Deborah Everett Places to See Kenojuak’s Work Albers Gallery of Inuit Art, San Francisco, CA Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University, Bristol, RI Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC World Wildlife Fund Collection, Switzerland http://www.canadahouse.com http://www.collectionscanada.ca http://www.dorsetfinearts.com

Bibliography Blodgett, Jean. Kenojuak. Toronto: Firefly Books, 1985. Grimes, John R., Douglas Stenton, and Karen Kramer. Our Land: Contemporary Art from the Arctic. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 2004. Hessel, Ingo. Inuit Art. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998. Leroux, Odette, Marion E. Jackson, and Minnie A. Freeman. Inuit Women Artists. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996. Von Finckenstein, Maria, ed. Celebrating Inuit Art 1948–1970. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1999. Walk, Ansgar. Kenojuak: An Inuit Artist’s Life Story. Manotick, ON: Penumbra Press, 1999.

B Rick Bartow (b. 1946), Wiyot Sculptor, Painter, Draftsman, and Mask-Maker. Rick Bartow will tell you that bears and coyotes are like part of his family, which has lived in the same area for generations. A lifelong observer of animal behavior, he learned about the natural world, as well as his Native traditions, from an uncle on his father’s side. It has always been important to the artist to live on Indian land and to recognize his twofold heritage: both Native (Wiyot) and non-Native. At the same time, Bartow has described his dual identity in another way: ‘‘ ‘I was always told,’ he says, ‘you’re Indian, and the other part is that you’re an artist’ ’’ (Sayre 1). Accordingly Bartow’s work is informed by both his indigenous cultural heritage and by his fluency in art history and contemporary art. Born in South Beach, Oregon, Bartow has numerous talents that surfaced early in life. His stepfather recognized his artistic inclinations and made a drawing board for him when he was a child. Accordingly, Bartow sees his abilities as a legacy from his forebears. He says, ‘‘It goes back to my family, to somebody else. My great-grandfather used to carve . . . ’’ (Abbott 1). As a member of the Wiyot nation, who were historically forest-dwellers, Bartow is part of a long tradition of working in wood. Numerous family members helped him develop his capacity for creative thinking—especially his aunt, who mentored him while she was attending art school. But, ultimately, he credits his parents for encouraging him and nurturing his unusual abilities. ‘‘My stepdad and my mother always provided a little extra space for me. We had a big family, but they always provided a little extra space’’ (Abbott 1). While an adolescent, Bartow’s parents sent him to Southern Oregon University to take an workshop from artist Joseph Magnani. ‘‘One thing that I picked up from him was gestural beginnings—just make marks and marks and marks . . . . Then refine and refine . . . until you start coming up with something’’ (Abbott 1). So Bartow learned early to pay close attention to the process itself —letting the imagery develop naturally from the build-up of marks, rather than forcing an image to fit preconceived notions. Bartow’s Wiyot heritage comes through his father, who died when Bartow was five. That loss was one of the defining events of his life, and has spurred his ongoing efforts to explore his roots. Bartow’s deep connection to his family’s land and its wildlife often shows up in the narrative characters within his

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work. This trend parallels the Wiyot gift for storytelling—a long tradition that includes many tales of mythical beings and animal ‘‘personae.’’ The Wiyot have historically placed great importance on visions and the ‘‘systematic cultivation of esoteric knowledge’’ (Feest 353). It is therefore not surprising that Bartow’s imagery often revolves around visionary states, or experiences that transcend everyday reality. Within that context, the faces of his figures often stare in wide-eyed, almost trance-like amazement. Equally life-changing was Bartow’s term of service with the military in Vietnam. Soon after receiving his B.A. in Art Education (1969) from Western Oregon State College, the artist was drafted. Although he was not assigned to combat duty, his experience of the war was nonetheless traumatizing. He saw a great many wounded and dying comrades, as he spent time in hospitals, using his musical talents to entertain the patients. In addition to playing for injured American soldiers, his band performed in Vietnamese hospitals, where he encountered innumerable amputees and children maimed by napalm bombings. Bartow later received a Bronze Star for his morale-boosting work in U.S. hospitals, but when he got home, he went ‘‘crazy . . . with survivor’s guilt’’ (Leepson 2) and sank deeply into depression and drink. While grappling with his alcoholism, Bartow began to immerse himself in drawing. He has since commented, ‘‘I believe in the power of drawing as medicine’’ (Bartow 1979–2001). In actuality, it was a kind of purging—a way of getting his demons out by putting them down on paper. He later remarked, ‘‘I didn’t realize it at the time, but I drew myself straight. I drew stuff that a lot of people didn’t want to look at’’ (Abbott 4). Many of his drawings are extremely dark, even harrowing. There are bodies whose flesh appears to be melting, or peeling off, and faces wearing horrific masks, often in the process of falling away. The jarring confrontations in these works reveal much about the personal battles that Bartow was fighting—as his own disguises were slipping. And the rawness and anguish of that process seem to howl from the picture plane. On the other hand, in three dimensions, Bartow creates (rather than removes) masks, which often have a visceral presence that alludes to the frailty of existence. Closely tied to the masks are Bartow’s affectingly ragtag sculptures, which tend to function as embodiments of emotional states. Made from skins, scrap metal, and found materials, they have a directness and immediacy that are piercingly felt. One such work is Dog Pack Series (#1, 2 and 3). The hounds in this work are chilling, ramshackle automatons, patched together from bits of metal and wood. Two of them have thick coats of protruding nails in painfully fetish-like style. But most striking are their rabid expressions punctuated by cold, vacant eyes, and fanged jaws set wide open in mindless aggression. They are frightening incarnations of desperation, having traded their individual identities for a frenzied gang-like mentality. The use of animal figures, especially for the purpose of probing psychological states, is a major feature of Bartow’s work. Sometimes the artist refers to this overlap of the human and the animal as ‘‘transformational imagery.’’ But elsewhere he has linked it to metaphor and character revelation, describing his art

Rick Bartow

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as ‘‘a literal representation that we are them (animals), and they are us, because . . . we’ve all got the same problems’’ (Abbott 3). Fox Spirit is another powerful example of Bartow’s ability to plumb the depths of the psyche via an animal figure. The creature in this work is startlingly vixenish, but it is also enveloped in human accoutrements: its leg has been ‘‘splinted,’’ a bundle is tied to its back, and what seem to be baling wire and bandages are Rick Bartow. Fox Spirit. 2000. Mixed media (sculpture). wrapped around its entire 20 in.  25 in.  9 in. © Rick Bartow. Photo courtesy of body. Seeming to barely hold Froelick Gallery. itself together, the fox stares back at its viewers through eyes that appear cloudy and half-blind, like a lost soul, injured, hunted down, and completely without hope. This four-footed incarnation of emotions deep enough to be ‘‘human’’ is often attributed to Bartow’s cultural identification with animals and the natural world. Bartow’s heritage, however has two sides, and he has been influenced by artists from Native as well as non-Native cultures. His painterly style clearly reflects his admiration for Fritz Scholder, the Native painter who brought Expressionist brushwork into Indian painting in the second half of the twentieth century. At the same time, Bartow reveres the Dutch master Vermeer, as reflected in two of his most sensual images: After Vermeer: Girl in Red Hat and After Vermeer: Girl with Pearl Earring. Bartow’s appreciation of many of the world’s cultures has been augmented by his trips to other countries. As early as 1991, his work was shown in New Zealand, closely followed by an exhibition in Japan and one in Germany. Stimulated by this international exposure, Bartow began to travel extensively, taking his wife and son with him to explore Japan. Soon after, he spent ten days in Frankfort, where he met his ‘‘hero,’’ German artist Horst Janssen. Deeply affected by such events, Bartow tends to immediately incorporate the lessons from such encounters into his own art. Now, as a mature artist, Bartow has seen his work gain an international audience. Before that, he was exhibited widely in cities across the United States, receiving important commissions and awards, including the prestigious Eiteljorg Fellowship. He has been interviewed on National Public Radio and exhibited at the White House. Recently asked about what guides the evolution of his work, he replied with a question that he constantly asks himself: ‘‘What can I [create] that’s going to make a difference?’’ (Abbott 7). Deborah Everett

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D.Y. Begay Where to See Bartow’s Work Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia, PA Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Froelick Gallery, Portland, OR Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, OR The Heard Museum, Phoenix, AR Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA http://www.britesites.com/native_artist_interviews http://www.davisandcline.com http://www.froelickgallery.com/Artist-Detail.cfm

Bibliography Abbott, Larry. ‘‘Rick Bartow.’’ In A Time of Visions: Interviews by Larry Abbott. http:// www.britesites.com/native_artist_interviews/rbartow.html ca. 1994–96. Bartow, Rick. ‘‘Artist’s Statement.’’ Po´rtland, OR: Froelick Gallery, June 2005. ———. ‘‘Artist’s Statement.’’ Ashland, OR: Davis and Cline Gallery, 1979–2001. Dobkins, Rebecca J. Rick Bartow: My Eye. Salem, OR: Hallie Ford Museum of Art Publications, 2002. Feest, Christian F. The Cultures of Native North Americans. Cologne: Ko¨ nemann Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000. Leepson, Marc. ‘‘Artist Rick Bartow: ‘A Finely Tuned Eye and a Deft Hand.’ ’’ In The VVA Veteran, 1–5, July 2003. McFadden, David Revere, and Ellen Napiura Taubman. Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation II. New York: Museum of Arts and Design Publications, 2005. Podedworny, Carol. ‘‘Rick Bartow: Transforming Images.’’ In After the Storm: Eiteljorg Fellowships for Native American Fine Art, edited by W. Jackson Rushing, III, 17–31. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. Sayre, Henry. ‘‘Rebecca Dobkins’ Review of Rick Bartow: My Eye.’’ Oregon Historical Quarterly 105, no. 4, 2002. Touchette, Charleen, and Suzanne Deats. NDN (Indian) Art. Albuquerque: Fresco Fine Arts Publications, 2003.

D.Y. Begay (b. 1958), Navajo Weaver. D.Y. Begay is a weaver and curator who ceaselessly pushes the boundaries of Navajo traditional textile arts, based on a deep knowledge of culture and ongoing experimentation with materials and design. Her work exemplifies the profound engagement with tradition that is a central element in the best U.S. contemporary tapestry art, whether her rugs are woven in regional styles that she reinterprets, as contemporary compositions that isolate and play with color and abstract forms that are drawn from traditional styles, or in impressionistic styles that experiment with subtle colors tied to the landscape of her native Southwest. Begay also teaches weaving, and is active in the development and curation of exhibitions of textiles as a way to promote Navajo weavers. Though a constant innovator, she feels linked to a long-standing tradition:

D.Y. Begay

D. Y. Begay. Red Earth. 2007. Woven rug. 19 in.  37 ½ in. © D. Y. Begay. Photo by Jim Marshall, © Jim Marshall.

‘‘my weaving reflects who I am. It incorporates my beliefs, my family, and my community’’ (Begay 1996). Begay (also known as D.Y. or DY) is Dine´ born to Totsohnii, the Big Water people, and born for Tachii’nii, the Red Streak Earth people. Begay is a fourth generation Navajo weaver. Her grandmother said that ‘‘the Big Water family have always lived here,’’ in Tselani, Arizona (Begay 1996). Begay’s earliest years were spent in her rural home, playing (sometimes watching her mother weave or tagging along when her mother collected plants needed to dye wool for weaving rugs) and doing chores, a fundamental part of which was learning to take care of the sheep that are central to traditional Navajo life. As a small child, Begay (like other Navajo children) was sent far from home to attend Chinle Boarding School. The abuses and privations in those schools are well documented, though Begay recalls one good teacher, who took the time to help Begay learn English and showed interest in Navajo culture. During summers, Navajo children returned home, and that is when Begay learned to weave by helping her mother. Good weaving requires good yarn, and ‘‘I learned at an early age to shear sheep, card and spin wool, and pick the plants for dyeing the fleece to obtain the varied and subtle colors in my weaving’’ (interview 2008). Begay recalls weaving her first rug at age twelve, which she sold for money to buy cloth to make new school clothes. Her father wanted Begay and her sisters and brothers to go to school, which he never had the opportunity to do (Begay 1996). Begay attended the Catholic St. Michael High School near Window Rock. Her art teacher encouraged Begay’s interest in weaving, and Begay developed a particular interest in Chilkat blanket weaving (see Jennie Thlunaut). Begay’s first year in college was at Rocky Mountain College (Billings, Montana), where

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art teacher Robert Morrison encouraged her interest in Southwest culture; there, Begay used rug motifs in her design work, and painted Southwest scenes. She transferred to Arizona State University as a sophomore to study fine arts and arts education, graduating in 1979 with a teaching certificate. While working as an elementary school teacher, Begay studied fiber art because she wanted to learn more about textiles. Begay had woven to pay for college, but while studying she neither exhibited nor marketed her work. She continued to weave part-time while teaching, and after a few years left teaching to weave full-time. Begay is passionately interested in designs and the possibilities of traditional materials. Her early work was clearly built on traditional rug patterns, but she always has altered the designs and played with color to create innovative pieces that make the weaving tradition she feels closely allied to contemporary and vital. Wedding II (McLerran) presents an expanded close-up of a Chief Blanket; the traditional wide black and white stripes that are punctured by many narrow stripes of pink-red and dark blue or black have been transformed, since this rug’s wide stripes of white and black are dominated by nontraditional (but contemporary) natural-dyed rust-brown and gold. Other textiles reinterpret important native objects, such as Cheyenne Style, which is based on Plains rawhide parfleche bags (Falkenstien-Doyle and Batkin; McLerran). A parfleche’s geometric design is only partially visible, since the bag has to be folded closed for use. Begay’s modern version is not only larger, but ‘‘opens’’ the bag she has transformed into a woven textile and forever altered with nontraditional colors: natural white and brown, and naturally dyed red and indigo blue. Begay’s interest in traditional arts inspired a series based on clothing, which for Navajo people, as in all cultures, marks identity. Biil do´o´ Beeldle´´ı: The Dress (Falkenstien-Doyle and Batkin) reinterprets the classic Navajo woman’s austere but bold step-patterned and fringed red and black garment in a new way, now colored natural brown and natural-dyed deep lavender-indigo blue. Begay explores the three-dimensional garment’s relationship to flat textiles— the dress is after all created as two pieces sewn together, slipped over the body—in rugs such as Manta Style 2 (Falkenstien-Doyle and Batkin) and Child’s Manta (McLerran). In these textiles, Begay transforms the traditional woman’s shawl (or manta), which no longer is worn, by altering colors, and the size and relationship of geometric elements. Begay’s attention to geometric patterning has combined with her observations of the extraordinary Southwest landscape and concern with natural dyeing in her Interpretive Landscape series, to which she periodically returns. These rugs depend on her mastery of natural dyeing. These stunning rugs ‘‘are reflective of the vast beauty of the land and the flora of the high desert’’ (interview 2008). Landscape #2 is a meditation in pinks, reds, golds, tans, rusts, and browns. The rug’s ‘‘mesa and sunset colors’’ (Falkenstien-Doyle and Batkin) of yarn, which were left over from other projects, started (for a few rows) as a traditional regional rug but quickly changed into one that plays with subtle color and abstract shape. Landscape #4, woven only in browns, reflects Begay’s worry

D.Y. Begay

about an extended drought (Talahonga). The Landscape series ‘‘constitutes an extended mediation on the correspondences between the geometric traditions of traditional Navajo weaving and the natural environment’’ (McLerran). At the same time, in pieces such as Two Points (McLerran), Begay returns to elemental color (white and black) and shape (thin and thick lines), in her ongoing exploration of the geometry of Navajo textiles. Trained as an educator, Begay is an indefatigable student. In addition to studying Navajo regional rug styles, she has traveled to Guatemala and Peru to investigate other textile traditions and meet with native weavers. When traveling, Begay continually seeks new dye materials and fibers; she endlessly experiments with dyes and catalogues results. Begay has exhibited at the Kennedy Museum of Art, Wheelwright Museum, Scottsdale Indian Artists of America (Scottsdale, AZ), and other institutions; as part of the ‘‘Art in Embassies’’ program, her work was shown in Chisinau, Moldova. Begay also has exhibited in galleries throughout the United States, including Washington, D.C., New York, and Philadelphia. She is sought after as a lecturer, and has taught numerous weaving workshops throughout the United States. Begay has cocurated major exhibitions in Santa Fe at the Wheelwright Museum on contemporary Navajo pictorial textiles (McGreevy and Begay), at the National Museum of the American Indian/ Smithsonian Institution on nineteenth-century Navajo weaving (Bonar), and at the Kennedy Museum of Art on textiles created by multiple generations of weavers (Begay 2006). The artist has served as a consultant to museums, galleries, and private collections throughout the United States, and is interested in developing new ways to present information about Navajo weaving and weavers on the Internet (Begay ‘‘Notebook’’). She also serves on various advisory boards. Begay divides her year between Scottsdale, Arizona (where she runs a weaving studio) and her home on the Navajo reservation in Tselani. Greatly in demand as a teacher, curator, and speaker, she continues to deepen her technical mastery of dyes and fibers, while weaving according to her creative vision. Weaving, for Begay, is ‘‘not just sitting in front of the loom and tapping rows of wefts and creating designs’’ (interview 2008). It ‘‘is important for your thinking. Weaving is communication. It is like speaking Navajo. (Begay 1996). ‘‘My weaving reflects who I am. It incorporates my beliefs, my family, and my community’’ (interview 2008). Elayne Zorn Where to See D.Y. Begay’s Work Autry National Center, Los Angeles, CA Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Kennedy Museum of Art, Athens, OH National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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Rebecca Belmore Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, NM ‘‘Weaving Is Life’’—D. Y. Begay Notebook, http://www.ohiou.edu/museum/ weaving/dybookgo.html http://www.navajo-indian.com/

Bibliography Begay, D.Y. ‘‘About D. Y. Begay, The Weaver.’’ http://members.cox.net/dybegay/ bio4.html. ———. ‘‘DY Begay The Navajo Weaver.’’ http://www.navajo-indian.com/. ———. ‘‘Shi’ Sha’ Hane’ (My Story).’’ In Woven by the Grandmothers: NineteenthCentury Navajo Textiles from the National Museum of the American Indian, edited by Eulalie H. Bonar, 12–27. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1996.. ———. ‘‘Weaving is Life: A Navajo Weaver’s Perspective.’’ In Weaving Is Life: Navajo Weavings from the Edwin L. and Ruth E. Kennedy Southwest Native American Collection, edited by Jennifer McLerran, 48–53. Athens, OH: Kennedy Museum of Art/Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. ———. Interview with the author (EZ), 2008. Bonar, Eulalie H., ed. Woven by the Grandmothers: Nineteenth-Century Navajo Textiles from the National Museum of the American Indian. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1996. Falkenstien-Doyle, Cheri, and Jonathan Batkin, eds. Another Phase: Weaving by D. Y. Begay. Commentary by the artist. Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 2003. McGreevy, Susan Brown, and D. Y. Begay. The Image Weavers: Contemporary Navajo Pictorial Textiles: An Exhibition at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 15–October 26, 1994. Santa Fe: The Wheelwright Museum, 1994. McLerran, Jennifer, ed. ‘‘Textile as Cultural Text: Contemporary Navajo Weaving as Autoethnographic Practice.’’ In Weaving Is Life: Navajo Weavings from the Edwin L. and Ruth E. Kennedy Southwest Native American Collection, edited by Jennifer McLerran, 8–31. Athens, OH: Kennedy Museum of Art/Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. Summers, Kathy. ‘‘Weaving Navajo Tradition.’’ AmericanProfile.com, November 5, 2006. http://www.americanprofile.com/article/19685.html. Talahongva, Patty. ‘‘Threads: Native Textiles.’’ Native Peoples Magazine, November 1, 2002. http://www.nativepeoples.com/article/articles/141/1/Threads:Native-Textiles.

Rebecca Belmore (b. 1960), Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) Installation, Video- and Performance-Artist. An artist of international acclaim, Rebecca Belmore has said that ‘‘When I do anything, I ask myself . . . will it benefit the people?’’ (Natl Gal of Canada 114). From the beginning, her work has been political, dealing with issues of history, race, identity, and social justice. She often specifically addresses concerns of Native women, while lending them an eloquent voice through her work.

Rebecca Belmore

Born in Upsala, Ontario, Belmore comes from a family of ten children. With such a large, built-in audience, she has said, they all tried to outdo each other with humorous or outrageous behavior, which has sometimes overflowed into her art. She went to high school in the neigboring city of Thunder Bay, an experience that made her adolescence very difficult. Belmore was one of a few indigenous students at her school and often endured racially biased treatment from her teachers and classmates. After graduating there, she entered Ontario College of Art (1984), although she decided to leave in 1987 before her senior year. She has always been keenly aware of the different sorts of audiences for art, often aiming her work away from the mainstream and toward marginalized viewers. She has also talked about the influence of other women on her work —coming from her community, her grandmother (or ‘‘Kokum’’), and her mother. ‘‘I can see their hands touching hide, cloth, and bead, creating colour, beauty: work hands. I look at my hands and I [see] their hands’’ (Natl Gal of Can 114). Some of Belmore’s earliest pieces were portraits of Native women. Building on that work, she created An Object that You Listen To, a combination installation and performance work. Laid on the floor in a circle were a series of ‘‘portrait boxes’’ with sound-track elements. Each of the containers cited a wide range of indigenous references while representing individual women who were overlooked by the writers of history. One of the small cartons is titled ‘‘For my Kokum’’ and is ‘‘wrapped in soft pelts, [so it] must be gently unwrapped, . . . [like] the reverent opening of an Ojibwa medicine bundle’’ (Natl Gal of Can 115). Its interior is covered with intricate traditional beadwork, and plays a recording of the artist’s grandmother speaking in her Anishinaabe language. Even while still in art school, Belmore was creating works about women’s issues, including an early performance piece, (I’m a) High-Tech Teepee Trauma Mama (1987) that was to be reprised many times in the future. It started out as a class project about self-image, in which the artist enacted a parody on cultural stereotypes against a background of movie segments showing violence against Native women. Soon after its initial presentation, Belmore quit college and went home to reevaluate her life-choices. She then performed Trauma Mama for her community, discovering that it strengthened and grounded her to receive that validation at home. In 1988, Belmore created and performed Exhibit 671B, during which she sat in the winter snow beside the Trans-Canada Highway outside Thunder Bay, positioning herself as a ‘‘live artifact.’’ From her perch within an improvised museum display case, she surrounded herself with signs announcing a show being presented at the Glenbow Museum (as the featured cultural event for that year’s Winter Olympics). The exhibition limited its display of Native artworks to historical ones, completely ignoring contemporary indigenous artists, as if Native people didn’t exist in the present. For one of her most famous performances, Belmore created Rising to the Occasion (1987) for an event titled ‘‘Twelve Angry Crinolines,’’ a silent parade organized by Lynn Shaman for a visit by Prince Andrew and his new wife to

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Thunder Bay. The women in the event dressed theatrically to protest a number of unfair social conditions that would otherwise have remained hidden from the royal couple. Belmore dressed herself in a Victorian costume and attached to it various symbols of indigenous life, including a prominent beaver house. She braided her hair and wired her braids to stand straight up in a spoof on stereotypes of Native women. She later commented that she felt this was one of her most humorous pieces, and acknowledged the influence of her family on its satirical approach. In 1991, Belmore presented a work called Speaking with Their Mother outside the Banff Centre for the Arts. It involved the outdoor placement of a sevenfoot-long megaphone she built as a tool which Native people could use to project their voices to their Earth-mother. After the original performance, which received rave reviews, the artist took the piece to indigenous communities all over Canada, offering all interested individuals the chance to participate. Although not a formal ceremonial occasion, it was suffused with a sense of reverence and intimacy, functioning for many viewers almost as a vehicle for prayer. Around that time, Belmore began to become very well known as part of the larger art scene. She appeared in the Havana Biennial in Cuba and soon after in a group show at the prestigious venue SITE Santa Fe. At the same time she was presenting her work all over Canada, as well as in the United States and Europe. In 2005, she was selected to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale, one of the highest honors a contemporary visual artist can receive. As she continues to focus on issues of gender and indigenous identity, Belmore teaches us much about the uncivilized side of the modern world. In addition, she confronts environmental problems and the darker consequences of postindustrial culture. While revealing the scope of the damage caused by ‘‘progress,’’ she prods us to reassess our own position within the global world. Deborah Everett Where to See Belmore’s Work Agnes Etherington Art Center, Kingston, ON Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON Galleria Francosoffiantino Artecontemporanea, Turin, Italy National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto, ON

Bibliography Brooklyn Museum. Global Feminisms. New York: Merrell Press, 2007. Matuz, Roger, ed. St. James Guide to Native North American Artists. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. National Gallery of Canada. Land, Spirit, Power. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada Publications, 1992. Rushing, W. Jackson. Native American Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 1999.

Frank BigBear Ryan, Allan J. Trickster Shift. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999.

Frank BigBear (b. 1953), Anishinaabe (Chippewa) Painter/Draftsman. Working solely in Prismacolor pencil on paper, Frank BigBear has created dazzling visions of the maelstrom of modern life in indigenous America. His impassioned works reveal Indians trapped in a consumer society and the claustrophobia of its ‘‘abundance’’—while struggling with poverty, isolation, stereotypes, and a host of other social problems. With imagery ranging from the deeply personal to the pan-cultural, he has created epic views of contemporary Native existence under collective and individual attack. Raised on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, BigBear moved to Minneapolis when he was fourteen years old. Having drawn since childhood, he decided to become an artist after he graduated from high school. He attended the University of Minnesota for about a year, where he studied with George Morrison, the noted Anishinaabe abstract painter who became well known in New York before returning to Minnesota. Morrison had a major impact on BigBear’s thinking, along with the influence of Cubism and Surrealism—particularly the work of Pablo Picasso. BigBear capitalized not only on Picasso’s elastic, morphing figures but also on his piercing portrayal of emotion and his overloaded, fractured sense of space. Whenever BigBear was not making art in his studio, he was driving a taxi to help support his family, which includes his son, gifted artist Star Wallowing Bull. BigBear’s earlier works often focused on searchingly personal themes, like family, culture, and identity. The artist has remarked that, as a child, he would participate in his family’s conversations around the breakfast table— often recounting their dreams from the night before. Dreams are immensely important in many Native cultures, particularly as insights into troubling situations or future events. Given the positive associations with dream states, the work Broken Hearts, Broken Dreams represents a cruel reversal of terms. Unlike most of BigBear’s images, this piece portrays an actual room-space, with Indian people drinking and smoking around a table in a crumbling bar. The faces are deeply marked and careworn, the mood is despondent, and the only answer seems to be escapism. In a piercing review in 1987, distinguished art critic Jean Fisher commented on numerous aspects of BigBear’s work, then on view at Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis. In particular she discussed the links between the artist’s work and Surrealism, both of which recognize the value of the unconscious. She deftly analyzed his drawing Sun Dance, elucidating the ecstasy of the famous Plains Indian ceremony that not only tested physical endurance but also enhanced the mind-body link—an element of many rituals in Native American cultures. She also addressed BigBear’s reference to media cliche´s constructed from indigenous symbols, as he illumines their misappropriation and reinvents them as emblems of survivorship. Especially thoughtful is Fisher ’s examination of the artist’s Time Zones, perfectly revealing the covert forces

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that erode the Native world; she exposes the inherent opposition between mythic time/collective memory and ‘‘Western culture’s media fantasies and stereotypes’’—resulting in a frictional damage to Native life that carries through to the present. Overall the critic sharply delineates the range and subtleties of BigBear’s perspective, clarifying the depth of his insights, and the poignant lessons he offers his viewers. Red Boy may be BigBear’s most famous work from this period, particularly since it was featured in the Heard Museum catalogue from its fourth Native American Fine Arts Invitational (1989). The piece reveals many of the characteristics that Fisher noted, including a remarkable integration of ‘‘figure’’ and ‘‘ground.’’ There is little, if any, separation between the two in this work— where writhing bodies are embedded in a fragmented, hyperkinetic atmosphere. Much like a Native version of Alice Through the Looking Glass, this work offers a world in which nothing makes sense, and even natural law has been disrupted. Here a muscular central figure raises his hand with a mirror, but his arm seems strangely scored and fibrous, almost as if shredding—while the mirror fails to reflect the man, replacing him with a two-faced caricature. All around are entities whose flesh seems to be melting and checkerboard floors that make every step as guarded as a chess move. Tribal emblems and objects abound, but always appear distorted or ravaged, while gun barrels seem to sprout from all corners, including the edge of an egg frying for breakfast. Even the bright ‘‘Pop’’ color scheme does little to defuse the tension—but instead makes the scene more unreal—and more desperate. Wreaking the chaos of a battlefield, this apocalyptic vision suggests a Surrealist nightmare gone ballistic. There is much about BigBear’s work that operates on multiple levels, finding ingenious ways to present brutal subjects, even to viewers unaccustomed to hard truths. In Attack on Fort Laramie, the artist depicts a scene resembling a child’s play-set. Both Indians and soldiers resemble LEGO figures and the fort’s palisade evokes a row of large birthday candles. On closer inspection, however, the packed ranks of the American troops seem cold and robotic, as they fire mechanically on the approaching line of horses with Indian riders. Few of the Native players seem to have weapons, and the arms they do bear often look more symbolic than dangerous; many are holding only ceremonial objects. In that light, the effect of the title is painfully ironic, as the attack seems to be from Fort Laramie rather than on Fort Laramie. At the same time, the imagery of mechanical, toy-like soldiers gives this confrontation the horror of automatic slaughter, endlessly repeatable by contraptions that never tire. BigBear’s more recent work often takes the form of faceted, mysterious portraits or images of ideological heroes. Nuclear Portrait #3 (Dear Mary) is the tender likeness of a woman on the point of being absorbed by the turbulent cosmos around her. Roiling cloud-banks are melding with her hair, which also appears irradiated by a high-voltage sun. Her facial features are on the point of disintegrating, as overlays of neutral color begin to fade them, and their surfaces seem to shatter like glass. Has the environment become so toxic that it now dissolves human beings, and if so, is that environment a physical or social one? Similarly, Warrior on Horse presents a classic Plains Indian, but his chest seems

Frank BigBear

almost vacant, suggested only by two-dimensional forms marking its contours. His horse also seems to be both ‘‘there’’ and ‘‘not there,’’ with legs that are bent and flat like a paper-doll, flimsy enough to become airborne at any time. Truly, the artist seems to say, cultural icons have become fragile things. BigBear figures in numerous important public collections and has had prominent gallery representation for many years. However, beyond those parameters, he tends to avoid the spotlight—which may well be the wisest choice in a society so prone to media-hype, distortion of information, and loss of privacy. Additionally, he does not exhibit his work often, but when it is seen, it is immensely well received. Whatever his reasons, BigBear is content to work steadily in his studio, creating stunning visual revelations of America’s first, and most lasting, dark secret—its violence against the indigenous world. Deborah Everett Where to See BigBear’s Work Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, MN Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

Bibliography Fisher, Jean. ‘‘Frank Bigbear at Bockley Gallery.’’ ArtForum Magazine (New York), May 1987. Hanson, Glen. Listening with the Heart. Minneapolis: Weisman Museum Publications, 2000. Heard Museum. Fourth Native American Fine Arts Invitational. Phoenix: Heard Museum Publications, 1989. Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings. New York: New Press, 1990.

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C Lorenzo Clayton (b. 1950), Navajo Installation- and Assemblage-Artist and Printmaker. Lorenzo Clayton is an urban artist. Having studied and worked in Manhattan since 1973, he has the kind of open, flexible approach that thrives in the city’s mix of ideas and energy. His thoughtful, elegant installations reflect an eclectic philosophy that deftly balances life’s paradoxes. Like most New Yorkers, Clayton comes from somewhere else, and in his case, that means the Navajo reservation of To’Hajiilee (formerly ‘‘Can˜oncito’’) in New Mexico. His father was a Navajo silversmith, and his mother was non-Native. When he was five years old, his parents divorced; at that time, his mother left the reservation, moving to Albuquerque and taking him and his brother with her. In Albuquerque the artist attended St. Anthony’s Home for Boys, but as an adolescent, he lived in Santa Fe, where he attended St. Michael’s High School. In 1973, Clayton moved to Manhattan to study art at Cooper Union, where he concentrated on painting and printmaking. Once in the city, the experience of plunging into its atmosphere felt like an escape from the past. Clayton has said that, at that time, he almost felt ashamed of his background. However, he came to realize that ‘‘this confusion is part of the creative process. You search for clarity, and that’s analogous to the way a person creates a canvas or starts thinking about ideas’’ (McMaster 46). Clayton graduated with a B.F.A. from Cooper Union in 1977. After that he became a printer ’s assistant for a number of years, working for highly respected printshops like Handworks. He also worked at Maurel Studio—the innovative Manhattan print center, whose record of sophisticated projects is well known—including collaborations with luminaries like Arikawa, Jack Goldstein, and Tom Wesselman. This work provided immensely valuable experience in the techniques of silkscreen and lithography. But, for Clayton, it was also an in-depth encounter with processes that helped clarify his thinking about art, as well as about life. In 1983, he became a faculty member at Cooper Union, teaching lithography there, as well as at Parson’s School of Design. By then he was gaining a reputation as an important artist, having received awards like the Eiteljorg fellowship, and exhibiting his work in numerous prominent spaces.

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Much of Clayton’s work layers together two-dimensional and three-dimensional imagery. His installations are generally life-sized, freestanding ‘‘assemblage’’ works—like a collage in three dimensions. (He has also made wall-mounted assemblage works that function as relief sculpture.) They may incorporate flat panels, constructed ‘‘frameworks’’ of wood, fragments of furniture (from chairs, tables, and cabinetry), small objects (like handheld crucifixes), and even food. At the same time, they often include two-dimensional elements (like drawings, photographs, text, and diagrams). And even his prints appear to have alternating dimensions, as they include portions that suggest depth and illusionism, as well as parts that seem flat and diagrammatic. Clayton’s work (both prints and assemblages) revolves Lorenzo Clayton. Richard’s Third Hand #16. 1995. Sculpture around an affecting blend of (mixed-media). 228.6 cm  182.8 cm  20.3 cm. © Lorenzo opposites. Perhaps its most Clayton. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the striking duality is a mixture of American Indian. science and spirituality. With numerous references to religion, his work calls up Christianity as well as indigenous belief-systems. The icons he employs, however, become metaphysical in his hands. His crucifixes often suggest grave-markers (more than church regalia), evoking the body’s return to an elemental state. Additionally, he frequently alludes to eating, especially ceremonial eating, as in communion; the act of consuming organic substance (which then converts to the body’s tissue) represents a special form of alchemy in these works. Perhaps most haunting among Clayton’s recurring motifs is the crown of thorns, which is often transposed over images of swirling galaxies or wreaths of cosmic clouds. With this juxtaposition, there is an implication of circling movement (as in whirlpools and vortices), as well as a sense of opposing realities—almost a pairing of matter and antimatter. At the same time, Clayton deals with indigenous spiritual imagery, including ‘‘yei’’ (celestial beings depicted in Navajo sandpainting rites) and references to the hides of buffalo (the manna and mainstay of Plains cultures). These

Lorenzo Clayton

images combine freely with mathematic and scientific devices in Clayton’s art, especially classification tools (like specimen cabinets and labels) or theoretical constructs (like equations or molecular modeling). At this point, the work begins to shift the viewer into the sphere of the analytical, while becoming increasingly abstract. This notion goes to the core of Clayton’s work. As he remarks, ‘‘To my knowledge, indigenous cultures seek out abstraction (the essence) . . . Herein lies the power of artistic expression, in which internalized abstractions are externalized as . . . artistic truths . . . ’’ (McMaster 50). Clayton says that he reached a personal and professional turning point when he began to read the work of ‘‘ . . . natural philosophers like Goethe, Chardin [and] Steiner . . . and I realized they were really embracing what the ancients and the indigenous cultures embraced, and that’s a natural and complete observation of nature . . . the spiritualized aspect [of] science . . . ’’ (Jersey City Museum Virtual Catalogue). At that point, he began creating a series of works titled Come Across (mostly wall-mounted, relief-like works), which he views as a celebration and rediscovery of his culture. The artist says that for Native people the phrase ‘‘crossing over’’ can be positive or negative—referring either to an adaptation by choice or to forced assimilation. For him, he says, this ‘‘marriage of cultures’’ had to do with a reawakening to his own heritage. ‘‘In my case, for the longest time I converted to Anglo/white. I forgot my culture. So there is that ‘come across’ aspect. Then there is the part of Caucasian culture wanting to cross over into the indigenous because they find it so beautiful’’ (McMaster 49). Many of the Come Across assemblage works incorporate photographic imagery from Clayton’s personal history—including views of Navajo women in Southwest towns of the 1920s or 30s, and himself as a baby in a cradle board. Shadowy and indistinct, the photographs evoke a disembodied world, especially as they are juxtaposed with extremely solid, concrete objects (like iron crucifixes and wooden cabinet-fronts)—as well as with abstractions, like linear diagrams. The photographs project a strong sense of preserved memory and poignant artifact. Other works by the artist have been dedicated to personal influences in his development, including mentor Richard Lewis Bloch, as well as Jamake Highwater, the renowned author and proponent of Native arts who encouraged Clayton in his pursuits. Clayton’s most recent series, called Mythistoryquest has produced some stunning installation works. The title refers to what the artist sees as the three key components of spiritual practice/life. The first element is that of myth, which explains a culture’s origins (like the Garden of Eden) and approach to life. These stories are anchored by certain historical events (like the Crucifixion), which give them substance and authority. The third part, ritual, is the action that links the individual to the belief-system through a spiritual quest, and it can range from a simple act of contemplation (like meditation) to a structured enactment of faith, i.e., a ceremony. Clayton’s individual works in this series interweave those three elements in powerful ways. In Mythistoryquest: Christianity/Crucifixion, the three parts of spiritual reality come together in a life-sized, freestanding assemblagework. With its furniture and three-dimensional objects, it resembles a stage

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set, yet also draws on the discipline of abstraction to make it evocative rather than literal. Myth is represented by blackboards (as devices that are often used to illustrate storytelling), which are overlaid with explosive figures suggesting cosmic expansion (genesis). To one side is an eight-foot tall wooden cross with shockingly realistic hands and feet attached to it—a disturbing reference to a historical event. Finally, a table at the other side, set with wine and bread, clearly cites the ritual of communion (spiritual quest). These metaphors for the three elements point to a cinematic, almost Fellinilike, distillation of experience—in which the eye moves back and forth from one area to another, creating its own frame-by-frame montage of vignettes. The more one looks at the various components, the more they become facets of the same reality. In many ways, Clayton’s way of working evokes the focusing and refocusing that often occurs in film—as the action shifts from one singular event to another, until the common threads eventually emerge. At the same time, the artist’s images can function in terms of sliding scales, where perception zooms in on details and then out again to the overall view, to find that widely varying components make up the same phenomenon at different levels. Perhaps that is the clue to this world after all—micro-views and macroviews of the same slice of reality. Ultimately, Clayton’s work poses innumerable questions about abstraction, nature, life, and the cosmos. At the same time, he intimates that the human presence persists as a central constant— leaving a lasting imprint, like a residue of the capacity to wonder. Deborah Everett Where to See Clayton’s Work Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY Newark Museum, Newark, NJ Tucson Museum, Tucson, AZ Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Bibliography McMaster, Gerald, ed. New Tribe, New York: The Urban Vision Quest. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2005. Nahwooksy, Fred, and Richard Hill, Sr., eds. Who Stole the Tee pee? Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2000. http://www.amerinda.org/naar/clayton/multimedia/multimedia.htm http://www.cooper.edu/art/bio_clayton.html http://www.eiteljorg.org/ejm_Collections/FellowshipForNativeAmerican FineArt/TheFellows/1999_Fellows_Lorenzo.asp http://www.npl.org/Pages/ProgramsExhibits/Exhibits/transcatalog.pdf

Jesse Cooday

Jesse Cooday (b. 1955), Tlingit Photographer, Mixed-Media Artist, and Filmmaker. Jesse Cooday started his career as a young artist in New York City, creating works that figure among the best of indigenous photography. From this central position, he has taken on numerous creative roles, helping many of his fellow artists along the way. His stunning images have been reproduced in some of the most highly regarded texts on Native art, and he continues to make important contributions to the community of artists and of Native Americans, while exploring new forms of self-expression. Born in Ketchikan, Alaska, Cooday inherited his Tlingit name, Shoowee ka’, from his uncle, Seth Williams, while attending a potlatch (see Glossary) at the age of ten. The artist was adopted and raised, along with his sister, by his Tlingit grandmother from Sitka, Annie Johnson Cooday. She was one of the elders of his community who taught Tlingit dance and song, and she maintained a traditional lifestyle that immersed the artist in indigenous culture and its ancient stories. Cooday has vivid, early memories of evenings during which masked dances were held at her house. He once said he could remember lying in his crib as a baby and watching the dances, as light from the other room threw shadows of the dancers across his face. This melding of his identity with that of others, as well as with tribal imagery, would later become central to his work. After graduating from high school in Petersburg, Alaska in 1972, Cooday moved to New York City. From 1978 through 1981, he studied photography at the acclaimed School of Visual Arts. During that time, he first saw the work of contemporary photographers who came to have a tremendous impact on him—particularly Diane Arbus, whose interest in life outside the mainstream inspired her arresting portraits of carnival performers, celebrities, and identical twins with otherworldly expressions. Cooday felt a similar attraction to the faces of unique individuals he encountered in the shifting crowds of the megalopolis, and he took to the streets, capturing candid, close-up shots of these personalities. His images were black and white, tightly cropped, and focused on the strength of individual character. The subject of identity soon became even more important to Cooday as he linked it directly to his deep personal connection with Northwest Coast art. By 1981, the artist had begun creating a series of stunning portraits that interpreted the psyche of historical figures through a Tlingit lens. In one of his most famous works, Clearcut Columbus, Cooday overlaid a well-known portrait of the ‘‘discoverer’’ of America with a striking image of a Northwest Coast mask. The explorer’s expression is no longer that of a keen-eyed visionary, staring past the horizon and into the future; it becomes clouded, troubled, and doubtful, with a strained mouth and heavily lidded eyes. In fact, this blending of his physiognomy with features carved in the ‘‘new world’’ changes everything about him, suggesting a political version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (the modern fable about a portrait that deteriorated along with the behavior of its subject).

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In Marlboro Man, another work from his Northwest overlay series, Cooday takes a commercial icon, the famous sketched cowboy hat from tobacco ads, and makes it indigenous, playing on a panorama of stereotypes. Here a Tlingit ‘‘transformation’’ mask (one that opens up to show another persona inside) is the face of the Marlboro man, with the cowboy hat balanced on top and a dark cigarette perched on his lips. Suddenly, the cowboy and the Indian are one, rather than mortal enemies as in the ‘‘old West.’’ At the same time, the newly ‘‘shared’’ features reflect a very uneven exchange; the cowboy has gained the vibrant, elegant contours of a Northwest Coast form-line mask, while the Indian has gotten only a flimsy, cartoon hat and a smoking habit. Probably Cooday’s most famous work, again from his overlay series, is his Self-Portrait. In this montage of photographs, Cooday’s own image combines with a Tlingit mask to create what is arguably one of the masterpieces of Native art, as well as of contemporary portrait photography. The inquisitive but meditative expression on the artist’s face seems to mesh perfectly with the image of the mask—rather than competing with it as in the Columbus work—creating a sense of deep humanity and timelessness that suggest a shifted paradigm. It is as though the viewer is encountering someone who understands himself and his world in a profoundly holistic way, in stunning contrast with the fractured consciousness of postindustrial culture. The mask’s cobalt blues and rose-reds lend the work a striking impression of freshness, along with a sensuality that is almost palpable. At the same time, the intimacy of the close cropping and the upward tilting of the face give the image a powerful and haunting immediacy. A number of Cooday’s images function as tributes to some of the great works of Modernism, although most of them reveal a transposed perspective. In 1989, for instance, he created Head of Gertrude Stein, in which a central image of his great-grandmother is transformed to resemble the Stein’s face, as well as the strong features of a Tlingit mask. The work references Picasso’s masterful use of mask-like planes in his portrait of Stein (the painting that opened the door to Cubism), but reframes the dialogue between cultures by using Northwest Coast features and shapes rather than African ones. Additionally, the head is lifted from its original context and ‘‘floats’’ in the middle of an abstracted, surreal space, whose checkerboard floor suggests the environment of a chess-game, where every move must be strategized. Cooday’s work began to receive attention early on. By 1982 he was participating in shows around the country, and in 1989 he appeared in the Heard Museum’s Native American Fine Arts Invitational. Soon after, his work was featured in an important exhibition at the Museum of the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, titled ‘‘Through the Native Lens’’ (1993). About the same time, he was selected for participation in the groundbreaking Native exhibition curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, ‘‘The Submuloc Show’’ (Columbus spelled backward); in a review published in The Washington Post, Cooday’s piece was singled out as ‘‘the most compelling’’ work in the show. In 1994, the artist’s work was chosen as one of the few color works appearing

Thomas Joshua Cooper

in the acclaimed exhibition at Princeton University, ‘‘The Photograph and the American Indian.’’ Cooday’s work also appeared in numerous important publications of that period. These included Mixed Blessings, Lucy Lippard’s seminal book on multicultural viewpoints within the art world, Strong Hearts, the Aperture Foundation’s acclaimed book on Native photography, and perhaps the first mainstream book to view Indian culture and history from an indigenous viewpoint, Through Indian Eyes. Meanwhile Cooday continued to exhibit his work, while actively providing support for Native social and political issues. Additionally, he served in a curatorial role for the American Indian Community House Gallery, the premier Native gallery space in New York. More recently the multitalented Cooday began plunging into new territory, exploring electronic music and sound art, as he continues to examine the aesthetic and philosophical underpinnings of reality. Deborah Everett Where to See Cooday’s Work American Indian Community House Gallery, New York, NY Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ http://www.myspace.com/shooweeka

Bibliography Aperture Foundation Staff. Strong Hearts. New York: Aperture Foundation Press, 1995. Bush, Alfred L., and Lee Clark Mitchell. The Photograph and the American Indian. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Editors of Readers’ Digest. Through Indian Eyes. Pleasantville, NY: Readers’ Digest Publishers, 1996. Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings. New York: The New Press, 1990.

Thomas Joshua Cooper (b. 1946), Cherokee Photographer. An artist of international distinction, Thomas Joshua Cooper is often cited as one of the world’s premier contemporary landscape photographers. His work reflects a reverence for the natural world and the view that nature, more than anything, defines reality. Seeing in his subject both character and mood, Cooper leads us to understand ourselves differently—both extended and circumscribed by a powerful and changeable environment. Born in San Francisco, Cooper grew up on three different reservations in the western United States. His father was half Cherokee and a war veteran. Maternal family members were poor Jewish immigrants, and his mother grew up in Shanghai as a ‘‘navy brat.’’ The artist’s childhood was not an easy one, with frequent moves from place to place. Additionally, in the 1940s and 50s, Indian people were extremely marginalized, and intermarriage often met with

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disapproval on the reservation, as well as in towns. Cooper’s immediate family worked as fishermen and lumberjacks, and their friends and coworkers were not known for their social sensitivity. The artist has commented that he learned early how to stand up for himself, ‘‘especially as I was the whitehaired son of a half-breed Indian who had crossed the colour bar’’ (Didcock 5). Always politically aware, Cooper has venerated the principle of equality since his youth. During his teen years, he worked for the civil rights movement, helping register black voters in the Deep South. In 1965, he began attending classes at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, even though his career plans revolved around being a lumberjack. ‘‘It didn’t matter if I had a university education, I was [still] going to go back to the woods’’ (Didcock 6). To his frustration, Cooper discovered that credit for an art class was required for graduation, so he chose a course in what seemed the most accessible medium: photography. After failing the first assignment, the artist reevaluated his new endeavor and began to approach it more seriously—while becoming mesmerized by what it could do. ‘‘Somehow I found I could talk through the camera. I had found my voice’’ (Didcock 6). After earning his Bachelor’s degree from Humboldt in 1969, Cooper went to graduate school at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he received his M.A. in Photography in 1972. He then taught for several years in the United States, Tasmania, and England. In 1982 he emigrated to Scotland, partially to escape the growing political conservatism in the States, as Ronald Reagan had just been elected president. The artist then took a position at the Glasgow School of Art, where he founded the school’s photography program and still runs it. Cooper works in a very unusual (some say eccentric) way: he uses a large and cumbersome 1898 field camera, which he lugs around to some of the remotest spots on the planet. Currently he consults an atlas when deciding where to shoot next, and he chooses each site for its historical importance as well as its geographic extremity (in terms of climate and location). Additionally he works in accord with to a vow he made in 1968 to take only outdoor photographs and to make only one image of each site. Despite Cooper’s selfimposed restrictions, his disciplined method yields astounding variety and abundant sensuality. His elegant prints are black and white (rather than color), to which he applies layers of selenium and gold chloride, generating an immensely rich surface and deeply saturated, often sepia-like tones. Cooper ’s early work tended to be site-specific and centered around a strong sense of place. His images were often intimate and suffused with the psychological and emotional undertones of each setting—highlighting the physical features (foliage, rock formations, canyon walls) that defined a site’s character. More recently the artist has dealt with landscape in terms of encounters between natural elements—particularly where large bodies of water meet land. Cooper ’s current undertaking, and the one for which he may be most famous, is called ‘‘The Atlantic Basin Project—the World’s Edge.’’ Begun in 1990, his plan calls for a visual tracing of the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean

Thomas Joshua Cooper

through all the continents it touches. Its focus revolves around the concept of ‘‘land’s end’’—where promontories, shores, and beaches act as jumping-off points, launching real or imagined journeys that knit together the eastern and western hemispheres. The sense of stepping off into the unknown—coupled with the cultural and historical weight of global circumnavigation—figure deeply in the sensibility behind these studies. In Cooper’s recent work, horizons are almost nonexistent; repeatedly the focus is on the ocean’s world and the sense of balancing on its brink. One photograph may be angled down at the ruffled surface of turbulent water below; another may depict a rocky shore that seemingly awaits an oncoming wave; yet another shows a velvet stretch of wet sand, with the smoothness of spread butter. In some ways, of course, Cooper’s images are all the same—meditations on the complex interactions of water and rock. But at the same time, they are all unique—with varying points of view, tidal stages, weather conditions, geography, and countless nuances of the moment. Perhaps the constant that increasingly emerges from Cooper ’s work is change. More and more he presents his viewers with acute observations of metamorphosis, of shifts large and small, yielding continual regeneration. And although patterns of movement may appear and reappear, there is nothing predictable about them. Unknown versions of previously seen phenomena surface as fleeting, individual occurrences, never to be repeated. The mutability captured in his images gives the sea a newly wild persona, an imminently fresh sense of the elemental and the uncontrollable. Since his first solo show in 1971, Cooper has had more than eighty oneperson exhibitions worldwide. His work figures prominently in the collections of over fifty public art institutions around the globe. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John D. Phelan Award in Art and Literature, as well as a prestigious art residency with the Lannan Foundation and a Creative Scotland Award from the Scottish Arts Council. In 2006, Cooper participated in an unusual exhibition at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, ‘‘Diaspora and the Desert,’’ bringing together contemporary artists from around the world whose personal ties to desert-linked landscapes have suffered from displacement by colonialism and postcolonialism; fellow indigenous artists Brian Jungen (Athabaskan-Beaver) and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (Seminole/Muskogee/Dine) were also in the exhibition, as well as artists from Pakistan, Israel, Nigeria, Iran, and Mexico. An artist of far-reaching insights and lasting resonance, Cooper gives us the world anew. In an era of highly structured environments and entrenched artificiality, his work continually teaches us about what it means to be human. Deborah Everett Where to See Cooper’s Work Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

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Thomas Joshua Cooper Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York, NY Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ The Tate Gallery, London, England

Bibliography Cotter, Holland. ‘‘Art in Review: Thomas Joshua Cooper.’’ The New York Times (New York), June 28, 1996. Cullen, Fintan, and John Morrison, eds. A Shared Legacy: Essays on Irish and Scottish Art and Visual Culture. London: Ashgate Publishing, 2005. Didcock, Barry. ‘‘Land of Scope and Glory: Thomas Joshua Cooper’s Grand Plan.’’ The Sunday Herald (Glasgow), October 17, 2004. Weintraub, Linda. In the Making: Creative Options in Contemporary Art. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2003. Yau, John. Ojo del Agua—Eye of the Water. New York: Pace Wildenstein Publications, 2006.

D Bonnie Devine (b. 1952), Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) Sculptor, Installation Artist, Filmmaker, and Mixed-Media Artist. Bonnie Devine is currently becoming known as one of the most innovative, sensitive, and versatile artists in Canada. She grew up in the village of Serpent River in northern Ontario, where she witnessed the region’s painful battles with the inroads of ‘‘progress.’’ Her other memories there are happy ones, as she was warmly nurtured in that environment by family and community. Stories told by her elders gave her a firm foundation in Ojibwa culture, and have stayed with her to the present day. Steeped in her origins, Devine gives voice to them through her art, while taking a stand against the intrusions that threaten them. As so often is the case, the ‘‘official story’’ of her village’s recent struggles is very different from what its inhabitants experienced. The gaps between private recollection and recorded ‘‘history’’ have been a major influence in the formation of Devine’s identity, as well as in the focus of her work. Devine began her formal education in the arts in 1993 at the Ontario College of Art and Design, earning her undergraduate degree there in sculpture and installation in 1997. From there, she went on to York University, where she obtained a Master of Fine Arts in 1999. She has stated that from the time her professional training began, she has been ‘‘studying the stories, technologies and arts of the Ojibwa people’’ (http://www.ccca.ca). Her work often combines traditional forms with new materials, addressing contemporary issues through the perspective of indigenous culture. In 1995, for instance, she constructed Pomo Basket, an imposing version of its namesake, measuring five feet across. Even more unusual is the material used as its fibers: coaxial cable (telephone cord), giving it a functional, highly modern look and a sense of unseen, pulsing energy. Extruding from the basket’s sides are the serpentine ends of the wires, which snake around at floor level—extending to the wall where they plug into phone jacks. The basket and its odd appendages suggest a kind of indigenous nerve center, weaving together the distant communicators at the ends of its wires. Another work of similar complexity, although more conceptual in nature, is Devine’s Smallpox Blankets, an installation of five life-sized woolen blankets mounted on the wall. The commercially made trade blanket is a ubiquitous symbol of Native life, but in this case it is replaced by standard-issue army blankets. Each of them is rumpled, smudged, and soiled-looking—establishing

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the coarse connotations of ‘‘dirty linen.’’ And indeed, their appearance points toward their sordid function: contaminated with smallpox, blankets such as these were given to Indian communities, with the intent of infecting them and reducing their population. This practice is seldom documented in historical records, but is well remembered by Native people. Concerning her motivation for this work, the artist has said, ‘‘I am interested in the oppositions inherent in the terms of history and memory, science and mythology, art and artifact, and these oppositions and their cultural antecedents form the basis of much of my work’’ (http://www.ccca.ca). Devine has also created work for outdoor settings, often producing an almost Dada-like sense of conflicting realities. Reclamation Project is a twentyfoot long section of moveable sod. Stationed at different sites in Ontario over time, it cut a stunning swath of green across a range of man-made environments. Outside Durham, Ontario, it bisected an asphalt road, linking the natural foliage on both sides of the pavement; its immediate effect was like a crosswalk made of grass. On McCaul Street in Toronto, it traversed a sidewalk and mounted the steps of a neoclassic, institutional building, as though a line of turf were invading the city. On University Avenue in Toronto, it made its way over a stone lion, partially obscuring a monument created by the dominant society to tout its own strength. In all these situations, Devine seems to propose a reversal of the intrusions of ‘‘development,’’ and a reinstatement of the natural world. In the process, she offers her audience a heightened awareness of what has been lost beneath the artificial world of ‘‘civilization.’’ In another large project, Devine built a seventeen-foot long canoe for her exhibition ‘‘Stories from the Shield’’ (i.e., the ‘‘Canadian Shield,’’ or plateau covering the Eastern portion of Canada). In the process of constructing the craft, the artist closely followed a design by renowned canoe-maker William Commanda (Algonquin), except that her version was fashioned from pages of notebook paper. Here journal sheets were covered with Divine’s research notes on uranium mining around Elliott Lake, Ontario in the 1950s—including its toxic effect on the water of Serpent River, the community of the same name, and the surrounding area. The artist’s paper canoe became a threedimensional narrative across time, beginning with personal stories that convey the bond between the land and Native people over time. One of the narratives recounts her uncle’s solitary vigil while coming of age, as he waited alone in the countryside for a revelation about his place in the world; features of the landscape—rocks, trees, hills—became companions and witnesses of his passage from adolescence to manhood. But following that closely, personal and tribal reminiscences relate a battle for real estate and its hidden wealth, also documented by mining surveys and test data, and ending with reports describing the ultimate ruin of the environment. Uranium mining operations produced waste material that entered the river, poisoning it and its watershed. The ground there is radioactive now, and the contamination affects the water in the Great Lakes and its entire biosphere. Devine’s canoe poignantly embodies the original Ojibwa relationship to their water-fed land, traversing and floating through their habitat, without disturbing it. That mindful approach is reflected in the integrity of the canoe’s

Bonnie Devine

Bonnie Devine. Canoe. 2003. Mixed-media sculpture. Approximate dimensions: 3 ft  16 ft  3 ft. © Bonnie Devine.

construction and its careful translation into unorthodox materials. In substituting paper for the customary cedar, the artist decided not to ‘‘cheat’’ and employed new techniques for strengthening the fragile paper sculpture rather than relying on artificial reinforcements of the overall structure. In the end, the paper canoe, suspended at an angle above the gallery floor, became an airborne icon, and its lightness was hailed by critics for its nearly ‘‘unbearable [psychological] weight’’ (Goddard G07). Plying the air with gentle force, it creates a path that commemorates the river’s beauty and the people who sustained it for millennia. Other works by Devine deal directly with kinship and personal histories, like the powerful suite Family Album, whose overtones approach the metaphysical. This group of digital photo-collages links pictures of relatives with otherworldly figures from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. In one of the works, an adult male relation smiles gently, warmly, from a relaxed sitting position; he is cradled and almost overshadowed by a towering, celestial personage. The text below him reads: ‘‘The air is the luminous shadow which accompanies the body.’’ And indeed, the atmosphere around the man seems to have taken shape as an entity of great compassion—emanating from him but also forming a protective shield for him. In another montage, a kindly woman and child anchor the image, like archetypes of tenderness; hovering above them, however, is a malevolent presence, a kind of maniacal demon who seems attracted by their vulnerability. The text states: ‘‘The particular dies for the satisfaction of the universal.’’ In a grotesque ‘‘survival of the fittest,’’ the two innocents seem fated for destruction by a devouring monster, much larger and stronger than themselves. These works suggest the presence of vast but

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unperceived forces in the world—at work for good or ill—and revealed only by their effects on individual lives. The beneficence of one man may become larger than his own limits, reaching outward as an active environment around him. At the other pole, the dark inclinations of others can build toward a critical mass—taking on a life of their own, and injuring those who are defenseless. The resonant implication is that human behavior has consequences, often exceeding the immediate and the visible—and necessitates an awareness far beyond simple cause and effect. Devine is an artist of tremendous subtlety and power, making us look past the present and the particular, to a wider sphere of action. She has stated that her work is an exploration of the ‘‘delicate yet elemental relationship of land to consciousness, especially . . . [through] the technologies, designs and narrative traditions of the Ojibway’’ (http://www.ccca.ca). Through her work, we comprehend ‘‘land’’ as the world around us, and ‘‘consciousness’’ as the core self, with each inextricably linked to the other. Her images suggest a larger reality—expanding our perception and allowing us to grasp the interconnectedness of all things. Deborah Everett Where to See Devine’s Work http://www.artsudbury.org/pastexhibits2004/bonnie_devine_stories_from_the_ shield.html http://www.ccca.ca/artists/artist_info.html?languagePref=en&link_id=2006

Bibliography Goddard, Peter. ‘‘Devine Inspiration.’’ Toronto Star, August 5, 2004, G07. Sumi, Glenn. ‘‘Sketchy Artshow.’’ Now Toronto 23, no. 27 (March 4–10, 2004): 23. http://www.ccca.ca/c/writing/d/devine/dev002t.html http://www.utoronto.ca/gallery/archives/devine_bio.htm

Jimmie Durham (b. 1940), Cherokee Sculptor, Performance and Mixed-Media Artist. A brilliant political analyst and theorist, Jimmie Durham is probably best known as a gifted and unusual artist. At the same time, he is an admired activist, a thoughtful writer and poet, and the curator of numerous important exhibitions. Highly regarded in Europe, he has shown his work at the renowned exposition ‘‘Documenta’’ (held annually in Kassel, Germany), the Venice Biennale, the prestigious ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) in London, and the Whitney Biennial of 2006 (in which European curators participated). Less familiar in this country, Durham approaches art from the stance of the social satirist, iconoclast, and perhaps even provocateur—but his scathing cultural commentary always contains the ring of truth. His dark realities are drawn from the closets of American history, and couched in disarmingly folksy terms.

Jimmie Durham

Chipping away at centuries of social denial, Durham leads his viewers to painful new realizations while proving himself a formidable strategist and compelling ideological warrior. Born in Washington, Arkansas, Durham started making art in the 1960s. He has remarked that his beginnings were somewhat haphazard: ‘‘I saw a bunch of work in Houston, Texas, by [Claus] Oldenburg, and I was very excited by it . . . that is the only art show I went to [at the outset of his career] and that was by accident’’ (Mulvey 9). At the time, Durham says, he was being influenced by artists whose work was ubiquitous in the public domain (such as Picasso and Duchamp), without always being aware of specific encounters or larger implications. Years later, after becoming thoroughly versed in contemporary art, he looked back on his early days with a striking sense of humility, calling them ‘‘filled with misinformation, filled with stupidity, my own defensiveness’’ (Mulvey 9). Regardless of his doubts after the fact, he had clearly begun to make his mark. In 1964, for instance, he staged a performance titled My Land at Houston’s distinguished Alley Theatre with Muhammad Ali. And by 1965 he was exhibiting his work in established venues (including a solo show) on the University of Texas campus in Austin. In 1968 Durham moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he presented his performances regularly on the street. Over the next four years, he had a number of solo shows there, while attending the city’s Ecole des Beaux Arts. By 1973, the artist had returned to the United States and become a full-time activist and organizer for AIM (the American Indian Movement), while living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. In 1975 he became the executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council in New York, and he represented that group at the United Nations. At the same time he was a member of AIM’s Central Council. The two organizations, however, were plagued with factions and internal conflicts, and in 1980 he left both of them in frustration. Durham then started writing a history of the Indian rights movement while simultaneously making assemblage paintings with edgy social commentary. These new works were featured in a group exhibition of political art called ‘‘Beyond Aesthetics,’’ and they were extremely well received. Unfortunately, this sudden popularity further disillusioned Durham, who felt that his work had only achieved a kind of ‘‘radical-chic’’ trendiness and had allowed ‘‘the art crowd of New York [to be] entertained by the sorrows of my people’’ (Mulvey 13). The artist knew that he could become successful by making more of that kind of work—but, having seen its potential for exploitation, he abandoned it. Clinching that decision was the fact that by then he was acquainted with most of the major contemporary artists in New York, and was still not fully accepted: rather than being seen as a fellow artist, he was seen as an ‘‘Indian artist.’’ Durham then launched into three-dimensional figures assembling them from animal skulls and urban detritus. The skulls in his sculptures repeatedly have their jaws flung wide open—baring their teeth threateningly, laughing maniacally, or both. Covered with jarring colors and high-voltage designs, their skins seem overlaid with frenzied video games or electronic media displays. An abundance of off-key humor runs through these ragtag works, like

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the spiraling, conical seashell set in one skull’s eye-socket, making eyes seem to whirl within a general wooziness. Yet another work sports a crop of wooly, orange hair, but this otherwise playful mop feels disturbing—as it caps a skull with menacing horns and a jaw-full of predatory teeth. In another piece, a moose’s skull reveals a sprinkling of confetti-like dots and squiggles, and one of its antlers is actually a peculiar arrangement of household plumbing. These ‘‘animals,’’ though droll and witty, are immensely unsettling; they often suggest a cross between zombies and escapees from an asylum—as if emitting an eerie laughter that registers just below our hearing. Durham has also created powerful images of human figures. Perhaps the best-known is his Self-Portrait of 1987. It achieves a devastating effect with its flimsy, canvas body-parts (limp as a paper doll), carved wooden face with nailed-on hair, an open chest cavity, and an array of found objects replacing several limbs and organs. It is almost a jury-rigged scarecrow, but one riddled with wounds from sustained abuse. Covered with graffitilike, self-denigrating remarks, the figure casts an arresting spell on the viewer—with the rawness of the just-discovered victim of a fatal crime. Another of Durham’s affecting figures is Malinche, a battered female presence with an odd resemblance to his SelfPortrait. The piece is named for a notorious historical personage: the indigenous (probably Nahua) woman who was mistress to Cortez and who helped him conquer Mexico in the role of his interpreter. Here the infamous traitor has the loose, articulated arms of a marionette, while her legs are made of stuffed fabric, incapable of supporting her. Seated on a plywood box, she wears a filmy skirt bunched up around her knees, revealing her legs provocatively. Her upper torso is represented by what suggests a wooden clothes hangJimmie Durham. Pocahontas and the Little Carpenter. 1988. er, draped with a gold lame´ Mixed-media sculpture (installation view—Matt’s Gallery). bra—again referencing the Dimensions variable. © Jimmie Durham. Photo courtesy of the sexual nature of her transgresartist and Matt’s Gallery, London. sion. Her face is half covered

Jimmie Durham

with snakeskin (signifying the ultimate betrayer in Western cosmology), and her gaze is angled down, in an expression of shame and dejection. Deftly elucidating her true identity as puppet and pawn, Durham reveals her powerless relation to her own destiny, while suffering for the part she was forced to play. This quality of insight and compassion surfaces in Durham’s life as well as his art. He has helped fellow Native Americans come to terms with the difficulties of their specific situations, whether dealing with the stigma often attached to being adopted, or numerous other traumas to which Indians are especially liable. It is no surprise then that there are frequent expressions of empathy, irony, and dark humor in the artist’s work. In the end, absurdity and twists of fate are painful constants in Durham’s work—but he makes them universal, as we perceive our own likeness in his tattered survivors. Deborah Everett Where to See Durham’s Work Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Bibliography Iles, Chrissie. 2006 Whitney Biennial: Day for Night. New York: Harry Abrams, 2006. Lee, Pamela. Souvenir of Site Seeing. New York: Whitney Museum Publications, 1991. Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990. Mulvey, Laura, Dick Snauwaert, and Mark Alice Durant. Jimmie Durham. London: Phaidon Press, 1995. National Gallery of Canada (Diana Nemiroff).Land/Spirit/Power. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada Publications, 1992.

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E Sheojuk Etidlooie (1932–1999), Inuit Printmaker. Unusual even among Inuit artists, Sheojuk Etidlooie is an enigma. It was not until she was sixty that she began printmaking, and, just as her work is full of mystery, much about her life remains obscure. Strange and familiar at the same time, her images are deceptively simple. They may severely minimize a subject’s features, or combine two perspectives in a single frame. They often recall the way intuitive artists depict what is known instinctively or by experience, rather than what is actually seen. Startlingly fresh, Sheojuk’s work is powerful in a haunting, almost metaphysical, way—as though she had collected fragments of other worlds, or seen into the minds of her subjects. Sheojuk was born in an outpost camp called Akkuatuloulavik on southern Baffin Island near Cape Dorset. Like so many of her generation, she lived much of her life in the traditional Inuit way, moving from camp to camp, changing location with the seasons. In the 1950s she married her husband, Etidlooie (brother of well-known sculptor Pauta Saila), and they moved to the distant region of Arctic Bay. Making camp in remote areas, they were cut off from family and friends in Cape Dorset for nearly forty years. Because of this long absence, she was almost an outsider by the time she returned in the early 1990s and reunited with her grown children who had moved back long before. During her lifetime, Sheojuk experienced a number of personal tragedies, including the death of one of her children at age ten in a motorcycle accident. Another child suffered convulsions and died because the family lived too far from the hospital to reach it in time. In her hard daily existence, Sheojuk met the constant demands of Arctic survival, and poured her creative energies into the making of traditional garments. Her designs focused on birds and animals, whom she portrayed with great originality, often covering their bodies with striking patterns of embroidery. Although she was absent during the first wave of Inuit printmaking, she knew of it and admired many of the Cape Dorset artists. When she came home and actually saw the new techniques, she was thoroughly intrigued. Like her more famous colleague, Kenojuak, Sheojuk had developed a unique sense of color and design from sewing clothing with applique´d motifs for many years. She was initially encouraged to make art on paper at the Anglican Church Christmas games in 1992 at Cape Dorset. The drawing she made of a kudlik (seal-oil lamp) was extremely unusual and was awarded first prize in

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the competition, judged by senior artists Kananginak Pootoogook and Paulassie Pootoogook. Following that success, Sheojuk showed her work to Jimmy Manning, the manager of the West Baffin Co-operative, which houses the drawing archives as well as the printing studio. With Manning’s support and guidance, she began to draw regularly, and her first prints came out in 1994. That year, her work was not only selected for the annual Cape Dorset Graphics Collection but also appeared on the catalogue’s cover. After that, she was included in the spring and fall release every year. And in 1998 almost half of the prints in the graphics collection were hers. As an artist, Sheojuk prized solitude. Even in a workshop setting with artists all around, she preferred to work alone, without the distracting influence of conversation. At one point, she commented that she needed to think about the image before starting a drawing, and she often sat looking at the page for some time before taking up her tools. Once the image was envisioned, however, she worked quickly and confidently, using broad strokes to commit it to paper. The first prints made from Sheojuk’s drawings were lithographs, a technique which allows the artist to draw directly on the stone (or sometimes plates) used for printing. A number of her later prints employed the traditional medium of stonecutting (very much like woodcuts). However, it was the combined technique of etching and aquatint that ‘‘turned out to be particularly suited to her work’’ (Kroeker 1). Perhaps the most famous example of this, and one of her most affecting works, is The Whale’s Fate. Created in 1998, its stunning use of color, line, and form come together with mesmerizing effect. The whale hovers toward the top of the image, just above a huge, globular entity, filled with a black matrix containing many small ‘‘pods.’’ The whale appears to be motionless; its eyes are closed, and a streaming red substance, presumably blood, crosses over from it into the sphere. The direction is implied by the appearance of the same red, but of lesser intensity, inside the globe. Although narrative is always open to interpretation, the whale’s life seems to be draining away, collecting in the attached structure. Meanwhile, the wiry ‘‘fringe’’ of the lower form prickles threateningly against passages of luminous color—with a sense of dark struggle and poignant loss. Sheojuk’s gift, naturally, was based on Arctic realities, including figures whose substantial body mass was geared toward conserving warmth. This feeling of heft and solidity often implied a precarious balance of forces—a kind of maximized weight to volume ratio, in which tiny shifts could undermine equilibrium. Additionally, a quirkiness in her drawing style produced constant surprises. Enormous creatures might be supported by spindly legs that seemed to dangle like threads from their torsos. Other figures suggest two forms at the same time, as in her print of a B52-like ‘‘aero-plane bird’’ (Kroeker 2) in the process of taking off. Little has been written about Sheojuk’s time away from Cape Dorset with her husband—but it is clear that her adopted community was much smaller, giving her a decreased level of companionship. It is possible that her isolation deepened her awareness of the birds and animals around her, which in many

Sheojuk Etidlooie

ways, shared the life she lived. The Inuit, as a people, are known for their keen powers of observation, as well as their profound respect for all life, but Sheojuk seemed to develop an especially deep rapport with the inhabitants of her world. For instance, the Snow Bunting is one of the few perching birds that winters in the Arctic, and is probably the most delicate of all creatures in the circumpolar region. Sheojuk must have seen it often and perhaps was charmed by its behavior—like the male’s courtship dance, which includes a long, fluttering ‘‘fall’’ (often likened to the descent of a snowflake), and his careful attendance on his mate while she broods. The artist’s portrait of the bird clearly conveys these qualities; with shy, gentle eyes and a downy plumage that begs touching, the image is tender and totally disarming. Similarly, Sheojuk’s print, Young Caribou, reflects a penetrating grasp of the lone calf’s reality—vulnerable and wobbling in place, he lets his mouth gape open, in what seems a deepthroated wail for his mother. Sheojuk’s empathy with animals (and the trials of their lives) is one of the most affecting features of her work. It is strong and clear-sighted, without a trace of sentimentality. Facial expressions are defined through a few deftly placed marks, whose subtle precision could evoke years of weary struggle for survival. There might be just a slight tilt of the head, or a single line for the mouth—but her ability to catch the essence of psychological states often triggered shocks of recognition from her audience. At times Sheojuk worked in serial fashion—in a dialogue that she continually renewed. Some of her favorite recurring creatures were ‘‘giants,’’ whom, she explained were the spirits who guard the earth. Behind that concept lies a larger concern of hers, as Sheojuk was an active environmentalist. She was known for scolding her neighbors when they acted irresponsibly toward the natural world. In fact, in April of 1999, the mayor of Cape Dorset presented her with an award in recognition of her volunteer activism on behalf of the biosphere. Sheojuk is most famous for her prints, but, to some, her drawings represent the peak of her self-expression. They are intensely fresh, at times almost raw, and have the open exuberance of children’s drawings. Kananginak Pootoogook once said, ‘‘In my opinion, she was like Parr [another Inuit master]. They both had a mysterious way about their work. They were special because they were adults who made things that looked sort of like a child had done it, but never that simple’’ (Boyd 8). Enthralled by the process of experimentation and its discoveries, Sheojuk pursued new ways of working throughout her career. Colleagues often remarked that she did not seem concerned about the ‘‘success’’ or ‘‘finished’’ quality of her work. Yet in one interview, she said she became frustrated when she made mistakes with the media that still felt new to her—especially when working on metal plates for the difficult medium of etching (Ross 3). At times, like most Inuit graphic artists, Sheojuk made the original drawing, but relied on other artists to do the actual printing. And because drawing and printing employ vastly different techniques, the final print might fail to replicate some aspects of a drawing. Musing on the vagaries of the medium, she once commented that ‘‘sometimes the technology changes [my] work from the original

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drawing . . . If you want to interpret something from the heart, and it comes out different, that’s disappointing’’ (Ross 3). Sheojuk constantly worked at expanding her technical reach. In 1998, she participated in a series of etching workshops in Cape Dorset given by visiting artist Paul Machnik of Studio PM in Montreal. Similarly, she attended an oil stick painting workshop in 1999 that opened broad new possibilities for her. At that time, Jimmy Manning said, ‘‘ . . . with the new (oil stick) technique she worked so quickly and the images were great. She just went wild, you know, on the paper’’ (Boyd 6). In these crayon-like drawings on board, her colors are extremely rich, often running together in saturated pools—with the optical depth and intensity of paintings. In multiple ways, Sheojuk provided a stunning window on the vitality of this planet, through her deep regard for the spectrum of living things. Her work suggests the current view of many scientists that meaningful consciousness is not restricted to its human version—that the awareness of animals is rich and significant in its own right, while offering us lessons as well. In a 1998 interview, Sheojuk said, ‘‘ . . . [I am] drawing rabbits, fish and bears to tell that all these things are beautiful and special’’ (Ross 1). She knew that, without them, the human journey would be greatly diminished. During the last years of Sheojuk’s life, from 1994 to 1999, her work was exhibited internationally every year. Although her ‘‘life experiences never prepared [her] . . . for the contemporary community . . ., one sensed that her ability to draw and the recognition that came to her so late in life gave her tremendous satisfaction’’ (Boyd 3). On May 17, 1999 she died after a brief struggle with cancer. Hers was a quiet, but deeply resonant voice. She had a rare gift for seeing the reality beneath the surface—and for presenting the world as though encountered for the first time. Deborah Everett Where to See Sheojuk’s Work Feheley Fine Arts Gallery, Toronto, ON Houston North Gallery, Lunenburg, NS Judith Varney Burch Gallery/Arctic Inuit Art, Kingsburg, NS Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

Bibliography Arnason, Robert. ‘‘Rare Inuit Prints on Display, Sale.’’ Winnipeg Free Press (Winnipeg), December 19, 2001, D8. Boyd, Leslie, and Michelle McDonnell. Transformed: The Last Works of Sheojuk Etidlooie. Toronto: Feheley Fine Arts (catalogue), 1999. Feheley, Patricia. Sheojuk Etidlooie: Original Drawings (exhibition catalogue). Toronto: Feheley Fine Arts, 1998. Feheley Fine Arts. Sheojuk Etidlooie (artist’s biography). Toronto: Feheley Fine Arts, 2005.

Sheojuk Etidlooie Grimes, John R., Douglas Stenton, and K aren K ramer. Our Land: Contemporary Art from the Arctic. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum Publications, 2004. K roeker, Richard. Sheojuk Etidlooie. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery (exhibition catalogue), 2000. Ross, Val. ‘‘Portrait of an Inuit Artist.’’ Toronto Globe and Mail (Toronto), November 26,1998.

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F Joe Feddersen (b. 1953), Colville/Okanogan Printmaker, Painter, Glass-Artist, and Fiber-Artist. An artist of multiple talents and unusual vision, Joe Feddersen comes from the Columbia Plateau region of northeastern Washington State. His nation’s Colville Reservation there is a place of great natural beauty. Its dense grasslands and forests are flanked by bodies of water, and framed by peaks and precipitous gorges. Rivers and mountains are always close at hand, and, not surprisingly, Feddersen’s art has timeless roots in that environment. Born in Omak, Washington, Feddersen earned his B.F.A. in printmaking from the University of Washington in 1983 and his M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1989. His phenomenal range of media includes painting, photography, masks, basketry, glasswork, mixed-media constructions and installations. But it is his resonant, multilayered prints that have established his reputation, and to which he returns again and again. Perhaps his first broad-based recognition came by way of the widely read multicultural survey Mixed Blessings (1990) by renowned critic Lucy Lippard. His photo-collage Self Portrait is prominently placed at the beginning of the book, with an analysis of his long-time concern for ‘‘the relationship of the human to the environment’’ (Lippard 29). In this work, the artist splits his portrait evenly into two portions; yet the half-images, in terms of scale and focus, don’t quite match up. Additionally, they are surrounded by a high energy field that differs from one side to the other (with an effect of thick rainstorms on the left, and textures like live electricity on the right). The external forces in this work are evocative but nonspecific, allowing for multiple readings, while the sense of space shifts radically from one side to the other. The left-hand part seems to recede, as though the artist’s face is seen through a window—like the internal self looking out at us—while the right half of his image appears externalized, unsheltered, exposed to the pulsing phenomena around it. The work’s tension is one of contrasts and opposites, which is further heightened by dimensional twists. Concrete reality is emphasized by solid objects, such as string and thread, which are attached as collage elements. But in many ways, the image also implies psychological landscapes or abstract phenomenon. There is, overall, a sense of the dual nature of intense experience—the edgy sensation of reality and unreality in the same moment, where some

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aspect of the elemental, or the unexplained, is perceived in a highly personal way. This effect of different levels of perception, occurring simultaneously, cuts to the core of Feddersen’s work; along these lines, the artist has created numerous cylindrical baskets, reflecting a classic form from his indigenous heritage, but with variations that contemporize their surfaces. In some of the works, he takes traditional shapes from Colville textiles and shifts their frame of reference; for instance, in Red Treasure Basket, the slanted ‘‘stitch’’ that forms the basis of Colville designs becomes isolated as a sort of dotted-line within a monochrome color field, for an intensely minimalist approach. In other pieces, the changes are even more dramatic, as in High Voltage Tower, in which the patJoe Feddersen. Lydia 7. 2007. Print (reduction linocut). 12 in.  tern (made with the traditional ‘‘stepped’’ diagonals of Colville 9 in. © Joe Feddersen. Photo courtesy of Froelick Gallery. basketry) depicts modern support-structures for power lines. The result is a startlingly up-to-date image inserted into a traditional form. In a further extension of this approach, Feddersen creates blown-glass vessels in the same cylindrical shape, covered with a variety of contemporary patterns, including chain link fencing, parking lot layouts, and HOV (highoccupancy vehicle) markings on highway lanes. Beyond the visual interest of such motifs, they represent what the artist sees as ‘‘signs’’ of ‘‘cultural identity.’’ Just as the designs on Colville textiles reveal much about their society of origin, so the details of urban structures embody principles of the industrialized world. Put more directly, his work is about cultural ‘‘perceptions of [and relationships to] land’’ (Artist’s Statement, Froelick Gallery). Some of the most elegant expressions of Feddersen’s sensibility occur in his prints. Rainscapes and Birth of Venus, two series of prints from the 1980s, were some of the artist’s early explorations of landscape; sensual and luminous, their imagery is abstract and rendered through expressionistic strokes. Following these works, he created other series that evolved from personal experiences, often via computer-generated imagery. One particularly beautiful autobiographical series, Plateau Geometrics, is among his best-known works.

Joe Feddersen

Based on blankets made by Plateau region Indians (which were often appropriated by commercial textile companies), they focused on geometric motifs —trapezoids, triangles, and so on—in repeating patterns of overlapping, shifting color. The inspiration for these designs comes from Colville emblems for elements of nature, such as mountains, stars, or butterflies, which Feddersen reinvented in modernist terms. These works are also a prime example of the artist’s gift for richly layered effects, building into a sense of spatial density and atmosphere. In them, one clearly sees his masterful handling of color, his sensitivity to nuances of light, and his gift for tactile surfaces. In addition to his contributions as a visual artist, Feddersen has participated in numerous other creative endeavors. Since 1989, he has taught printmaking at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He has also worked as a writer, curator, and active member of the Colville Confederated Tribal Arts and Humanities Board. From 1999 through 2001, he served as one of the primary organizers for a meeting of indigenous artists from Pacific Rim nations (centering on New Zealand, Hawaii, and Washington State) with accompanying workshops—which resulted in the exhibition ‘‘Within the Circle of the Rim.’’ Feddersen is highly respected for the various roles he plays, but most of all for creating the images that reflect his sensitivity of touch and his capacity for visual harmonies. Deborah Everett Where to See Feddersen’s Art Art Museum of Missoula, Missoula, MN Eigeljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Froelick Gallery, Portland, OR Jeffrey Moose Gallery, Seattle, WA

Bibliography Eiteljorg Museum (Rushing, W. Jackson, ed.). After the Storm. Indianapolis, IN: Eiteljorg Museum Publications, 2001. Evergreen State College Longhouse Education and Cultural Center. Within the Circle of the Rim. Olympia, WA: Evergreen State College Publications, 2002. Feddersen, Joe. Artist’s Statement. Portland, OR: Froelick Gallery, 2005. Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990. Museum of Arts and Design (McFadden, David Revere, and Ellen Napiura Taubman, eds.). Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 2. New York: Museum of Arts and Design Publications, 2005. Rushing, W. Jackson, ed. Native American Art in the Twentieth Century. New York: Routledge, 1999.

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G Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979), Tlingit/Aleut/Cherokee Multidisciplinary Artist. Born in Sitka, Alaska, Nicholas Galanin has struck an intriguing balance between his origins and the course of his practice. Having trained extensively in ‘‘traditional’’ as well as ‘‘contemporary’’ approaches to art, he pursues them both in parallel paths. His stunning bodies of work both preserve elements of his culture and chart new perceptual territory. Galanin comes from a long line of Northwest Coast artists—starting with his great-grandfather, who sculpted in wood, down through his father, who works in both precious metal and stone. Although Galanin’s parents separated when he was a child, he continued to spend time with his father, especially working together in the studio. The artist looks back on those experiences now as a ‘‘very memorable part of [his] childhood’’—and this sharing of art became a potent link to his heritage as well as a vehicle of cultural identity. Galanin’s mother is part non-Native and part Cherokee, although, the artist says, he never developed an awareness of his indigenous background on that side of the family. After his parents’ separation, he moved around a great deal with his mother—to Arizona, Seattle, Washington, Juneau, Alaska, and elsewhere. By the time he graduated from high school, the artist had attended thirteen different schools. Having always had an interest in creative pursuits, Galanin took on apprenticeships at an early age—first with his father and his uncle, then with other local, traditional artists. When he was about eighteen, he began to feel the strain of being pulled in two directions—working a day job, with its requisite frustrations and energy drain, while also apprenticing in the arts. At that point he realized that he needed to commit himself totally to art-making, or it ‘‘wasn’t going to happen.’’ From early craft courses, he went on to study at the London Guildhall University (in London, England) from 2000 to 2003, where he received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts with honors in Jewelry Design and Silversmithing. Unfortunately, however, the school’s curriculum was inflexible, and the artist found it difficult to pursue his innovative, culturebased ideas through their academic structure—so he kept a running sketchbook on the side for planned projects. Soon after, Galanin discovered a graduate arts program at Massey University in New Zealand that meshed perfectly with his interests and concerns, and in 2004 he began earning a Master’s degree there in Indigenous Visual

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Arts. The artist has commented that the Maori people there have established strong cultural programs, and that their initiatives are of tremendous interest to other aboriginal groups. After finishing his graduate coursework, Galanin moved back to Sitka, which, he says, is a very interesting place to be—particularly in terms of what is happening with Native culture. That atmosphere helps him maintain a dual focus, making objects that are ‘‘traditional’’ (or ‘‘customary,’’ as he tags them), while also creating a body of contemporary work. Although especially drawn to sculpture and video, Galanin’s medium can be ‘‘pretty much anything.’’ He begins by developing a vigorous concept (often based in cultural issues), and then he finds a way to express it. This is important to him as a means of retaining control over his work, since he has had numerous encounters with gallerists, collectors, and others who want to impose their own demands on the kinds of objects he creates. Galanin admires the way that artists worked freely before European contact, determining their own trajectory; he wants to reclaim that autonomy for himself, as the direction of choice for true creativity. Some of Galanin’s most striking works were recently exhibited in an important show at the Aldrich Museum (Ridgefield, CT) called ‘‘No Reservations.’’ Among them were his contemporary ‘‘Northwest Coast masks,’’ adapted to confront cultural issues. One of them suggested a Tlingit mask, but it was cut from a stack of 700 sheets of paper—bound in back like a book and containing the words, ‘‘Made in Indonesia.’’ The most obvious of several ironies in this work is that its ‘‘Northwest Coast style’’ is greatly diluted, so that the clear-cut contours of traditional masks become hazy here. Additionally, Galanin’s piece reveals none of the characteristic formline design (see Glossary), nor is it painted in high contrast colors. Beyond that, its subdued facial features could have been created by another culture (and in fact, the template for this work is actually a copy of a Tlingit mask that was carved in Indonesia). Similarly, Galanin’s Tlingit Nicholas Galanin. The Good Book Vol 16. 2006. Sculpture (1,100 pages of bound paper, with human hair). 6 in.  9 in.  Raven Vol. 14 is cut from 4 in. © Nicholas Galanin. the pages of a book. Like the

Nicholas Galanin

‘‘Indonesian’’ mask, it reveals the layers between us and the original Tlingit object, filtered through foreign documentation and analysis—which have been channeled back to both Native artists and their audience. Both of these works retain the elegance of traditional masks, but their contemporary forms have an eeriness, a feeling of being there and not there—perhaps because of their pale color, their blurry, clouded features, and their almost glazed-over eyes. And, just as they seem to be materializing from the book’s pages, they also hover on the point of dissolution. There is a lingering doubt as to whether they will ever fully take form—resulting in a haunting sense of loss and longing. Galanin is also gifted as a video artist, and created a stunning piece titled Who We Are—in which single frames of 25,000 traditional Northwest Coast objects are collapsed into a fifteen-minute video loop. Silently flashing before the viewer, individual objects are impossible to extract from the diluvian flow. The speed of the work, and its overload of images, evokes the superficiality of contemporary life, in which complex phenomena are reduced to sound-bytes or media spots. By arranging the artworks according to formal similarities, Galanin makes ‘‘categories of objects, such as baskets and bowls, gradually morph into each other’’ (Aldrich 22). Fascinating though they are, the flickering transformations create a disturbing sense of moving all too fast, with forms melting into each other at a rate that defies comprehension or control. Despite the power and insights of these works, Galanin is well aware of their drawbacks for him as an indigenous person. On that subject, he has remarked, ‘‘Elders have difficulty seeing themselves in pieces such as the generic faces created from [reams of] paper, . . . though the concept speaks to issues our culture deals with today . . . ’’ (Aldrich 22). Similarly, a Tlingit artist’s use of a medium like video can be unsettling to Northwest Coast traditionalists. Galanin has acknowledged the personal challenge involved in this kind of artmaking: ‘‘Tradition is a gift . . . Coming from a culture with a strong visual language, I risk cutting myself free from this when I work away from these forms’’ (Aldrich 22). Valuing his culture as highly as his individuality, Galanin has created an unusual path for himself. He deftly navigates ‘‘the politics of cultural representation’’ (http://www.nicholasgalanin.com), as he balances both ends of the aesthetic spectrum. With a fiercely independent spirit, Galanin has found the best of both worlds and has given them back to his audience in stunning form. Deborah Everett Where to See Galanin’s Work Alaska State Museum, Juneau, AK Devilfish Gallery, Sitka, AK Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH University of Alaska Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK

Bibliography Aldrich Museum. No Reservations. Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Museum Publications, 2006.

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Jeffrey Gibson American Museum of Natural History. Totems to Turquoise. New York: American Museum of Natural History Publications, 2004. McFaddin, David. Changing Hands 2. New York: Museum of Art and Design Publications, 2005. http://www.nicholasgalanin.com

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972), Choctaw/Cherokee Painter and Installation Artist. The imaginary worlds in Jeffrey Gibson’s paintings are often greeted with the comment, ‘‘This work is refreshingly liberated.’’ He is known for his exuberant color, surface embellishment, and luxuriant imagery. His fantasy landscapes have often blurred the boundary between two dimensions and three, and accordingly they counterbalance mental and physical realities with the shadowy gap between them. Born into a military family in Colorado Springs, Gibson lived in many different locations while growing up. His family moved almost every three years— even after his father transferred from the army to a civil engineering job with the government. As a result, the artist experienced life all over the United States, as well as in Germany, Korea, and, later, in England. As a child, he was always aware that his Cherokee mother and Choctaw father suffered the painful aspects of a Native American childhood—including Indian boarding schools and growing up in poverty. Consequently, as adults, they both wanted to escape from economic hardship and meld with Middle America. While they encouraged the artist to be proud of being Native, they also stressed the importance of stability and a middle-class means of support. Gibson attended undergraduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received his B.F.A. in 1995. While there, he also had an internship with the Department of Anthropology at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. His exposure to objects in that collection included encounters with the small, heavily beaded items known as ‘‘whimsies’’ (‘‘novelties,’’ such as pincushions and small purses); these articles were made by Native peoples of the Northeast and sold to tourists as mementos. The sense of Victorian opulence in the objects appealed to him, but he also saw them as painful evidence of economic necessity. These concerns would later come to figure deeply in his work. After graduating, Gibson wanted to teach on the Choctaw Reservation, but his Chief said that holding that position required a Master’s degree. At that point, the artist applied to, and was accepted by, the Royal College of Art in London; his tribe paid his way, including tuition and living expenses. Gibson received his M.A. from the Royal College in 1998, and soon after, he moved to New York City. Probably best known for his teeming, jungle-like ‘‘landscapes,’’ Gibson has created two series of paintings dominated by delicately rendered, foliage-like forms. The artist has referred to the first group of paintings as ‘‘primordial,’’ where suggestions of a cosmic soup combine with lush, primeval plant life. The second phase of this work suggested a more habitable space that Gibson conceived of as a ‘‘utopian’’ world—often peopled by a few idealized figures.

Jeffrey Gibson

Many pieces from both series are garnished with colored silicone droplets in intricate, bead-like patterns; these globules often accumulate like foam, even flowing off the canvas, and entering the viewer’s space. The influence of the so-called whimsies in these works is unmistakable. More recently Gibson has focused on a separation of the two facets of his previous work: painting and three-dimensional elements. The beads of silicone have begun to spread and sometimes separate, with each drop becoming oversized and less spherical—or sometimes even flattened, like the head of a large mushroom. Gibson began to layer these components on top of each other as freestanding forms, piling them into larger structures, sometimes extending straight up and resembling trees. In 2007, the artist created a striking, new variant of these growth-like structures, presenting his breakthrough work, Promise, in the show ‘‘Off the Map’’ at the National Museum of the American Indian. This innovative work is a commanding, sculptural installation with a kind of sci-fi version of internal logic. The semisolid forms originate in a space behind the gallery walls. Having filled up that room, they flow through a window in the wall, building into a heap on the floor outside—much like an eyepopping mound of bubbling candle-wax. The cumulative structure has strong psychological overtones, like the aftermath of a prison-break by biomorphic entities or perhaps a frozen cataract of emotions. Its forms are fluid, smooth, and lustrous, while suggesting an inanimate substance gone wild; at the same time, however, the uncontrollable tide of this near molten mass yields a vague sense of uneasiness on viewing it.

Jeffrey Gibson. Infinite Anomaly #1. 2003. Painting (oil on paper). 76 cm  102 cm. © Jeffrey Gibson. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian.

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In the same show, Gibson presented his striking, wall-sized painting Submerge and, with it, introduced wildly energized, graffiti-like strokes. This piece was the first of a new phase of work that implies a considerable shift toward more personal self-expressionism—offering visual leaps through a vastly expanded, gestural space and marks that allow for ambiguous readings. Other pieces in this series include strong, graphic images on paper where two visual ‘‘languages,’’ one chaotic and one orderly, create a kind of metaphysical dance. With an alternately sharp and soft focus throughout, much about them appears photographic. Additionally, the effect of ‘‘near ’’ and ‘‘far ’’ in the opposing patterns projects a layered effect—almost a shift between parallel universes. As the artist remarks, the viewer perceives a switching back-andforth between ‘‘figure’’ and ‘‘ground’’ established by the two sliding scales. Gibson states that his newfound freedom stems partially from his recent research into a family-owned tract of land outside Tahlequah, Oklahoma. He has said that returning to that land, and its long history with his family, was a kind of revelation for him. So much happened there, so many personal trials, so many tribal misfortunes—and yet the strength and endurance of his people seemed to hang in the air, almost palpably. The experience released in him a new perception of his identity and a reconnection with forgotten parts of himself. It brought him to the realization that joining Middle America has consequences—among which is an agreeable outward persona that forbids the expression of anger or force. Gibson’s newly discovered directness paralleled his volunteer work with disadvantaged youth. By leading his kids through open-ended exercises (with graffiti-based drawing), both teacher and pupils moved toward a more spontaneous form of self-expression. In this way they became one with the act of making marks, accepting them in whatever shape they appeared. Ultimately, as Gibson says, this unity of creator and creation allows one to become ‘‘a force of nature’’ (Interview 2007). Gibson’s evolution as an artist has the ring of self-discovery. His most recent work breaks through barriers and grapples with the unvarnished truth. With an exciting new body of work in full swing, he stands on the edge of a very bright future. Deborah Everett Where to See Gibson’s Work National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY Samson Projects, Boston, MA http://www.jeffreygibson.net

Bibliography Aldrich Museum. No Reservations. Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Museum Publications, 2006. Nadelman, Cynthia. ‘‘Tribal Hybrids.’’ Artnews (New York), June 2007.

William J. Grant National Museum of the American Indian (Kathleen Ash-Milby, ed.). Off the Map. New York: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2007. University Art Gallery of Stony Brook University. Paumanok. Stony Brook, NY: Stony Brook University Publications, 2006.

William J. Grant (b. 1948), Anishinaabe (Chippewa) Painter/Printmaker/ Mixed-Media Artist. A sensitive artist and teacher, William J. Grant has a long and complex professional history. Often creating images in black and white, his work is psychological in tone and introspective in nature. Although many of his works reflect the familiar world around us, they make us feel as though we’re seeing it with new eyes. Grant’s parents met while both were serving in the military during World War II. His mother had grown up in Cross Village, Michigan, a small Chippewa town in the state’s upper peninsula, where her tribe is said to have lived for thousands of years. She had been brought up as a Native person, although the culture of her indigenous community was interwoven with that of the Arcadian-French ‘‘settlers’’ that surrounded it. Grant was born in Michigan, but his parents soon took him to Brooklyn, NY (his Irish-American father’s hometown)—where the artist was given a rigorous Catholic upbringing. Grant had little contact with his maternal relatives as a child, although family visits to Michigan did occur now and then. At the same time, the artist has vivid memories of his mother ’s stories based in Anishinaabe mythology; they gave him a deep and lasting attachment to the Native side of his heritage. During his twenties, Grant began to visit his mother’s family with greater frequency, extending his experience with them by attending powwows and taking part in ceremonies. By the time he was in his forties, the artist had fully reconnected with his Native cousins and become a registered member of his tribe. Grant’s formal training in the arts has been wide ranging—much like an exploration, he says, where every step led him to more questions. In 1977 he entered the prestigious SVA (School of Visual Arts) in New York City, where he studied painting and sculpture, as well as other disciplines. He continued his studies at Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) and IAIA (the Institute of American Indian Art) in Santa Fe, later returning to SVA to finish his Bachelor of Fine Arts coursework in 1995. From 1996 through 1998, he studied as a graduate student at another prominent art school: the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey). He earned his M.F.A. there in 1998. By that time, his training included not only painting and sculpture, but also printmaking, graphic design, advertising, illustration, and architectural design. Clearly a man of many talents, Grant’s professional path took an equally winding course. It has encompassed freelance design and illustration, as well as a term with NBC (the National Broadcasting Company), where he was Managing Art Director for Corporate Design. In that capacity, he won multiple

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William J. Grant

awards in graphic arts and broadcast design. At the same time, he has served as a teacher and lecturer at numerous institutions. In a serendipitous juncture of art and life, Grant was employed for a time by a raptor rescue facility, where his keen observations of its tenants led to some of his most important work. His untitled painting of an eagle (2003), for instance, is a striking embodiment of captivity. The bird’s gaze is turned down and to the side, with its eyes obscured by shade; perhaps most prominent is the curving grid pattern that drapes over its body like a net. But the ‘‘net,’’ in actuality, is the shadow cast by the wire screening of its cage. The eagle, the essence of freedom has been transformed by his location; who he is has become defined, in large part, by where he is. A very different work from the same series is titled Winged. A black and white photoengraving in three parts, it reveals a life-sized likeness of the artist’s bare back—but with two large, open wings attached at the shoulder. The image’s stunning sense of gesture emanates from its anatomical synchrony of man and bird—like the apprehension of some new metaphysical phenomenon. Evoking the haunting aura of the Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire, Grant’s picture makes a convincing case for the existence of the inexplicable. Grant has also created several series of landscapes, with vibrant textures and lush, painterly strokes. They often incorporate rhythmic patterns that evoke layered foliage or splintering waves, creating an intense sensation of life’s interwoven web. In one striking work, Cascade (Untitled), he combined two separately painted images of waterfalls—for a diptych whose twin flows run in counterpoint to the eye’s steady movement from one canvas to the other. And instead of yielding to the lure of the sparkling hues in rushing water, the artist has presented his subjects in somber tones of black and white—in memoriam, he says, to the lost land that once belonged to Native people. Currently, Grant is finishing his dissertation for a doctoral degree in art education at Columbia University. Meanwhile, he continues to conduct the essential groundwork for his art, photographing vivid aspects of the natural world

William J. Grant. Winged. 2003. Photo etching with mixed-media. 7 ft  4 ft. © William J. Grant.

Darren Vigil Gray

—like a stretch of ground frost in morning light. It will later resurface in his work, perhaps through subtle tonal variations or sensual paint strokes. As an artist, he says, he is concerned with the future direction of young people as a whole—but particularly that of Native young people. For that reason, he especially wants to return to IAIA, but this time as a teacher—where he plans to share his affecting sense of why human beings make art. Deborah Everett Where to See Grant’s Work Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY Columbia University—Grace Dodge Hall, New York, NY IAIA Museum, Santa Fe, NM National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY

Bibliography Grant, William J. ‘‘Keepers of Culture: Artistic Resistance and Growth within Social Constructs.’’ Dissertation for Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, 2007. http://www.amerinda.org/naar/grant/painter/grantpainter.htm

Darren Vigil Gray (b. 1959), Jicarilla Apache/Kiowa-Apache Painter. Darren Vigil Gray always knew he wanted something different. Growing up on the reservation, he spent a lot of time around two painters, Francis Vigil and Nossman Vigil (both relatives)—intrigued and stimulated by the freedom of their thinking. By the time Gray was in fourth grade, his decision to become an artist was clinched—by the sighting of a UFO from his school bus window, which proved that anything was possible. Gray’s family was always talented, including both his parents. His father, Charlie Vigil (Jicarilla Apache) was a country Western guitarist with a band called the Apache Red Vests. His mother, Thaymeus Bitseedy (KiowaApache) studied operatic voice in college and was widely known for her singing. She made the artist study piano as a child, but he also learned to play drums by age ten. He performed in his older brother’s rock band, as well as the groups Seventh Son and the Mud Ponies. Along the way he developed friendships with musicians Steve Miller, Paul McCartney, Bono, and others. Gray says that, for him, music and art are inextricably linked, and he still keeps rock music playing at full tilt while working in his studio. During his early teens, he spent summers on ‘‘the pow-wow circuit’’ with his older cousins. He knew the dances from both sides of his Apache background and further explored his Native heritage through the Pan-Indian culture of the powwow. Soon after Gray became established in that world, his cousins went off to Santa Fe’s IAIA, and when they returned, they brought back stimulating new perspectives. Gray says they were in ‘‘a different frame

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of mind . . . They had something else in their eyes . . . Right then and there I made up my mind to escape the reservation atmosphere’’ (Lippard 7). While dancing at powwows, Gray had met his first love, Carol Gala. And when she went off to IAIA, he followed. He enrolled in the high school program at IAIA, where he studied with Otellie Loloma and he had his first encounters with the work of T. C. Cannon and Fritz Scholder. Cannon, the gifted and inventive Kiowa artist, was also a musician and quickly became a mentor to Gray, whose early paintings echoed Cannon’s style. Gray says that some of his images with patterned surfaces are a reworking of ‘‘ . . . what T. C. used to do—create these wallpapers for his interiors . . . ’’ (Lippard 18). After studying at IAIA from 1975 to 1977, Gray attended the College of Santa Fe, where teachers Tesmar Mitchell and Ron Picco influenced him strongly. Gray then took a break from studying, but soon found himself missing the interaction with other artists. In 1985 he enrolled at UNM (University of New Mexico), where he studied with printmaker Garo Antreasian. By the end of that academic year, he felt ready and eager to make art on his own. ‘‘I was on fire,’’ he said (Lippard 8). By 1987, Gray was well on his way to arriving at some turning points in his life. He had met his future wife, Jill Momaday—Kiowa actor and model, and daughter of acclaimed author N. Scott Momaday. Gray had left school permanently by then, and was painting full-time in his studio. He was also moving toward a decision to shift his self-image by changing his name—pronouncing Vigil with a ‘‘g’’ sound rather than the ‘‘h’’ sound used in Spanish and adding the word ‘‘gray’’—because the color denotes ‘‘every shade between the extremes of black and white’’ (Parks 31). At the same time Gray continued to make music as well as paint, and a number of high-profile musicians began to buy his canvases. His work attained a new visibility, and he began to get more invitations to exhibit. By the time he was forty-three, he had had a major retrospective at Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum. Characterized by intense energy and saturated color, Gray’s work is generally figurative and expressionist in style. It tends to fall into three related but distinct types: landscapes of Jicarilla Apache territory, portraits of Indian individuals, and more loosely composed, vigorously painted scenes that he refers to as ‘‘mythological.’’ His approach to each of the three categories differs significantly. Gray’s landscapes are based on places with which he feels a close connection, both personally and through his heritage, and the paint handling reflects a variety of trends in modernist painting. A work like Variation on an Abiquiu Landscape #95 has definite affinities with the work of American early modernist painters like Marsden Hartley and Oscar Bluemner, who saw the land as a sensual, living entity. In many of Gray’s works, however, there is a more Fauvist sense of color, while his brushwork in a painting like Wisdom Hill recalls high Impressionism. Gray says that nature has always been his strongest influence and that part of its ongoing appeal for him is that each vista constantly changes in appearance, becoming different every time one experiences it.

Darren Vigil Gray

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Gray’s second focus is a series of portraits of individuals who ‘‘often [wear] traditional regalia, face paint or masks’’ (Lippard 9)—but frequently reflect Gray’s own interpretation of ‘‘traditional.’’ After Praying Four Times, for instance, presents a strong figure, who appears to be sizing up the viewer in front of him. The gaze is clear, unafraid, almost confrontational, while the apparel includes a horned headdress with a coyote’s head on top. Referring to this atypical configuration, Gray says, ‘‘I still don’t know why I did that . . . The symbology in my paintings is made up, created from who I am in the here and now’’ (Lippard 33). Perhaps the most unusual of Gray’s paintings are the large, almost panoramic, compositions that explore mythic subject matter. Many of these works appear ritualistic, comDarren Vigil Gray. Moonlight Shines Back at the Sun. bining a variety of traditional 2006. Painting (acrylic on paper on board). 27.5 in.  19.5 in. Native symbols with a very © Darren Vigil Gray. Photo courtesy of LewAllen Contempogestural, almost frenzied style rary Art. of painting. In fact, most of these works have the feel of an indigenous version of neo-Expressionism (see Glossary), owing much to European painters of the 1980s and 90s like Georg Baselitz and Francesco Clemente. Within this group of works, Gray created a striking series about bears in the modern world. Regarding Bears in Parks #1, Gray says, ‘‘The stance is taken directly from a painting of a bear by JeanMichel Basquiat. He is on his hind legs and almost looks human’’ (Lippard 36). Gray’s style of mark-making, in fact, has been compared more than once to Basquiat’s exuberant, graffiti-style strokes. Gray sometimes seems at his best when his images become more abstracted. The Earth is All Before Me is an eerie monotype he created using innovative techniques with commercial lithography plates. Its central figure has a chilling intensity, and his smeared flesh looks injured and bruised. Another singular work is the Untitled Triptych that Gray made for musician Steve Miller. Probably the most abstract of all his work, it maintains the flat, wall-like presence of graffiti art, along with its freedom of expression. Ultimately it subjects a

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range of icons and messages to the kind of violent, urban-guerilla gesture that slashes at its surroundings in order to establish dominance. Its maelstrom of color and jagged form launches across three canvases vibrantly and effectively. As Lucy Lippard notes in her essay for his survey show Counterclockwise, ‘‘Gray has been called ‘the Golden Boy of the third generation’ of Native American modernists’’ (Lippard 4). She states that he was always a ‘‘natural painter,’’ who could reinvent and expand upon much of what he encountered by using his own strong sense of color and exuberant gestural style. In the end, Gray looks at art all-inclusively, without seeing himself as a ‘‘Native American artist.’’ ‘‘I’m a painter first,’’ he says, ‘‘but the characteristics that make up my being as a Native American will bleed into my work’’ (Lippard 5). It is these things, he says, that tell him who he is and where he is going. Deborah Everett Where to See Gray’s Work Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ LewAllen Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM Museum of Mankind, Vienna, Austria National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.

Bibliography Indyke, Dottie. ‘‘Marathon Man.’’ The New Mexican, Pasatiempo supplement, August 20, 1999. Lippard, Lucy. Counterclockwise. Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian (exhibition catalogue), 2002. McCloud, Kathleen. ‘‘Blood Memory.’’ The New Mexican, Pasatiempo supplement, August 1, 1997. Parks, Stephen. ‘‘Painting Bridges between Cultures.’’ Southwest Profile: Arts & Travel Magazine, August 1988, 31.

H David Hannan (b. 1971), Me´tis Multidisciplinary Artist and Filmmaker. An artist of wide-ranging talents and elegant sensibilities, David Hannan often builds his art around issues of cultural identity. A painter, sculptor, mixedmedia artist, and filmmaker, his work takes numerous shapes. As he grapples with questions of history and indigenous rights, he gives stunning form to his sage critiques of events and political agendas. Hannan was born in Ottawa, Ontario, to a mother with Mi’kmaq and Algonquin ancestry and a non-Native father. As Hannan’s father worked for a survey company that required frequent travel, the artist often stayed with his grandmother for months at a time. A creative person in her own right, she constantly encouraged his art-making inclinations and provided endless supplies of drawing materials. When Hannan was in the eighth grade, his family moved to Thailand— where his father ’s employer had assigned him for three years. The artist learned to speak Thai in his first six months in Bangkok and rapidly established many friendships there. During that time, he attended an international school with kids from all over the world. His art teacher at the school, Robert Gutowski, had a strong influence on Hannan’s developing sensibilities, and the two would remain in contact for years afterwards. Returning to Ottawa in 1988, Hannan entered the Canterbury High School for the Arts, where he completed his secondary education. He then moved to Toronto and attended Ontario College of Art, earning his degree there in 1995 and receiving numerous awards and scholarships along the way. Hannan’s indigenous affiliation is Me´tis—a mixed heritage of Native and non-Native roots with official status as an aboriginal group of Canada. He has always maintained a devoted interest in his cultural background and has pursued it through formal research of historical accounts, as well as oral histories gathered from his family and friends. The knowledge he’s gained has thoroughly informed his art—and through it, he says, he ‘‘hopes to contribute to the discourse . . . on Me´tis needs which are often marginal to the mainstream . . . ’’ (Mattes 20). After graduating from art school, Hannan became a painter, creating rich collage-like images that often incorporated family photos. Some of them suggest happy times, like Camping Stories and At the Cottage, where relatives relax together in a country setting. Others imply hardship, like Broken Man, awash in

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shades of intense blue, or Untitled (Crossfire), where an affectionate snapshot on one side confronts a charred and smoldering scene on the other. There is a moving sense of atmosphere in Hannan’s paintings of family, saturated with color and hints of an intimate world that we seem to have discovered by accident. Many of Hannan’s paintings, including Mathilda, a mixed-media work about his great-grandmother, contain pieces of melton cloth, the fabric of trade blankets and ‘‘symbol of European and First Nations contact—the very contact that the Me´tis Nation springs from’’ (Kerkhoven 22). A related work, Double Curve, focuses on a blurred, watery image of his grandparents and others, seeming to rest on a stunning piece of red-and-black ribbon-work that embodies their Mi’kmaq heritage. Not only does this potent element serve as a further reference to ancestry, it evokes indigenous culture as a vibrant, living presence that survives the fading of individual lives. Hannan has created other works that specifically address issues of his people. In 2000, he created works based on the controversial historical figure Louis Riel. Riel was a charismatic Me´tis man who saw himself as a prophet while leading his Native nation’s struggle for justice during the late 1800s. The Canadian government judged his resistance to be inflammatory and treasonous, executing him by hanging in 1885. Hannan’s portrait panels of Riel contain fragmentary images of their subject, implying the complicated and illusory nature of his character. At the same time, the rich encaustic surfaces of the works and their jewel-like tones impart an aura of nobility, implying that the worthiness of his intent and accomplishments far outshines his personal oddities. Exhibited at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, these works describe ‘‘a cultural hero . . . [who] is complex and ambiguous . . . [despite the] simplified myths that we are taught [in] history [lessons]’’ (Mattes 20). In 2001, Hannan expanded his range of media to include sculpture and installation. One of his first three-dimensional works, Invaded Wilderness, creates both an indoor and outdoor space, where the viewer is allowed tantalizing glimpses of gleaming copper ‘‘trees’’ by looking through a window on the exterior of a rustic cabin (actually the studio of painter Tom Thomson). It seems that nature has become domesticated here, while we are on the outside looking in. In 2004, the artist created an installation called Copper Land, with an overlay of copper plates on the floor, a fragile, awkward deer struggling to stand on them, and a large, decorative sphere of cast-off moose antlers over it. The fascinating references here include the fact that Canada is the world’s fifth-largest producer of copper, and the environmental damage from its mining operations is linked to bone and antler ‘‘anomalies’’ among the moose and deer that graze in mining areas. Hannan shows us a world where lustrous metals, and the profits they bring, are prized above life itself. Hannan’s most recent sculpture, a work called Untitled (the hunt/hunted), is a ‘‘cascade of translucent deer and coyotes suspended from the ceiling’’ (NMAI/ Heard 48). In this work, the coyote (a complex trickster, transformer, and seer in indigenous thought) is the pursuer, while the deer (sometimes appearing as a shape-shifting woman in Native stories) is the pursued. Here they become an intertwined mass, joined by their collective action, while plunging headlong

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toward the floor. Both creatures are hollow, created from luminous layers of packing tape, so that their forms have an aura of postindustrial culture. At the same time, these beasts appear not so much unnatural as surreal. Glowing with the opalescence of abalone shell or Northern Lights, they are simultaneously modern and timeless. Nevertheless, the fact that they are life-sized seems to echo ‘‘natural-history’’ dioramas and taxidermic displays. As Gerald McMaster has stated, these associations would normally confer the subordinate role of specimens (or trophies) to both species represented. However, Hannan’s work overthrows such expectations, as his creatures suggest inhabitants of a transcendental realm, airborne and no longer subject to human domination. David Hannan. Hunt and the hunted. 2007. Mixed-media Hannan has had numerous installation. Dimensions variable. © David Hannan. solo exhibitions since his first in 1990—in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, and the prominent Thunder Bay Art Gallery. His work has also appeared in group exhibitions in various prestigious spaces, including the Winnipeg Art Gallery (Winnipeg, MN), the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, ON), and the Heard Museum in Phoenix. Additionally, his work was featured in the traveling show ‘‘Transitions’’ with venues in France, Costa Rica, Taiwan, and New Zealand. His other artistic endeavors include theater and filmmaking, which, he says, he took up in order to support his art. Throughout his oeuvre, Hannan engages his audience with graceful forms and exquisite surfaces—while revealing painful truths that suggest the thorns in his hypnotic garden. Deborah Everett Where to See Hannan’s Work Indian and Northern Affairs Canada: Indian Art Centre, Hull, QC National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, Toronto, ON Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay, ON Woodland Cultural Centre, Brantford, ON

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Bibliography Heard Museum. Remix. Phoenix: Heard Museum Publications, 2007. Kerkhoven, Marijke, and Sarah Quinton. Comfort Zones. Toronto: Textile Museum of Canada Publications, 2001. Mattes, Catherine. Rielisms. Winnipeg, MT: Winnipeg Art Gallery Publications, 2001. http://www.davidhannan.ca/ http://www.gallery101.org/content.php?lan=en&col=5&sub=hannan&act= exhibitions&lev=1

Sheldon Harvey (b. 1978), Navajo Painter and Sculptor. Sheldon Harvey is an emerging Navajo (Dine´) artist whose distinctive paintings, carvings, and sculptures depict the people and the beings of the Navajo creation of the First World. Working from a deep concern about the importance of retaining Navajo culture, Harvey interprets traditional beliefs in contemporary ways. His sculptures and masks use mixed materials to represent the Ye’ii (Holy People in the Navajo religion). His paintings depict various subjects, but some of his most memorable work uses a range of styles drawn from western masters to represent Navajo deities in the earliest stages of the complex Navajo creation story. The Navajo creation story doesn’t tell us what those inhabitants look like, so Harvey says that ‘‘I paint them the way I imagine them’’ (Goode). Harvey is born to Ta´chii’nii, the Red Streaks Running into Water Clan, and born for Ashiihi, the Salt Clan. He grew up in rural Arizona ‘‘in Lukachukai among the grassroots Navajos . . . . We relied on a well. We relied on horses. We relied on ceremony. It made our lives’’ (Goode). Harvey attended the Lukachukai Boarding School in the town of the same name. His early interest in art was encouraged by his grandfather, who was widely respected for his knowledge of several traditional ceremonies, including their sandpaintings (sandpaintings are created and destroyed as part of most ceremonies; see Hastiin Klah). As a teenager, Harvey was drawn to the work of the world-renowned Navajo artist Tony Abeyta, which depicts (among other subjects) stylized, intensely colored Navajo deities. When he first saw Abeyta’s original paintings, Harvey was struck by how the work ‘‘has really strong texture, strong design texture. His yei bichai [masked ceremonial dancers that are familiar figures in Navajo art] have a three- dimensional, pop-out quality’’ (Goode). Harvey attended tribally controlled Dine´ College in Tsaile, Arizona. One of his professors was the ‘‘Navajo artist Don Whitesinger, whose paintings make use of bright colors similar to Abeyta’s’’ in ‘‘ ‘surrealistic’ figurative and landscape paintings’’ (Goode). Harvey started studying art history in college, and he continues to deepen his knowledge of western art. Though best known for his paintings that depict Navajo religious figures, Harvey’s subjects also include horses and landscapes. His paintings of horses such as Became One, or horses intertwined with a human figure such as Soul Colliding with Spirit, recall classical equines as well as works by Giorgio de

Sheldon Harvey

Chirico. Landscapes such as Sandia Lake evoke the primacy of water in the vast space of the desert, while also recalling the mysterious worlds of Paul Klee. The main focus of Harvey’s work, however, is Navajo religious tradition, which he explores in subtle interpretations of the evolutionary stages in the complex Navajo creation that recounts the emergence of the Dine´ into this world. Kept from the Light depicts one of the Insect People, who lived in the first Four Worlds before this one, and were the predecessors of humans. ‘‘We were grown into being in the form of insects, wind spirits’ ’’ (Andrews Pueblo Pottery). A dark red and yellow elongated humanoid figure occupies most of the painting; it wears a geometrically angled white mask and has multiple small blue wings, which shows it is one of the Insect People. Against a richly gradated black background, the figure’s face nearly touches a tall yellow and brown rectangle with a white diamond-like shape, which it nevertheless cannot reach. The elongated figure and textured surfaces present a vision that is dramatic and harrowing. Harvey’s sculptures and masks, which depict the Ye’ii (Holy People) at different stages in the process of Creation, draw from the stylized depictions of Ye’ii found in rugs (see Hastiin Klah) and paintings, but depart from interpretations by other artists in being both rustic and sometimes playful. To the base material—juniper, pine, cedar, and pin˜on (a high desert tree)—Harvey adds paint, horsehair, yucca, and (macaw) feathers (Andrews Pueblo Pottery). Harvey finds these materials ‘‘in my backyard. I do a lot of exploring’’ (Goode). While the artist finds what he needs at hand in the outer world to create his sculptures, his imagery comes from his inner world—from his dreams and visions. These visions, he said, ‘‘show me direction and what will probably work for me’’ (Goode). Wide Coyote Masked Figure (Andrews Pueblo Pottery) depicts a well-known personage in many native cultures. Coyote’s behavior generally is negative in versions of the Navajo Creation story, but he plays important roles and despite his evil behavior can be considered a Culture Hero. As a Trickster, Coyote’s horrible behavior teaches powerful moral lessons. Atop Harvey’s front-facing figure is a wide rectangular headdress, painted roughly with red, yellow, and white, which is divided into a triangle on top and dagger-like teeth below. Because of the way the paint is applied, the piece appears worn and ancient. The stylized, roughly carved figure wears feathers atop its masked head, formed by two sides of an equilateral triangle; one side is marked by an eyelike circle subdivided into eight, painted in primary colors; the other side is red, and it has a small, austere, cutout rectangle mouth. The figure, whose two hands are tied with blue string in front, wears geometric markings suggesting one of the masked dancers who represent the Ye’i. Rough and powerful, the small figure appears very old (because of its painted surface), yet contemporary (because of its bright colors and minimalist strength). Harvey’s masks are elemental and can be disturbing. Ye’i with Teeth (Andrews Pueblo Pottery) is carved on desert pine, and then painted. The mask is long and narrow, like an animal’s muzzle. Slightly more than half is taken up by a plain area of brown-grey, punctuated on two sides with ‘‘eyes’’

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from simple concentric circles: red, black, and a yellow center. The striations and subtle colorations in the weathered wood look like fur. The lower half consists of long, whitish-grey, tusk-like teeth in a black mouth: five teeth on top, one below. More teeth appear on the side. The textured upper half, the staring lidless eyes, and the long animal-like teeth combine to create a powerful being suggested using the most minimal detail and form. Many aspects of Navajo religion are reserved for practitioners, including objects such as masks, and information about beliefs. Their use by outsiders is taboo. Harvey has discussed this issue with elders, asking, ‘‘Was he going in a correct direction? Did he violate tribal restrictions? A majority expressed approval. His great-grandfather then talked with him at length to explain what he could and could not do’’ (Goode). Harvey is, however, committed to his art, and notes that he is compelled to paint, carve, and sculpt. Harvey presented his work in 2005 for the first time as a professional artist at the important Santa Fe Indian market, which is run by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts. His work was recognized with a second place award in abstract painting (oils), and a first place award in sculpture (mixed media). In 2006, Harvey received a first place award in oil painting, and in 2007, was awarded a first place in both categories (Andrews Pueblo Pottery). His modern imagery has inspired other artists, including a computer animation of the traditional story of ‘‘Coyote and the Flea’’ (Berger, Molten Pictures). Though still very young, in 2006 the Navajo Nation Museum presented an exhibition of Harvey’s earlier and contemporary work (titled Hajı´´ıne´´ı Emergence). Harvey’s sculptures and paintings have been collected in the southwest and eastern United States, as well as China, Japan, Israel, Australia, and Switzerland (Andrews Pueblo). He lives and works in Fort Defiance, Arizona. Part of the impulse for Harvey’s work comes from his preoccupation that Navajo culture ‘‘is disappearing . . . . Many of the old ways are fading. A lot of the youth are not interested. Parents are busy educating their kids to survive, and survival doesn’t include the Navajo inheritance’’ (Goode). In a way, Harvey is bringing sandpaintings to life (Goode). Harvey’s evocative paintings of the stages of creation build on diverse western art historical styles to make the nonhuman protagonists, which do not have standardized referents, beautiful and hauntingly present—for young Navajo and for others who appreciate his distinctive vision. Elayne Zorn Where to See Sheldon Harvey’s Work Andrews Pueblo Pottery, http://www.andrewspp.com/index.cfm?Area= ArtistDetails&ArtistUUID=9376618E-2F57-4538-BB97-2B11C297B312 Lilly Vigil Gallery, http://www.lillyvigilgallery.com/bio-Harvey.html

Bibliography Begay, Sararesa. ‘‘Dine´ Artist Inspired by the Masters.’’ Gallup Independent, October 31, 2006. http://www.gallupindependent.com/2006/oct/103106sb_dineartist. html.

James Havard Berger, Aaron. ‘‘Coyote and the Flea.’’ Molten Pictures. (Aaron Berger, Sheldon Harvey, Rhianna Yazzie, and Chris Kientz). http://www.moltenpictures.com/ coyote/coyote.html. Goode, Stephen. ‘‘Sheldon Harvey: Walking in Beauty.’’ World and I 19, no. 6 (June 2004): 82–87.

James Havard (b. 1937), Choctaw/Ojibwa (Chippewa) Painter. James Havard figures prominently in the larger art world and has ranked among its foremost painters for decades. An artist of deep insights, clarity, and intelligence, he has had a distinguished career spanning a range of related styles. Originally an exemplar of abstract expressionism, he currently creates mesmerizing images that reference ‘‘outsider’’ art, while revealing striking psychological undertones. He works from his studio in Santa Fe and exhibits at Allan Stone Gallery in New York, where his paintings continue to dazzle international art audiences. Havard was born in the city of Galveston on the Gulf coast of Texas, where oil fields dominate the landscape. During his childhood in the 1940s, the petroleum business was booming, and drilling companies hired extra workers every time oil was struck. The artist’s father was one of those hardworking ‘‘roughnecks,’’ continually moving on to the site of the next gusher. In later life, Havard’s father would proudly refer to his son as ‘‘the arteest’’ (Newmann 71). Havard assisted in running the family farm near Crosby, Texas, raising and tending the animals, and helping his mother. Originally from Alabama, she frequently talked about her family of origin, including her Native American father. Along with his siblings, Havard grew up seeing himself as part Indian. When he later became an artist, that identification was reflected in his work, and he began to collect Native art as soon as he could afford it. In addition, he participated in a number of Native invitational exhibitions over the years. Recently, however, Havard has expressed a concern that his Indian heritage might be more limited than it first appeared, and he has de-emphasized it. In an interview during 2006, he said, ‘‘My ancestry is all mixed up, mostly French/English, a little Choctaw and Chippewa, but I don’t talk about it any’’ (Sasse 35). Nevertheless, the artist does, as he now puts it, have ‘‘some Indian blood,’’ which was clearly a profound influence on his art and is reflected in the titles of many of his paintings, like Mimbres Skull and Mohave Lecture. Havard received his Bachelor’s degree in 1959 from Sam Houston State College (Huntsville, Texas), and then studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia) for five years. Always self-sufficient, he supported himself then with night-work as a technical illustrator. During that time, he also received two travel grants from the Academy, which allowed him to live and work for months in France, Spain, and London. This immersion in European culture stayed with the artist, who continues to visit there frequently. And when he moved to Santa Fe in 1989, he replicated a French country garden on the hillside terraces of his home.

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James Havard

During one of his first trips to Europe, Havard attempted to meet his favorite artist, the enigmatic metaphysical painter Giorgio Morandi—whose late stilllifes have the ephemeral presence of a mirage. Equipped with an official letter of introduction, Havard boarded a train to Bologna, where Morandi lived; the train, however, arrived in the middle of the night, much too late for him to seek out a total stranger. Starting out again the next morning, Havard read in the paper that Morandi had died the evening before. That sequence of events became an important episode in Havard’s life, perhaps symbolizing cyclical passage—as he and the great painter crossed in the night, one exiting his career while the other arrived at the threshold. After his early years shuttling between Philadelphia and Europe, Havard took up residence in New York City, where he lived for some time. While in his twenties, the artist began to exhibit his work around the country, from Washington, D.C. to California. By his thirties, he was showing internationally, and in 1977 he was included in an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. By then he had earned a reputation throughout the art world as one of the pioneers of abstract expressionism. Within that broad category, he created a highly individual style—using a trompe l’oeil technique (see Glossary) by which isolated symbols and marks seemed to hover in front of the canvas. Many of his paintings from this period reveal an iconic presence shaped by luscious paint strokes, ranging from broad impasto to subtly worked blushes of color. ‘‘Floating’’ before these forms are monochrome squiggles and minimal shapes. Although few in Havard’s audience were directly aware of his indigenous background, some viewers have found ‘‘the suggestion of medicine sticks, corn masks, and sand paintings’’ (Philbrook 273) in these enigmatic signs. It was this work that established Havard’s reputation and made him a recognized master of abstract illusionism. Always experimenting and evolving, Havard then developed a purer form of abstraction during his next phase, moving toward a type of action painting influenced by Willem de Kooning. There were broader gestures in these works, establishing an expansive framework that challenged the edges of the canvas. Many areas were less referential and more intuitive. This work was soon followed by a series called Mimbres that introduced the element of collage, initially by adding photographs or bits of paper to the paintings. These works began to be populated by figures, both painted and collaged, with references to tribal societies and a haunting sense of elemental realities. This direction reached its high point in a group of paintings shown at the Hokin Gallery in Palm Beach, Florida in 1993. In 1995, a life-threatening illness intervened, and Havard went through a difficult period of recovery over the next several years. Feeling a new sense of urgency and of confrontation with the self, the artist began developing a new series—one that many see as his best work to date. Raw and powerful, the work packs the punch of both art brut (see Glossary) and graffiti art. Its paint strokes often resemble drawing marks, made with a kind of jabbing, driving force. Additionally, this work features a striking emphasis on figuration, with similarities to the work of the acclaimed graffiti artist Michel

James Havard

Basquiat—but Havard’s work creates a sense of stillness rather than tumult, and alludes to the primordial rather than the passing scene. These works were presented in a highly successful solo exhibition at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York in 1996. Many of them contained the visual signatures of specific North American tribes, as to dress or object-making practices. In Woman with Apache Doll Portrait, for instance, the drawing of an Apache girl’s doll clearly reflects a specific historical work, very much like the one owned by the National Museum of the American Indian; the doll’s hair stands straight up, separating into three spiking tufts—just like the real doll, whose locks are made from strong, wiry horse hair. Similarly, in Mohave, an adult figure holds a child whose face is painted with vertical streaks in the traditional Mohave style. In these works, the looseness of Havard’s ‘‘drawing’’ style evokes a kind of ‘‘Rorschach test’’ reality, but unmistakable clues to the identities of each image are always present. The artist’s paintings have also revealed a fondness for the visual languages of various African peoples. His painting Songye, for instance, refers to the Songye tribe of Zaire, and the occupant of this image is an nkishi figure from that culture. The traditional sculpture is a double figure (back-to-back male and female) symbolizing power and fecundity, attributes which counteract evil influences. But Havard has gone far beyond referencing this icon—his image gives it the startling intensity of metamorphosis in progress. The two heads of his figure are angled downward, staring hard, as if amazed at their lower half. Their base seems to have swelled beyond normal size and even suggests a giant (seemingly upside-down) head, with two eyes focused straight ahead. Ironically, this situation seems to undermine one of the powers of the nkishi figure—its ability to see in two directions at once. With the force of a primal scream, the painting suggests that even elemental entities may experience the pangs of self-doubt. An artist of remarkable intellect and wide-ranging achievements, Havard has been compared to Jean Dubuffet, along with other masters of modern painting. At the same time, Havard’s work reveals countless other parallels and influences, including children’s art, pictographs, and self-taught (or naı¨ve) artists, from Bill Traylor to Joseph Cornell. Its vast range of imagery and technique is staggering, let alone its cultural references and psychological nuance. Ultimately, Havard is among the most eminent painters in this country, synthesizing myriad ethnic influences within his unique personal style. Deborah Everett Where to See Havard’s Work Allan Stone Gallery, New York City Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ

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Bibliography Allan Stone Gallery. James Havard. New York: Allan Stone Gallery Publications, 1997. Newmann, Dana. New Mexico Artists at Work. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2005. Philbrook Art Center. The Arts of the North American Indian. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1986. Sasse, Julie, Dianne Perry Vanderlip, and David Lynch. James Havard. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2006. St. James Press (Roger Matuz, ed.). St. James Guide to Native North American Artists. Detroit: St. James Press, 1998.

Faye HeavyShield (b. 1953), Blood (of the Blackfoot Confederacy) Sculptor and Installation Artist. In many ways an alchemist as much as an artist, Faye HeavyShield coaxes primal meanings from organic substance. Her sculpture and installations explore metaphysical connections between the abstract and the concrete. Like notes that shatter glass, her work has an otherworldly feel, yet derives from the body—each person’s first frame of reference and the metaphor for all that follows. Born and raised on the Blood Reserve in southern Alberta, her work draws heavily on family ties and her experiences as a Blackfoot woman. As a child, she was tossed between the conflicting realities of her traditional upbringing and her time at St. Mary’s, the Catholic boarding school she was forced to attend. The Church’s tendency to attach shame and guilt to the body and its issues came as a blow to the artist’s sensibilities. But most distasteful were the school’s efforts at cultural ‘‘assimilation,’’ based on the isolation of Native children from their families and cultural practices—along with prohibition of all indigenous languages. At the same time, HeavyShield had already witnessed events through her tribal-based home-life that made a lasting impression on her. In one interview she spoke of a crystalline moment when she watched her father quietly, gently skin a deer he had killed—with the animal’s eyes shining peacefully in death, almost willingly offering itself as a meal for her family. For the artist, this image had a near-mythic resonance, gesturing toward the raw materials used by her culture, like bone and wood, or tanned skins and canvas. The Blackfoot world revolved around affinities with nature and its varied life forms—especially their continual metamorphoses from one state into another, in a flowing continuum of spirit and substance. For HeavyShield, her personal history, along with her culture, have an ongoing presence through the mechanism of memory, and these two guideposts form the basis of her abstract art. For an exhibition in Kelowna (British Columbia) in 2002, the gallery’s brochure stated, ‘‘HeavyShield often begins her process with journal writing. From her writing she extracts particularly intense and poignant memories which she turns into drawings; these drawings inform her sculptures, which are often realized through the use of

Faye HeavyShield

multiples’’ (http://www.kelownaartgallery.com/2002/faye_heavyshield. htm). Like the vivid memories that she draws on, HeavyShield’s work is quintessentially distilled. Pared-down and concentrated, it is minimalist in form; nothing extra weighs it down. One of her best-known pieces, Aapaskaiyaawa (They are Dancing), is an installation that consists only of segments of yellow canvas, each a different size, hung individually from the ceiling. The top of each cloth is folded and attached to an opposing edge, origami-style; they become like cloaked figures, as if wearing long robes or blankets. The ‘‘figures’’ are arranged in an irregular semicircle, facing more than one direction, as though interacting or engaged in conversation. Their surfaces wave fluidly with the passage of air currents in the room, giving them a further sense of mingling, as their shadows interweave on the floor below. Inspired by HeavyShield’s recollections of her parents and others close to her, this work evokes her forebears’ presence, carrying them forward into our time-frame. The technique of using multiples is a recurring one in HeavyShield’s art. In 2002, she presented a work called body of land, where hundreds of tiny paper cones dotted the walls of a gallery space. Each tipi-like form was a ‘‘portrait,’’ a close-up photograph of human skin that, together with the others, grew into a throng of ‘‘human beings.’’ Almost like a locator map whose small flags create a pattern of ‘‘sightings,’’ the walls of the gallery became a record of individual presences. The artist said of it, ‘‘My environment includes family, language/narrative, the land, and the configuration of objects on the gallery walls is my attempt to convey the scope of this personal landscape. Each portrait is a body. Of knowledge, histories and stories both real and imagined’’ (http://www.kelownaartgallery.com/2002/faye_heavyshield.htm). With a similar sense of the cumulative, HeavyShield created an installation of miniature paper boats at Gallery Connexion (Fredericton, New Brunswick) in 2005. The canoe-like forms were delicate and oddly elegant—with the fragility and freshness of a child’s toy. They stretched across the floor in the same direction like a diminutive fleet—and their numbers gave them a sense of determination and purposefulness, despite the vulnerability of their size. As in body of land, this work speaks through a kind of silent strength and dignity—translated into lithe forms; their fluid placement builds rhythmic patterns that suggest a sense of gentle, but relentless movement. In 2004, HeavyShield created one of her most complex and stunning installations at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge), and it was simply called blood. Within the main exhibition area, she placed several large individual, but interrelated, components. On the wall at one end of the space, she drew two bare, branching trees, standing together as a stately, life-sized pair. Each tree held a set of dates in its limbs: 1910–1971 in one and 1916–1971 in the other (each apparently the limits of a lifetime). These abstract symbols represented her parents, while referencing her tribe’s tradition of placing their dead in trees. Toward the other end of the space stood a thick, freestanding wall, colored blood red and covered with a pattern of small, lozenge-shaped forms of the same hue. The forms suggested congealed bits of the matrix that they occupied. Midway between the two walls, a ‘‘stream’’ seemed to fall from

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the ceiling, splattering on the floor below. It was, again, blood-like in color, composed of long, thick cords that swelled at regular intervals. The swellings mirrored the small forms on the wall, and they were actually tiny bundles of cloth, like capsules or clots in shape, and red in color. They also resembled minute models of a swaddled baby. HeavyShield elucidates their meaning in one of her texts accompanying the installation, as she speaks of someone who ‘‘ . . . came to be in an instant . . . from a blood clot; his story [tells] just how small [was] his origin . . . ’’ (HeavyShield 41). The embryonic forms, then, marked the moment that life appears and the skeletal trees, like emptied veins, represented life’s end. The moving ‘‘fluid’’ in between evoked the passage of individuals through the world, as well as the link between them and their family members. It is this kind of elegant simplicity, this concrete metaphor that HeavyShield wields so powerfully. She is able to refocus venerable symbols and present them in fresh and contemporary ways. Using a visceral imagery, she weaves a kind of universal poetry about the human condition. My parents blessed me with language, kindness, and strength, my brothers and sisters taught me loyalty, and my children give me hope. This is blood. (HeavyShield 48) Deborah Everett Where to See HeavyShield’s Work Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Kelowna Art Gallery, BC MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON

Bibliography Lamecha, Vera. Faye HeavyShield: Venus as Torpedo. Regina, Saskatchewan: Dunlop Art Gallery Publications, 1995. Nemiroff, Diana, Roubert Houle, and Charlotte Townsend-Gault. Land Spirit Power. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada Publications, 1992. Smith, Paul Chaat. Blood. Lethbridge, Alberta: Southern Alberta Art Gallery Publications, 2004. http://ccca.finearts.yorku.ca/c/writing/r/renwick/ren001t.html http://www.kelownaartgallery.com/2002/faye_heavyshield.htm

Grace Henderson and Family. Grace Henderson Nez (1913–2006), Mary Lee Begay, (b. 1941), and Gloria Begay (b. 1970), Navajo Weavers. This entry about Grace Henderson and her family of weavers reminds us that artistic expression sometimes is carefully nurtured within multigenerational families. Informal education within the family is particularly important in the

Grace Henderson and Family

textile traditions of many native cultures, and especially so among Navajo people (see D.Y. Begay). Weaving is an essential part of a Navajo woman’s role; many learn the craft, though technical skill and aesthetics of course vary. Grace Henderson Nez and the weavers in her family—her daughter Mary Lee Begay, granddaughters Lenah Begay and Gloria Begay, and granddaughter-in-law Margaret—are among those weavers whose work represents some of the highest achievements of the textile arts. Of the 10,000 or so Navajo weavers, according to anthropologist Ann Lane Hedlund (NEA), ‘‘Grace Henderson Nez is especially deserving of recognition because she combines artistic excellence with the traditional values and spiritual concentration that serve as a model for all weavers of the region’’ (NEA). Grace Henderson Nez was born to Ma’ii deeshgiizhnii, the Coyote Pass People Clan, and born for Deeschii’nii, the Start of the Red Streaked People Clan, in 1913 in Kinlichee at the base of Ganado Mesa on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Like other women of her generation, she lived in a traditional way. She lived throughout her life in a hogan (round Navajo dwelling), farmed and raised sheep, and processed the sheep wool into perfectly spun yarns by shearing, carding, and spinning, then dyeing the yarns. Henderson Nez started weaving as a child, and wove throughout her life. Henderson Nez first wove when she was very small: ‘‘My earliest memory of weaving is when I was 5 or 6 years of age. I was taught by my grandmother and aunt. I was attracted by the designs and the rewards for a completed rug’’ (Eckstein). Navajo weaving is an art, but the income from rugs makes a woman

Grace Henderson Nez. Ganado Red. 1994. Woven rug. 4 ft  7 ft. © Grace Henderson Nez Family. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian.

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independent. ‘‘We had a lot of sheep,’’ said Henderson Nez; ‘‘my grandmother . . . my mother . . . and my aunt had a herd. I believe there were over 800 sheep’’ (Henderson Nez). Henderson Nez wove many rugs during her lifetime. She was fascinated with the process and extremely concerned about technical issues, but like other Navajo weavers, once she finished a rug she sold it. Henderson Nez demonstrated weaving during the 1970s at the Hubbell Trading Post (now a National Historic Site) in Ganado, Arizona. Throughout her life she worked on the huge turquoise-colored loom that her late husband built for her, but even though she continued to live in her traditional hogan, she was completely in touch with the modern world: one of her sons attended graduate school and is a college administrator, and her granddaughters attend college and studied high-tech subjects (Hedlund 1992). Henderson Nez wove rugs using many different styles, though she is best known for two principal styles: nineteenth-century designs called the ‘‘old styles’’ (see Bonar for examples) and the ‘‘Ganado’’ style from the region where she lived her entire life. Women from Ganado (and neighboring Klagetoh) weave distinctive rugs using a deep red color (achieved with synthetic dyes), in combination with white, gray, black and, sometimes, brown. The rugs ‘‘were famous for elaborate stepped diamonds within a series of patterned borders’’ (Hedlund 2004). Her rugs are not just technically perfect (which they are), but a marvel of bold yet sophisticated geometry. Her rug Woman’s Chief-Blanket Style Rug (1988) (Hedlund 1992, p. 29) was one of her favorite designs, and she wove many in that style. Historically, wealthy individuals owned such high-quality textiles (erroneously called ‘‘Chief’s Blankets’’). The principal color of this textile is deep red. The surface is divided lengthwise into five broad bands: three predominantly red bands containing dark blue crosses and stripes at the top, middle, and bottom, separated by two bands of eleven alternating black and white stripes. The upper and lower red bands each contain three dark blue symmetrical crosses (with small black rectangles at the four points of the cross), separated by narrow stripes: the top narrow stripes are red and black, and the bottom narrow stripes are white and black (meeting the long white and black striped bands). The wide center red band has three dark blue crosses separated by alternating narrow and wide dark blue stripes. The overall impression is of symmetrically balanced yet quietly pulsating design. Some weavers (and, especially, non-Navajo) interpret the geometric shapes as having symbolic meanings, but to other weavers, they are just designs. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, ‘‘in addition to creating textiles with complex and balanced designs, she [Henderson Nez] reveals her technique in her ability to select the right wool quality, yarn weight, and weaving texture to produce strong and perfectly even rugs and blankets’’ (NEA). According to Henderson Nez, ‘‘to excel in weaving, a weaver must have a design plan in mind—size, color and which materials to use. Spiritually, a weaver is someone who is dedicated, a hard worker, independent, responsible, and has the will to teach and share with the younger generation. An authentic rug or artwork is displayed by spiritual participation’’ (Eckstein). Henderson Nez increasingly worked in the bold Ganado style when she became older: ‘‘I

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can’t weave fast anymore. So if you’re young you can weave and weave and weave. When you become my age, you can’t create your design. You can’t see it. Sometimes I wish I were young’’ (Henderson Nez). Grace Henderson Nez’s textiles are in many private and permanent collections. Her artistic achievement was recognized with the Museum of Indian Arts and Crafts in Santa Fe’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, and the Lifetime Honor of a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 2005 (the United States’s highest honor for an artist working in folk and traditional arts). When asked why she continued weaving, Henderson Nez said that ‘‘my children, grandchildren, and my great grandchildren are my inspiration for weaving. And weaving is my occupation, livelihood, and my life’’ (Eckstein). Henderson’s daughter Mary Lee Begay was born to Ma’ii deeshgiizhnii, the Coyote Pass People Clan, and born for Kiyaa’a´anii, the Towering House People Clan, in 1941 at Ganado, Arizona. She explains that ‘‘I remember that my mother set up a loom for me . . . I was eight or nine years old. First, my mom used to help me. And then she encouraged me to do it by myself—all by myself . . . ’’ (M. Begay). She recalls that ‘‘I also herded sheep . . . . took care of them. And my mother told me to take the spindle with me so I could practice. That’s where I learned to spin’’ (M. Begay). Navajo children are encouraged to be very independent, and it is expected that they will exercise that independence in their weaving. While weavers in some families sometimes collaborate on projects, Henderson Nez and her daughter Begay do not: ‘‘they keep their identities separate and, they say, keep peace in the family’’ (Hedlund 1992, p. 28). Mary Lee Begay has woven at the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado since 1971, including commissions to copy old-style Navajo textiles (Hedlund 1992, p. 30). When weavers copy designs, they typically alter the design or change colors as they wish, but Begay also could weave and copy exact when producing textiles for historic purposes. However, she received many commissions to create ‘‘innovative contemporary tapestries and shows in urban art galleries’’ (Hedlund 1992, p. 30). When she weaves at the Hubbell Trading Post, Begay wears old-style Navajo clothing, but at home and when doing chores she wears modern dress. She and her husband teach their children traditional Navajo religion and culture, but also expect them to obtain higher education and work outside the reservation. Begay’s textiles are renowned for their technical perfection, strong and balanced design, and sense of color. Her deep red, black, and white Hubble Revival Rug (1981) is a copy she made for the Denver Art Museum of an old-style textile, based on a 1905 painting by Bertha Little (that and other paintings were commissioned by Trader J. L. Hubbard) (Hedlund 1992, pp. 30–31). At the center of the rectangular rug’s geometric shapes are two large symmetrical red crosses, each of which is outlined with stripes in white, red, and black: outside each corner of the crosses are small black crosses. Two white stripes at the top and bottom of the rug, which is oriented vertically, echo each large cross’s white outline; a black line that turns into serrated edges along the length of the textile enclose the crosses and lines, and the black line in turn is surrounded by

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the same deep red of the background. The geometric shapes and their outlines alternately recede and come forward, as the eye is continually drawn from center to edge and back again. The technically perfect rug achieves an overall effect that is dramatic and intense. Mary Lee Begay’s work has been recognized in different ways. Her textiles have been exhibited at many galleries and museums, including the University of Arizona Museum of Art and Kennedy Museum of Art. In recognition of Begay’s decades of demonstrating weaving at the Hubble Trading Post, the Friends of Hubble Trading Post National Historic Site dedicates one of its scholarships to Navajo and Hopi students in her name. Begay is a deeply spiritual person, but she makes it clear that her weavings come from hard work. ‘‘I weave everyday . . . I weave all day at work and then when I come home I also weave. So I weave summer, winter, fall. Year round I weave’’ (M. Begay). Regarding historic textiles, Begay says about the so-called Chief’s Blankets that ‘‘these were the leaders’ blankets . . . . The Chief’s Blankets make me sad. I often feel sad for them. I feel sad for the blankets because of their significance . . . . because a long time ago our people made the Long Walk . . . . They were used in times of hunger, in times of imprisonment’’ (M. Begay). (The Long Walk was a series of forced removals in 1863–86 from the traditional Navajo lands to Fort Sumner or Bosque Redondo; hundreds died during the 300-mile trek. Following the signing of a treaty with the United States, survivors walked back in 1868: Ackerly). Through her work and life, Begay demonstrates her commitment to the continuity of Navajo culture. Mary Lee Begay’s daughters Lenah Begay and Gloria Begay were born to Ma’ii deeshgiizhnii, the Coyote Pass People Clan, and born for To´ dı´ch’ı´i’nii, the Bitter Water People Clan, in 1970, at Ganado, Arizona. Mary Lee Begay started to teach her daughters to weave when they were small girls. According to Gloria Begay, ‘‘I remember that my mother set up a loom for me . . . I was eight or nine years old . . . I remember we had a really small loom and we started one summer . . . my sister and I shared the loom . . . . Then we took a really long break . . . . until we were ten’’ (G. Begay). Gloria Begay wove some of her first rugs using yarn left over from her mother’s rugs, which is a common practice among young weavers. She completed Moki Striped Rug (1991) by weaving at night while attending summer school at Navajo Community College (Hedlund 1992, pp. 32–33). The stunning blue, black, red, and white rug is strikingly contemporary. The background of the vertically oriented rectangular rug is formed by alternating violet-blue and black stripes. Nine white squares, aligned three per row, are enclosed by wide black and white stripes, which gives each square the effect of floating atop the darker stripes. Building on traditional aesthetics, the rug exemplifies the best of modern textile design. Gloria Begay studied computer science, and does not work as a full-time weaver. However, whenever she can, on weekends and during the summer, Begay returns to the reservation and weaves: ‘‘I know it’s very important because of the cultural aspects. The Navajo traditional heritage is very important . . . . It’s [weaving] sacred’’ (G. Begay). Trained within a lineage of

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outstanding weavers, Begay knows she needs to work hard to create an independent artistic vision: ‘‘My mom is an artist. I’d better keep weaving so that I can compete . . . . I’m an artist already, too. Watch out!’’ (Hedlund 1992, p. 30). Elayne Zorn Where to See the Henderson Family’s Work Grace Henderson Nez, Mary Lee Begay, Gloria Begay:

Arizona State Museum, http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/exhibits/ navajoweave/contemp/learning_to_weave.shtml Kennedy Museum of Art ‘‘Weaving is Life’’ Exhibition: ‘‘Virtual Tour: Henderson Begay Family Section,’’ http://www.ohiou.edu /museum/weaving/begayfamilymain.html ‘‘Virtual Tour: Henderson Begay Family Section Interactive Notebook,’’ http:// www.ohiou.edu/museum/weaving/begaybookgo.html ‘‘Virtual Tour: Henderson Begay Family Section QTVR,’’ http://www. ohiou.edu/museum/weaving/begayfamilyqtvr.html ‘‘Virtual Tour: Henderson Begay Family Section Video Kiosk,’’ http:// www.ohiou.edu/museum/weaving/begayvideo.html Grace Henderson Nez:

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO The Gloria F. Ross Center for Tapestry Studies, Arizona State Museum, Tucson, AZ http://arts.endow.gov/honors/heritage/Heritage05/Nez.html Mary Lee Begay:

Toh-Ahtin Gallery, http://www.toh-atin.com/items/ganado-c1379 http://www.friendsofhubbell.org/MaryBegay.htm Bibliography Ackerly, Neal W. ‘‘A Navajo Diaspora: The Long Walk to Hwe´eldi,’’ 1998. http:// members.tripod.com/~bloodhound/longwalk.htm. Begay, Gloria. ‘‘Virtual Tour: Henderson Begay Family Section Interactive Notebook.’’ In Kennedy Museum of Art ‘‘Weaving is Life’’ Exhibition. http:// www.ohiou.edu/museum/weaving/begaybookgo.html. Begay, Mary Lee. ‘‘Virtual Tour: Henderson Begay Family Section Interactive Notebook.’’ In Kennedy Museum of Art ‘‘Weaving is Life’’ Exhibition. http:// www.ohiou.edu/museum/weaving/begaybookgo.html. Bonar, Eulalie H., ed. Woven by the Grandmothers: Nineteenth-Century Navajo Textiles from the National Museum of the American Indian. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1996.

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Maria Hupfield Hedlund, Ann Lane. ‘‘Grace Henderson Nez, Mary Lee Begay, Gloria Begay.’’ In Reflections of the Weaver’s World, edited by Ann Lane Hedlund, 28–32. Denver: Denver Art Museum, 1992. ———. Navajo Weaving in the Late Twentieth Century. Kin, Community, and Collectors. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004. ———. ‘‘Speaking for or About Others? Evolving Ethnological Perspectives. Museum Anthropology 18, no. 3 (October 1994): 32–43. Henderson Nez, Grace. ‘‘Virtual Tour: Henderson Begay Family Section Interactive Notebook.’’ In Kennedy Museum of Art ‘‘Weaving is Life’’ Exhibition. http://www.ohiou.edu/museum/weaving/begaybookgo.html. McLerran, Jennifer, ed. Weaving Is Life: Navajo Weavings from the Edwin L. and Ruth E. Kennedy Southwest Native American Collection. Athens, OH: Kennedy Museum of Art/Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). ‘‘Grace Henderson Nez.’’ http:// www.nea.gov /honors/heritage/fellows/fellow.php?.id=2005_08. National Endowment for the Arts. ‘‘Grace Henderson Nez. Interview with Mary Eckstein.’’ http://arts.endow.gov/honors/heritage/Heritage05/Nez2.html.

Maria Hupfield (b. 1975), Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) Sculptor, Installation- and Performance-Artist. An artist whose aesthetic is both sensual and elegant, Maria Hupfield creates sculpture and installation art that are as fresh as they are affecting. Also known for her work as a performance artist, she shifts her nation’s visual traditions to contemporary frameworks and universal implications. Hupfield grew up around Parry Sound in rural Ontario, Canada, close to the home of her grandparents, who filled her life with art and music. They kept their walls adorned with paintings, and they introduced the artist to classical concerts and exhibitions of contemporary and traditional art around Toronto. Her grandfather especially loved art and painted in his spare time; he also gave Hupfield her first lesson in perspective drawing. Her mother (Anishinaabe) is also formally trained as an artist, having studied painting at Sheridan College in Toronto; Hupfield’s father was studying new media and photography at Sheridan when he met her mother there. As a child, Hupfield was always making things and was recognized as an artist by classmates and teachers. She learned about her Anishinaabe heritage from her mother, aunts, and cousins, along with numerous teachers who lived in the Georgian Bay area around her home. Many of them created intricate quill- and beadwork which had a strong impact on Hupfield; the artist also studied beadwork pieces made by her grandmother and continuously conducts research on both historical and contemporary examples. At the same time, her in-depth knowledge of local plants—their uses and attributes—has directly affected the development of motifs in her artwork. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in both art and art history at Sheridan College in 1999, with an aboriginal studies minor at the University of Toronto. In 2004, she was

Maria Hupfield

awarded her Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from York University in Toronto. During that period, the number of contemporary artists figuring among her influences began to multiply, expanding her view of art and its role in the world; that group included sculptors Ron Noganosh, Piero Manzoni, and Vessna Perunovich, printmaker Annie Pootoogook, and sculptor and performance artist Jimmie Durham, along with modern master Marcel Duchamp. Hupfield’s work is informed by multiple aspects of her heritage, but perhaps most visibly by its bead- and quillwork. She takes linear designs from beaded textiles and transforms them into images that are as unusual as they are contemporary. In her striking work My Grandmother’s Home, Hupfield created an almost flat earthwork with references to culture, family, and the natural world. Both an installation and a performance, this work was filmed in progress, as the artist ritually created it. She began at sunrise, at an outdoor site in Calgary, Alberta near Fort Calgary—the first structure in the city and a stronghold for European settlers as they displaced Native people in the area. Initially, she laid a circle of rocks (as the ‘‘footprint’’ of a traditional tiipii), while leaving a marked opening, or entrance, facing east. She then carried containers of earth into the center of the circle, where she knelt and formed the earth into a raised, Anishinaabe floral pattern, radiating outward from the center. Each time she left to get more earth, she went out through the circle’s eastern ‘‘doorway’’— referencing the work’s ultimate framework, a solar-oriented world—and on returning, she entered through it again. She worked for a single day, setting a time-limit at sundown for the duration of her actions. The performance of My Grandmother’s Home is a work filled with graceful, concentrated movements, and both the installation and its materials are strikingly cyclical. Not only is the basic form a circle, but the elaboration of its center is radial in arrangement; additionally the flowers in the design are actually the organs that reproduce their plants, while soil is the archetypal material of fertility—the matrix that nurtures seeds and yields vegetation every year. The central image Hupfield used is a traditional one, abstracted from nature by the Anishinaabe in the 1800s and applied at the time to beadwork on textiles. In this case, the artist completes the loop by lifting the design from Anishinaabe textiles and returning it to the natural world. A related work is My Mother’s Skirt, conceived when Hupfield learned about why women wear skirts for ceremonial occasions. As she remarks, ‘‘If you wear a skirt, then you are carrying a circle with you, the circle made by the hoop [or hem] of your skirt . . . [It is] connected to the gift women have . . . to give life, . . . guided by the moon and [natural] cycles’’ (interview 2007). The circle then is the projection of the skirt’s hem on the floor below it, like a noonday shadow. In this case that secondary image becomes realized in cut red linoleum and is pierced by the traditional Anishinaabe floral pattern. It was inspired by Hupfield’s memory of her mother ’s skirt, ‘‘where [the artist] would hide’’ as a child—a sphere of warmth and protection that seemed as steadfast as planetary motion. By shifting the perspective downward toward the ground (rather than the usual eye-level view of art objects), the artist upends our accustomed sense of spatial relationships. Hupfield says she would like to think that viewers might walk onto the circle, entering her mother’s

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space, or that they might envision the woman whose presence would cast a shadow like the circle in this piece (interview 2007). Another striking work by Hupfield, Chew Toy, goes even further in reversing the customary expectations for its design. It isolates the form of the Anishinaabe beaded flowers from their usual textile support, and suspends them midair. In this case, the linear design elements are made of pieces of dried rawhide, and when suspended (and no longer attached to a planar structure), they fold in upon themselves to become loosely biomorphic, like a web of foliage and blossoms. The individual petals are clearly visible, and the vine-like stems intertwine in an elegant meshwork, whose shadow on the wall in back extends its presence. Other works by Hupfield further embody her sensitivity to rich surfaces and graceful Maria Hupfield. Suspended Dome/Chew Toy. 2005. forms. Arrayed on a wall, Red Rawhide and mixed-media (Sculpture). Dimensions variable. Skins takes organic entities © Maria Hupfield. (leaves, twigs, pine cones) and coats them in a creamy red substance with the sensuality of beeswax. The play on words in the title reminds the viewer of the superficiality of linking identity to surface color, even as the objects allow us to revel in the beauty of their exterior. Additionally, in this case, the covering is so thick that it masks the details of the forms beneath it and shifts them subtly toward assuming a different shape. Similarly, Flap Flap Flap is an elegant installation of fluttering bird forms within a marked zone on a floor. Its poignant surprise of airborne creatures laid out on the floor (with wings still spread for flight) confronts the viewer with a challenge of perception as to the actual condition of the birds. The resultant consternation, and urge to examine more closely, is matched, if not surmounted, by the beauty of the forms. The depth of Hupfield’s body of work is mirrored by her commitment to her community. For years she has directed a program called 7th Generation Image

Maria Hupfield

Makers (of Native Child and Family Services of Toronto). She developed it from a summer mural workshop for Native youth into a year-round program, giving young people access to mentors, elders, and professional artists. Her belief in the power and accessibility of art has fueled this remarkable community work, as well as her own creativity. Ultimately, Hupfield is an artist of expansive vision and sensitivity, creating images with a vibrant presence, while she simultaneously enhances the well-being of her community. Deborah Everett Where to See Hupfield’s Work Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives/Aboriginal Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON Health Canada Headquarters, Toronto, ON Indian Art Centre, Hull, QC Student Centre of York University, Toronto, ON

Bibliography Hill, Richard William. Wagon Burner This! Princess Moonrider That! Toronto: ASpace Gallery Publications, 2006. Laronde, Sandra, ed. Sky Woman: Indigenous Women Who Have Shaped, Moved, or Inspired Us. Penticton, BC: Theytus Books, 2005. http://www.mstfestival.org/artists01.html

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J Terrol Dew Johnson (b. 1975), Tohono O’odham Basketweaver. Terrol Dew Johnson is a young artist, teacher, and community leader, who creates baskets that are profoundly new in their mix of surfaces and materials. Deeply engaged with cultural revitalization in the broadest sense, his work, whether in community activism or art, exemplifies culture as philosophy and practices based in traditions yet actively renegotiated and invented—and therefore always vigorous and fresh. Johnson was born in Sells, Arizona, in 1975, and is a member of the Tohono O’odham (Desert People), who were formerly known as the Papago. Johnson’s mother, Betty Ann Poncho, works as a bookkeeper for the tribe. His father, Roger Johnson, recently retired after working nearly forty years at the nearby Kitt Peak National Observatory. Johnson grew up when Tohono O’odham people relied on stores for their food, rather than gathering it in the desert. But, he says ‘‘I was very fortunate that my grandparents were still alive at the time, and my parents, my mother especially and my aunts and uncles . . . grew up like that [gathering food in the desert].’’ Johnson said that he heard ‘‘stories of my mom going out and spending a month in the desert . . . and she said it wasn’t fun and games, it was work because it determined if they were going to eat or not . . . . I grew up being taken out in the desert’’ (Food Systems and Rural Development). Residing in the Sonora Desert, the Tohono O’odham people are renowned for their fine baskets. Like other successful desert groups, over millennia they developed a profound knowledge of their environment, which made it possible to not only survive but thrive in what, to outsiders, appears to be a forbidding environment. Traditionally, Tohono O’odham women weave baskets (men make cradles), but Johnson’s mother encouraged Johnson when he learned to weave baskets, starting at age ten. Johnson recalls that ‘‘I learned my stuff, my weaving in school here on the reservation. It was part of the Arizona history class where the culture part came in and, you know, basket weaving. I did that and was good at it’’ (Food Systems and Rural Development). ‘‘I’ve always been touchy-feely and good with my hands . . . and it was fun!’’ (Krol, p. 29). He says that he was ‘‘brought up to do things, to help people, to help your family—to do different things, to express your ideas, to communicate any way you can’’ (interview 2008).

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Tohono O’odham peoples created baskets for both utilitarian purposes and for ceremonies. Baskets were used to carry babies (cradles) and burdens; to store foods (including granaries); as water jars; and as bowls (shallow and deep) and trays. Their baskets are known beyond their tribal boundaries: ‘‘for hundreds of years, Tohono O’odham weavers have traded their baskets with other Native and non-Native peoples’’ (Tohono O’odham Basketweavers Organization). Tohono O’odham baskets do not incorporate dyes, instead relying on the naturally occurring colors of their materials. Beargrass serves as the coil (warp); yucca (green and white), Banana yucca (red), and devil’s claw (black) are used as the weft. Some very ‘‘traditional baskets still use desert willow and cattail. Miniature baskets are often made out of horsehair ’’ (Tohono O’odham Basketweavers Organization). In the last century, as the desert environment has changed due to farming and more recently, pesticide use, basketweavers have had to adapt and use different materials. Basket designs also have changed over time. Older designs were geometric; later baskets included naturalistic figures of plants, animals, or people. Johnson’s baskets, however, are unlike those of anyone else. Perhaps it is because, as he says, ‘‘I get bored easily’’ (Krol, p. 29). He is best known for baskets that combine large gourds with woven sections at the top and, sometimes, base. The tonal variations in the orange-brown hard, smooth, symmetrical gourds contrast in color and texture with the subtle varied beiges and light greens of the fibrous bundled beargrass coils. While some coiled rows are perfectly horizontal, as in a traditional basket, towards the center the basketry lines undulate and curve around the gourd, punctuated horizontally at regular intervals by the fibrous stitched weft. A work simply titled Basket Terrol Dew Johnson. Bronze gourd basket. 2003. Bronze, vegetal fiber, and sinew (artificial). 13 in.  9 in. (diameter). achieves a distinctive joining of © Terrol Dew Johnson. Photo courtesy of the National Museum opposites—the softness of fiber of the American Indian. and hardness of cast metal,

Terrol Dew Johnson

shiny patina and matte grass, gourd and basket—that asks for repeated viewing to confirm this union. The title is ironic because traditional basketry techniques were used to make the piece, but no traditional basket would be partly composed of metal, nor would it be so open to the air. Though opposed in material and texture, the metal gourd and the fiber basketry are similar in that each is both open and closed. The woven, closed top of the basket appears to fall, as if of its own weight, into halves seemingly pulled apart by gravity as they descend in increasingly open lines toward its base. The gourd, whose subtle variations in tone could be those of a natural gourd except for its surface hardness and shine, is solid on two sides, but precariously open in its center. The soft fiber partially fills the hard gourd, together forming a basket that continually demands reviewing. Regarding this ‘‘signature piece,’’ Johnson explains that ‘‘a few years ago, I decided to apply traditional techniques in new ways by weaving on top of gourds. This piece takes that contemporary approach a step further. I cast a large gourd in bronze, worked to get a nice patina, then wove using traditional basketry materials [braided bear grass] on top of the bronze. It reflects my connection to tradition as well as the diversity of contemporary life. This piece walks in two worlds, just as many Native people do’’ (Johnson, Terrol Dew. ‘‘Basket.’’ In ‘‘The Language of Native American Baskets from the Weavers’ View.’’ http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/baskets/images/detail/view_ terrol_basket262578.jpg). In 2005, Johnson started collaborating with New York architects Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch (Aranda/Lasch) on the architecture and design project ‘‘Baskets.’’ Together, they seek ‘‘to connect two distinct cultural practices, basketry and architecture, through their shared foundation of patternmaking’’ (Artists Space). In addition to his work as an artist, Johnson is codirector and cofounder (with Tristan Reader) of TOCA (Tohono O’odham Community Action), started in 1996. Johnson also founded and directs TOCA’s TOBO (Tohono O’odham Basketweaver’s Organization). TOCA is renowned for its multifaceted work, encompassing community food systems (targeted at enhancing use of traditional foods to help combat a startlingly high level of adultonset diabetes), arts and culture, a youth/elders outreach program, and TOBO. As a result of his community activism, Johnson was named one of the top ten young community leaders by the Do Something organization in 1999. TOCA was honored with a Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 2001, and Johnson and Reader were awarded a Leadership for a Changing World Award from the Ford Foundation in 2002. One of Johnson’s baskets won the Arizona State Museum’s 2003 Southwest Indian Art Award of Excellence. His work was included in the major exhibition ‘‘The Language of Native American Baskets: From the Weavers’ View’’ (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution) and has been shown at galleries such as the American Indian Community House Gallery. A solo exhibition was held in 2007–2008 at the Fulton-Hayden

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Memorial Art Gallery of the Amerind Foundation. His work is in private and public collections. Johnson has written about baskets (Johnson), and served as a curator. He cocurated ‘‘Beyond Contemporary Native American Basketry’’ at the American Indian Community House Gallery, and was one of four Native basketmakers (including Julia Parker) invited to a seminar at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, during the planning stages of the exhibition ‘‘The Language of Native American Baskets from the Weavers’ View’’ (National Museum of the American Indian). Johnson was a curatorial advisor for the ‘‘Carriers of Culture: Living Native Basket Tradition’’ project, which originated at the Michigan State Museum, in collaboration with National Museum of the American Indian and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Studies of the Smithsonian Institution, other museums, and Native American basketry associations, including the TOBO. Baskets are an intimate part of daily life; they hold not just physical materials, but traditions and philosophy. As TOBO notes, ‘‘in the Tohono O’odham language, there is no word for ‘art’ . . . . Weavers try to live in ways that bring together the material, spiritual and aesthetic worlds. In basketry, beauty and utility are joined together. Some call it art . . . most basketweavers simply call it life’’ (Tohono O’odham Basketweavers Organization). Johnson says that, ‘‘many times I dream a design, and it haunts me until I actually weave it. Heritage and vision combine in my work, reflecting the world in which I live’’ (TOCA Online). Concerning his innovative art-forms, Johnson states, ‘‘the sky is the limit!’’ (Krol, p. 29). Elayne Zorn Places to See Terrol Johnson’s Work Blue Raven Gallery & Gifts, Tucson, AZ Central Arts Collective, Tucson, AZ National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Tohono Village Trading Post, Tucson, AZ http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/baskets/subpage.cfm?subpage=view_ terrol http://www.tocaonline.org/

Bibliography Artists Space [New York, NY]. ‘‘Architecture & Design Project Series. Aranda/ Lasch and Terrol Dew Johnson: Baskets.’’ http://www.artistsspace.org/ exhibitions/2006/when_artists_say/when_artists_say.html. Bernstein, Bruce. ‘‘Terrol Johnson.’’ In The Language of Native American Baskets: From the Weavers’ View, 28–31. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian, 2003. Food Systems and Rural Development (program of W. K. Kellogg Foundation). ‘‘Interviewee: Terrol Johnson.’’ Food Systems and Rural Development

Brian Jungen Newsletter, June 1, 2006. http://www.wkkf.org/default.aspx?tabid=68& CID=4&ProjCID=19&ProjID=120&TID=1246&NID=32&LanguageID=0. Johnson, Terrol Dew. ‘‘Basket.’’ In ‘‘The Language of Native American Baskets from the Weavers’ View.’’ http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/baskets/ images/detail/view_terrol_basket262578.jpg Johnson, Terrol Dew, Jody Folwell, Ann E. Marshall, Diana F. Pardue, Tristen Reader, and Diza Sauers. Hold Everything!: Masterworks of Basketry and Pottery from the Heard Museum. Phoenix: Heard Museum/Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2001. Krol, Debra Utacia. ‘‘Terrol Dew Johnson: Pushing the Basket Boundaries.’’ Native Peoples, December 29, 2005, 27–32. National Park Service. ‘‘Material Culture of the Pima, Papago, and Western Apache.’’ Field Division of Education. Historical Handbook, 2001. http:// www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/Berkeley/beals1/beals1g.htm. TOCA Online. Tohono O’odham Community Action. ‘‘Terrol Dew Johnson.’’ http://www.tocaonline.org/Gallery/Artists/Terrol%20Johnson.htm. Tohono O’odham Basketweavers Organization (TOBO). ‘‘More About Baskets.’’ http://www.tocaonline.org/Programs/Basketweavers/Basketweavers.htm #More.

Brian Jungen (b. 1970), Dane-zaa (Beaver-Athabaskan) Sculptor, Painter, and Installation Artist. Brian Jungen is a remarkably inventive and articulate artist, whose incisive contemporary work is among the hottest on the global art scene. Yet despite the dizzying attention he’s received from international publications and prestigious institutions, he remains profoundly focused on the social and economic inequities that define postmodern life. Deeply intuitive, superbly well-read and intellectually gifted, Jungen is, in many ways, a ‘‘Renaissance man’’ of our time. Jungen was born and raised in Fort St. John, an isolated logging town on the ancestral land of his people in British Columbia. His Swiss father and Danezaa mother both died when he was eight, after which he lived with his father’s sister and husband. Growing up on the family farm there, he developed a fascination with animals at an early age. As a child he was constantly drawing them—an activity fueled by his exposure to indigenous mythology and storytelling, in which animals play a central role. This emphasis is clear in numerous Native traditions, including the masks of the Northwest Coast nations adjacent to Dane-zaa land. A lasting cross-cultural influence, the masks would later play a major role in Jungen’s art. Jungen has remarked that growing up in a rural area left him with a craving for the high-level energy of the city. Depictions of urban life on television were especially attractive, where lifestyles seemed as varied as ethnic groups. ‘‘The city seemed to offer an escape from the sense of social and psychological isolation I had experienced as a child’’ (Higgs 18). After graduating from high school, Jungen moved to Vancouver and attended Emily Carr College of Art, from which he received his Diploma of Visual Arts in 1992. At that time,

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Vancouver’s vibrant art community was intensely influenced by conceptualism (see Glossary). Accordingly, Jungen’s work during that period, and even during his preceding years in public school tended toward ideational content, as opposed to naturalism. The artist has remarked that, in his experience with art classes, ‘‘representations of animals [are generally] frowned upon’’ (Vancouver Art Gallery 130). Not surprisingly then, his work at the time offered visual cues to issues and ideas, rather than full-blown imagery, and it often took the form of abbreviated figurative paintings in a cartoon-like, neo-Pop style. In 1992, after completing his bachelor’s degree, Jungen moved to New York City. While there, he temporarily stopped making art, as dealing with urban survival became a full-time preoccupation. He worked as an art shipper—a job that taught him much about the commercial side of the art world. At one point, Jungen met and became friends with Nicole Eisenman, a rising ‘‘art star’’ whose sudden visibility offered further lessons about the art scene. By 1994, Jungen began to feel overwhelmed by the stresses of living in New York, and he returned to Vancouver with a new dedication to making art. Within the next few years, Jungen began a series of sculptures that would catapult him to international attention: Prototypes for New Understanding. These works, which the artist created from 1998 through 2005, form a group of masklike objects made from segments of the popular Nike sneaker style ‘‘Air Jordan trainer.’’ Jungen cut up and reassembled pieces of the shoe in a variety of striking configurations, all resembling various Northwest Coast masks. One of the works suggests regalia in the form of a killer whale, another a raven, and yet another a bear-like creature. Some of them introduce human features, like Prototype #9, whose ‘‘lips’’ are pursed, as though emitting a deep and guttural moan. Another work, Prototype #17, suggests the shape of Tsimshian hats, with their broad conical base, tall slender crown, and even the occasional decorative projection. The range of objects and entities evoked by these sculptures is stunning, as is their ability to inhabit, and comment on, multiple realities at the same time. The parallels between Jungen’s ‘‘prototypes’’ and historical Northwest Coast masks are powerful and uncanny. However, their minimalist aesthetic and high-tech materials place them squarely in the domain of contemporary art—especially their aura of pop culture and its commodity-driven base (so perfectly embodied by the luxury sneakers). Additionally, the high-contrast color scheme (red, black, and white only) echoes the traditional palette of Northwest Coast art. And the crisp, emblematic forms reveal the shared aesthetic of modern sports design and the bright, modular components of Northwest Coast art. But the engagement between different cultures, as well as old and new sensibilities, runs even deeper, and it speaks to the transformation of ancient art into commodities for sale as trinkets. Jungen’s initial interest in the phenomenon of ‘‘tourist art’’ was spiked when he settled in Vancouver. Northwest Coast imagery seemed to be everywhere— on tee shirts, on signage, in shops at every corner. Its varied forms continually reduced ancient art to watered-down mementos, tailored to a tourist’s sense of aesthetics. Nowhere in this new version of indigenous objects would a consumer encounter the difficult life issues that tribal cultures confront squarely.

Brian Jungen

Nor did it remind viewers of the brutal battles between native cultures and ‘‘settlers.’’ Its overriding sense was of a ‘‘new-age’’ worldview where all may partake of other cultural traditions without effort or fear of psychological consequences. In a world where tourists tend to come from industrial societies and mass-produced realities, the inevitable boredom with homogeneity drives a thirst for the exotic; at the same time, contact with the unknown (or barely known) entails risk, by introducing markedly different worldviews that may challenge one’s own. ‘‘Tourist art’’ seeks to provide the advantages without the disadvantages: the buyer gets something new and different, but in a diluted form that requires no reassessments of one’s own way of life or history. The misguided banality of this social safety harness is blatantly exposed as a subtext of Jungen’s objects. As the artist put it, ‘‘by manipulating the Air Jordan shoes, you could evoke specific cultural traditions while simultaneously amplifying the process of cultural corruption and assimilation. The Nike ‘mask’ sculptures seemed to articulate a paradoxical relationship between a consumerist artifact and an ‘authentic’ native artifact’’ (Vancouver Art Gallery 30). Another of Jungen’s very unusual works is a series of life-sized, ‘‘skeletal models’’ of whales, based on displays in natural history museums. On closer inspection, the viewer finds that, instead of assemblages of bones, these structures are constructed from plastic stacking chairs. Despite their mundane materials, the ‘‘models’’ are elegant and strangely moving, perhaps more so because they are suspended within our space—without display cases—where they sweep the viewer into the fluid rhythm of their lines. Jungen’s work is immensely complex, and layered with multiple levels of content and social inquiry. One of his recurring themes is that of class structures in a global society. Just as the Nike shoes, for instance, reference a population of affluent consumers, they also cite the sweatshop origins of the object (for which various corporations are notorious)—as well as the art-display techniques used in boutiques like Niketown. In a related work, Jungen made a ‘‘basketball court’’ using the tabletop surfaces of sewing machines from sweatshops; again he created an artwork that exposes the disgraceful social consequences of the current global economy. Another frequent subject in his work is the burden of the hybrid identity, as well as stereotypes about indigenous people. It was painful, for instance, when he was encouraged to make art about his indigenous background, but only within a ‘‘politically correct’’ framework (i.e., one that would focus on unjust treatment of Native people by mainstream society or related themes). This approach denied his individual prerogative to turn the artwork in whatever direction he chose, whether it delivered the expected message or not. This deeply thoughtful artist has provoked international attention by confronting some of the most glaring (yet generally unacknowledged) flaws of contemporary life. Jungen’s work has shocked some in his audience, while opening discussion on forbidden subjects in a seamless and irrefutable way. He has shown his work throughout the United States and Canada, and across Europe—culminating in perhaps the ultimate venue for contemporary art, the Tate Gallery in London. In 2005, a major survey exhibition of his work—a

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rare event for a young artist—was presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and traveled to New York’s New Museum. Continuing to break new ground in myriad ways, this gifted, young artist exposes the myths and denial maintained by contemporary society. Ultimately, Jungen presents his viewers with fresh understandings of his culture and their own, through surprising aesthetic encounters within the global community. Deborah Everett Where to See Jungen’s Work Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York, NY Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver, BC National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON Tate Modern, London, UK Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC

Bibliography Gluek, Grace. ‘‘Art in Review: Brian Jungen.’’ The New York Times (New York), December 23, 2005. Gopnik, Blake. ‘‘Brian Jungen’s Masks Reconsider ‘Native’ Crafts from the Insole Out.’’ The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.), October 24, 2005. Higgs, Matthew. ‘‘Brian Jungen in Conversation with Matthew Higgs.’’ In Brian Jungen—Vienna Secession 2004. Toronto: Art Metropole Publications, 2004. Vancouver Art Gallery. Brian Jungen. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery Publications, 2006. http://gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artist_e.jsp?iartistid=25208

K Brad Kahlhamer (b. 1956), Native American Painter and Sculptor. Brad Kahlhamer’s voice is a formidable one. Beneath a sense of openness and unconcern, his work bears the stamp of a lone wolf, howling in the desert. His urban guerrilla content has the effect of graphic novels, as he rages against the machine with eloquence and daring. Enticing his viewers with the familiar ease of Pop culture, he uncovers the chilling ‘‘collateral damage’’ in the wake of the American Dream. Born in Tucson, Arizona, Kahlhamer was put up for adoption at birth. He was raised in that city by a family of German heritage who gave him a ‘‘very positive upbringing’’ (Krane 14), but he had little exposure to indigenous traditions or any inkling of his tribal affiliation(s). His experience was shared by numerous Native children adopted by non-Native families in the 1950s, and it often resulted in a sense of trauma—for having been robbed of their cultural heritage, as well as their personal identity, when they were at their most vulnerable. In an insightful statement for one of his exhibitions, the artist explained, ‘‘[My work] is all about what I call the third place. I’m adopted so there was another life available to me which might have been on a reservation or with my natural parents, whom I’ve yet to find. Then there’s the life that I’ve lived, which is the adopted life. The third life is melding these first two lives with lots of fantasy and personal revelation’’ (Hoptman 47). Always an artist, Kahlhamer was drawn to creative stimuli from an early age—ranging from paint-by-number kits to the work of Tucson painter Ted de Grazia, famous for kitschy images with Native American subjects. Kahlhamer also liked building things and learned carpentry from his father; together they made tree houses, desert shelters, and even a doghouse. When the artist went off to college at the University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh, he had his first encounter with Abstract Expressionism and was swept away by its expansive, liberating sensibility. He then began to work in a variety of painting styles, including abstract figuration and expressionism. But Kahlhamer says his greatest visual influence has been Pop culture, especially comics and album covers. This link becomes clear when one looks at Mad Magazine from the 1950s, perhaps the first periodical of cultural satire and dark, fatalistic humor —which was widely read by the youth of that period. In successive decades, it would be followed by the more biting and complex content of counterculture

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comics, like Zap and Raw and by related rock music album covers, like Cheap Thrills (Janis Joplin and the Holding Company). Pop culture, with its street-savvy language and explicit emotion, had always appealed to Kahlhamer. But its importance to him increased as he became professionally immersed in rock music, singing and playing guitar for several bands during and after college. As punk rock came to dominate the music scene, it increasingly engaged the artist with its hard-edged view of society as irreparably flawed. Beyond its freedom of expression, music offered Kahlhamer the liberation of the open road, as he toured with his band for a number of years, discovering places he had never seen. He found that he often felt a kind of subliminal connection to the landscape, and, as a result, references to locales and travel appeared in his work. On moving to New York City in 1982, Kahlhamer became an art director for Topps Chewing Gum, where he worked with cartoonists and became even more engrossed with the potent visual language of comics. The artist’s associates at the time included a number of luminaries from the world of cartoon art —including the near legendary Art Spiegelman, creator of the acclaimed artist’s book, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, depicting his father ’s experience in Auschwitz, and exhibited in 1992 at the Museum of Modern Art (New York). Kahlhamer once said that what he loved about the cartoonist’s approach was its ‘‘direct sense of politics and mission: it’s all about action’’ (Krane 15). As Susan Krane described in her piercing essay on the artist, he was part of an ‘‘underground . . . subculture whose work was a nexus of punk art, [with] a political consciousness that leaned toward nihilism . . . ’’ (Krane 15). Kahlhamer related perfectly to the social and political skepticism of this crowd—a community of like minds who shared his view of the entrenched and unjust power structures in our society. During the 1990s, Kahlhamer became much more visible professionally, showing his work in some of the most important alternative spaces in New York. In 1992, at Thread Waxing Space, he showed his ‘‘funkily lumpish sculptures made of scavenged rubber inner tubes’’ (Krane 16). He also showed clunky figures, based very loosely on Kachina dolls and made from scrap cloth, wood and pieces of animal hide. Their scruffy survivor-sensibility won the artist critical acclaim from the avant-garde, and he quickly developed this aesthetic into rambling, LEGO-like installations of ‘‘miniaturized cities and ravaged landscapes’’ (Krane 17). Perhaps the pinnacle of these small, wartorn environments is Old Tucson, a model-scale birch-bark fort littered with the tiny bodies of massacred Indians (made with bits of the artist’s own hair). Kahlhamer remarked that this piece came out of his ‘‘own sense of personal chaos and death . . . ’’ (Krane 19). Immediately following that exhibition, he began showing his work widely at prominent galleries, both in New York and across the country. His reputation quickly grew, and by 1993, he had exhibited in Amsterdam, in London by 1997, and at the Museum of Modern Art’s P.S. 1 Annex by 2000. The mid-1990s were years of change. In 1996, Kahlhamer was deeply affected by a show of ledger drawings at the Drawing Center in New York. (The Drawing Center exhibits highly contemporary works on paper,

Brad Kahlhamer

interspersed with shows of important drawings from other cultures and eras, like the exquisitely lean action scenes created by Plains Indians on ledger paper.) Elegant and sparely constructed, these drawings recorded Native American histories during a time (1865–1935) of full-fledged assault on their world—in the form of surprise attacks, forced assimilation, relocation, and confinement. Kahlhamer described the ledger images as ‘‘the original American cartoon chronicling a dark history’’ (Wiedeman 74). Around that time the artist began to make frequent trips to the Southwest and worked on a series of paintings about travel. An atmosphere of transience filled these canvases, mirroring the artist’s personal sense of dislocation. Some of the works, like 65 MPH, are abstract and gestural, evoking the blur one sees from a car window —as another car speeds by or the landscape runs together during passage. Other expressionistic works from that period, like 10,000 FT, have an airy feeling, with stretches of open canvas punctuated by swirling or percussive marks. With their sprawling compositions, these works remain abstract but begin to feel more narrative and action oriented in spirit. The year 1998 marked a turning point. That year the artist traveled through the Plains states, visiting sites of great significance to Native American tradition; being in these locations had a profound effect on Kahlhamer’s art and worldview. After returning to New York, he began a series of large-scale ‘‘landscapes,’’ which loosely resembled storyboards. In these works, the white space becomes much more open and more spatially ambiguous. The overall image is often dreamlike and light-filled, with a sense of free-floating reverie. Swaths of green or brown toward the bottom suggest an anchoring prairie, but gravity seems erratic, as filmy characters drift above (ranging from coyotes, to people, to clouds with top hats—most of which wear Indian-style braids). On the ground, towers of electronic guitar amps function like moorings, as well as personal emblems of the artist/musician’s lifestyle. Sunny (often transparent) color pervades these paintings, along with a mood of carefreeness. At the same time, other works in this series reflect disturbing realities, as in Loser + Clark, an indigenous take on the Lewis and Clark explorations, which laid the foundation for White incursions into the West. This time the floating figures ooze with red, as if bleeding. About half the buffalo in this work appear to have been wantonly slain and left where they fell (a practice of White men ‘‘clearing’’ land for the coming railroads). And a large, grayed-out face with braids has the lipless teeth and jutting cheekbones of a skull. Around 2002, Kahlhamer’s paintings became even more grim, loaded with macabre images, and swarming with skulls and skeletons. His reds became bloodier and more omnipresent, and Armageddon seemed in full swing. These works still reflect the almost choreographed movement of the ledger drawings, but the tempo and resulting turbulence have become supercharged—as wholesale carnage and bloodbath-like havoc replace individual transgressions. The artist’s depiction of these appalling events gives concrete form to the silent atrocities behind America’s ‘‘settlement’’—injustices that still remain unknown or unacknowledged in the majority view of our nation’s development. Kahlhamer ’s account of history is a chilling one, but more so because it blends inseparably with the trivial nature of contemporary consciousness. He

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presents gut-wrenching scenes in flirtatious color, where figures evince the lightness of cartoons, accompanied by oddly humorous glyphs—like his ubiquitous ‘‘happy faces,’’ seeming to wish the viewer a ‘‘nice day.’’ He once explained, ‘‘People understand smiley faces and popular music but they don’t really understand, or they’re not interested in, the history of America or the history that . . . I think is important. So it’s a way to meld all these things together and to make a solid painting that could be read abstractly and in a narrative way’’ (Hoptman 49). Through his images, Kahlhamer undermines ‘‘the official story’’ to present an indigenous perspective on the growth of America, and he does that with the cool nonchalance and disaffected cynicism of the rock-and-rap generation. Blithely satirical, brash and splashy, his paintings leave the viewer with an unnerving dose of painful truth. In other series, Kahlhamer has created related but distinctly different works. An obsessive collector of skulls and taxidermy, he generated a monumental assemblage work during 2003 and 2004 called the Skull Project. Composed of 200 or so small drawings and paintings (mostly graphite and watercolor), they are hung, edge to edge, in a large-format, diamond-shaped pattern. Each work is surprisingly unique, but there is a kind of horror-movie thread running through them. It is difficult not to relate this work to ‘‘Day of the Dead’’ imagery from Mexico—also filled with skeletons and a fusion of life and death—and which, like Kahlhamer’s work, features sensual women holding skulls, or topped by them. However, the real flavor is closer to gothic nightmare. Exhibited in 2006 at one of New York’s most prominent galleries, Deitch Projects, the work borders on the deeply disturbing; yet true to the artist’s buoyant vitality, it also offers a striking sense of freshness and a plethora of high-voltage energy. In the same exhibition, Kahlhamer’s portraits of female ‘‘punk’’ models were shown, along with his Community Board Project, a me´lange of snapshots, notes, sketches, and ephemera gleaned from the artist’s personal ‘‘tribe.’’ At his strongest, Kahlhamer brings a raw energy and jive-like street-wisdom to his expressionist narratives and historical expose´s. He presents a kind of postmodern revelation of the brutal reality known as the ‘‘winning of the West’’—disclosing its cruelty and greed in a framework of balmy color and pop icons. His dazzling amalgam rivets his audience, as he lays bare the cultural and personal wounds that may never really heal. At times bewildering in their scathing detail and profusion of content, Kahlhamer’s frenzies clearly spring from a revolutionary’s idealism—petitioning the mainstream to act according to its principles. Despite the anguish unleashed in his harrowing images, he extends to his audience the gift of truth—which might be the best chance yet for a smiley-faced world to come to grips with its past. Deborah Everett Where to See Kahlhamer’s Work Deitch Projects Gallery, New York, NY Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI

Sonya Kelliher-Combs Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC http://www.deitchprojects.com

Bibliography Hoptman, Laura, and Sara Krajewski. Brad Kahlhamer: Almost American. Madison, WI: Madison Art Center Publications, 2000. Krane, Susan. Let’s Walk West: Brad Kahlhamer. Scottsdale, AZ: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Publications, 2004. Schlesinger, Emily. Brad Kahlhamer: Girls + Skulls. New York: Deitch Projects Publications, 2006. Weideman, Paul. ‘‘Brad Kahlhamer’s Loaded Paintbrush.’’ The New Mexican (Pasatiempo), August 16, 2002, 74.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs (b. 1969), Inupiaq/Athabascan Sculptor, Painter, and Installation/Mixed-Media Artist. An artist of unusually deep sensitivity, Sonya Kelliher-Combs has a penetrating grasp of organic structures. In them she finds the common thread in all life—a kind of cellular-level vulnerability. Delicate and even wet-looking, her work often stops viewers in their tracks—with a presence that is both raw and strangely precious. Confronting haunting questions about the nature of existence, she opens a broad window into the realm of metaphysics. Kelliher-Combs was born in Bethel, Alaska and was raised in Nome within an atmosphere of traditional Native aesthetics. She spent a substantial amount of time working with her mother and learning traditional ‘‘life skills’’ like beadwork and sewing with skins. Indeed, for preceding generations, these techniques supported survival—skin sewing because clothing had to withstand Arctic weather, and beading because aesthetics strengthened the psyche against the stress of a harsh environment. (Many of the artist’s current works are made with walrus gut, used for centuries in waterproof Inupiaq ‘‘overcoats;’’ the substance protected the fur and skin garments worn beneath, which could lose their warmth if they became wet.) As a child, Kelliher-Combs also spent time with older artists in her community and was deeply influenced by their work, especially sculpture in various materials. ‘‘I’m really interested in ivory carving,’’ the artist said in 2001. ‘‘I grew up around it and . . . I really love the marks, symbols, and patterns . . . [especially] the geometric patterns, like the Old Bering Sea Period. I think they relate to nature’’ (DeRoux 2). Kelliher-Combs says that she was always a ‘‘doodler,’’ and became accustomed to lavish praise for her work from childhood. At the time, she didn’t really take drawing seriously. She always thought she would be a lawyer or an engineer, following the path of her grandfather, who became a federal marshal and later a judge in Nome. Nevertheless, she continued to take art classes, and when she entered college at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, she met

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someone who called her bluff. There she studied with gifted artist and instructor David Mollett, whom she described as ‘‘honest, upfront, merciless’’ (Dunham 16). At one point, he remarked that the life of an artist is tough and demanding, and said that, in all likelihood, only one person from her entire class would still be making art in twenty years. Kelliher-Combs thought to herself, ‘‘That will be me.’’ Suddenly, she realized the importance of this endeavor in her life. She rose to his challenge and firmly committed to succeeding as an artist. Originally working figuratively, Kelliher-Combs reacted strongly to her undergraduate encounters with masters like de Kooning and Picasso. She then shifted her direction toward abstraction. Simultaneously she was taking classes in Alaskan Native Studies, and she became very interested in the ‘‘formline’’ approach of Northwest Coast art (see Glossary). She wanted to create unorthodox animal imagery, and she liked the fact that formline already abstracted the animal shapes for her. It provided her with vibrant, compartmentalized building blocks which she could disassemble and reconfigure, while retaining an indigenous flavor. She did, however, receive substantial criticism for appropriating designs from another Native culture (Northwest Coast Indians have an entirely different aesthetic from both Inupiaq and Athabaskan people). Fortunately, however, soon after that, she discovered the work of Jim Schoppert (a Tlingit artist from Alaska), and it ‘‘took her breath away’’ (Interview 2006). She went to see his work repeatedly at the University of Alaska’s Museum (Fairbanks). She has remarked, ‘‘I couldn’t get enough of it. Schoppert, more than anybody else, was instrumental in helping me see in a new way. He opened a door in my mind that it was OK to do what I was doing’’ (Dunham 16). While still earning her bachelor’s degree, Kelliher-Combs began to exhibit her work and gain recognition. After graduating in 1992, she went to Europe, soaking up the cultural landscape there. Shortly afterwards the artist married Shaun Combs, her high school sweetheart from Nome, and was then accepted into graduate school at Arizona State University in Tempe. Her time in the Southwest was a difficult period in the artist’s life—since it took her so far from home and separated her from her husband, who had to keep working in Nome. Kelliher-Combs also missed her family and culture immensely. ‘‘We ran up huge phone bills . . . But I’d come home every summer to become reenergized . . . [I] realized that my family, my culture and Alaska were the sources of my creativity’’ (Dunham 16). At the same time, she has said that her time in Arizona was an important ‘‘learning experience,’’ during which her work (even the paintings) became more object-like and monochromatic. Artists who influenced her work at that time, and since then, include Maya Lin, Ellen Gallagher, Jane Hammond, Anne Wilson, and the post-modern master of biomorphic forms, Eva Hesse. Kelliher-Combs’ work has evolved as an evocative mixture of the elemental and the contemporary. Her forms are minimal, and her colors generally reference the body—implying liquids or semisolid matter, with blood reds or pale, membrane-like yellow and the purplish-blue of deep veins. Her blacks are sometimes wispy and hair-like, but other times appear smudged, like charcoal

Sonya Kelliher-Combs

or tar formed from organic decomposition. Within this striking, organic aesthetic, the artist has made mixed-media paintings that employ acrylic paint and medium, as well as collage elements (including hair and walrus stomach). Kelliher-Combs’ paintings may be mounted on stretchers or may simply be poured layers of acrylic paint and polyurethane hung directly on the wall. Untitled for Aunti Evi Jo, for instance, is a square of poured red that could very easily be a patch of vital fluid—with edges that seem to have dried and linear fragments that look almost chromosomal. Its color is startling, with the feel of a blood sample smeared on glass, where the scarlet hemoglobin forms puddles, leaving the plasma around it thinner and more pale. Emblematic and mysterious, it has the eerie sense of extruding the contents of the body—and the shock of confronting life’s inner workings. A related painting is Red Pore, where an intensely red ground again establishes the mood. However, its variations of hue are more extensive, including a branching network of resonant oranges. At the same time, rather than the solid, iconic presence of Aunti Evi, Red Pore is sprinkled with circular shapes that the artist conceives of as ‘‘pores,’’ or openings that make the skin permeable. This reference is tied to a recurring theme in her work—the point of contact between the individual and the outside world. In 2003, Kelliher-Combs created the mixed-media painting Reindeer Pore, whose richly textured surface is covered with fibrous elements. More random in pattern than fur, it still has a pelt-like feel, as well as a suggestion of nesting material. Its tawny surface has circles ‘‘drawn’’ into it with brown pigment that almost appear singed, as if branded. One wonders here if the creation of pores is a painful process. A related mixed-media work from 2002 is Seal Skin Pore. This time the ‘‘painting’s’’ surface is an elegant section of actual seal skin, with lustrous, cream-colored fur and a dappling of black markings. Into this beautiful hide are placed darker, circular ‘‘pores’’ where the fur has been shaved off, giving the skin a sense of functioning as a filter, rather than an unbroken covering of the body. This alteration of an anatomical surface gives a new vulnerability to the implied entity beneath it. But the ‘‘pores’’ are only one aspect of a structure that, for Kelliher-Combs, is a defining element of reality. When she creates pores, they are apertures that pierce the exterior of the body. In its more general definition, a pore is a pocket or sac extending downward into the skin, rather than just its open end. Not surprisingly, the artist also deals with that internal vessel, or pouch form, especially in reference to its ability to hold things and keep them out of sight. For that reason, she calls her pouches ‘‘secrets.’’ An early work from 1998 that employs this form is Idiot Strings. A large, mixed-media painting, it has a delicately worked, fleshy surface of pale golds, pinks, and whites, in which the outline of a pouch (or ‘‘secret’’) is drawn. The cylindrical form is minimally sketched and almost diagrammatic, but it clearly shows a sac-like structure seen from the side, with a rounded opening at the top that becomes ovoid from this angle. This unusual painting is highly suggestive of a cave painting or pictograph on a finely nuanced, stone-like surface, with fresh, animated marks. Its object-like presence is heightened by rope supports that attach the top edge of the work to the wall. In Red Walrus Family Portrait, Kelliher-Combs gives us a

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large array of ‘‘secrets,’’ laid out flat in a grid-like formation across a scarlet canvas. The red (sometimes darkening to black) that forms her ground is, again, vibrant and almost pulsing. It is covered with about a dozen rows of pouch-like forms, which are painted, collaged, or stitched onto the ground. The pouches also suggest the larva-like forms of walruses in an almost specimen-like array; many of them are pale and ghostly—like residual traces of things that once occupied this space. Kelliher-Combs has also created her ‘‘secrets’’ in three dimensions, in a number of evocative arrangements. In a work from 2003 titled Large Secrets, some two dozen of them are mounted directly on the wall in a row, each having the same basic form, but differing considerably in its details. Many of them are made from walrus stomach, but have individualistic shapes, sizes, and orientations; additionally, the way each is put together reveals a unique pattern of seams that may spiral around or crisscross their surface. Others are made of hide or even of commercial fabric in a range of fibers and printed designs, but unified by their predominantly organic colors and common form. In 2006, for a solo show in Hudson, New York, the artist created a large installation of these pouches. Each sac was made from beautifully translucent walrus gut and suspended on cords at different heights and angles from above. Each form is made in the same way from similar material, but with individual differences. They hover in profusion, like fruit on a vine, casting shadows on the floor in a powerful psychological landscape. In 2005, the artist created Guarded Secrets, shown at the Museum of Art and Design in Manhattan. This time the pouches had no strings and rested in a small grouping on a ledge. Again made from animal intestine, they appeared even more luminous and almost golden; at the same time, they displayed a threatening array of porcupine quills in every direction. Like a family of spiny sea creatures (or perhaps insects), each ‘‘secret’’ was studded all over with black-and-white thorny spikes—alternately suggesting multiple legs or defensive weapons. Looking inside, the viewer could see the other ends of the quills, poking into the interior of the pods and suggesting an internal discomfort to match their dangerous exteriors. The ideas behind these works are as intriguing as the forms themselves. Inupiaq artist and writer Joe Senungetuk once made a telling comment regarding the meaning of the ‘‘secrets’’: ‘‘There’s so much we [Natives] don’t talk about in our community, and it’s killing us’’ (Smith E-4). And in fact, KelliherCombs developed aspects of her formal vocabulary in response to the death of three of her uncles by suicide. In an interview in 2001, the artist stated, ‘‘A lot of [my pieces] are [created] . . . in memory of loved ones. [Other works] are . . . in response to stories I’ve heard about terrible experiences many people have had as children. They could be about physical or psychological abuse, any kind of neglect or trauma’’ (DeRoux 3). These concerns are universal in our era, but, as many indigenous artists have said, they are particularly prominent as Native issues. Filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk once commented that the rate of suicide among Inuit people, for instance, is ten times the national average. For individuals who live on reservations, the incidence of poor nutrition, diabetes, and alcoholism are all high

Hastiin Klah

and are aggravated by inadequate health care. Poverty and lack of educational opportunities are also widespread. Loss of culture, and of traditional lifeways, is rampant and ongoing, as is despair. Currently, with the effects of global warming drastically changing the northern landscape, people who live there are watching their world dissolve around them—as glaciers melt, and Arctic tundras thaw and destabilize. Polar bears, isolated on melting ice blocks, drown as the blocks disappear. Alaskan forests are keeling over, en masse, as the ‘‘permafrost’’ landscape unfreezes, and its soggy soil releases ancient roots and abandons trees to the effects of gravity. It is a world that has suffered much and continues to do so. Kelliher-Combs is clearly thinking of her community as she creates. Her work not only memorializes them as individuals—it also provides a healing context for their struggles. It takes the harshest facets of their reality and turns them into objects of beauty and power, extolling the strength of her people and their will to survive. Deborah Everett Where to See Kelliher-Combs’ Work Alaskan Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, AK Decker-Morris Gallery, Anchorage, AK Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Nicole Fiacco Gallery, Hudson, NY

Bibliography DeRoux, Ken. ‘‘Sonya Kelliher-Combs Interview.’’ Alaska State Museums Bulletin (Juneau, AK), Fall 2001, 1–3. Dunham, Mike. ‘‘Art from the Gut.’’ Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage), August 4, 2000, 1, 16. Heard Museum. 8th Native American Fine Art Invitational. Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum Publications, 2002. Smith, Dawnell. ‘‘Open Secrets.’’ Anchorage Daily News (Anchorage), January 27, 2005, 29.

Hastiin Klah (1867–1937), Navajo (Dine´) Weaver. Hastiin Klah [Hosteen Klah] was a renowned weaver and healer (medicine man), who is recognized as the first Navajo to translate religious images from sandpaintings into permanent woven form. An extraordinary individual who had the opportunity to master both male (healing) and female (weaving) arts because of his special status as a nadle (third gender), Klah was particularly concerned with preserving Navajo culture following decades of persecution. Hastiin Klah was born at Bear Mountain, New Mexico. His father was Koskay (Hoskay) Nolyae, and his mother was Ahson Tsosie (Slim Woman) (Lapahie). Klah was born the year before Navajo people signed a peace treaty with the United States that allowed them to return to their homeland. Before

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that, the U.S. government forced thousands of Navajo, including Klah’s parents, to resettle in eastern New Mexico. The Long Walk (more than 300 miles) ended in internment at Fort Sumner, known as Bosque Redondo (Hwe´e´ldi) (Hedlund 53), during 1864–68. The artist was given his nickname ‘‘Klah’’ (left-handed) when he was a small boy. Hastiin or Hosteen is a term of respect for an elderly man. Hastiin Klah developed the desire to learn about Navajo healing after his uncle Dinnae Nez (Tall Man) performed the Wind Chant to help Klah recover from a serious accident following a fall from a pony. While an invalid, it was discovered that Klah was a hermaphrodite, which in Navajo culture signified that he was especially fortunate, and expected to achieve high status and wealth by mastering the skills of both a man and a woman (Newcomb 97). Klah was fascinated by the traditions revealed to him during the healing ceremony, and decided to study to become a Navajo ceremonial leader (chanter or singer, or medicine man). Navajo healers use chanting and temporary paintings called sandpaintings (made of sand and ground pigments) to treat illnesses. While still young, Klah began to practice as a chanter, though he continued to study healing and chanting throughout his life. Traditional healing ceremonies take two to nine days, and most healers learn only a few complete chants. Klah was renowned because he learned at least eight (Kennedy Museum of Art). The sandpaintings, which illustrate an allegory of the healing ceremony, are created in a day. When complete and blessed, the sandpainting becomes a sacred altar, which must be destroyed by the chanter before dawn. Sandpaintings thus must be ephemeral; it therefore was contrary to traditional beliefs to weave a rug or make a drawing or painting of a sandpainting, because as fixed forms they cannot be destroyed in the prescribed fashion. While fixed forms of sandpaintings are not sacred, they do depict sacred sandpainting images. While an adolescent, Klah learned to weave—a female art—by helping his mother and his sister (Newcomb 103). Navajo textiles are woven using sheep wool in the tapestry technique. Klah completed his first rug by himself in 1893, working at the New Mexico Indian exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (Kennedy Museum of Art). In 1910, Klah copied a rug fragment found in Chaco Canyon, and then wove a full-sized duplicate. In 1911, he wove a blanket depicting ye’ii bicheii (dancers), which he sold to a trader. Conflict resulted over this violation of religious beliefs, but since the rug was to be sent to Washington to be hung on a wall, ‘‘the incident was forgotten’’ (Newcomb 115). Starting around 1919, Hastiin Klah became the first known Navajo to break with the tradition of not recording sacred imagery, by weaving textiles representing sandpaintings used in healing ceremonies (rugs depicting sandpainting imagery may have been woven earlier). This followed his work with Franc Johnson Newcomb, who with her husband owned a trading post near Klah’s home. Newcomb made drawings of sandpaintings she observed at ceremonies Klah allowed her to attend. Klah helped her with her drawings, painting them as a record (Newcomb 127).

Hastiin Klah

Klah eventually created a permanent textile record of the sandpaintings— antithetical to traditional Navajo beliefs—because he wanted to record Dine´ traditions for the future (Kennedy Museum of Art). At that time, the Navajo had suffered decades of efforts to assimilate them into U.S. society, including removal of children to boarding schools where they were prohibited from speaking native languages. Because Klah wove the sandpainting textiles to preserve traditions, he made them the same size as sandpaintings, averaging six by eight feet (though some were as large as twenty feet). Creating such a large textile, especially one filled with many details and curves that are difficult to weave, was an outstanding achievement. Klah’s first sandpainting textile was based on a Whirling Log sandpainting from the Nightway religious ceremony. Klah wove this rug at the suggestion of his friend Newcomb, following discussion with his family (Newcomb 157). The massive loom built to weave this rug was twelve feet by twelve feet. Klah is said to have chanted prayers to receive ritual protection against potential negative effects from depicting ye’ii (Holy People) in fixed form. The rug’s background was undyed tan sheep wool, like the sand upon which sandpaintings are created. Other colors were the natural colors of undyed wool (white, browns, grays), or wool dyed yellow, indigo blue, and cochineal red (Johnson 157–58). The completed rug won the blue ribbon for rugs of its size at the Gallup, New Mexico Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial. Klah then woven two additional rugs of ye’ii bicheii (Yeibichai) dancers, and he subsequently wove others. No color photographs exist of Klah’s first woven sandpaintings, but a black and white photograph shows Klah standing next to an enormous textile, which the caption calls a ‘‘Yeibichai tapestry’’ (Newcomb 143). The textile includes the traditional stylized depictions of corn stalks, and stylized ye’ii figures, organized in a linear design. The ye’ii are represented with rectangle faces, slender elongated bodies, upraised arms, triangular kilt, and long legs. A photograph taken around 1927 shows Klah with another very large sandpainting textile, organized as a radiating design (Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian). These textiles illustrate a deep ‘‘aesthetic preference for dynamic symmetry and repetition within variation’’ (Berlo. 43). Soon after, Mary Cabot Wheelwright visited the Newcomb trading post, and bought one of Klah’s rugs, promising to never put it on a floor. In 1927, Klah worked with Wheelwright to record hundreds of chants. Years later, Klah collaborated with Wheelwright to construct the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art in Santa Fe (now the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian). Seventeen sandpainting textiles woven by Klah constitute a centerpiece of the museum and a unique record of Navajo healing ceremonies. Klah instructed his two nieces Gladys Manuelito (‘‘Mrs. Sam’’) and Irene Manuelito (‘‘Mrs. Jim’’) how to weave sandpainting textiles (Arizona State Museum; Newcomb 71). They helped him weave approximately seventy textiles during eighteen years, which is an astonishing level of productivity. Though Klah wove these textiles to preserve traditional culture, some viewers have suggested that sandpainting rugs, as well as drawings and paintings

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made by Klah and other Navajo artists, have deliberate errors to limit disrespect to the Holy People depicted, or to avoid personal danger resulting from weaving sandpainting designs. Klah’s nieces completed his last textile, which represents sky images from the Shootingway ritual. The rug was eventually donated to the Kennedy Museum of Art at Ohio University (Gibson). Following Klah’s innovation, other Navajo weavers began to weave rugs with sandpainting and other ceremonial designs, particularly of ye’ii or ye’ii bicheii. These are still relatively rare rugs; they are large and difficult to weave, and for religious reasons or concern about personal danger many refuse to make them. Some artists have achieved a compromise: ‘‘many weavers today avoid using specific sandpainting imagery; instead, some weave stylized ye’ii rugs that are popular tourist items’’ (Hedlund in Arizona State Museum). The female weavers often are relatives of or are married to medicine men, though late twentieth-century weavers ‘‘worked from sandpainting designs reproduced by outside artists and scholars and published in books’’ (Hedlund 93–94). The reasons for representing the ye’ii bicheii, who represent the Holy People, are many, ranging from ‘‘personal devotion, to family customs, to requests from customers’’ (Hedlund, Arizona State Museum). Klah’s unique and highly respected status as master of the male profession of chanting and the female profession of weaving allowed him to create a new art form: sandpainting textiles. Through innovation, Klah brought outside attention to Navajo cultural imagery, and helped preserve important beliefs in traditional Navajo culture. Elayne Zorn Where to See Hastiin Klah’s Work The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, NM http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/exhibits/navajoweave/contemp/ honoring_the_spirit.shtml Note: Since some Navajo feel strongly that it is disrespectful to display Klah’s sandpainting rugs, they are not shown here. The large collection of sandpainting rugs at the Kennedy Museum of Art are not on display. The Arizona State Museum link shows rugs that include ye’ii (Holy People) imagery.

Bibliography Arizona State Museum. ‘‘Navajo Weaving at Arizona State Museum. 19th Century Blankets, 20th Century Rugs, 21st Century Views.’’ http://www.statemuseum. arizona.edu/exhibits/navajoweave/index.shtml. Berlo, Janet Catherine. ‘‘ ‘It’s up to you—’: Individuality, Community and Cosmopolitanism in Navajo Weaving.’’ In Weaving Is Life: Navajo Weavings from the Edwin L. & Ruth E. Kennedy Southwest Native American Collection, edited by Jennifer McLerran, 34–43. Athens, OH: Kennedy Museum of Art, 2006. Gibson, Andrea. ‘‘Sacred Treasures.’’ Perspectives Spring Summer 2002. http:// news.research.ohiou.edu/perspectives/archives/0201/home5.htm. Hedlund, Ann Lane. ‘‘ ‘More of Survival Than an Art’: Comparing Late Nineteenth- and Late Twentieth-Century Lifeways and Weaving.’’ In Woven by the

Zacharias Kunuk Grandmothers: Nineteenth-Century Navajo Textiles from the National Museum of the American Indian, edited by Eulalie H. Bonar, 47–67. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1996. ———. Navajo Weaving in the Late Twentieth Century: Kin, Community, and Collectors. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004. Kennedy Museum of Art. ‘‘Hosteen Klah, Nadle Hatali. Gender, Transformation, and Navajo Weaving.’’ http://www.ohiou.edu/museum/host2.htm. Lapahie, Harrison, Jr. ‘‘Hosteen Klah (Sir Left Handed).’’ http://www.lapahie.com /Hosteen_Klah.cfm. Newcomb, Franc Johnson. Hosteen Klah, Navajo Medicine Man and Sand Painter. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971 [1964]. The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. ‘‘About the Museum. Origins.’’ http://www.wheelwright.org/about.html.

Zacharias Kunuk (b. 1957), Inuit Filmmaker and Videographer. Zacharias Kunuk is an artist of stunning vision and unimpeachable integrity. His luminous, otherworldly films have made him the best-known director ever to come from an indigenous nation. At the same time, he remains open and accessible, continuing to support his immediate and extended community. Reflecting a deep love for his culture, his films have a grace and clarity that draw outsiders irresistibly to that realm. His work not only embodies and preserves the Inuit worldview—it sets it glowingly at the center of the global stage. Born in the eastern Arctic community of Kapuivik, Kunuk lived the nomadic life of his parents for his first nine years. An extremely perilous and demanding lifestyle, it requires that children learn early about survival. Kunuk remembers going with the men of Kapuivik on walrus hunts, which meant staying out on the ice for days. Those experiences taught him not only practical skills, like how to hunt and dress meat, but more elusive perceptual abilities and secrets of personal endurance. Being on the broad, flat stretches of ice, for instance, is entirely disorienting; one quickly loses sight of land and its reference points. Kunuk says that during those times he learned ‘‘how to find my way, how to pace myself so I wouldn’t get too tired, and when to sleep so that I could make it home’’ (Chaw 4). Many observers have noted that the Inuit seem to develop a sixth sense about their environment, as well as a profound knowledge of themselves and their limits as human beings. The result is a kind of unshakeable confidence and fearlessness—a way of being in tune with oneself and one’s surroundings that is so ingrained, it hardly ever slips. About the time Kunuk was learning to hunt, the federal government began a concerted effort to get Inuit children into schools, and generally enforced it by the threat of withholding economic assistance. Of course, once the children began school, it was virtually impossible for the family to continue a nomadic existence—so that formal education had a disastrous effect on traditional lifestyles. Kunuk and his brother were shipped off to Igloolik in 1966, the location of the nearest school. Two years later their parents joined them there.

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Exposure to the ‘‘southern’’ world (the industrialized society of Southern Canada) felt oppressive to Kunuk in countless ways. The most odious part of the encounter was the attempt by missionaries to sabotage the roots of indigenous identity: traditional culture. They constantly pressured the Inuit to ‘‘turn away from your old way of life’’—to give up their religion and its sense of a sentient world, and replace it with Christianity. At the same time, schools promoted southern values, as did American films in the local theater, where Kunuk often watched John Wayne fight the ‘‘savage’’ Indians of the Old West. By the end of eighth grade, Kunuk had become so alienated from the modern world that he dropped out of school. At the same time, he continued to embrace the cinematic experience, despite its often distasteful content, and he began to carve soapstone sculptures to pay for admission to the theater. As a young adult, Kunuk grew to recognize the importance of storytelling in his culture. Despite the onslaught of postindustrialism through television, movies, and the printed word, the Inuit people were managing to preserve much of their heritage by recounting their ancient narratives. As the filmmaker states, ‘‘People in Igloolik learned through storytelling who we were and where we came from for 4,000 years without a written language . . . The history has been saved through our songs’’ (http://www.isuma.ca). The artist began to think about ways to conserve the oral traditions as well as the patrimony they embodied. ‘‘I thought it would be great to film [events like] hunting trips so you wouldn’t have to tell it, just show it’’ (Kunuk http://www.isuma.ca). So Kunuk began by photographing hunting scenes with a still camera, until 1980 when he heard about the advent of video. The next year the artist traveled to Montreal and sold a number of his carvings in order to buy a video camera. By 1982, Kunuk was so successful in his new field that he was able to join the IBC (Inuit Broadcasting Corporation) in Igloolik, and over the next ten years, he became a senior producer and station manager. During that time he directed, wrote, and/or produced numerous important video works about Inuit life and culture. During the 1980s, Kunuk met Norman Cohn, an immensely gifted videographer from New York who had migrated to Canada some ten years earlier. Cohn held a deep-seated belief in the capacity of video to empower communities, and he had moved north specifically to work with an experimental program of the National Film Board of Canada. When that project ended, Cohn began to look for other artists who shared his vision, and he was stunned when he encountered Kunuk’s work. In 1990, Kunuk and Cohn founded Igloolik Isuma Productions, in which they have worked together since then—almost as alter egos, sharing the jobs of filming and directing their works. Other partners with whom they formed Isuma include Paul Apak Angilirq, a pioneering producer and writer who had worked at IBC, and Pauloosie Quilitalik, another talented producer formerly of IBC. Qaggiq (The Gathering Place) was the first of Kunuk’s works to carry his reputation to non-Inuit circles. It was especially exciting because it seemed to create a new genre entirely its own. Neither documentary nor fiction, it drew on

Zacharias Kunuk

cinema, television, and video art to construct an intimate, hybrid reality with slice-of-life immediacy, and the psychological impact of drama. Like many of Isuma Productions’ works, Qaggiq unfolds principally through reenactments of the intensive daily labors of traditional Inuit life. It therefore has a double time frame, reflecting the pre-settlement way of life, while maintaining a contemporary feel—since aspects of that lifestyle, and its closeness to nature, continue today. While planning his first feature film, Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), Kunuk became disillusioned with the policies and management of public television, and he turned to the National Film Board of Canada for funding. The Board, along with Telefilm Canada, an investor in cultural projects, granted funding for the film in 1999, and production began immediately. The Fast Runner is based on an ancient Inuit legend about a struggle between two men—a hero and a villain—and the effects of their actions on the surrounding community. It is, at the same time, a classic contest between ethics and ego—the well-being of the group versus individual greed. Filmed entirely as video, the story unfolds with a powerful intimacy, putting the viewer at the center of the timeless Inuit world. Part of its intense realism derives from attention to detail, as in a sequence showing the construction of an igloo—where real ice blocks are being shaved and fitted into place, instead of the styrofoam used by most studios. At the same time, Kunuk maintains an affecting sense of magic reality throughout—especially in the dazzling scenes of the hero’s escape from his enemies, as he sprints across the glistening ice sheets without benefit of shoes or clothing. Similarly, story parts involving phantoms are rendered compellingly, cast in the flickering light of Inuit interiors, where the glow of whale-oil lamps barely pierces the surrounding shadows. The film’s sensitivity to beauty, balanced by its concrete naturalism, received accolades around the world, including the Camera d’Or (best first feature film) at the Cannes Film Festival in France, six Genie awards (Canada’s ‘‘Oscars’’), and ‘‘best feature film’’ at numerous international film festivals. After The Fast Runner’s showing in New York City, the New York Times declared that it ‘‘expand[ed] the scope of our vision, and immerse[d] us in a radically different point of view . . . However, [The Fast Runner] is not merely an interesting document from a far-off place; it is a masterpiece’’ (Scott B-9). Since then, Kunuk has explored new ground artistically, while working as a catalyst for the revitalization of his people. His next film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, premiered in 2006 to receptive audiences at film festivals around the globe—revealing the devastating encounters between missionaries and the Inuit people. Like his other works, this film supports the survival of Inuit traditional knowledge, both through the story it tells, and the process of shooting it. As Kunuk states, ‘‘We create traditional artifacts [as props and sets for the film], digital multimedia, and desperately needed jobs in the same activity’’ (http://www.isuma.ca). Kunuk’s films have probably had a greater effect on the outside world than the work of any other indigenous artist. At the same time his devotion to his culture and to a humane world continues to fuel his creative endeavors. Ultimately, the visual poetry of his work is not only a

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stunning portrait of his people—it acts as light in the darkness for a world desperately seeking meaning. Deborah Everett Where to See Kunuk’s Work Institute of American Indian Art, Santa Fe, NM Museum of Civilization, Hull, Q C National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY http://www.isuma.ca

Bibliography Chaw, Walter. ‘‘ ‘Fast’ Times.’’ http://filmfreakcentral.net/notes/ fastrunnerinterview.htm. Nemiroff, Diana, Robert Houle, and Charlotte Townsend-Gault. Land, Spirit, Power. Ottawa, Ontario: National Gallery of Art Publications, 1992. Peabody Essex Museum Staff. Nunavut/Our Land. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum Publications, 2004. Scott, A. O. ‘‘Film Festival Review: A Far-Off Inuit World, in a Dozen Shades of White.’’ The New York Times (New York), March 30, 2002, B-9. Wilson Staff, H. W. ‘‘Kunuk, Zacharias.’’ In Current Biography International Yearbook 2002. Bronx, NY: H. W. Wilson Company, 2002.

L James Lavadour (b. 1951), Walla Walla Painter and Printmaker. Undeniably a painter’s painter, James Lavadour is wholly engaged with his medium. For him the act of making art is as important as the final image. He puts color on a surface, scrapes it, lets it run, wipes it off, and considers the results. This is an organic exchange, as he sees it—and much like other life processes, small changes can affect the outcome tremendously. Like his experiences with hiking and climbing, painting is an action that can be performed repeatedly, with the possibility of new discoveries every time. Lavadour knows that, in the outdoors, recent growth may suddenly change the way light falls, or a hard rain may reshape the contours of the land. The artist observes these events closely. He absorbs the natural world as he communes with it, and later, in his studio, that encounter reemerges, through his probing interaction with the paint. Born in northeast Oregon, Lavadour has lived and worked on the Umatilla Reservation for most of his life. He grew up among his father’s family, whose ancestry is both Walla Walla and French. The group of people on that reservation, he has noted, ‘‘called ourselves ‘Indians’ even though we were an obvious assortment of Indian, White, and Black peoples’’ (Nemiroff 174). Strongly committed to his community, Lavadour has worked for it over many years, in the areas of tribal education, programs for alcohol and drug treatment, economic growth, housing, regulation of land use, and management of natural resources. A holistic thinker of piercing intelligence, Lavadour is a self-taught artist who grew up in a creative atmosphere. Everyone in his family ‘‘did something.’’ His mother drew and painted, and most of his relatives created textiles or other objects. His ‘‘father and uncle taught [him] a passion for the earth, or what they called ‘the mountains’ ’’ (Nemiroff 177)—so it was natural that he should choose landscape as his subject. As a child, Lavadour was always interested in the way things looked, and in games involving perceptual twists; as he got older, he spent a great deal of time with art books in the local library, pouring over the work of artists from Audubon to de Kooning to Rauschenberg. He also developed an early affinity for Asian landscapes and their sense of space and natural phenomena. All these influences fed his painting practice. As he reached adulthood, he began driving to Portland and Seattle, in search of a gallery to represent him, and in the process, he met and got to know others in his

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field. At that time a close community of Native artists was thriving in the area, and they often critiqued each other’s work and talked about art issues. Lavadour’s home is located close to the Blue Mountains of Oregon, so it is not surprising that peaks and slopes are prominent in his imagery. By the same token, his mountains (both actual and painted) are much more organic than ones in the Euro-American imagination. Rather than solid rock, they are active participants in the transformation of matter—providing a foundation for the whole spectrum of environmental behavior, from all-consuming wildfires, to the dusty turbulence of landslides. He sees these events in terms of the inherent energy of the natural world, rather than in terms of disasters or ‘‘apocalypses,’’ as some writers have implied. His paintings reference the intertwined and cyclical character of life and death—the continual work of evolution that is Nature’s truest face. Many of Lavadour’s images are illusionistic in approach, but have highly contemporary frameworks. They often form unique panoramas by focusing on climactic events (like geysers or volcanic activity) in multiple views. For these works he creates four or more paintings of what appear to be the same subject from different viewpoints. He then mounts them on the wall in a squared configuration, edge to edge, as a single work. The viewer is then confronted by a work with shifting perspectives—and a sense of closeness to natural spectacles, surrounded by their enormity in all directions. The effect of dazzling immediacy comes partially from the cinematic movement of the eye from canvas to canvas, but also from Lavadour’s spirited brushwork and brilliant use of color. In Lavadour’s natural vistas, there is a striking sense of depth that can feel photographic, often through a juxtaposition of distant shrouded peaks and sharp crags in the foreground. This combination generates high drama within the space of a single canvas. In the case of multicanvas works, it becomes more complex, as one moves through the grouping, switching from near to far (or side to side) and back again. At the same time, Lavadour’s manner of working yields a kind of dual viewpoint, that tends toward both landscape and abstraction. He works the paint around loosely on his canvas, and responds to forms that emerge—which may suggest landscape or something less specific. Some of the earlier, more abstract works were what Lavadour conceived of as ‘‘interiors,’’ in which gestural strokes evoked the right-angled elements of construction. During the year 2000, Lavadour began to change his approach. He had been engaged in making prints for some time, and working in that structured medium began to affect the way he painted. Printmaking requires a number of processes that take place in discrete steps, and the medium’s orderly stages made Lavadour think differently about painting. He began to consciously construct the paintings in phases, working on several of them in the same day. These procedural shifts were accompanied by changes in the look of his work. Sometimes the finished pieces would have a sharper, more graphic quality. His palette, previously revolving around elemental hues, began to shift away from center, like the smokey tones of jazz compositions. And perhaps most unexpected, the ‘‘abstract’’ and ‘‘landscape’’ leanings in his work began to overlap

James Lavadour

more, pushing his imagery even further—toward more clearly defined architectural elements, implying tents or frame buildings. At the same time, he began to think in more general terms—that the energy he was exploring was not limited to geology, but represented the broader properties of physics that apply to all matter—particularly in terms of movement and ‘‘flow.’’ He finds that his work is opening up now, visually and conceptually, and new possibilities are emerging. In addition to his gifts as a visual artist, Lavadour is a highly articulate writer and philosopher. Despite a statement in 2005 that he was becoming less sure about his direction and more open to changes—his essay of 1992 about the link between art and life still holds, as a deeply affecting statement on the process and effects of both (excerpt below). I believe that whatever I have done in life, the people I have known, the places I have been, the things I have seen, the wild meat and fruit I have eaten, the water I have drunk, are what makes me what I am . . . Whatever is in the earth is in me, and whatever is in me is what I make art out of. I view making art as an expressive event of nature and a transfiguration of the experience of living . . . I am not concerned about what a painting means . . . I have never been in control of a painting enough to be able to give it meaning. The best I can hope for is to act with wise and hopefully intelligent decisions as the circumstances in paint present themselves. To paint is to engage with nature, and this engagement produces knowledge and the love of being. (Nemiroff 177–178) Deborah Everett Where to See Lavadour’s Work Cumberland Gallery, Nashville, TN Grover/Thurston Gallery, Seattle, WA Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ http://www.jameslavadour.com http://www.pdxcontemporaryart.com

Bibliography Archuleta, Margaret, and Rennard Strickland, eds. Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors of the Twentieth Century. Phoenix: Heard Museum Publications, 1991. Nemiroff, Diana, ed. Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada Publications, 1992. Ostrowitz, Judith. Privileging the Past: Reconstructing History in Northwest Coast Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press; Vancouver/Toronto: UBC Press, 1999. Rushing, W. Jackson. ‘‘What the Ground Says: The Art of James Lavadour.’’ In Into the Fray. Indianapolis: Eiteljorg Publications, 2005.

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Carm LittleTurtle (b. 1952), Apache/Tarahumara Photo-Based Artist. Daughter of a photographer and a painter, Carm LittleTurtle has always been surrounded by artists. All her friends were artists when she was a child, and her social circle stayed that way as she went through art school, and later married painter Ed Singer (with whom she now lives in New Mexico). This ongoing atmosphere of creativity may be the basis of her clear-sighted approach to making art. ‘‘My father always had a camera around his neck,’’ says LittleTurtle; ‘‘he was always photographing’’ (Abbott 144). At the same time, it was her mother who had the greatest influence on her art. When asked what led her to photography, LittleTurtle once said, ‘‘My mother bought me a camera when I was in seventh grade, a Polaroid Swinger. It was a cool thing to have . . . right then I started posing people [and photographing them]’’ (Abbott 144). The artist also recalls constantly watching her mother paint, both abstractly on canvas and directly onto photographs. LittleTurtle is a photo-based artist, who shoots ‘‘staged’’ scenes with figures, and then hand colors the resulting images. She is especially known for the dreamy, surreal quality of her work, which owes partly to their sense of intimacy. Her images project an aura of emotionally charged private worlds— which the viewer has somehow stumbled upon. The faces of her characters are either cropped out by the picture’s edge or deeply obscured, furthering the sense of informality and personal encounter. Additionally, her images are often sited in lonely surroundings, where the mind, like the body, tends to wander. In The Parasol Near Taos, a young woman sits under a tree within a large sunlit field, shading herself with an umbrella and staring into the far distance. One can almost feel the presence of her daydreams. That contemplative quality and sense of mental landscape play a large role in LittleTurtle’s work, often heightened by positioning one or two individuals within the evocative spaces of the Southwest. The composition of such images requires considerable planning. LittleTurtle has said, ‘‘I structure my images very intentionally. I usually sketch out the basic positions of the models and the ideas . . . Then I’ll pick a location in the environment I want . . . basically the shoot is based on the sketch I drew’’ (Abbott 139). Aside from working with models, the artist uses props as well, ranging from old, abandoned cars to cowboy boots and parasols. The Western flavor of the models’ clothing often emphasizes gender roles (and unequal relationships), in a theme that is of primary importance to the artist. When interviewed, she frequently mentions her interest in ‘‘ . . . women’s conflicts in society, in women’s rights’’ (Abbott 142). Accordingly she focuses intensely on the relationship between the sexes, which, she feels, revolves around need and self-interest. She is particularly interested in the way that relationships can be characterized by power plays. In Iron Horse, for instance, the central image is a couple, seemingly dancing together, with a trudging, interlocked step. The woman is barefoot, soft and vulnerable, in pink-and-yellow ‘‘Indian’’ attire, and carrying a

Carm LittleTurtle

baby. The cowboy behind her looks hard and aggressive, pressed up against her, as his pointed boots and steely legs push her along. He seems to be driving her in the direction he chooses, just as the locomotive (faintly shown in the background) shoved Native Americans off the plains to make room for incoming settlers. LittleTurtle has also created sequential, narrative works. Perhaps the best known example is She Wished for a Husband, Two Horses and Many Cows, a series of four images. In the first scene, a woman sits on an abandoned car, peering into the endless desert around her. The second shows her bent over double in the body language of conflicting desires—while a shadow on the ground reveals an approaching cowboy. In the next image, she leads the cowboy toward her car, as his hand pushes money at her. The final frame shows her alone again, but now she stands resolutely atop the car, facing a different horizon where cows and two horses graze. She may not have gotten the husband she wanted, but perhaps her other goals are in sight. Again the relationship between men and women is seen in terms of disappointing encounters, where differing needs lead to trade-offs rather than love. At the same time, the hard realities are softened by LittleTurtle’s delicate handling of color, as the rosiness of the woman’s blouse injects a hopeful note of tenderness. LittleTurtle uses other techniques as well to underscore (or counterpoint) the mood of each piece. Color often heightens the emotional aspect of the scene, while lighting, or focus, can add tension, ranging from sharp, harsh contours in one area to muted ones in another. Such oppositions evoke a shifting inner world, where competing drives yield twists and turns in the drama of seduction. Interestingly, LittleTurtle is also a registered nurse, and has worked in a number of operating rooms in Albuquerque for years. She finds it useful in keeping a down-to-earth perspective, while offering rare opportunities to observe human nature. Additionally, having another income gives her the freedom to ignore art-market trends, since she has no need to make work that sells. Ultimately, LittleTurtle creates memorable images that explore the tie between male and female—as the core relationship that defines all others. She reveals secrets of this complex phenomenon through subtle detail and unexpected circumstances. With the eeriness of truth distilled from dreams, her work illumines the contest between ‘‘self’’ and ‘‘other ’’ as the axis on which the world turns. Deborah Everett Where to See LittleTurtle’s Work Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Southern Plains Indian Museum, Anadarko, OK The Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, CA

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Bibliography Abbott, Lawrence, ed. I Stand in the Center of the Good. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Aperture Foundation (Peggy Roalf, ed.). Strong Hearts. New York: Aperture Foundation Press, 1995. Bush, Alfred L., and Lee Clark Mitchell. The Photograph and the American Indian. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Harlan, Theresa, and Jolene Rickard. Watchful Eyes: Native American Women Artists. Phoenix: Heard Museum Publications, 1994.

Truman Lowe (b. 1944), Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Sculptor and Installation Artist. Through his elemental perceptions of water and wood, Truman Lowe explores both nature and culture. His evocative sculpture and installations may suggest primal structures, or reveal the essence of natural phenomena, but there is always more to them than meets the eye. Together they comprise a powerful, contemporary body of work—through which he examines the human link to the biosphere. Born in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, Lowe was the youngest of six children (thirteen years younger than the sibling preceding him). He grew up on the nearby Winnebago Indian Mission, constantly surrounded by a large extended family. Both his parents were hard workers, having a number of odd and seasonal jobs, but when at home with their children they always spoke the Winnebago language. In Lowe’s community everyone supplemented his or her income by making and selling traditional objects, which they thought of in terms of craft. Both Lowe’s parents made beadwork with traditional Ho-Chunk designs, and his mother was particularly admired as a colorist. But perhaps most appealing were the splint-ash baskets she wove; they had a warm integrity of design and materials, and unusual bentwood handles made by Lowe’s father, who was famous for them. Often the children, including the artist, helped put together the baskets and beaded jewelry, working at night by kerosene lamplight. The making of objects in Lowe’s community was organized through a Handcraft Co-operative, which set technical standards for (and raised the overall quality of) the work, while also stimulating sales. Because of the co-op’s success, fashioning objects was a recognized and valued endeavor, so that Lowe grew up in an atmosphere that encouraged creativity. It was a community of artists, where everyday interactions included discussions of form and design, and comparisons of specific pieces to shared aesthetic ideals. Lowe’s artistic talents were always nurtured by his family, but it was only when he went off to college that he began to see art as a profession. At that point, Lowe says, ‘‘I read everything I could get my hands on about Michelangelo . . . He was the first artist I’d [encountered] who went to work every day and was paid . . . for making art’’ (Ortel 20). Lowe began his studies at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse in 1962 and took classes in all media. His art

Truman Lowe

from this period was heavily influenced by various modernist movements, from expressionist painting to shaped, geometric canvases and assemblagetype sculptures. In 1969, Lowe received his B.S. in art as well as his teaching certificate. At that point, he and his new wife moved to Valders, a small town north of Milwaukee, where he taught art in elementary and secondary schools, and continued to work in his studio in his free time. He gradually became aware that he wanted to concentrate much more on his own work, and by 1971 he had enrolled as a graduate student at UWM (University of Wisconsin-Madison), one of the most progressive art schools in the country. During his time there, Lowe worked extensively with transparent plastic, often creating pieces that bridged the gap between sculpture and installation. Transforming the spaces where they were shown, the works were fashioned in innovative ways that were highly evocative—from draped sheets of cut-work plastic to cascading flows of clear filament. Diaphanous and sometimes almost wispy, their content hovered around contemporary issues of perception, such as form/antiform, inside/outside, and visible versus invisible. Meanwhile, during Lowe’s graduate school years, the Red Power movement was taking off, exposing the injustices faced by Native Americans daily. Lowe, however, continued to focus primarily on his work, being painfully aware that his time in art school was precious and limited. He later stated, ‘‘I did not have the luxury . . . of being a protestor’’ (Ortel 39). On the other hand, he was far from being unaffected by the events around him. As an undergrad, he had traveled a long way to hear distinguished author and activist Vine Deloria (Sioux) deliver a memorable speech about the need for more opportunities and life-choices for Native Americans. Soon after entering UWM, Lowe enrolled in Native American Studies classes and gained a scholarly perspective on his Native heritage and the accompanying issues. Toward the end of graduate school, and immediately following it, a number of events came together that would dramatically affect the course of Lowe’s art. During his studies, he encountered the work of George Morrison, a ground-breaking Native American painter who succeeded as an Abstract Expressionist in the New York art world. Morrison’s modernist work, as well as his ability to break free of Indian stereotypes, made him very attractive to Lowe as a role model. Shortly after, in 1972, Art in America (one of the nation’s foremost art journals) devoted its summer issue to ‘‘The American Indian,’’ detailing the contemporary indigenous art scene and inspiring Lowe with the prospect of a community of young Native artists. Soon after finishing grad school, Lowe took a university teaching position in Kansas, where he soon found himself longing for the forests he had always known; this yearning motivated him to create an unusual assemblage work from cast-off bits of weathered wood. The construction of that piece was a turning point for him, during which he realized that, deep down, he was a Woodland Indian. From that point on, he made his work from natural materials. Lowe has said, ‘‘That’s when I began turning my focus to wood as a medium. I was very conscious of my heritage and my environment. The influence came from my father, who really understood wood’’ (Ortel 42).

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In 1974, Lowe moved back to Madison, accepting a position as assistant dean of students and coordinator of Multi-cultural Programming at UWM. Lowe took the job during a time of tremendous social unrest, but he achieved a great deal within the space of his first year. In 1975, he became coordinator of the University’s new Native American Studies program, as well as an assistant professor in the Department of Art. At the same time, his art was becoming considerably more focused on indigenous content. Lowe was coming into his maturity as an artist, and his work was becoming increasingly influenced by the aesthetics of his heritage, but always through a postmodern lens. Often working in series, he explored the culture of the HoChunk, their natural environment, and the relationship between the two. In 1984, Lowe created Detroit River Shelter, a life-sized, openwork structure of twigs. It was a spare but elegant bower that humanized its site at the Detroit Institute of Arts—revealing a Native sensibility in a nonspecific way. Similarly, in the early 1990s the artist made a number of installations that, together, were titled Red Ochre Series. The first piece was constructed at the Tula Foundation in Atlanta. Its focus was a delicate corral-like structure made of bare branches, with other branches propped against it and angling down toward a mound of brown paper at its center on the floor. Above this ‘‘zone’’ hung a large rectangle of small boughs with dangling white feathers, while various twigs throughout the structure revealed pigmented surfaces. The ritualistic feeling of the piece established an atmosphere of solemnity and silence, with pareddown forms that spoke a universal language. In many ways, Lowe was coming to see the artist’s function as that of storyteller—and he assumed that role masterfully, through a combination of eloquence and understatement. For instance, his Wooden Pole Construction, which formally resembles a sawhorse, evokes numerous Native structures ( e.g., the armature for a tipi, drying racks, etc.) while holding its own as a unique shape. It angles down toward one end—where its legs lie flat on the floor, in what appears to be a state of collapse. Closer inspection of the poles reveals the ominous presence of tiny red nodules (actually, red seed beads pressed into the bare, fleshy surface of the wood). The swarm of red bumps implies infestation by an insidious enemy, launching a stealth attack on an unsuspecting victim. The work’s underlying reference is a smallpox epidemic that ravaged Lowe’s reservation during his father’s childhood—a painfully dark episode, made worse by the inhumanity of neighboring towns, whose lack of concern added to the suffering. Another event-related work, but with a more heartening subject, is Red Banks—a colossal, curving form, 12 feet high and 37 feet in length. Built entirely of wood, it gracefully suggests a riverbank with a row of bare saplings along its crest—like the first line of trees back from the water’s edge. It is an immensely fresh and idyllic piece, and doubles as an embodiment of the Ho-Chunk myth of origin, which names Red Banks as the entry point for the first people setting foot on Earth. During the 1980s and 90s, Lowe made a series of evocative works based on the canoe. His interest in it had a number of sources, most of which were universal rather than culturally specific. Not only was he exploring it as vessel, but as sheltering structure and elegant, archetypal form. Many of the pieces

Truman Lowe

Truman Lowe. Wach-Nee. 1999. Sculpture (wood, mixed-media). 96 in.  288 in.  48 in. © Truman Lowe. Photo courtesy of the Eiteljorg Museum.

are stripped down to their supports and call up other objects with similar shapes. Canoe Basket, for instance, has no external covering, and is mounted on the wall, suggesting an openwork container or sieve. Canoe Form, still more spare and metaphorical, is a sort of half-canoe that calls up a spectrum of tools, like fishing traps or trelliswork. Perhaps Lowe’s most daring interpretation of this form occurs in Thunder Bay I (referencing a location where large-scale canoes were made for explorers and trappers). This piece is composed entirely of bentwood slats mounted on the wall at right angles, like a row of arcs that protrude into the viewer’s space. It is an intensely minimal work, and one that allows for multiple readings—including canoe silhouettes, compressed bows, sound waves, and ribbed structures of various kinds. Some of Lowe’s most vital and eloquent works have dealt with water— specifically in relation to rivers and shorelines. These pieces, in particular, reflect the artist’s predilection for ‘‘transparency,’’ i.e., the quality that allows you to experience a form both internally and externally at the same time. That kind of paradox is the basis for a work Lowe made in 1992, titled Ottawa. Named for the city it was first shown in—a city at the juncture of three rivers—this wedge-like sculpture is an open, thirty-one-foot long form, covered with interlacing layers of thin wood stripping. The strips descend in curving stages from the top of the work (5 feet in height) to floor level, weaving in and out of each other and almost appearing to splash. It is a static object that

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creates a striking effect of liquid movement, along with the sense of stopped time that accompanies a streaming flow. On the other hand, despite the persuasive physical presence of the ‘‘water’s’’ surface, one can see through the structure below, showing that the ‘‘river’s’’ depths consist of nothing but air and wooden struts. In Water Mound, Lowe built a wall-mounted bas-relief form of elliptical contours, bulging out from its support and covered with his signature strips of wood. It evokes the sensual swells that move through bodies of water, complete with a slight dimpling of ripples, created here by modulation of the curvature between one slat and the next. Even more mysterious is his Maumee Reflection, a large installation work constructed for a show in Fort Wayne, Indiana—another city located at the confluence of three rivers. In a reductive analysis, one might say that it is nothing more than an arrangement of tall, reed-like saplings, sprouting upward through a waist-level wooden grid—yet its evocation of a marshy shoreline is unmistakable, to the extent that one almost looks for waterbirds weaving through it. It is this kind of spare, structural metaphor that makes Lowe’s work so affecting and so memorable. Beyond Lowe’s achievements as an artist, he possesses notable talents in other fields. He is recognized as a gifted teacher and discerning curator—as evidenced by his work at the National Museum of the American Indian, where he has been Curator of Contemporary Art since 2000. Additionally, his eloquence as a writer has produced numerous works of striking clarity and insight. But ultimately, it is his art that reflects the scope of his creative vision and the depth of his insights. Lowe’s ability to distill the essence of natural and cultural phenomena saturates his work with a resonant visual poetry—opening new ways of seeing while engaging the core issues of human experience. Deborah Everett Where to See Lowe’s Work Cloquet Community College, Cloquet, MN Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Department of Natural Resources Building, Milwaukee, WI Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

Bibliography Archuleta, Margaret, and Rennard Strickland. Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century. Phoenix: Heard Museum Publications, 1991. Lowe, Truman et al., ed. Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution, 2004. Nemiroff, Diana, Robert Houle, and Charlotte Townsend-Gault. Land Spirit Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada Publications, 1992.

Jason Lujan Ortel, Jo. Woodland Reflections: The Art of Truman Lowe. Madsion, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Peabody Essex Museum. Gifts of the Spirit: Works by Nineteenth-Century and Contemporary Native American Artists. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum Publications, 1996. Penney, David W. North American Indian Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004.

Jason Lujan (b. 1971), Chiricahua Apache Filmmaker, Photographer, and Mixed-Media Artist. Jason Lujan took to New York City from the day he arrived, reveling in its high energy and global atmosphere. His optimism and vitality immediately established a connection with the city’s teeming mix of cultures. Well-traveled and gregarious, he seems to effortlessly balance the demands of being a New York artist—while posing pregnant questions about the obscurity of Indians in ‘‘the capital of the world.’’ Lujan was born and raised in Marfa, a tiny town in west Texas that would eventually become known in the art world as the site of the Chinati Foundation. Chinati was brought into being by eminent sculptor Donald Judd, perhaps the most noted exemplar of high minimalism. But the institution’s effect on the town itself ranged from negligible to negative, as it displaced numerous Indian and Mexican families. Lujan remembers, as a child, asking his mother about the artist who had bought up all the land on one side of the main road, and she replied, ‘‘He’s some crazy guy.’’ The resultant shift in local property lines exacerbated a long-standing split between ‘‘brown and white’’ in the community. Lujan says that, although his family was fully ‘‘Americanized,’’ everyone in his social group was either Spanish-speaking or Apache. Situated in an isolated locale, Marfa’s resources were limited. Lujan relates that the town didn’t have much to do, and the only thing in abundance there was ‘‘dirt.’’ Under those circumstances, he says ‘‘you either became resigned, or you got creative.’’ Accordingly, the artist busied himself with numerous exploratory activities while growing up, including ‘‘doodling’’ on paper and ‘‘figuring out how to paint.’’ He also spent many hours putting together model planes and other vehicles. At that time, however, he didn’t think of these pursuits as related to art-making. After graduating from high school, Lujan trained and became employed in computer technology. Most of his jobs were with corporate institutions, and he hated the work they involved. He soon decided to look into studying for a medical technician’s license and enrolled at a community college. However, ‘‘just for fun,’’ he included an art course in his schedule. Something about the class got him hooked, and he was soon taking many more, forgetting the goal of a medical career. In 1998, Lujan earned his B.F.A. in painting at the University of Texas at Arlington. Shortly afterwards, he left for graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he became immersed in both art and activism. He worked energetically for several environmental groups, as well as the Native American Rights Fund. In one of his first memorable

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encounters, he met celebrated writer and activist Vine Deloria. Meanwhile, through the school’s Visiting Artist Program, Lujan became acquainted with numerous contemporary artists, including many Native Americans. While becoming more active in regard to indigenous issues, the artist was also increasingly attracted to photography—as a more direct medium than painting for the political content that interested him most. In August of 2001, Lujan moved to New York City, like many young artists— attracted to it as a major hub of contemporary art. He flourished in the metropolitan environment, immediately obtaining a job with the renowned Dia Center ’s museum in the Chelsea art district. By a strange coincidence, he was scheduled to start on September 11th, but on his way to work, the commute was interrupted by reports of hijacked planes hitting the World Trade Towers. With stunning composure he called in to ask whether he was expected at work that day despite the citywide crisis. Lujan began exhibiting early, while still an undergraduate. By the year 2000, he had shown his work as far away as New Zealand. And once he arrived in New York, he quickly gained even more visibility, participating with other artists in exhibitions at the renowned P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in 2002 and 2003. Since then he has also been featured in the Artist in the Marketplace Program at the Bronx Museum and at the prominent alternative space Exit Art in Manhattan. His exhibition record is an impressive one for a young artist; Lujan comments, ‘‘New York’s been good to me.’’ Working with a variety of photo-based materials, Lujan has created a wide array of insightful and innovative work. In 2000, he created American Indian Nightlight, a small lightbox (eight inches by six inches) that can be plugged into any wall socket. Its glowing red image is shaped by the outline of North America and is filled with a frightening scene from a gothic woodcut. In it, an enormous devil figure—whose horns fill up Alaska on one side and the land encircling Hudson Bay on the other—is gorging itself on human beings. The artist says the work is ‘‘meant to influence one’s dreams about Indians,’’ but he won’t be pinned down to a specific interpretation. One clear possibility is that the ravenous demon represents the invasion of the Americas by Europeans, who gluttonously consumed the world that belonged to ‘‘red’’ nations. In 2005, Lujan created an unusual series of photographs titled The Sacred Nothing. For these works he visited a major collection of indigenous art and photographed Native American objects in storage or undergoing conservation or documentation. These ‘‘behind-the-scenes’’ images reveal the current circumstances of regalia, vessels, and even totem poles—removed from their original, sacred contexts and often looking like specimens in a laboratory. In one work, a striking mask from the Northwest Coast is laid out for reattachment of a broken part; its prone position on a sterile conservator’s table, alongside precision instruments, seems to drain the power from its features, leaving it helpless, like a patient anesthetized for surgery. Another image in the series presents what initially appears to be a severed human forearm in a tray— wearing a Kuna bracelet from Panama and surrounded by cultural accoutrements. It is only on noticing the chipped edges of the form that one realizes the ‘‘arm’’ is a cast. Nevertheless, the hand’s perfectly formed grip and the

Jason Lujan

lifelike details of the skin’s surface (down to the pattern of hair follicles) give it an eerie morbidity—as though an arm was sacrificed to provide a display prop for the bracelet. Working more recently in the medium of video, Lujan has shown a particularly strong gift for paring down and clarifying the impact of visual culture. His awareness of the imagery overload in our society (generally estimated at 2,000+ pictures seen daily by each ‘‘consumer’’) is keenly focused, and he turns it to his own advantage. He may zero in on the glut of signage in public places, or the iconography of advertising and entertainment, but he consistently reveals hidden aspects of these ubiquitous influences on modern consciousness. Playing off the public sense of the ever-present mass audience, he confronts the isolation and absentia that Native people often feel in a world that mostly ignores them. With exhilarating wit and ease, Lujan’s work injects a Native presence into the world at large, slipping disturbing questions between layers of disarming imagery and humor. In 2004, he created the American Indian Fansub Project; in it, gleaming anime´ videos (the fast-moving Japanese animation with a cult following and sci-fi content) are overlaid with exotic subtitles in Cherokee, Inuit, and Apache. Lujan says, ‘‘I chose Native languages with their own letter systems, rather than [using] the Latin alphabet [to create] phonetic [versions] of Indian words. Being a visual artist, I’m interested in how these alphabets look, and how they interact with the spoken Japanese of the video’’ (Lujan 2). Graceful and enigmatic, the subtitles mesh seamlessly with the Asian ‘‘future-world’’ of anime´, like runes from a distant planet. And like anime´ itself, these inscriptions suggest the possibility of discovery and meaning in a ‘‘9-to-5’’ world that often seems suffocatingly cynical and bland. In this way, Lujan joins Native American reality to a highly popular, essentially ‘‘underground,’’ assertion of human potential. In an eloquent and even more ambitious film completed in 2006, Lujan created an autobiographical work titled, I Look at Indians, I Look at Myself. While the film delineates his personal immersion in New York’s ‘‘global village,’’ it also reveals the many ways he is ostracized from it. Repeatedly the viewer encounters the city’s massive array of multilingual labels and signage that somehow never includes indigenous languages; the artist envisions Native characters on ATMs and commercial packaging, wondering if that might induce a greater awareness among non-Natives. Simultaneously, he ponders the international fascination with American Indians, and its existence at the level of outrageous misconceptions and exploitable icons. With a flickering overload of commercial ‘‘Indian’’ logos, as well as a haunting slice of dehumanization in ethnographic museums, Lujan poignantly moves his viewers into his own shoes. From an initial close-up of his own piercing gaze, to the film’s last lines calling out the harm done by stereotypes, Lujan finds his mark again and again. Within its brief, four-minute span, this film opens the lid on many dark wells—‘‘in an environment where Native culture is either invisible, or buried under the weight of high-density living and global consumerism’’ (Lujan 3).

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Lujan is an artist of unwavering commitment to both the integrity of his work and the betterment of conditions for his fellow Native Americans. At the same time, he seamlessly bridges the gap in experience of most nonNatives, expanding their awareness with engaging wit, provocative questions, and arresting imagery. His approach, in many ways, resembles a kind of amicable ‘‘lightning raid’’—with the result of persuading viewers to change their perceptions before they know what hit them. It is his ability to move gracefully within and between postmodern parameters that gives his work its polish and fluidity. But it is his concern with the issues and his unfailing humanism that make his best work so powerful. Deborah Everett Where to See Lujan’s Work http://www.amerinda.org/naar/lujan/mixedmedia/lujanmixedmedia.htm http://www.artcodex.org http://www.jasonlujan.com http://www.presenciataina.tv/PTAICH.htm

Bibliography Everett, Deborah. Multiple Identities. Brooklyn: Kentler Gallery Publications, 2008. University Art Gallery, Stony Brook University. Paumanok. Stony Brook, NY: Stony Brook University Publications, 2006. http://www.jasonlujan.com

James Luna (b. 1950), Luisen ˜o Performance and Installation Artist. James Luna lives on the ‘‘rez.’’ So he knows about alcoholism. He knows about high rates of diabetes, inadequate health care, and poor educational opportunities. His firsthand acquaintance with the problems plaguing many Native people has become the source of his creativity and the subject of his art. Luna’s family has always kept close ties with its ancestral home, the LaJolla Reservation in California. The artist himself has lived there for the last 30 years. He began his formal art education as a painter at the University of California at Irvine, where he received his B.F.A. in 1976. Performance art, however, soon became his primary medium, as he found it more real than pictures—with a capacity to express complex ideas that don’t translate well into painting. Simultaneously, he was drawn to the formal parallels between performance art and the indigenous traditions of dance, ritual, and storytelling. Luna began exhibiting and performing his work in 1975, and he became increasingly well known throughout the 1980s. At the same time, he had entered graduate school at San Diego State University, where he received an M.S. in Counseling in 1983. Luna has called himself a ‘‘contemporary traditionalist’’ (Lippard 198), and makes his art for both Native and non-Native audiences. Art critic Lucy Lippard once said Luna’s work is essentially ‘‘art as

James Luna

intervention,’’ referencing his comparison of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to Sweat Lodge purification rites. (The Sweat Lodge is an underground chamber where Indians gather for the ritual endurance of the intense warmth and steam from heated stones, cleansing both body and spirit.) Luna has said, ‘‘I feel like my art is strong as long as I stay working as a counselor. We Indians have survived as long as we have because of our ability to adapt. We still have our healers, leaders, and warriors. It’s just that the new warriors are armed with legal, political and artistic weapons’’ (Lippard 198). Luna’s breakthrough to a larger audience came in 1987, when his stunning installation/performance work The Artifact Piece was presented at the San Diego Museum of Man. In a section devoted to the Kumeyaay Indians (who once occupied San Diego County), Luna presented himself, wearing a breechcloth and lying in a display case on a bed of sand. Outfitted like a classic ethnographic specimen, Luna was surrounded by his personal accoutrements, from articles of clothing, family photos, and a Jimi Hendrix album, to divorce papers and diplomas. Multiple labels identified him, down to explanations of the scars he had received during fistfights. And so the questions for the audience began. Could this still, silent figure really be a mannequin, when he looked so much like a live human being? Given his music and other effects, he was clearly ‘‘contemporary,’’ so why was he dressed the way he was? And how had he come to be laid out in a case? Could a person really be an artifact, a leftover from a dead culture? The performance was repeated in 1990 at the Studio Museum in Harlem, in the celebrated ‘‘Decade Show’’ that spanned three museums in New York City. In that very contemporary setting, viewers found it even more shocking to come upon an anthropological display, only to discover it was actually a living person. Critic Elizabeth Hess stated, ‘‘the realization that Luna was not an inanimate object was stunning. Who was watching whom? I already had a relationship with this person. What would he do if I talked to him? Touched him? I felt self-conscious staring at Luna, yet I was riveted’’ (Hess 27). In 1991, Luna really began to come into his own, appearing at the Whitney Museum (Wall St. Annex) with his piece Take a Picture with a Real Indian. Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to pose for a photo with Luna dressed in his famous breechcloth, or else with life-sized cardboard cutouts of him, wearing street clothes or regalia. In the same year he created A. A. Meeting/ Art History, an autobiographical installation work, which is now part of the permanent collection of the prestigious Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego. In it, he features two parallel aspects of life (for him, as well as for many Native Americans), representing both struggle and deliverance: Alcoholics Anonymous and art. In the installation, the scene is set as a Twelve-Step meeting, with folding chairs in a loose circle, used Styrofoam cups and ashtrays, and AA books strewn about. On the wall is a series of formal photographs— stills from a performance video simultaneously being shown on a TV placed between the chairs. The photos and the video feature Luna bringing figures to life from a variety of well-known art works, including Rodin’s Thinker and Picasso’s Guernica. The pairing of the art works with the AA meeting seems to imply that both are sources of stabilization and self-renewal in troubled

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lives. But neither of them is a guaranteed solution. Just as empty beer bottles loom threateningly outside the AA perimeter, the series of art images concludes with a parody of James Earl Fraser ’s End of the Trail—in which Fraser ’s vanquished Indian is replaced by a drunken-looking Luna, holding a half-consumed bottle of liquor. So it seems that both the art and the support groups have their challenges and limitations, as the artist reveals the daily nature of indigenous battles. One of the great milestones for any artist is inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, which occurred for Luna in 1993. In 2005, he appeared in the Venice Biennale, creating for it two installations and a performance work, collectively titled Emendatio (Latin for ‘‘emendation’’—a correction and improvement of something faulty). One of the installations, Chapel for Pablo Tac, paid homJames Luna. Emendatio (rehearsal still). 2005. Performance age to a Luisen ˜ o man of the work. © James Luna. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of 1800s, who studied in Rome the American Indian. and wrote the only known history of a California mission from an indigenous perspective. In this work, Luna ‘‘emends’’ the assumption that Luisen˜o history is the purview of Euro-American writers, reclaiming a major facet of his heritage. The second installation Apparitions: Past and Present used dramatic lighting and photographic projections to layer images of present-day Luisen˜o individuals over historic portraits from Luna’s community. Here the artist provides the sense of a continually evolving culture, replacing romantic visions of the past with faces that belong to the contemporary world. Luna’s performance for the Biennale evoked rituals performed in many cultures that ensure the well-being of the community into the future. For this work, Luna laid out a circle of stones, interspersed with food items common on the reservation; they alternated with the medicine vials and syringes so necessary in a group with high incidence of diabetes (including the artist himself).

James Luna

Luna then danced for four hours on each of four days at the beginning of the Biennale. The number four, referring to the cardinal directions, represents a sacred and all-inclusive parameter. As renowned artist and curator Truman Lowe states, ‘‘When something is repeated four times, it carries with it a statement about permanence’’ (Lowe 22). In this way Luna created a ritual and an act of endurance—extended as ‘‘a gesture of sacrifice, healing and renewal, honoring a global community’’ (Lowe 22). Luna is known and highly respected for the courage and frankness of his confrontational work. As an artist, he pulls no punches. His focus is on reality, and that is the gift he gives his audience. In refusing to sugarcoat the lives of Native Americans, he ushers in a substantial breath of fresh air—offering the kind of unexpurgated truth that lays the foundation for genuine cultural understanding. Deborah Everett Where to See Luna’s Work Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, CA Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA New School of Social Research, New York, NY

Bibliography Gopnik, Blake. ‘‘Indian Artists in Venice: Off the Traditional Path.’’ Washington Post (Washington, D.C.), July 24, 2005. Hess, Elizabeth. ‘‘The Decade Show: Breaking and Entering.’’ Village Voice (New York), May 1990, 27. Jones, Amelia. Body Art Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Lippard, Lucy R. Mixed Blessings. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990. Lowe, Truman T., and Paul Chaat Smith. James Luna: Emendatio. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2005. Matuz, Roger, ed. St. James Guide to Native North American Artists. Detroit: St. James Press, 1998. Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego (Anne Farrell, ed.). Blurring the Boundaries: Installation Art 1969–1996. San Diego: Museum of Contemporary Art Publications, 1997. Rushing, W. Jackson, ed. Native American Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 1999.

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M Mario Martinez (b. 1953), Yaqui Painter. Principally known for his detailed abstract paintings, Mario Martinez creates painterly, organic imagery with an emphasis on color and texture. With densely layered surfaces, his works suggest a range of biological environments where unique forms interlace inseparably. Martinez grew up in a small Yaqui community called Penjamo, now surrounded by the city of Scottsdale, Arizona. As a child, he was deeply immersed in his nation’s traditional culture, but he was also interacting with mainstream America and integrating it into his worldview. The traditions and history of his community were ever-present, providing a rich grounding in the artist’s primary heritage. ‘‘In my time,’’ Martinez says, ‘‘I saw the elders who preserved the language and knowledge of the original ways’’ (NMAI 45). While growing up, the artist often witnessed the compelling Deer Dance—a ritual performance central to Yaqui culture—recounting the life of the animal they hold most sacred. Attendees of the ritual watch this gentle creature, the archetype of goodness, struggle against danger and selfish intent in the form of stalking coyotes. It is a dance that is elemental and deeply evocative—one that Martinez has given concrete form in recent years—in his Yaqui Mural Project in Scottsdale. Despite the strength and richness of the Yaqui culture, many outside influences have been entering and affecting their world for some time. Their original homeland is the Sonoran Desert of northern Mexico, but during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pressures from the Mexican government had motivated many Yaqui people to move across the border into Arizona— including Martinez’s grandparents. Because of having lived within a Latin American country for so long, the Arizona (or ‘‘Pascua’’) Yaqui had been bicultural for hundreds of years before arriving in the United States. The artist has remarked, ‘‘Diverse influences [have] affected me, including the Spanish language; the desert; TV shows and news; country, rock, and jazz music; and many other phenomena’’ (NMAI 43). From a very young age, Martinez loved making pictures, starting with the tempera paints and paper available in his classroom at school. The artist has commented that he has always felt a deep connection with color and paint, all the way through public school and continuing through various challenges in adult life. After finishing high school in 1972 he enrolled at a community

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college for some time, before going on to Arizona State University, where he received his B.F.A. in 1979. As a young adult, Martinez says, he was a ‘‘hippie’’ and was therefore drawn to the counterculture scene in San Francisco, which became his next home. There he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he earned his M.F.A. in 1985. During this time, his primary influences were the ‘‘color, texture, and movement’’ of Wassily Kandinsky’s work, as well as the powerful ‘‘life force’’ in the paintings of Pablo Picasso. After an early career on the West Coast, Martinez was becoming increasingly drawn to New York City, where he moved in 2002. He had always been influenced by artists of the New York School, including Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner, Frank Stella—and even minimalist sculptor Richard Serra. Stimulated by the vitality of the City’s art community and the energy of its cultural dialogue, Martinez made the statement, ‘‘New York challenges you to change your work and grow and develop it differently’’ (NMAI 42). At the same time, many allusions to Yaqui culture have continued to pervade Martinez’s work. Flowers, for instance, are a constant, though subtle, reference for the artist, as they are a primary object of veneration for the Yaqui—a symbol of ‘‘everything that is good and beautiful in this world’’ (http://www.pascuayaqui-nsn. gov). In Universe and Flowers, Martinez presents a form with rows of radiating, pointed ‘‘petals,’’ looking very similar to the bloom of the Easter cactus of the American Southwest. Similarly, Flower Crown reveals a flower-like shape toward the lower edge of the canvas, with an almost spherical arrangement of slender, spiking petals, reminiscent of Arizona’s ‘‘Fairy Duster’’ blossom. These forms exist within an abstract space perhaps referring to the Yaqui realm of flowers, a paradise with similarities to Western conceptions of Eden. Martinez’s work suggests not only a world of beauty, but an intensely interconnected one. In a work like Cactus Memories, the sense of a web of life is strikingly evident. The viewer perceives a close-up of forms Mario Martinez. Galaxy and Flowers. 1998. Painting (acrylic evoking stems, sticks, twigs, on canvas). 60.5 cm  50.5 cm. © Mario Martinez. Photo branches, and botanical projeccourtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian. tions, essentially embedded in

Victor Masayesva, Jr.

the space that ‘‘surrounds’’ them—in other words, there is a minimized sense of ‘‘figures’’ as separate entities from the ‘‘ground.’’ The relationship appears thoroughly interdependent. In a similar way, although much more representational in style, Martinez’s painting Talking Tree projects a feeling of shared space and shared existence between figure elements and ground elements; despite its clear depiction of a tree planted in the soil, the intervals between branches (and between the tree and the earth) are so heavily painted that they become almost palpable. This propensity to display the interwoven character of life often results in a kind of tightly packed, brimming composition. In an unusual and particularly beautiful piece by Martinez—Floating—the density gives way to an airy atmosphere. Four centralized forms, in an arching configuration, do indeed seem to float above an apparent horizon line. Each of the forms is similar and disk-like, perhaps representing different phases of the same organic entity—and one of them bears a close resemblance to the bloom of the mighty Saguaro cactus, the monarch of the Arizona desert. There is an affecting sense of tranquility in this image, as the forms seem to radiate harmony, almost as a by-product of their natural course through life. Martinez’s work was recently presented in a solo show at the National Museum of the American Indian (2005) and has been exhibited widely across the United States and in Japan. His work figures in the collections of several important museums and has been published in a number of noteworthy books. He currently lives and works in New York City, continuing to blend his multiple cultural influences into a fluid, expressionist style. Deborah Everett Where to See Martinez’s Work Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, IL National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ

Bibliography Abbott, Lawrence. I Stand in the Center of the Good. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. National Museum of the American Indian. Who Stole the Tee Pee? New York: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2000. National Museum of the American Indian (Gerald McMaster, ed.) New Tribe, New York. New York: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2005. Robertson, Jean, and Craig McDaniel. Painting as a Language: Material, Technique, Form, Content. New York: Harcourt College Publishers, 1999. http://www.mmartinezpainting.com

Victor Masayesva, Jr. (b. 1951), Hopi Filmmaker and Photographer. Victor Masayesva, Jr. is a filmmaker, film and video producer, and photographer whose work and activities place him in the forefront of creating an

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indigenous audiovisual media. His documentary and experimental films, and mixed-media photographs of symbolically charged visionary dreamscapes, are intended for a Native audience, or others willing to do the hard work of understanding the complex and multilayered world he depicts. His films and photographs document traditional cultural practices, combat Hollywood stereotypes of Indians, and explore the relationship between spoken and visual language. For Masayesva, ‘‘history—a people’s story—must be told by those for whom that story equals experience. Above all . . . . these stories must be preserved within their own culture, and passed down’’ (Horace Mann School). Masayesva was raised in Hotevilla, Arizona, on the Third Mesa. In that small village (population 767 in 2000), Masayesva spoke Hopi and learned agriculture, while also attending elementary school. He describes his home as a place where ‘‘you carried wood chips and bark with you when you were very young, branches as you grew stronger. When you reached adolescence you cut and carried wood. When you started your family you hauled pin˜on and juniper logs from miles away. When you reached old age you carried a wood cane’’ (Andrew Smith Gallery). As a teenager, Masayesva left Arizona to study at the prestigious Horace Mann School in New York City. Former teacher Tek Young Lin recruited Masayesva because he wanted to increase diversity at the school, but also because Lin wanted cross-country runners (Horace Mann School). With dry wit, Masayesva recalls that ‘‘my father only agreed to my going so far away because when he heard the name, ‘Horseman School,’ he thought I might learn something that could be useful when I returned home’’ (Horace Mann School). Masayesva’s father was a gifted agriculturalist and community leader, whose family ‘‘has served in leadership roles in his tribe for centuries’’ (Horace Mann School). Moving to New York City meant that Masayesva had to leave his obligations behind—for a while. One of the teachers at Horace Mann who strongly influenced Masayesva was art teacher Ion Theodore, whose extraordinary life inspired a novel by a classmate. Following Horace Mann, Masayesva attended Princeton University, where he studied photography and English literature. Masayesva started graduate studies at the University of Arizona in interdisciplinary studies (Singer), financed by a prestigious Ford Foundation fellowship. He returned home, drawn by ‘‘family and village responsibilities’’ (Singer), and continued to take photographs and started to make films. In 1980, Masayesva worked, in then, directed Hotevilla’s short-lived, federally funded Ethnic Heritage Program, creating ‘‘a project with the Hopi community schools in which oral histories of elders would be used to teach Hopi language and values . . . [and] traditional skills.’’ . . . He used ‘‘a video camera and trained an all-Hopi crew of high school students in video production’’ (Weatherford). Masayesva was particularly drawn by the potential of video, which was the first portable filmmaking medium, and also drawn to experimental filmmaking, yet continued taking photographs. Native photography is an emerging field, in part because of the complex and sometimes conflictual relationship that native peoples have with photography, due to its associations with exploitation of native peoples (Singer). However,

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for a growing number of native artists (including Richard Ray Whitman, Carm LittleTurtle, Jesse Cooday, Jolene Rickard, and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie), photography offers the opportunity to not only control a medium that has been used negatively against native peoples, but also to present their distinctive artistic visions in ways sometimes directed at Native audiences. According to scholar Beverly R. Singer, Masayesva ‘‘cannot be forced into the category ‘Native American photographer,’ because he produces images that articulate with . . . . ideas and . . . elements predating the modern vernacular use of the term ‘Native American’ ’’ (Singer). Masayesva initially resisted making portraits, to avoid turning his subjects into timeless ‘‘Edward Curtis’’ Indians dressed in traditional clothing: ‘‘I had forged my rebellion against possible success by carrying the Indian wars into my chosen field, photography’’ (Masayesva 2006). However, as Masayesva elegantly and passionately describes, he had a ‘‘turning point’’ when he rushed to develop a photograph he had taken, using a large, antique four-byfive-inch camera, of a young girl dressed as a Butterfly Dancer for a Dance his father sponsored to celebrate the safe return of Masayesva’s brothers home from the Vietnam War. As the black and white photograph of the calm pollen-daubed face of the elaborately dressed and bejeweled girl emerged from ‘‘shallow developer water,’’ Masayesva realized that the portrait revealed a profound moment beyond time. Similar to the magical way in which the photograph emerged from the developer, through the process of dressing and dancing the girl was ‘‘released to become all the suggestions of butterflyness’’ (Masayesva 2006, 6). Masayesva saw that wearing traditional dress did not turn the young girl into a subject fit for a tourist magazine (though she might have been perceived as such by outsiders). ‘‘One can understand why Indians love to be photographed in their native costumes . . . . The Indian imagines himself, dressed in his costume, far beyond the moment, given momentum by the pollen release into a future where he or she is alive on his or her own terms. Ever since, I have looked for this portrait in human, landscape, and experimental photographs’’ (Masayesva 2006, 6). Some of Masayesva’s landscapes do appear to present a timeless, transcendent moment, such as the silver print Rain Runner (1982), where a small human appears over the horizon, which is divided into light land and dark sky. Weaver (1982) shows an elderly man almost completely hidden behind a belt loom that he is adjusting, yet a calendar that occupies the same plane of the weaver, which advertises a car and truck headquarters, reminds us that this is a contemporary scene. Other photographs combine image and text, on photographic surfaces that may be scratched or hold multiple layers of digital or printed images: some strongly visible, others faint, reversed, and unreadable. Masayesva also may incorporate hand coloring or collage. Some of the texts are personal, but many are political, recounting times of famine, or the slaughter of priests. In Ong Tupka (1997, cover of Masayesva 2006), two small boys (or the same boy twice) dressed in traditional Hopi clothing fill most of the left side of the photograph, but between them and to their right are silhouettes of masked dancers: wearing deer antlers, carrying a staff, moving outside the frame. The overall

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reddish-orange color of the print, punctuated by the boys’ dark hair, eyes, and clothing, recedes into orange distance, powerfully evoking a sense of time and a collusion of past and present. The series ‘‘Drought’’ explores the terrible effects of the Southwestern drought on Hopi people (whose farming depends on rainfall) and others in the region. In this series, as in many of his works, Masayesva does not address a subject bluntly, instead presenting beautiful but disturbing images that raise issues indirectly. The photographs are filled with elements of nature: desiccated skeletons, lost feathers. In black and white Cradle (2006), one of the simplest compositions in the series, dried antlers rise from carefully arranged feathers on arid sand (Hopi viewers would understand the significance); below, two dead birds with beaks touching are strapped to small bentwood and mat frames, seemingly safe in their cradles. The print is beautiful and disturbing simultaneously; the contrasting textures and materials (sand, feathers, antlers, basketry materials) evoke multilayered messages that warn about the effects of severe drought without ever directly saying so. Masayesva says that he started to make films and videos—‘‘moving photographs’’—in 1978. From the beginning, he wanted to counter the profusion of images and words in English, against the possibility of a loss of the Hopi language: ‘‘Many of us have grown up hearing that one day the songbirds would not return, that one day our Hopi language would be gone. For me, perpetuating language is a collective assurance of future tribal existence’’ (Masayesva 2006, 34). Yet language, transformed into writing, is not sufficient. Masayesva’s used footage shot under the Ethnic Heritage Program to create his first film—Hopiit (‘‘The Hopi,’’ 1981)—which recounts a story from Second Mesa. This bio-documentary starts with a glimpse of prayer feathers moving lightly in the wind. The storytelling is not sequential and turns back on itself. At one point, Masayesva’s father talks about corn, so central to native life; in doing so, he communicates profoundly important information on multiple levels simultaneously. ‘‘The language of the film is Hopi; the language of the images is Hopi. The viewers must actively make the effort to interpret the images and understand the structure, as would Hopi viewers’’ (Sand and Lewis). Masayesva also makes films that are didactic, such as the early Weaving (for the National Endowment for the Arts Folk Art Program, 1981–82) and tribal programs on tourism: Southwest Tourism for the Hopi, and Havsuw Baaja for the Havasupai. Imagining Indians (1993/94), made for ITVS (Independent Television Service) and PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), turns the lens on the film industry. Filmed in various Native communities in North and South America, it powerfully critiques Hollywood’s stereotypical depictions of native peoples, and the industry’s commercial gains from doing so. According to Masayesva, ‘‘I hope this challenges the viewer to overcome glamorized Hollywood views of the Native American, which obscures the difficult demands of walking the spiritual road of our ancestors’’ (DER). Masayesva explores Hopi language and narrative in Itam Hakin, Hopiit, which means ‘‘We, someone, the Hopi.’’ In that film, Ross Macaya (the eldest in a storytelling clan) recounts in Hopi the stories of Hopi Emergence, the

Victor Masayesva, Jr.

Pueblo Revolt, Age of Conquistadors, and the origin of the Bow Clan. In this film, so distinctive for its time, Hopi heritage is presented through a complex narrative structure realized through observation, not ethnography. Masayesva’s film Ritual Clowns (1988) was shown for two years, but then Masayesva pulled it from circulation for almost twenty years, because it depicted an aspect of Hopi tradition normally kept secret from outsiders. Masayesva said that he decided to show Ritual Clowns again ‘‘to make sure the young people of his own tribe were aware of their heritage’’ (Horace Mann School). Paatuwaqatsi H2Opi Run to Mexico is a documentary about the 50K Paatuwaqatsi Run (founded by Hopi runner Bucky Preston) from the Hopi reservation, which attempted to deliver water to the 2006 World Water Forum in Mexico City. Masayesva’s work-in-progress, Pensoyungkam: People with a Pencil, is about Hopi Indians accused of sedition who were imprisoned on Alcatraz Island at the end of the nineteenth century. These recent films were screened at the prestigious Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival at the American Museum of Natural History. (An extensive list of Masayesva’s documentaries and experimental films are in a news release by Black Mesa Trust at http://www.blackmesatrust.org/news-local/Run-toMexico-report.htm.) Masayesva has received important fellowships from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundation and SWAIA (Southwestern Association for Indian Arts) and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, among others awarded. Masayesva has been invited as artist-in-residence or guest artist in Chicago, Princeton, and Montana. His films and videos have been shown internationally at museums and in exhibitions in the United States (New York, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and others), Holland, Japan, and Ecuador, and have received awards in the United States and internationally. When not traveling, Masayesva continues to live in the village where he was born. His work remains deeply concerned with language—spoken, written, and visual. ‘‘I continue to this day to observe the exchange between experience and language, between image and text . . . . Text seems to keep at bay our forgetfulness, our madness, and as such it is the way of the healers’’ (Masayesva 2006, 37–38). Elayne Zorn Where to See Victor Masayesva’s Work Andrew Smith Gallery, http://www.andrewsmithgallery.com/exhibitions/ victormasayesva/drought/index.htm http://www.blackmesatrust.org/news-local/Run-to-Mexico-report.htm http://www.eai.org/eai/artist.jsp?artistID=371

Bibliography Electronic Arts Intermix. ‘‘Victor Masayesva, Jr. Biography.’’ http://www.eai.org/ eai/biography.jsp?artistID=371. Enyeart, James L. et al. ‘‘Victor Masayesva.’’ In Photographers, Writers, and the American Scene. Visions of Passage, 153–57. Santa Fe: Arena Editions, 2002.

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Alan Michelson Evers, Larry, ed. Sun Tracks: An American Indian Literary Series. Hopi Photographers/ Hopi Images. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1983. Horace Mann School. ‘‘Victor Masayesva Jr. ’70 Tells Hopi History Through Hopi Eyes.’’ Horace Mann School Alumni House & Development Office. http:// www.horacemannalumni.org/V.Masayesva.cfm. Masayesva, Jr., Victor. ‘‘Hopiit.’’ 15 min. film. IS Productions c/o Atlatl, 1981. ———. Husk of Time: The Photographs of Victor Masayesva. Introduction by Beverly R. Singer. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006. ———. ‘‘Imagining Indians.’’ 60 min. film. DER (Documentary Educational Resources), 1993/94. ———. ‘‘Itam Hakin, Hopiit.’’ 58 min. film. IS Productions c/o Atlatl, 1985. ———. ‘‘Paatuwaqatsi: H2Opi Run to Mexico (Water, Land, Life).’’ 60 min. film. Black Mesa Trust, 2007. Masayesva, Jr., Victor, and Erin Younger, eds. Hopi Photographers/Hopi Images. Vol. 8, Sun Tracks: An American Indian Literary Series. Tucson: Sun Tracks and the University of Arizona Press, 1983. Rony, Fatimah Tobing. ‘‘Victor Masayesva, Jr., and the Politics of ‘Imagining Indians’.’’ Film Quarterly 48, no. 2 (Winter, 1994–1995): 20–33. Sands, Kathleen M., and Allison Sekaquaptewa Lewis. ‘‘Seeing with a Native Eye: A Hopi Film on Hopi.’’ American Indian Quarterly 14, no. 4 (Fall 1990): 387 ff. http://www.nau.edu/~hcpo-p/culture/articles/Sand&Lewis.pdf. Singer, Beverly R. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In Husk of Time: The Photographs of Victor Masayesva, Victor Masayesva, Jr., ix–xviii. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006. Weatherford Elizabeth, and Victor Masayesva, Jr. ‘‘To End and Begin Again: The Work of Victor Masayesva, Jr.’’ Art Journal 54, no. 4, Video Art (Winter 1995): 48–52.

Alan Michelson (b. 1953), Mohawk Sculptor and Video- and Installation-Artist. An artist of penetrating insight, Alan Michelson creates stunning sculpture and installation art with multiple levels of meaning. His work is well known in Canada and increasingly so in the United States since his solo exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian (2005). Offering piercing commentary on history, cultural origins, land, and identity, he sifts through layered realities and uncovers hidden truths. His sensitivity to materials— and affecting use of light—yield haunting works with the potency of a recurring dream. Michelson was born in Buffalo, New York to a Mohawk mother and a Sicilian-American father. The artist was adopted and raised by a non-Native couple in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and his childhood was a ‘‘typical’’ one of the 1950s and 60s, except for two significant losses—the deaths of his adoptive father when he was four and his stepfather when he was thirteen. Drawing was a refuge for Michelson as a child, and his talent was further stimulated by art classes he attended at a local museum—formerly a Victorian mansion, complete with a wide-ranging collection of objects evoking a ‘‘cabinet of curiosities.’’ Its examples of European and American landscape painting would

Alan Michelson

continue to affect the artist years later, and would join Mark Rothko and Anselm Kiefer as some of Michelson’s primary influences. In 1971 Michelson moved to New York City and entered Columbia College, where he studied until 1973. From 1978 through 1981 he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tufts University, studying painting and receiving his B.F.A. from Tufts in 1981. Following the death of his adoptive mother when he was twenty-five, he learned that his biological mother was an American Indian, and he began to reconnect with his original heritage. He sought out his birth mother and reunited with his Mohawk family; some time later, he became formally enrolled as a member of his nation. At the same time, the usual identity issues he experienced as an adoptee were compounded by the transcultural nature of his adoption. In the mid-1980s, Michelson attended a thought-provoking talk by Cherokee artist and writer Jimmie Durham, after which Michelson introduced himself and made reference to his adoption. Durham replied, ‘‘During the 1950s and 60s, we [Native people] lost about thirty percent of our children through adoption to non-Native families’’ (Interview 2006). Hearing the adoption issue framed in that way helped Michelson put it in context, as a culture-wide phenomenon. The two artists subsequently became friendly, and Durham mentored the younger artist, introducing him to other professionals in the field, like distinguished art critic Jean Fisher. Soon after, Fisher and Durham invited Michelson to contribute work to their groundbreaking show, ‘‘We the People’’ at Artists Space; taking place in 1987, that exhibition was among the first to present contemporary Native art in a prominent, non-Native gallery in New York. Durham later invited Michelson to collaborate on Virginia/Veracruz, an installation and performance about colonization of the Americas for ‘‘Edge ’92,’’ a British biennial exhibition held in both London and Madrid. For that work, Michelson researched and located the original point of embarkation of the Virginia Company’s ships, when taking the founders of Jamestown from England to America. Accordingly, the London performance was held at Trinity Buoy Wharf bordering the launch site—whose atmosphere was further loaded by the presence of a British Empire-era lighthouse. Similarly, in Madrid the performance was presented next to the city’s ‘‘triangle of high art,’’ where three venerable museums enshrine a Eurocentric worldview and perception of culture. By that time, Michelson had been making sculpture and installations for several years, focusing increasingly on three-dimensional work. In 1990, he created a work called Earth’s Eye for the noted art organization The Public Art Fund, on the former site of Collect Pond—a large freshwater system that had existed in lower Manhattan for centuries. It had been a precious source of food and water for both indigenous people and colonists until tanners polluted it in the eighteenth century; eventually, it became a breeding ground for disease and was filled in with the middens (see Glossary) that had surrounded it since pre-Columbian times. Michelson built a ‘‘flat monument’’ to the original harmony and abundance of that pond, now lost, recreating its shape with forty wedge-shaped markers of cast concrete. The upper surface of each stone

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revealed detailed relief-work depicting specific aspects of the area’s flora and fauna, and the sides were etched with a passage from Thoreau that likened ponds to sentient organs of the earth. This installation drew considerable response, and after seeing it, renowned critic Lucy Lippard invited Michelson to join the esteemed artists’ group REPOHistory, whose public art projects examined the repressed or marginalized histories of specific sites. In 1992 Michelson participated in their ‘‘Lower Manhattan Sign Project,’’ a wellreviewed collaborative work presenting alternative views of ‘‘high points’’ in American history. Throughout the late 1980s and early 90s, Michelson’s reputation was growing, and he was participating in important shows in the United States, Europe, and Canada. His work appeared in exhibitions at the Banff Centre for Arts in Alberta, the Whitney Museum in New York, Art in General (also in New York), the New Museum, and other important contemporary venues. He was also an Artist-in-Residence at New York’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center and took part in art panel discussions and lectures, in cities ranging from Washington, D.C. to Chicago to Santa Fe. Michelson’s focus was becoming increasingly attuned to critical intersections of time and space—junctures of history and landscape that changed the course of cultures as well as individual lives. He had long been influenced by the work of Anselm Kiefer, the visionary German painter whose dissection of his country’s recent past is one of the most moving and effective examples of this hybrid perspective. But Michelson was interested not only in locales with historical significance, but in the way places change over time—and the worldview of local inhabitants as the source of those changes. He began to explore the social assumptions underlying landscape art, including the way Hudson River School paintings reflect the pastoral view of nature inherent in the doctrine of ‘‘manifest destiny.’’ One of Michelson’s most powerful works is Mespat (an indigenous word for ‘‘bad water place’’), created in 2001. Its imagery is the current blighted condition of Newtown Creek, the body of water separating Brooklyn from Queens. Filming the industrial landscape of its shore from a moving boat, the artist created a smooth, relentless passage through an urban wasteland, made palatable by a sprinkling of striking forms—like the wedding-cake shape of a massive white storage tank. At the same time, the video is projected on a huge panel of white turkey feathers—referencing garments of the Lenape Indians who used to live there—while causing the scenery to ripple over them hypnotically. This alternately dreamlike and disfigured world both chills and seduces the viewer with a strangely provocative fusion of beauty and destruction. In 2005, Michelson expanded his use of video with the complex installation, Two Row II. The work’s structure is based on The Two-Row Wampum, a historic and revered beaded sash that embodied a major treaty between the Iroquois and Europeans in the 1600s. Like the belt’s two rows of purple shell beads (with white in between), the installation presents double tracks of filmed landscape in deep violet. It reveals both shores of the Grand River in Ontario— with the Six Nations Indian Reserve on one side and non-Native land on

Alan Michelson

the other. The images span four separate screens (totaling fifty-six feet in all), as they simultaneously flow in opposite directions. Specific features of the landscapes subtly reflect the differing values of the two cultures, while sudden jumps in the imagery underscore a sense of multiple perspectives, relative to the viewer. From a speaker on each side of the room, a different narrative about the place’s history—one indigenous and one mainstream—confronts the audience and competes for their attention. Tensions build, along with the dissonance of conflicting viewpoints, until the non-Native monologue reveals ulterior motives, just as the boat’s horn sounds three times, and one by one, the images fade. In other works, Michelson has addressed the challenging, often anguished, aspects of hybrid realities. This is a particularly important issue for Native people now, as dislocation to other parts of the world is common, and separation from language and land are increasingly widespread. Michelson has come to see his own situation of restoration to family and community as a fortunate reversal of the dominant trend—in which economic, social, and legal issues separate individuals from their birthplace and their world. Michelson’s penetrating knowledge of both his cultures brilliantly illumines the first and most enduring conflict of North American countries—their status as settler nations. He exposes the sociopolitical contexts of landscape, revealing multiple related issues—including the struggles of Native people to retain their heritage and landbase. As he unfolds stories and viewpoints, the artist offers trenchant insights into the Euro-American psyche and its treatment of its appropriated home. Ultimately, Michelson’s work powerfully reframes not only the land, but our relationship to it, telling us much about ourselves in the process. Deborah Everett Where to See Michelson’s Work Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, IL Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY New York Public Library, New York, NY

Bibliography Everett, Deborah. ‘‘Alan Michelson: Light on Shadowed Ground.’’ Sculpture (Washington, D.C.), May 2007, 30–35. Museum der Weltkulturen Frankfurt am Main. Lifeworlds-Artscapes: Contemporary Iroquois Art. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Museum der Weltkulturen Publications, 2003. National Museum of the American Indian (Gerald McMaster, ed.). New Tribe, New York. New York: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2005. National Museum of the American Indian. Who Stole the Teepee? New York: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2000.

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George Morrison Woodland Cultural Centre. NATIVity. Brantford, ON, Canada: Woodland Cultural Centre Publications, 2005.

George Morrison (1919–2000), Anishinaabe (Ojibwa/Chippewa) Painter and Sculptor. In 1997, the White House mounted a prestigious exhibition of Native American art—during which George Morrison was cited as the only Indian artist to be recognized as an ‘‘American artist.’’ And behind that breakthrough to the larger, non-Indian public, stands Morrison’s uncommon body of work—the art that established him as an American artist and Abstract Expressionist, as well as the ‘‘godfather of Native modernism.’’ His style was innovative, sensitive, and individualistic, and his strong visual metaphors evoked an unusual oneness with nature. These gifts earned him a respected position in the intensely competitive New York art world, and in the course of twentieth century art as well. Born in 1919 in Chippewa City, Minnesota, Morrison was raised on nearby Grand Portage Indian Reservation. His childhood experiences were extremely difficult, including serious illness and surgery, poverty at home, and a stay at a government boarding school that made the children ashamed of being Indian. Yet his creative abilities proved a rewarding outlet from an early age, and he was constantly steered toward college by his high school teachers—later attending the Minneapolis School of Art. His studio art professors were immensely enthusiastic about his talent, introducing him to the world of modernism through nonobjective masters like Matisse and Picasso. This training in Euro-American visual culture had a deep impact on Morrison, and during the course of his career, he was influenced by almost every major movement of the times, from Cubism to Abstract Expressionism. Upon graduation in 1943, Morrison received a travel scholarship that took him to New York City. There he began to study with well-known RussianAmerican artist Morris Kantor at the progressive Art Students League. At the same time, he immersed himself in the city’s heady mix of international trends and ideas. He became part of a group known as the ‘‘Native American Fine Arts Movement,’’ composed of Indian artists who chose to forego traditional Native American imagery and media, instead taking up ‘‘fine arts,’’ as defined by non-Indian cultures. Morrison became a solid member of the city’s art scene, often sharing evenings of camaraderie with Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline at the Cedar Street Tavern in Greenwich Village. When Morrison’s son was born in 1961, Kline became the child’s godfather. While in New York, Morrison participated in numerous exhibitions, including group shows with Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, and other luminaries of the Abstract Expressionist movement. His first solo show came in 1948 at Grand Central Moderns Gallery in New York (he would have eight more over a twelve-year span, through 1960). Meanwhile, Morrison was receiving favorable reviews in mainstream periodicals, and his work was being acquired by major American museums, including New York’s Whitney Museum of

George Morrison

American Art, the Walker Art Center, the High Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Joslyn Art Museum, the Rose Art Museum, and the Chrysler Museum. In 1952, Morrison was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for foreign study and enrolled in the E´ cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris; later that same year, he attended the University of Aix-Marseilles in Provence. While living in France, he furthered his knowledge of European culture by traveling to Spain and Italy as well. After one year abroad, he received a fellowship from the John Hay Whitney Foundation, and returned to the United States with the funding to pursue art-making full-time. During the 1950s, Morrison’s paintings became more and more abstract. Some of them had vertical geometric forms within horizontal compositions, which Morrison thought of as ‘‘structures within a landscape space’’ (Lowe 53). Many had no horizon line and, as he envisioned them, presented stretches of ‘‘endless space.’’ These paintings often revealed gestural shapes hovering in an allover field of organic, nuanced strokes—with lush, saturated color and thick impastos of paint. Their apparent spontaneity is real, as Morrison often painted them in one sitting, sometimes working through the night to finish. In some, the strokes flow in currents, swirls and updrafts; in others, they follow the same direction, like heavy rain—creating different moods through the atmosphere they established. In 1959 Morrison taught briefly at the Minneapolis School of Art, his alma mater, and in 1960 at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio. There he met Hazel Belvo, an art student, whom he soon married. In the early 1960s, Morrison went on to teach at Cornell University and at Pennsylvania State University. At the same time, he was creating a series of ‘‘white paintings’’—with an underpainting of outlined patches of color that fit together like pieces of a stained glass window. The entire composition was then painted white, partially allowing the color below to show through—as if dusted with a fragile layer of frost. These works have the fresh and ephemeral effect of chalk drawings on a sidewalk. Morrison’s next teaching appointment, in 1963, was to a full-time position at one of the most prestigious art schools in the country: RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). At that point, he became the first Native American artist to become a faculty member of a major, non-Indian art school. After successfully teaching there until 1970, Morrison felt the desire to go ‘‘back to the Indian connection, to Minnesota and my family’’ (Lowe 58). He then resigned from RISD and accepted a faculty position in American Indian Studies (and later in studio art as well) at the University of Minnesota. A sculptor as well as a painter, Morrison loved working in wood—and it remained a primary medium for him throughout his career. During the 1970s and 80s he created an important series of wood ‘‘collages,’’ or assemblages with pieces of driftwood or other found wood, building grid-like, almost architectonic, surfaces. In these unusual, relief-like sculptures, a variety of contours and grained patterns converged to create many small compositions within a larger, more complex design. They often appeared map-like, suggesting aerial views of towns or fields—or implying cross-sections of some other structure,

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perhaps cellular or geologic. Morrison himself saw them as forms within a landscape. Later he developed this work even further, with a series of lithographs from rubbings of the original collages. The prints echo many of the effects of the sculptures, but in a disembodied, apparitional way, via the thin, wash-like inks used in making them. Morrison’s drawings are another affecting aspect of his work. During the 1970s and 80s, he created a number of delicate line drawings that suggest a close-up view of densely curling forms—an allover pattern much like a Renaissance rendering of wavy locks. The marks are generally made with ink of one color on paper of a sharply differing hue, so that the image becomes an elegant study in contrasts. During the 1980s, Morrison also created a series of twelve-foot tall largescale totems from small, puzzle-like pieces of red cedar. He chose the totem pole partially because it was used, in different forms, by a number of Indian nations: the Northwest Coast tribes, the Delaware, Iroquois, Shawnee and the Chippewa (Ojibwa). The cedar-red hue had a special resonance for Morrison —referencing the color of earth in many Indian lands, as well as the rocks along his own North Shore in Minnesota. The geometric shapes covering the totem’s surface often evoke his earlier collages, while echoing traditional Chippewa forms. In 1983, Morrison retired from the University of Minnesota, and soon after, he built a house and studio on Grand Portage Reservation, just steps away from the shore of Lake Superior. Here he immersed himself in the sound of the water, along with the light that animated the sky as well as the lake’s surface in distinct but parallel ways. Unfortunately, at this time he discovered he had Castleman’s disease of the lymphatic system. As he became weakened by the illness and its treatment, he began to make small paintings whose focal point was the constant yet ever-changing horizon at the far edge of Lake Superior. Most of these small paintings were done on panels about six by eleven inches. Filling them with tremendous diversity of form and effect, Morrison seems to hone in on numerous facets of his environment. Among these works is a series of sixty-one paintings called Red Rock Variations: Lake Superior Landscape. Although most of them are indeed small, one finds the occasional large work among them, like Lucent Paramour, a quietly spectacular painting, in which the last rays of the sun seem to be burning their way into night. Morrison’s later paintings are characterized by exquisite textures, as well as rich tonal variations, yielding a pulsing sense of nature’s vibrancy and cyclical flux. Richly worked and tactile, the works evoke the play of light on surfaces at different times of day or season. This luminosity derives from his almost incandescent palette, which plays orange and mauve against cobalt blue or umber, creating optical interactions that appear to flicker. Although the forms themselves are nonspecific, the implication of landscape is inescapable, partially owing to the clearly organic surface—a dense matrix of short, interlocking strokes. These final works also reveal the growing weight that Morrison placed on the horizon line—as an anchor around which the rest of the world revolved.

George Morrison

That Morrison was a master is evident from each series of works he created, from his early Abstract Expressionist compositions to the totems and final small ‘‘landscapes.’’ His peerless color sense and gift for organic texture produced one affecting work after another, as did his ability to create striking forms in unusual configurations. Perhaps most powerful was the indefinable authenticity of his work, along with its evocation of the natural world as ultimate source. Through his striking realization of Nature’s essence, Morrison created a memorable sense of distilled sensory pleasure—extending the scope of modernism while opening a new chapter in Native American art. Deborah Everett Places to See Morrison’s Work Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minneapolis, Minneapolis, MN GSA Design Excellence and the Arts, Washington, D.C. The Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ The High Museum, Atlanta, GA The Joslyn Museum, Omaha, NE The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN The Minneapolis Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN The Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN The National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA The Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, MN http://www.bockleygallery.com/pages/inv.html http://www.britesites.com/native_artist_interviews/gmorrison.htm http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/Tours/Garden_Exhibit6/morrison.html http://www.nmai.si.edu

Bibliography Anthes Bill. Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940–1960. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Berlo, Janet, and Ruth B. Phillips. Native North American Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Highwater, Jamake. Arts of the Indian Americas. New York: Harper and Row, 1983. Lowe, Truman T., ed. Native Modernism. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution —National Museum of the American Indian (with the University of Washington Press), 2004. Monroe, Dan L., Richard Conn, Richard W. Hill, Sr., and Suzan Shown Harjo. Gifts of the Spirit. Nineteenth-Century and Contemporary Native American Artists. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum Publications, 1996.

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Nadia Myre Morrison, George, as told to Margot Fortunato Galt. Turning the Feather Around: My Life in Art. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998. NMAI (NMAI Editions). Essays on Native Modernism. Washington, D.C. and New York, NY: National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution, 2005. Penney, David W. Native American Indian Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Rushing, III, W. Jackson, ed. Native American Art in the Twentieth Century: Makers, Meanings, Histories. New York and Oxford: Routledge, 1999. WalkingStick, Kay, and Ann Marshall. So Fine: Masterworks of Fine Art from the Heard Museum. Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum Publications, 2002.

Nadia Myre (b. 1974), Algonquin Installation and Mixed-Media Artist. Young Canadian conceptual artist Nadia Myre creates searing works, in individual pieces and installations—stencils on public walls, videos, paintings, sculpture, beading, and writing—that explore the critical themes of language, love, loss, and identity, in ways that complicate the perspectives of First Nation traditional art as well as of European Modernism. Myre was born in Montre´al, Que´bec. Her family is Que´be´cois and Algonquin. Her mother had been adopted off the reserve, but Myre was reinstated (under Bill C-31) in 1997 as a member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg of the Algonquin First Nation in Maniwaki, Que´bec. Myre earned an associate degree in Fine Art from Camosun College, in Victoria, BC, and a Fine Arts diploma from the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver, BC. She attended Concordia University, in Montre´al, where she earned an M.F.A. (2002). Myre’s M.F.A. exhibition, titled ‘‘Cont[r]act,’’ was curated by her friend and fellow student Rhonda L. Meier. The powerful exhibit attracted national and international attention. ‘‘Cont(r)act, according to Meier, circulates between the verbal or physical object which is a contract, and the action signified by contact’’ (Martin). Cont[r]act includes sculpture, video, and mixed media. Myre says that the show was ‘‘specific to my own investigations into identity, but also a bit broader, in that it’s about two cultures co-existing’’ (Martin). Indian Act (2000–2003) is one of Myre’s most well-known works. This project started with a copy Myre downloaded in 1999 of the Indian Act (‘‘An act respecting Indians’’), R.S., 1985, c. I-5, which, since it was first introduced in 1876, legislates Canadian Aboriginal identity and land (reserves). (The Indian Act has been amended over the last 200 years; in 1985 in Bill C-31, it granted Indian status to children of First Nation women who ‘‘married out.’’) Myre, working in collaboration with relatives, friends, and strangers (recruited for weekly beading sessions at Gallery Oboro in Montreal and the Native Friendship Centre of Montre´al), beaded over the pages of the Act, replacing text (letter by letter) with white glass beads. The rest of the page was beaded red. Myre left some pages unbeaded (unfinished), because in the future the Act is likely to be amended yet again. Curator Ingrid Jenkner comments that the

Nadia Myre

‘‘unfinished panels in the 56-page work, which is double-hung in Two-Row formation, disclose a mass of white documentation disappearing under a wave of red’’ (Jenkner). The beaded pages are mounted on thick black Stroud cloth, historically traded to native peoples (see Marion Tuu’luq). The red beads can be interpreted as symbolizing native people, overwhelming the white (texts), or as Canada’s two national colors of red and white. More than 200 people collaborated to make Indian Act. Myre’s interest in incorporating beading as part of her practice beading, long an important part of native peoples’ art and an important object of intercultural trade, started when Myre’s Concordia advisor Barbara Layne took Myre to see an exhibit of Iroquois beadwork at the McCord Museum. For Myre, ‘‘Beading is political . . . . an act of silent resistance’’ (Martin). In Indian Act, like other works by Myre, the artist resists simple identification with any group of people, but rather asks the viewer to consider the complex, complicated, and interworked history of Canada. Cont[r]act also includes the video Portrait In Motion, in which Myre paddles a canoe she made, titled History in Two Parts; in a repeating loop, the artist paddles out of the mist toward the viewer. Half of the canoe is modern aluminum and the other half is traditional birch bark. ‘‘The canoe is symbolic of Nadia Myre’s hybrid status and the history of relationship between aboriginal and settler nations in Canada . . . . Each half is distinct and each half is beautiful . . . . the illusion of disproportion should not be forgotten for it too is symbolic’’ (Collett). Myre’s works that explore memory, and the wounds that memory creates and scars it leaves, are simultaneously disturbing and beautiful. In The Scar Project, hundreds of small 10´´ stretched white canvases—‘‘all virgin,’’ according to Myre—have been given to other people, to tear or cut then sew together; her collaborators were asked to also write a narrative. The gashes in the canvas are inexpertly stitched together; the sides do not join. The wound will never heal completely. Myre’s input into the work resumed when she subsequently ‘‘edited’’ these works, grouping them based on the sometimes amusing, oftentimes sorrowful texts. That collaborative project continues (http:// www.nadiamyre.com/scarproject/). Myre also has worked with scars by creating scarred and (barely) healed canvases as part of ‘‘The Want Ad’s and Other Scars’’ exhibition (at the Urban Shaman Gallery). Myre slit, stitched, and then painted the wounds on canvas, covering them with orange and red earth-toned color (‘‘salve’’) for the piece Everything I Know About Love (Myre). These and similar canvases were works ‘‘without language’’ (Myre). Myre’s work has drawn a great deal of attention, and has been included in national and international shows including ‘‘Remix,’’ presented by the Heard Museum and NMAI (National Museum of the American Indian) in New York. Although still very young, she has received major grants and awards, from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Que´bec, the British Columbia Cultural Fund, and the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation (Absolute Arts). She was elected to the National Board of CARFAC (Canadian Artists’ Representative/le front des artistes canadiens) in 2006.

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Myre lives and works outside of Montre´al. As curator Lee-Ann Martin writes on the home page of Myre’s Web site, through her work Myre ‘‘negotiates the relational spaces of hybridity and ambiguity.’’ Elayne Zorn Where to See Nadia Myre’s Work Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, QC The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art (The Canadian Art Database), http:// www.ccca.ca/artists/artist_info.html?languagePref=en&link_id=2003 Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN Gallery Art Mur, Montre´al, QC, http://www.artmur.com/current.htm/artists/ artistes/Nadia_Myre.htm Gallery Oboro, Montre´al, QC, http://www.oboro.net/archive/0102.html Indian and Inuit Art Centre, Ottawa, ON Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg, MB, http://www.urbanshaman.org/gallery/ archive/Nadia_Myre/index.htm Virtual Museum of Canada, http://www.museevirtuel.ca/Exhibitions/Science/ English/myre-bio.html http://www.nadiamyre.com/home.html http://www.nadiamyre.com/scarproject/ http://www.nativeonline.com/nadia.html

Bibliography Absolute Arts. ‘‘Cont(r)act by Nadia Myre.’’ Indepth Art News. http:// www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2002/05/17/29930.html. Capell, David. ‘‘The Invention of Line: Nadia Myre’s Indian Act/L’Invention de la Ligne. L’Indian Actde Nadia Myre.’’ Parachute, no. 111 (June/July/August 2003): 98–111. Collett, Anne. ‘‘Nadia Myre: A History of Unequal Halves.’’ Kunapipi 25, pt. 2 (2003): 86–94. Jenkner, Ingrid. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In Beyond Words, edited by Ingrid Jenkner and Gaetanne Verna, 25–30. Halifax, NS: MSVU Art Gallery; Lennoxville, PQ: Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, 2005. Martin, James. ‘‘Nadia Myre’s Art Project Is Already at the McCord.’’ Concordia’s Thursday Report Online, June 6, 2002. http://ctr.concordia.ca/2001-02/June_6/ 08-Myre/index.shtml. Myre, Nadia. ‘‘Video Artist Talk with Nadia Myre.’’ Filmed October 26, 2006. 18 min. 29 secs. Bilingual (English, French). Urban Shaman Gallery. http:// www.urbanshaman.org/video/Nadia_Myre/index.htm.

N Marianne Nicolson (b. 1969), Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) Photographer, Painter, Print-Maker, and Installation Artist. Marianne Nicolson comes from a place where images wield tremendous power. They embody tradition, convey culture to new generations, and even connect people to their land—in the form of pictographs. Gwa’yi, Nicolson’s village in British Columbia, holds a key position in a region famous for its preservation of culture, including remarkable totem poles, shell middens (heaps of ancient food remains and artifacts), and a cedar plank meetinghouse over 100 years old. The depth and breadth of the area’s enduring cultural history has had a lasting effect on Nicolson and her art. Born in British Columbia’s Comox Valley, Nicolson spent her childhood on Vancouver Island. When she was ten years old, she traveled to Gwa’yi, her mother’s village, for the first time in her life. The place’s sense of uniqueness is heightened by the fact that there are no roads in the area, and it is only accessible by small plane or boat. Nicolson became immersed in her culture of origin there, and during her adolescence, she learned her mother’s language, along with the customs and rituals of her community. Perhaps more importantly, she learned to define herself differently. Before this experience, she had seen herself in terms of her individual identity, but within Gwa’yi, she became part of a larger whole—through extended family, clan, and the village itself. As a young adult, Nicolson studied photography at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, where she received her B.F.A. in 1991. She went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Victoria in 1997. In addition, she has an M.A. in Linguistics and Anthropology from the University of Victoria. She learned much about her heritage from various relatives, especially her uncle, Ernie Peter Willie, who taught her the traditional way of painting. Working with him, she learned the intricate symbols and iconography of the Kwakwaka’wakw—the clan signs and mythological creatures, and how to arrange and interlace the figures. She also learned about traditional pigments and what was appropriate for various surfaces, ranging from wood (usually cedar) to metal and even rock. Nicolson’s village is famous for its pictographs and petroglyphs, which often depict cultural emblems or commemorate milestones in the life of the community. The forms that appear in Kingcome rock paintings are often

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‘‘coppers,’’ the Northwest Coast ceremonial shields that are made of copper and represent physical, spiritual, and material well-being. Coppers were highly prized and decorated with animal crests that showed the high rank of their owners. Their presence was an important aspect of marriage rites, children’s naming rituals, and potlatches—the key ceremony of Northwest Coast society, in which abundance was celebrated, changes in rank or social ties were recognized, and wealth was redistributed—by a host whose status grew according to his generosity. Despite the fact that ‘‘potlatching’’ was outlawed in Canada from 1884 through 1951, the people of Gwa’yi never stopped practicing it. In fact, an image painted on a rock face in the area in 1927 was created in honor of that year’s illegal potlatch—as an act of cultural and spiritual resistance. Nicolson’s sense of indigenous identity has given her a deep understanding of the importance of community involvement in maintaining tradition. With full knowledge of the 1927 pictograph (as well as the older ones made by her ancestors), she decided to begin a new chapter in her village’s bond with the land, by creating the first rock painting made in some seventy years. In 1998, the artist climbed a sheer cliff face, about 100 meters from the 1927 pictograph, to paint a huge rendering of a traditional copper on the rock wall. This was the beginning of an enormous undertaking, involving investigation of the most permanent pigments, techniques for transferring the image to the rock face, and devising a support structure that allowed Nicolson to paint while suspended before a monumental vertical surface. The project was a perfect opportunity to work with her community, and many individuals responded, providing traditional knowledge, technical assistance and labor. Working together, they met the difficult physical and environmental demands of the project, as well as numerous unforeseen challenges and setbacks. Bit by bit, the artwork took shape via a durable, weather-resistant paint, with the colossal dimensions of thirty-eight feet by twenty-eight feet. Nicolson’s monumental image materialized as a copper that framed a Kwadilikala, or ancestor figure in the form of a wolf, considered by the Gwa’yi villagers to be their forebear. He held a treasure box covered with sun and stars, extending bright prospects to his present-day descendants and to many generations to come. The significance of roots and communal identity plays an important part in much of Nicolson’s work. A case in point is her installation House of Origins, shown in New York in 2000 at the National Museum of the American Indian. The main structure is a meetinghouse, perhaps inspired by Gwa’yi’s own ‘‘big house.’’ Photographs are suspended from the ceiling, forming the ‘‘walls’’ of the house; the images depict environmental features of Kingcome Inlet, e.g., mountains, river, and rain, along with portraits of families and individuals— suggesting a celebration of community. A number of Nicolson’s smaller paintings within this work are reinterpretations of traditional designs, like her red panel with two very animated, crouching frog-men; their long, sinuous tongues leap out, as though sweeping the air for tastes and smells, and their humanized ‘‘hands’’ spread wide in an expression of delight. They reflect a kind of poised energy much like the frozen movement in cartoon strips, where lively gestures and expressive postures translate motion into stop-action

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frames. Additionally, these works exemplify Nicolson’s ability to take traditional iconography and loosen its intertwined compositions, creating evocative images in a postmodern framework. Other works, like Container for Souls, reflect cultural traditions while addressing issues faced by indigenous people daily, such as the appropriation of their culture for trivial commodities. Exhibited in an area of commercial vendors of ‘‘Northwest Coast objects’’ (not necessarily made by Native people), Nicolson’s work presented a striking con- Marianne Nicolson. The Entrance to Heaven. 1999. Painting trast to the surrounding atmos- (acrylic on wood). 58 in.  66 in.  3 in. © Marianne Nicolson. phere of objectification and Photo courtesy of the Eiteljorg Museum. cultural kitsch. The central focus of her installation was a contemporized, glass and cedar version of the Kwakwaka’wakw bentwood box (a large carved chest for holding things of value). With traditional designs etched on its glass surfaces, and an internal light source, Nicolson’s box threw shadows of its figures on the darkened gallery walls. This stunning allover environment of powerful forms was broken only by the presence of viewers entering the space, and interrupting the path of the projected shadows; this interaction then became very personal, as the designs played over and around the viewers themselves. At the same time, this work evokes the classic Northwest Coast tale of the mythical Raven figure who snatched the sun from a box in which it was kept, and set it free to light the world. An artist of many talents, Nicolson is also an anthropologist and a linguist, with a deep interest in the preservation of indigenous languages. She is currently studying for a PhD in Linguistics and anthropology at the University of Victoria, and she has written essays about Northwest Coast objects, in works like Native American Voices on Identity, Art and Culture. At the same time she continues to participate fully in her community, often leading projects that extend the cultural involvement of those around her. The multiple facets of her professional activity truly embody her often quoted statement: ‘‘To know one’s community is to know oneself’’ (Eiteljorg 29). Deborah Everett Where to See Nicolson’s Work Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, QC

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Bibliography Eiteljorg Museum. Contemporary Masters. Indianapolis, IN: Eiteljorg Museum Publications, 1999. McMaster, Gerald, ed. Reservation X. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998. Nicolson, Marianne. Native American Voices on Identity, Art and Culture. Edited by Lucy Fowler Williams, William Wierzbowski, and Robert W. Preucel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2005. Williams, Judith. Two Wolves at the Dawn of Time. Vancouver, BC: New Star Publications, 2001. http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=15444

O Jessie Oonark (1906–1985), Inuit Printmaker and Fiber Artist. Jessie Oonark was one of the most acclaimed of all Inuit and Canadian artists; her graphics and textiles express a powerful, individual vision of the harsh but beautiful northern world. Oonark’s many drawings, prints, and wall hangings are characterized by strong imagery and dramatic shapes; her work startles the viewer with her personal iconography, which often focuses on Inuit women. Oonark’s applique´d and embroidered wall hangings in particular reveal a narrative play of stylized images in a world of bold color. Jessie Oonark, also known as Una [Una Oonark, Unaaq Oonark], was born in 1906 in the Back River area known as the ‘‘Barren Lands’’ (Berlo 420), approximately 150 miles northwest of the village of Baker Lake, in Nunavut, Canada (formerly a part of the Northwest Territories). Oonark was a member of the mainland Inuit: specifically, of the Utkusiksalingmiut or ‘‘people of the soapstone pots’’ (Blodgett and Bouchard 7). (The Inuit were known in English as Eskimos.) She grew up living a traditional Inuit life with her mother Killivuk and her father Aglaquarq, moving seasonally among small camps to hunt, fish, and trap as they lived on the land. As was the norm, Oonark’s parents arranged her marriage, and when Oonark was around age twelve she went to live with Quabluunaq [Kabloonak], near Chantrey Inlet (Blodgett and Bouchard 10; Lindeman). In 1946, they married in a Christian ceremony at Baker Lake. As a young girl, Oonark learned the art of sewing clothing and other necessary items from animal furs—a skill that women were expected to master. Preparing skins and transforming animal furs into clothing, blankets, tents, and boat covers was essential in Inuit culture, because warm, waterproof clothing meant the difference between success and failure: even life and death. Girls were not taught to sew, however, but were expected to learn through careful observation (Driscoll-Engelstad 26). Though collectors of Inuit art sometimes talk nostalgically about the ‘‘old days,’’ life on the land could be very dangerous. As a child, Oonark (and her family) suffered from periods with very little food. Years later, she was widowed with eight children (six of whom were married) in 1954. Traditional Inuit could not live without a man to hunt, and though her relatives tried to help, the 1950s was a time of famine, in part because caribou had changed their migration routes. In early 1958, Oonark and her children tried to travel with

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her brother-in-law and other relatives to Baker Lake, seeking food. During the trip, Oonark and her daughter Nancy Pukingrnak had to be left behind; a Royal Canadian Air Force plane rescued them, following five days without food. Oonark and her daughter had almost starved to death (Bouchard 15, in Crandall 63). Like other Inuit whose traditional way of life was undermined by the reduction in herds and famine, Oonark moved to Baker Lake (now called Qamani’tuaq), where her children attended school. The transition from seminomadic to settlement life brought about profound changes, including an unprecedented need for cash to buy things the Inuit previously could make or obtain in trade. Since there was little employment, the Canadian government started sewing and printmaking projects in the hope that Inuit could earn money by making and selling clothing and other ‘‘crafts.’’ In the meantime, however, Oonark made food and earned rations by taking on odd jobs, eventually becoming the janitor of the Anglican Church to which she belonged (Blodgett and Bouchard 16). Oonark was in her fifties when she started making art. The story is told that one day she went to school with her children, where she saw students drawing. She commented to the schoolteacher that if she had supplies, she could do better. By chance, the teacher told a visiting biologist, Dr. Andrew Macpherson, of Oonark’s remark. He gave her some of his paper and colored pencils (Lindeman). She returned with the drawings, he paid her eight dollars for each one, and subsequently he sent her more paper and colored pencils (Blodgett and Bouchard 16–17). She sent a dozen drawings; he paid five dollars each, kept two, and sold the rest to friends for one to five dollars each. Starting in 1957, a number of Inuit men at Cape Dorset, working with James Houston, started to experiment with printmaking, which evolved into a significant new art form. The 1960 Cape Dorset graphics collection included two prints based on drawings by Oonark (‘‘Una’’), even though she was from Baker Lake. Oonark was included because James Houston, a southerner involved with Inuit art from its earliest days, asked Edith (Dee Dee) Dodds, who had started a crafts program in Baker Lake in 1960, about drawings that might be included in a print collection (Crandall 132, 142). Oonark’s work was included in the 1961 and many subsequent Cape Dorset print collections. Starting in 1966, in recognition of her remarkable talent, new arts and crafts officer Boris Kotelewetz provided Oonark with a small salary and space in the Baker Lake arts and crafts project (Blodgett and Bouchard 18). Oonark’s drawings and prints drew the attention of the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council in 1968; in 1969, the Canadian Arctic Producers organization sold nearly ninety of her drawings to the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of Civilization). Fifty of Oonark’s drawings were featured in a two-person, major exhibition in 1970 at the National Arts Centre (Ottawa); the show subsequently traveled throughout Canada (Crandall 185–86). That year, the first collection of prints from Baker Lake was issued, including one of Oonark’s most well-known prints, ‘‘Woman’’ (Crandall 187). A symmetrical, front-facing clothed figure, posed with arms held at the side and legs straight, fills the drawing’s field. The face is reduced to its minimum: an oval

Jessie Oonark

with open eyes, two nostrils, and a line for the mouth. Most of the space is dominated by shapes and colors of an Inuit adult woman’s traditional outfit: an outer parka (amautik) with long front apron (kiniq) and elongated hood twice the size of the face; pants; stockings; and shoes (Hall, Oakes, and Webster). The woman shows neither hands nor mittens. Horizontal lines, diagonals, and curves illustrate what in real clothing would be carefully assembled colored furs, though actual fur would be white, beige, brown, and black, not the colors—yellow, orange, green, red, and turquoise—that Oonark uses. The contrast between curved and horizontal spaces and the repetition of a limited number of bold colors lead the viewer’s eye around the piece, returning to the simple, stylized face. Oonark’s interest in women’s clothing, with its regional and individual variations, remained a focus of attention in much of her work, such as ‘‘Figure in Striped Clothing’’ (1971). Though Oonark had no formal art training, ‘‘Woman’’ and other drawings and prints reveal that she had decades of experience in the Inuit woman’s art of sewing to create fur (skin) clothing. This craft was the essential counterpart to men’s hunting, without which no one could survive in the harsh Arctic environment (Hall, Oakes, and Webster). The stunning, graphically bold clothing crafted from all available animal furs, which are characterized by exceptionally fine stitching of meticulously cut shapes, strongly influenced Oonark’s graphic and fiber art work. Many of her drawings and prints depict women, and their clothing is carefully detailed. A decade after Oonark started making drawings she began to create textile wall hangings. One of the government projects in Baker Lake was a factory sewing program that only lasted a few years (1966–70). After it ended, Inuit seamstresses sought help from the government art advisors Sheila and Jack Butler in order to continue (Driscoll-Engelstad 31). The Butlers ordered materials and encouraged women to embroider and applique´ wall hangings, using felt on a wool (duffle) background (Driscoll-Engelstad 31). Within a decade, Oonark and other Inuit women (including Marion Tuu’luq) were producing large-scale applique´d and embroidered hangings. Over time, Oonark reduced her use of embroidery. Some of Oonark’s earliest textiles used inset pieces of fabric to create contrasts of shape and color (a technique used in fur clothing), but in her subsequent work she turned to applique´, where fabrics are laid one over another as desired. Oonark’s wall hangings frequently are hieratic or hierarchical, composed of figures, whose size varies according to importance, arrayed in horizontal lines across the textile. While most of her work focuses on traditional Inuit themes including women, female symbols such as the ulu (the Inuit woman’s crescent-shaped knife), women’s facial tattoos, animals, and shamans, she also has created wall hangings with Christian themes, such as an ‘‘Untitled’’ work from 1972, interpreted as ‘‘Moses Receiving the Ten Commandments’’ (Driscoll-Engelstad 33). Unlike many other Inuit artists who focused on traditional imagery of animals, people, shamans, and the land, Oonark also depicted modern elements, such as planes and snowmobiles (Marion Scott Gallery).

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Oonark’s wall hangings rapidly received national and international recognition. In 1973, she received a commission to create an enormous wall hanging (four by six meters) for Ottawa’s National Art Centre (Untitled 1973) (Bouchard). Another large wall hanging (Untitled, circa 1975) is on display in the foyer of the House of Commons Heritage Collection (Ottawa). The long rectangle, hung lengthwise, is filled with more than sixty figures arrayed in rows in a realm where animals of the northern world greatly outnumber humans. The work, made with applique´d felt and embroidery, uses somber tones of white, beige, browns, grays, and blacks on a black, thick wool ground. The top row is the only one full of humans, walking or (in the center) on a sled. Their clothing is carefully delineated even though they are composed of geometric shapes. Below them starts the first of a dozen rows of sea and land creatures: fish, polar bears, spotted seals (their spots carefully embroidered), caribou, wolves, rabbits. Two clothed, legless people (with faces and torsos only) occupy the center, within a sea of animals. The other lone human occupies the lower right, though since the wearer’s large hood appears to have a face in profile, the person might be a shaman. The movement of animals and colors, some of whom leave their designated rows to travel upward or downward, the repetition of a few bold colors, and the strong shapes take the viewer to a world where animals dominate. One of her wall hangings was given to Queen Elizabeth II on ‘‘behalf of the Inuit of the Northwest Territories’’ (Crandall 199), and another of her large textiles was hung in the Northwest Territories’ Legislative Assembly Chamber (Crandall 179). Oonark’s drawings, prints, and wall hangings have been included in dozens of exhibitions, ‘‘in almost every major exhibit of Inuit art ever organized,’’ as a listing of exhibitions makes clear (Berlo 420). Oonark’s productivity suffered terribly starting in 1979 when as a result of a degenerative illness and surgery she had to stop drawing (Crandall 235). Oonark was ‘‘greatly frustrated . . . because she had so many ideas for wall hangings and prints that she could not bring to fruition’’ (Lindeman). ‘‘I can’t work any more with my hands . . . . It’s too bad because I can remember a lot of things’’ (Blodgett and Bouchard 23). A prolific drawer, who continued to develop new imagery throughout her career, Oonark’s prints continued to dominate the Baker Lake print collections until 1985 (Berlo 420). Oonark received many prestigious honors throughout her exceptional career. In 1975, she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 1976, the United Nations issued a stamp, a ‘‘first-day cover, and a cachet’’ (Crandall 215) based on one of her prints. (A cachet is a design or text that explains or illustrates the event.) In 1984, Oonark was named an officer of the Order of Canada—Canada’s highest civilian honor—recognizing ‘‘a lifetime of outstanding achievement and merit of the highest degree, especially in service to Canada or to humanity at large’’ (Governor General of Canada). Also in 1984, Oonark’s daughter presented Pope John Paul II with a copy of Oonark’s print ‘‘Giver of Life’’ (Crandall 261). Oonark, a central member of the first generation of Inuit artists, died in 1985. The Winnipeg Art Gallery organized a traveling retrospective of eighty-seven of her drawings, prints, and wall hangings (1986–87), and a second exhibition

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of Oonark’s work and the work of many of her children (Crandall 281). In 1987, the Canadian government closed the sewing center in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), but in 1990 a new center opened, named the ‘‘Jessie Oonark Arts and Crafts Centre.’’ Oonark’s children, including Nancy Pukingrnak, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, Josiah Nuilaalik, Janet Kigusiuq, Mary Yuusipik, Miriam Nanurluk, and William Noah—whose styles vary greatly from that of their mother—continue to create important Inuit art. Oonark said that for her, ‘‘drawing had provided a release from everything in the world’’ (Blodgett and Bouchard 24). Elayne Zorn Where to See Jessie Oonark’s Work Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON The House of Commons, Ottawa, ON MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON http://www.ccca.ca/artists/artist_work.html?languagePref=en&link_ id=2012&artist=Jessie+Oonark&startRec=1&cnt=49&ord=asc http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/English/index_flash.html

Bibliography Berlo, Janet Catherine. ‘‘Jessie Oonark (1906–1985).’’ In North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by Jules Heller and Nancy G. Heller, 420. Vol. 1219, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. New York: Garland, 1995. Blodgett, Jean, and Marie Bouchard. Jessie Oonark. A Retrospective. 16 November 1986–15 February 1987. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986. Bouchard, Marie. ‘‘Jessie Oonark, R.C.A., O.C.; Retrospective 1970–1985: Prints, Drawings, Wallhangings.’’ Inuit Art Quarterly 2, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 10. ———. ‘‘Old Master: Oonark; Condensed from Biography Written for Catalogue for Oonark Retrospective.’’ Inuit Art Quarterly 2, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 4–8. ———. ‘‘Seams of Cultural Affirmation.’’ http://katilvik.com/content/articles/ seams.php. Crandall, Richard C. Inuit Art: A History. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Co., 2000. Driscoll-Engelstad, Bernadette. ‘‘Beyond Anonymity: The Emergence of Textile Artists in the Canadian Arctic.’’ Museum Anthropology 20, no. 3 (1997): 26–38. Governor General of Canada. ‘‘Order of Canada.’’ http://www.gg.ca/honours/ nat-ord/oc/index_e.asp. Hall, Judy, Jill Oakes, and Sally Qimmiu’naaq Webster. Sanatujut: Pride in Women’s Work. Copper and Caribou Inuit Women’s Clothing. Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994. Lindeman, Lenore. ‘‘Artist Profile: Jessie Oonark (Baker Lake),’’ 1999. http:// www.uleth.ca/artgallery/TWAM/vr1/BioOonark.htm. Marion Scott Gallery. ‘‘Jessie Oonark (1906–1985).’’ http://www.marionscottgallery. com/artists_work_biographies/inuit_artist-Oonark-bio.asp.

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P John Pangnark (1920–1980), Inuit Sculptor. Often called the ‘‘Brancusi of the North’’ (referring to the great Constantin Brancusi, famous for his ability to evoke an entity through its essence)— John Pangnark was one of the great masters of Inuit sculpture. His stunning forms feel massive, even when diminutive in size. Their sense of spatial displacement feels monumental, as though giant boulders have suddenly filled a void opposite the viewer. A pioneer of the Inuit abstract image, Pangnark broke striking new ground, via both his individual work and his role as a cultural model. Born at Windy Lake in the Keewatin region of Nunavut, Canada, Pangnark was a member of an inland-dwelling group known as the Ahiamiut, meaning ‘‘people from the other side’’ (a name assigned by a group that occupied the area before them). The artist led a traditional, seminomadic life during his childhood and young adulthood, going wherever the herds of game animals took him and his family. During the 1940s and 50s, however, the numbers of caribou in the region dropped significantly, and famine became widespread, along with disease. Pangnark and his neighbors endured years of privation and suffering under these dire conditions. Eventually, fearing that the Ahiamiut might be wiped out, the Canadian government relocated them to the coastal settlement then known as Eskimo Point (later called Arviat). Pangnark arrived there in 1958, and he continued to hunt in order to support his family, but like many of his peers, he also made stone carvings to sell at Arviat’s Hudson Bay trading post. The Inuit began making art in Arviat in the early 1960s, and sculptors there developed a distinctive, minimalist style. Perhaps initially prompted by the hardness of the local stone (a type of basalt), most of the artists developed a spare, abstracted style—as opposed to the more detailed, often narrative work of other Inuit communities. At the same time, however, this emphasis on form and volume is often favored in Arviat even when more malleable stone is available. As to subject matter, groups of figures (especially in the form of ‘‘crowds’’ of faces) do exist in Arviat sculpture, but the area is primarily known for its single figures, and the composite figure of mother and child. Pangnark created both male and female figures, as well as ones of unspecified gender, and other works designated ‘‘Abstract Compositions.’’

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It has been noted that Pangnark’s approach was essentially one of taking human beings as a point of departure. Beyond that initial impetus, he often appeared more interested in the resolution of a work’s formal challenges than with creating recognizable figures. Pangnark’s first works were often dominated by planes and angles. One of his most famous early works is essentially a rectangular block (a bit taller than it is wide) with four slightly rounded heads at the top, each recognizable by its sets of three single grooves that define eyes and mouth. It was perfectly described by George Swinton (one of the first chroniclers of Inuit art) as ‘‘a family that has grown together’’ (Swinton 19). Other works from about the same time are extremely architectonic, with heads and squared-off ‘‘limbs’’ extending outward from one plane of a solid block, just as engaged columns only partially emerge from the wall they’re attached to. These works have a kind of weight and density suggesting stasis and permanence. A related work by Pangnark shows a man with his upper body erect and arms flat on the ‘‘ground,’’ while the lower body ‘‘disappears into’’ the tabletop on which the sculpture sits. The figure’s imposing immovable presence has the timelessness of landscape and the natural world. Pangnark’s next phase of work entailed more softened contours; the pieces were generally more rounded and often implied a more personal demeanor or state of mind. Although their surfaces were left unpolished (and may even reveal marks from the sculptor’s tools), their overall smoothness is inviting to the touch. In his late work, Pangnark returned to an exploration of volume, and he began to work in an even less naturalistic way than previously. One work from 1974, Figure, is a squared-off wedge shape with its only figural indications being a minute ridge for the nose and two barely detectable marks for the eyes. Its presence, nevertheless, is striking and powerful. Another work from about the same time, Mother and Child, is equally abstract but much more organic in form. Its sensual, almost undulating curves suggest movement of the figures’ limbs under a covering, as if huddling together under animal skins to ward off the Arctic cold. Like a number of Arviat artists, Pangnark tended to work serially—that is, creating a number of works dealing with the same theme or subject, and exploring the range of aesthetic possibilities. He was considered the most extreme example of the Arviat minimalist style, generally preferring to depict the body as a series of masses, planes, and angles, rather than articulating specific structures like limbs. For that reason his work has not always been well appreciated by collectors, especially during his lifetime. At the same time, however, he achieved considerable acclaim from critics. In 1970 his work was exhibited, along with Jessie Oonark’s, in an important traveling exhibition organized by the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The same year he was invited to be an artist-in-residence at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan, and in 1972 he had his first solo show in Los Angeles, California. During the 1970s, as Pangnark’s sculpture became more abstract and geometric, he continued to participate in major group exhibitions. He worked vigorously and without interruption until his death in 1980. An innovator who

Julia Parker

was deeply committed to his own vision, Pangnark is currently becoming increasingly well known and appreciated, as his work appears in important galleries and institutions throughout Canada and the United States. Deborah Everett Where to See Pangnark’s Work Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, QC National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, MB

Bibliography Canadian Museum of Civilization (Maria von Finckenstein, ed.). Celebrating Inuit Art 1948–1970. Hull, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization Publications, 1999. Hessel, Ingo. Arctic Spirit. Phoenix: Heard Museum Publications, 2006. Kardosh, Robert. Vision and Form. Vancouver: Marion Scott Gallery Publications, 2003. Swinton, George. Sculpture of the Eskimo. Boston: NY Graphic Society Press, 1972.

Julia Parker (b. 1929), Kashaya Pomo/Coast Miwok Basketweaver. Julia Parker is a living master of Native California basket weaving, whose lifetime of achievement as weaver, cultural interpreter, and educator has touched tens of thousands of people. For nearly half a century, Parker—an elder of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (Valoma 4), has been deeply concerned with both her peoples’ cultural traditions and the natural environment that provides the artistic materials for creating baskets. Her work, ranging from playful miniature gift baskets in the style of the Pomo people, to perfect traditional versions of functional baskets, is marked by unusually complex designs and an innovative ‘‘intertribal’’ weaving style. Parker’s artistic achievements have been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, which in 2007 named Parker a national Heritage Fellow. Julia Parker was born in 1929 in Sonoma, California. Her mother Lily Pete (Pomo) died while Parker was a small child, and in 1934 Parker was placed in foster care for five years. Parker then was sent to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs Stuart Indian boarding school near Carson City, Nevada, whose assimilation policies prohibited speaking native languages and practicing native customs. Parker was told ‘‘Don’t do Indian things, don’t talk the Indian way’’ (Weinstein). At the school, she met Ralph Parker (Sierra Miwok and Mono Lake Paiute); they married in 1949 and Parker moved to Yosemite Valley to live in her husband’s village. Ralph Parker’s grandmother was Lucy Telles, a renowned Yosemite Miwok and Mono Lake Paiute basketmaker, who worked as a cultural demonstrator at

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the National Park Service’s Yosemite Museum. Telles gave Parker her first basket—a cradleboard, and taught her Native cultural traditions, including how to use baskets, and aspects of making baskets. Following Telles’ death in 1955, the Park Service asked Parker to work as a cultural demonstrator. Parker says that at that time she still did not ‘‘really know about basketry and how they were made’’ (Camp Internet). Parker’s husband introduced her to his great aunt Tina Charlie, who taught Parker to weave baskets. Parker also studied with other important Miwok basketweavers, including Carrie Bethel, Ida Bishop, Minnie Make, and renowned Pomo weavers Elsie Allen (Cloverdale Pomo) and Mabel McKay (Cache Creek Pomo). Parker is the only practicing weaver ‘‘taught by women who wove in the early 20th century’’ (Mono Lake). Baskets in traditional Native cultures are bound up with all aspects of life: they ‘‘contain energy, knowledge, history, memory, and stories’’ (Valoma 6). Baskets may have been among the earliest tools made by humans; the ancestors of Native peoples probably have made baskets throughout their 4,000-year history in northern California. As functional items, baskets were necessary for collecting and storing food, and for transporting objects, food, and infants. Weavers made burden baskets, (acorn) mushbowl baskets, weirs (to catch fish), dipper baskets, and openwork cradles. Special baskets are used in weddings and ceremonies, and given as unique gifts; baskets also were (and are) made for sale to non-Natives. Basket weaving requires a profound and intimate knowledge of, and respect for the environment, so that weavers can carefully choose, then gather and prepare fibers. Parker’s baskets are ‘‘made of willow, split willow, redbud, sticks, split redbud, brackenfern root, sedge root, and grasses, bulrush root’’ (Camp Internet). These natural fibers provide varied colors and characteristics, from stiff to supple. Traditional colors include beige (sedge root), black (brackenfern root and bulrush), and red (California redbud). Designs include ‘‘geometrical patterns such as diamonds, triangles, rectangles, zig-zags, straight lines’’ (Camp Internet). As a cultural interpreter at Yosemite Park, and a tireless teacher and lecturer at many elementary schools, colleges, museums, and workshops, for decades Parker has worked to preserve diverse aspects of traditional culture, including games, tools, foods (Ortiz and Julia Parker. Untitled (miniature basket and lid). 2001. Coiled Parker), and of course basketry. sedge over willow stick foundation, with beaded surface. 4.5 cm She is unusual in being an in diameter  2.5 cm in height. © Julia Parker. Photo courtesy of expert in several basketry traditions (Yosemite Miwok and the National Museum of the American Indian.

Julia Parker

Paiute, and Pomo). Sometimes Parker works in a single style, but she also has built on her knowledge to develop a distinctive ‘‘intertribal’’ style. With a friend, Parker founded CIBA (California Indian Basketweavers Association), which works to ‘‘preserve, promote, and perpetuate California Indian basketweaving traditions’’ (http://www.ciba.org/about.html) through mentorship and oversight of the environment. Her daughter is president, and Parker is the eldest of four generations of weavers. Parker weaves functional baskets in standard sizes as well as miniature versions. For example, the ingenious traditional Pomo double basket (funnel) fish trap is a marvel of ingenuity—once fish enter the inner funnel, they can not get out—but also of density, textures, and form. The basket’s openwork twined form, in dark reds whose exact tones vary according to materials and light, balances on its side when away from its intended watery environment. Its wide mouth tilts invitingly open, ready to receive any unwary fish that might swim by. Densest and most saturated in color just below the basket’s opening, where the inner basket lies within its outer companion, the basket’s increasingly smaller, openwork base tapers dramatically to its end. Parker combines technical mastery with innovation, as can be seen in a beaded miniature basket woven in 2003. Miniatures in Euro-American art often are curios, to be admired but viewed with the seriousness given fullsized objects. In traditional American cultures, the miniature may have equal or greater power, because of the extraordinary technical skill required to achieve perfection. Pomo basketweavers are renowned for their highly esteemed feathered or beaded gift baskets, and Parker follows these exceptionally high standards. The black and colored glass beads, in two sizes, almost completely envelop the basket’s lid, but are restricted to three austere horizontal lines near the top of the little basket. Coiled baskets are made using a sewing technique, and each bead is attached as part of a single stitch. The finished, beaded basket has a shimmering, jewel-like surface—whose deep primary colors stand out strikingly against the natural tones of the sedge root forming the basket’s body. Parker continues to work in the Indian Cultural program at the Yosemite Museum. Her baskets are in private and museum collections, including the private collection of Queen Elizabeth II of England. A major retrospective of Parker’s work was held in 2004 at the Bedford Gallery, in Walnut Creek, California (CIBA, Valoma). She was one of four Native basketmakers (including Terrol Dew Johnson) who were invited to a seminar at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, to help plan the exhibition ‘‘The Language of Native American Baskets from the Weavers’ View’’ (National Museum of the American Indian). Parker was awarded an honorary doctorate by the California College of the Arts in 2006, for her contributions to the arts and society as an artist, storyteller, teacher, and cultural treasure. In 2007, she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the NEA, which confers lifetime recognition to the United States’ most significant folk and traditional artists. Basket weaving connects Parker to her history, people, and the environment. Her daughter Lucy Parker is an accomplished basketweaver, who now co-

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teaches with Parker, and Julia Parker’s granddaughter also is learning to weave baskets. Parker is well known for her philosophical statement that ‘‘you take from the earth and say please, and you give back to the earth and say thank you . . . . You follow the rules, and just relax, let those pieces of fiber in that basket just dance in your hands, just dance around and flow in there’’ (Parker and Smith-Ferri 27). Elayne Zorn Where to See Julia Parker’s Work National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Norwegian Ski Association Headquarters, Oslo, Norway Storyteller Video, ‘‘Grandmother’s Prayer: Julia Parker’’ Yosemite Museum, Yosemite National Park http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/baskets/subpage.cfm?subpage=view_julia

Bibliography Bernstein, Bruce. ‘‘Julia Parker & Sherri Smith-Ferri.’’ In The Language of Native American Baskets: From the Weavers’ View, 27–29. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 2003. California Baskets.com. Julia Parker. http://www.californiabaskets.com/ juliaparker.html. California Indian Basketweavers Association (CIBA). Review of ‘‘The Past in Present Tense: Four Decades of Baskets by Julia Parker.’’ August 31–October 31, 2004. Newsletter #43, Summer/Fall 2004. ———. http://www.ciba.org/about.html. Camp Internet. Webchat (Julia Domingues Parker). http://www.rain.org/chats/ campinternet19991020.html. Giese, Paula. ‘‘Yosemite Basketmakers: Miwok-Paiute Tradition.’’ http:// www.kstrom.net/isk/art/basket/yosemite.html. KQED-Spark. ‘‘Julia Parker.’’ http://www.kqed.org/spark/artists-orgs/ juliaparke.jsp. ———. ‘‘Spark Educator Guide—Julia Parker.’’ http://www.kqed.org/spark/ education/lessonplans/218b.pdf. Ortiz, Beverly R., and Julia F. Parker. It Will Live Forever: Traditional Yosemite Indian Acorn Preparation. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1996. Valoma, Deborah. ‘‘The Past in Present Tense: Four Decades of Baskets by Julia Parker.’’ News from Native California 18, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 4–6. Weinstein, Dave. ‘‘Basket Weaver Represents Best of American Indian Tradition.’’ San Francisco Chronicle, October 1, 2004. http://www.yosemite.org/ newsroom/clips2004/october/100104.htm.

Edward Poitras (b. 1953), Me´tis Sculptor, Conceptual Artist, and Installation Artist. For Edward Poitras, identity is a complex issue. His tribal affiliation is Me´tis (meaning ‘‘mixed’’ in French), the name given by the Canadian government

Edward Poitras

to people whose ancestry is both Native and non-Native. This designation recognizes their birthright (which may include individual ‘‘aboriginal and treaty rights’’ or access to group programs) without using such flawed and odious methods as ‘‘blood quantum.’’ In Poitras’s case, his father was a Me´tis, and his mother a Plains Cree woman, who met while attending the Indian school in Lebret, Saskatchewan. Born in Regina, the artist learned early that his blended heritage was not well accepted by people on the Reserve or in the city. Both Poitras’s parents were involved in the visual arts, creating a variety of traditional objects as well as two-dimensional work. The artist has talked about the importance in his life of early exposure to art and art-making. He still vividly remembers his childhood experience of seeing Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa (an appropriation of the original, but with a moustache added)—and trying out that imagery at home on his sister’s dolls. During his formal education, Poitras had the good fortune to study with two immensely gifted artists who were also of Me´tis heritage, beginning in 1974 at the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural College in Saskatoon. There Poitras met and studied with Sarain Stump, whose unusually global perspective influenced many young indigenous artists. Stump’s mother was Italian, and his father was a Native man stationed in Italy during World War II. Stumps’s approach involved intuitive thought, along with an in-depth understanding of Native cultures and their relationship to ritual, art, and the environment. This sensitive grasp of the richness of indigenous life was tremendously beneficial to Poitras in developing a sense of his place in the larger world. In 1976 Poitras attended Manitou College in Quebec, where he studied with Domingo Cisneros, a renowned, mixed-indigenous artist from Mexico, known for the elegant simplicity of his installations with animal bones, hides, and other organic materials. Cisneros’s sense of his hybrid background was celebratory —fully embracing its depth and diversity. At the same time, Poitras became immersed in the visionary writings of the Lakota holy man Black Elk, which gave the artist a deep spiritual grasp of his cultural heritage. Through the influence of Stump and Cisneros, as well as the philosophies of Duchamp and Black Elk, Poitras evolved his own, very sophisticated approach. ‘‘Drawing on his studies of Indian cultures and his experience of living in an urban environment, Poitras’s work suggests rebirth through death, conflicting ideology through juxtaposed imagery, and giving new life through the process of decay’’ (McMaster 160). The artist’s earlier work often focused on surprising pairings, especially animal skulls decorated with electronic parts (transistors, circuit boards, etc.) in ways that referenced Native imagery. This combination of found natural objects with commercial detritus has often been cited in regard to Poitras’s Duchamp-like approach to the absurdities of modern life. At the same time, these jarring contrasts reflected a growing concern with the invasion, and manipulation, of the natural world by aggressive industrial interests. Curator and art historian Carol Podedworny has commented that such works reveal the artist’s ‘‘ . . . concern with traditional indigenous values regarding the land; with the ritualizing of the art process; and with a self-imposed intention to be culturally responsible’’ (Matuz 460).

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Other works by Poitras have explored less apparent aspects of what it means to be indigenous. Internal Recall is one of his most important installation works, and it deals with Native people’s perception of their situation. Its imagery is chilling, composed of a group of dark-skinned, long-haired individuals slumped over on the floor. Their hands are tied behind their backs with ropes that come down from the ceiling. The overall impression is one of impending execution. Although based on an actual event in Plains Cree history, the artist has reconstructed it as a fiction based on memory; the reality is that the ropes are not attached—they only loop over hooks at ceiling level and fall again loosely to the floor. So the individuals involved could get up at any point and walk away—‘‘the victimization is self-imposed’’ (Nahwooksy 47). Poitras seems to be telling us that, after bearing so many cruelties at the hands of the dominant society, some Indians may have internalized this dynamic, bringing it to any and all situations. Another prominent work, Offensive/Defensive, also deals with identity but within the context of place, and it is surprisingly complex despite its minimal means. In it, Poitras used two kinds of sod—one from the Gordon Indian Reserve, and the other from the lawn of the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. He dug up a long section of the two and transposed each one to the other’s original site. The grass from the Reserve thrived immediately in its new urban locale. The city turf died when transplanted to the Reserve, but revived shortly after. The artist’s point was that a tribal outlook can survive very well in the city, because the urban environment is fluid and anonymous and allows for many types of individuals. On the Reserve, however, the community is tightly knit, traditional, and well integrated—so that an urban Indian moving there would have to lose some of his or her urbanity or individuality, and almost become ‘‘re-invented’’ to fit into the community’s specific values and structure. Poitras’s deeply philosophical approach has had a profound effect on many younger Native artists who have seen his work. His influence has also been felt as an instructor at Saskatchewan Indian Cultural College, a graphic artist for New Breed magazine, a wide-ranging lecturer, and a participant in Me´tis organizations. He has an extensive and distinguished record of exhibitions, and he was selected to represent Canada in the 1995 Venice Biennale. Known as one of the most sophisticated and innovative artists working in Canada, Poitras sees his work as contributing to the emergence of a new nation, where a broader sense of humanity celebrates hybrid realities (and varied individual identities) as the source of its strength and endurance. Deborah Everett Where to See Edward Poitras’s Work Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Regina, SK Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, QC Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay, ON

Jane Ash Poitras

Bibliography Matuz, Roger, ed. St. James Guide to Native North American Artists. Detroit: St. James Press, 1998. McMaster, Gerald, and Lee-Ann Martin, eds. Indigena: Contemporary Perspectives in Canadian Art. Hull, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization Publications, 1992. Nahwooksy, Fred, and Richard Hill, Sr., eds. Who Stole the Tee Pee? New York: National Museum of the American Indian Publications, 2000. Rushing, III, W. Jackson, ed. Native American Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 1999.

Jane Ash Poitras (b. 1951), Cree/Chipewyan Painter and Mixed-Media Artist. Widely acclaimed First Nations artist Jane Ash Poitras creates intensely colored painted canvases that incorporate collaged photographs, prints, and other visual material, in which she explores the powerful themes of acculturation, intercultural relations, the spiritual world and, most recently, ethnobotany. Though best known perhaps for her striking social commentary about the oppressive history suffered by native peoples, she is equally masterful at painting landscapes or portraits, which reveal their subjects’ external appearances and internal states. The multilayered imagery in Poitras’ work is immediately appealing (in part because of her extraordinary control of color and technical skill), yet study reveals levels of subtle allusions and complex messages. Poitras was born in a remote native community in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. She was orphaned as a child, and then raised in Edmonton by Marguerite Runck, who was sixty-five and a Catholic. By age eight, Poitras had to become independent enough to help her elderly guardian. During that period, Poitras had no experience with native culture, but while very young developed ‘‘a love of drawing, coloring, cutting, and pasting’’ (Miller). Despite Poitras’s strong interest in art and body of paintings and collages, she was advised to find a practical major in college, so she earned a B.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Alberta (1977)—while studying art in the evening. Following graduation, Poitras reports that friends and acquaintances encouraged her desire to continue in art; she put together a portfolio, and within hours of submitting it, was accepted into the University of Alberta’s art and design program, where she earned a B.F.A. in Printmaking in 1983 (Miller). Poitras also studied printmaking and drawing at Yale University during the summer of 1982. She attended graduate school at Columbia University, and earned an M.F.A. in Printmaking (1985). Poitras’ distinctive work attracted attention even before she graduated, though she reports that that was due to ‘‘timing and good luck’’ (Miller). Her life as an artist blossomed, and during the same period she met her birth family and traveled to her childhood home, the Mikisew Cree First Nation. Her critical, and critically acclaimed, vast body of work has found a secure place within the mainstream of art.

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Poitras’ paintings, rooted in both postmodernism and what she calls ‘‘Indian expressionism,’’ explores her heritage and that of other native peoples, as well as the larger human condition. Her gorgeously colored paintings and collages explore the bitter history of colonialism and other important historical and social themes, but are grounded in interior spirituality and dreams. Poitras achieves these effects through designs she draws and combines with newspaper clippings, ‘‘gel-transferred photographs and paint-based work created with high-quality, highly-layered oil pigments on traditionally stretched canvases’’ (Bouchard). Poitras is perhaps best known for the major exhibition ‘‘Who Discovered the Americas’’ (1992/1993), which toured across Canada; the works in that show investigate Columbus’ arrival in America from a native perspective. In this exhibition, and so many others, Poitras shows how artists can be modern warriors: ‘‘you can take your art and create something good, and that becomes your bow and arrow’’ (Canadian Museum). But Poitras does not delve into the past only for the knowledge it can bring us, however valuable: ‘‘we know the history. What we should be worried about now is what are we going to do for tomorrow, what are we going to do today to change that. And so I don’t really care about yesterday, I’m going to do something about it today’’ (Poitras 1998). In 2007, a solo exhibition of Poitras’ work titled ‘‘Shamans’’ originated (like several other major Poitras shows) at the Bearclaw Gallery in Edmonton. Two shows that also explored this subject, which is central to much of her work, were ‘‘Cultural Hierophany’’ (2005), also at the Bearclaw Gallery, and ‘‘Shamans and Sages’’ (1998), at the Russell Gallery. ‘‘Shamans’’ explores the cross-cultural importance of that vital figure, as well as Poitras’ intense interest in visionary experiences and shamanism. In her artist’s statement, Poitras tells us that ‘‘without [shamans] cultures would have died and the human race would no longer exist. They appear in every walk of life . . . . This exhibition explores their mystery and is intended to further human consciousness and prompt questions about the mystery of every realm of intellectual thought and spiritual experience and expression’’ (Poitras, Bearclaw Gallery). Her mixed-media works on canvas include, among many, Arapahoe Shaman, whose seated, front-facing figure within a frame of deep red holds a rifle colored rust-brown like his moccasins; Threads of Hope—Weaving Knowledge, which presents a front-facing woman on a blue, water-like ground, who peers behind warps—above her is a segment of an Egyptian frieze, and below is the text ‘‘I shall weave it white as a cloud,’’ above the single word ‘‘Oceania.’’ Sea Shaman, a mixed-media work on board, is an example of Poitras’ other, less well-known style: forward-facing stick-like figures, painted x-ray style one over another (similar to some Australian aboriginal paintings), lack arms but have antlers or animal-like pointed ears. The deep blue, lavender, and black ground on which the figures seemingly float resembles a midnight sky in which the shamans dream. The painting Bolivian Shaman Protest is divided into upper and lower panels, with a predatory bird on the top, and three men below. The top panel, in

Jane Ash Poitras

browns and blacks, frames a sharp-beaked, fierce-looking American bald eagle. The two panels are separated by a multicolored band, which echoes the colors in the flag and man’s poncho. The large figure in the center front holds the seven-colored wiphala, symbol of indigenous people of the Americas, which people carry into protests (though Poitras painted only some of the colors in the flag). The other two men wear brown, as in the frame above. The mouths of two of the men are open as they speak or shout slogans, in a photograph that could have been taken during 2004–2005 when social movements (some led by native elders) swept Evo Morales (Bolivia’s first indigenous president) to office. While Poitras shows us that native elders can be powerful agents of change, the eagle is ambiguous. On the one hand, the bald eagle symbolizes the United States, whose policies were a target of some of the Bolivian protests. The bald eagle in the top panel of the work could be interpreted as dominating Bolivia —as it does, economically and politically. On the other hand, the eagle has long been an important symbol to native people of the Americas, and fierce eagles figure prominently in other works by Poitras where they symbolize native groups, including Seeing Together, Our Endangered Indigenous Peoples (above a western-looking man with a rifle), and Nez Perce Eagle (where an eagle perches above an historical photo of people) (Balzac Fine Arts). Where some might see the symbol of the United States dominating indigenous Bolivia, Poitras sees the unity of native peoples of the Americas, seeking change. Poitras has participated in numerous group shows, and nearly forty solo exhibitions have focused on her work. More than fifty commercial and public galleries, banks, colleges, universities, and museums have work by her in their collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, Columbia University, Canadian Museum of Civilization, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and the National Gallery of Canada. Poitras is a world-renowned artist, and is well aware of the consequences of her fame: ‘‘I was born a great artist, I am a great artist, I see myself as a great artist, I tell people that; they look and say ‘yes you are’. It’s what I project, what I radiate’’ (Poitras 1998). In 2006, Poitras was honored with the prestigious Aboriginal Achievement Award in Arts and Culture, awarded by the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, Canada. That year, she also was awarded the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts (Canada’s foremost distinction for excellence in the arts), and the University of Alberta Alumni Association’s Award of Excellence. She lives and works in Edmonton, lecturing annually at the University of Alberta, where she has long been a sessional instructor (her classes on shamanism, native art, and ethnobotany are particularly well attended). Poitras lectures throughout Canada and worldwide. She also is involved in community-building activities with Aboriginal people, and her Edmonton community. Currently, Poitras is exploring both ethnobotany and cross-cultural spirituality. In 2006, she said that she wanted to ‘‘ ‘paint for herself’ again, ‘like back in University’ . . . with no pre-destined goals for the works’’ (Getty). Yet she continues to bring her exceptional social consciousness to her work; as curator

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Janet Clark writes, ‘‘it is her [Poitras’] resolve that her work speak to both a Native and non-Native audience, that a dialogue be initiated’’ (Glenbow Museum). Elayne Zorn Where to See Jane Ash Poitras’s work Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton, AB Balzac Fine Arts, Toronto, ON, http://www.inuitfinearts.com/paintings/poitras/ b-index.html Bearclaw Gallery, Edmonton, AB, http://www.bearclawgallery.com/Paintings. aspx?ArtistID=19 Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, ON Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, QC City of Calgary Art Collection, Calgary, AB The Collector ’s Gallery, Calgary, CA, http://www.collectorsgalleryofart.com /dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=22 Columbia University, New York, NY Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, AB Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK McMichael Canadian Art Collection, ON National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON Virtual Museum of Canada, http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/template/index.php ?action=output.loHome&id=1821&collectionId=1668&user=

Bibliography Bouchard, Gilbert A. ‘‘Jane Ash Poitras. ALBERTA: Shaman, May 26–June 7, Bearclaw Gallery, Edmonton,’’ 2006. http://www.gallerieswest.ca/Departments/ ArtistPortraits//6-107539.html. Canadian Museum of Civilization. ‘‘Jane Ash Poitras, The Contrary, 1999.’’ McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2006. http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/template/ index.php?action=output.loHome&id=1821&collectionId=1668&user=. Getty, Shannon. ‘‘Jane Poitras: Media is the Message.’’ First Nations Drum. http:// www.firstnationsdrum.com/Spring%202006/ArtPoitras.htm. Glenbow Museum. Honouring Tradition: Reframing Native Art. Calgary, AB: Fifth House Publishers, 2008. Miller, Heather Andrew. ‘‘Alberta Artist Receives Aboriginal Honor.’’ Windspeaker, March 2006, 8. Poitras, Jane Ash . ‘‘Jane Ash Poitras.’’ In Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives, edited by Gerald McMaster and Lee-Ann Martin, 167. Hull, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization; Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1992. ———. ‘‘The Other Side of the Picture.’’ National Film Board of Canada, 1998. Transcript. In Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2006. http://www.

Jane Ash Poitras virtualmuseum.ca/template/index.php?action= output.daVideo&id= 1960& learningObjectId= 1821&collectionId= 1668&user= &format= 4&user= . ———. Who Discovered the Americas: Recent Works. Thunder Bay, ON: Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 1992. Poitras, Jane Ash, Centre Culturel Canadien, and Rick Rivet. Osopikahikiwak: Jane Ash Poitras/Rick Rivet. Paris: Services culturels de l’Ambassade du Canada, 1999.

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R Jereldine Redcorn (b. 1939), Caddo/Potawatomi Ceramics Artist. Jereldine Redcorn grew up among her father’s people, the Caddo—a nation with an especially long and complex history. The word ‘‘Caddoan’’ actually refers to a large group of native speakers linked by a common language, including numerous diverse but related tribes. Since its beginnings, the group has experienced repeated reconfigurations over thousands of years, with the Caddo tribe of today being located along the Red River valley in Oklahoma. Its original ‘‘mother nation’’ was the Caddo branch of the great Mississippian culture that flourished from 800 A.D. to 1600 A.D. Also known as ‘‘moundbuilders,’’ these people created colossal earthen mounds and stunning ceramics, and are only now beginning to become known outside archeological circles. Growing up in Colony, Oklahoma, Redcorn, like others of her tribe, knew little about her ancient Caddo heritage. Today however, a vibrant cultural revival is underway, and Redcorn is at the center of it. Dedicated and self-taught, she currently creates a spectrum of beautiful ceramic forms in the tradition of her ancestors. With her work now exhibited in museums across the country, she has traveled an unusual path to reach this point. Her story began with an invaluable, if long delayed, exchange between her nation and archeologists studying the mound-builders. The encounter took place in June of 1991, when the Texas Archeological Society invited members of the Caddo Culture Club to a field program at the Museum of the Red River in Idabel, Oklahoma. Having belonged to the club for some time, Redcorn traveled with them to perform traditional dances and, in this case, to see what discoveries had been made about her ancestors. As they entered the museum, the group came upon hundreds of elegant and unusual clay vessels, ranging from engraved jars, to decorated bowls, to delicate tripod bottles. The objects were exquisite, in terms of their complexity of construction, their lithe, organic forms, and their sinuous, geometric designs. The group was speechless. None of them had ever seen pottery like this or known of its existence. Now, as the club members came face to face with their own rich heritage, they felt a sense of revelation and delight. As if recovering a long lost relation, they were deeply moved. They unanimously decided to reconnect more fully with this newfound legacy, and thereby expand their sense of collective and personal identity. They pledged to investigate further,

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to learn how to create these impressive forms, and to revive this ancient art as an ongoing tradition. The Caddo of the mound-builder era were an advanced civilization with an especially powerful sense of aesthetics. This is abundantly clear from the stately mounds of earth they created—often shaped into platforms at the top to support temples or chief’s houses. (And although Caddoan mounds are smaller in scale, they are related to the monumental earthworks at Cahokia near St. Louis, including Monk’s Mound, which is larger than Egypt’s Great Pyramid.) The depth of their artistry is also clear from their ceramics, which are globular in shape, with unusual formal configurations and long, graceful necks. Many of them reveal very intricate patterns of surface decoration, often with overlapped and interwoven elements that produce a sense of shallow, layered space or undulating movement. Textures are extremely important and vary widely from one work to the next, including tactile ‘‘dotted’’ patterns that rhythmically punctuate the surface, animated patches of swirling spirals and intensely hatched networks, as delicate as lace. Gradually Redcorn began to find her way into the age-old techniques. Of all her group, she was the only one with enough energy and persistence to keep experimenting with forms and approaches. She gained a basic knowledge of building coiled clay pots from her brother, who had a rudimentary knowledge of ceramics. After that, she began the sometimes exciting, sometimes frustrating process of trial and error. She studied photographs of Caddoan pottery and visited museum collections. She was fortunate to have an aesthetic gift that allowed her to grasp the underlying structures of various vessels. Over time she developed the ability to configure the forms (often multichambered ones), to lay out and engrave the designs, and to polish the final surface. At first, the creative process was a thrilling and happy one, Jereldine Redcorn. Taysha. 2005. Pottery (engraved and making Redcorn feel exhilaburnished tripod bottle). 9 ½ in.  9 in. © Jereldine Redcorn. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian. rated and gratified. However,

Jereldine Redcorn

those emotions were soon infused with sadness and anger at having been deprived of her patrimony for so long. She couldn’t avoid thinking that this ancestral art had been lost to the Caddo for generations, mostly because of the upheaval caused by Euro-American ‘‘settlers’’ (including forced removals of the Caddo from their land, as recently as 1859). And beyond the concrete losses inflicted on the Caddo, the discovery of the pottery had not been shared with them until the invitation from the Texas archeologists. Redcorn says, ‘‘I went through stages [of reactions] . . . [As] I made pottery, I worked through a lot of conflict. I realized that we couldn’t go back, only forward. By reviving part of the tradition, you find something that helps you look toward the future. [Realizing this] gave me more excitement and joy’’ (http://www. texasbeyondhistory.net). Redcorn has taught several dozen Caddo women how to make the ancient forms. She finds pleasure in passing on her understanding and would like to have a group of women working steadily with her. But it takes a tremendous commitment of time and effort to do the work, and she has yet to realize her goal of an ongoing studio workshop. Like her students, she must take time out for the practical demands of life, as she is a high school geometry teacher, wife, and mother. She continues to take part in tribal life as well, as a member of the Caddo Nation Tribal Council. Today she lives in Norman with her husband Charles, who has been the strongest supporter of her art all along, making pottery tools for her and assisting her in firing the pots. Redcorn continues the consuming work of making her pottery, as time permits. At the same time, she travels extensively to archeological conferences and to give workshops and demonstrations. One of her most prestigious positions was prompted by the stunning show of Mississippian art called ‘‘Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand’’ (at the Chicago Art Institute’s Museum); she was featured as the Artist in Residence there, presenting detailed demonstrations of her working process. She continues not only to create, but to educate Native and non-Native people about this almost lost art form. The pleasure she gives others is a satisfaction that returns to her as well. She once said ‘‘[I think] no matter what else, Caddo people are proud of me for doing this. This one thing’’ (http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net). Deborah Everett Where to See Redcorn’s Work Chicago Art Institute Museum, Chicago, IL Institute for American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, NM National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY Museum of the Red River, Idabel, OK

Bibliography Matos, Ramiro, Ann McMullen, Thomas E. Evans, Patricia L. Nietfeld, Felipe Solı´s, and Bruce Bernstein. Born of Clay. New York: National Museum of the American Indian, 2005.

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Bill Reid (1920–1998), Haida Sculptor and Goldsmith. Bill Reid’s artistic legacy looms large—arising from his fresh and engaging body of work, which both extends and reinvents Northwest Coast traditions. In an extraordinary life of exploration, he pursued art through anthropological adventures that led him full circle to his Native roots. And in the process, he reawakened an ancient culture and rediscovered himself. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Reid had a composite heritage—Haida on his mother’s side, and Scottish and German on his father’s side (although the artist’s father was actually born in the United States). Shortly after the couple married, William Reid senior moved his hotel business to the town of Hyder on the Alaskan border. The family moved back and forth between Hyder and Victoria for some years, so that young Bill was shifted from one school to another. Reid’s mother, Sophia Gladstone, had received the traditional, repressive education given to Native people then—and was persuaded to bring up her son as an Anglo and to hide her heritage from him. However, he had a keen aesthetic sense from an early age and was always attracted to the Haida designs on the jewelry worn by his aunts. Young Reid, in fact, was gifted in numerous ways, none of which seemed to please his father. Neither Reid nor his mother got along well with his rough-natured father, and in 1933, when the artist was thirteen, Sophia left William senior, who was never seen again. Reid’s mother set up a business designing clothing for well-to-do families in Victoria and supported her three children with that income. At about the same time, the artist began to make things with his hands—especially small-scale carvings, including a Viking boat and a totem pole. After graduating from high school, he became a radio announcer for local stations in British Columbia and eastern Canada—which eventually led to a job with CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in Toronto. Meanwhile, by the age of twenty-three (in 1943), Reid had become so intrigued by his almost-lost heritage that he set off to explore it. He traveled to the Queen Charlotte Islands (known as ‘‘Haida Gwaii’’ to its original inhabitants) and visited Skidegate, his mother’s home village. There he met his maternal grandfather, Charles Gladstone, a silversmith and carver of argillite —and one of the few remaining Haida artists working in the ancestral style. Gladstone, in turn, had learned his craft from his uncle Charles Edenshaw, the great nineteenth-century Haida sculptor. During that visit, Reid had the pleasure of seeing and handling Edenshaw’s tools, which had been passed on to Gladstone. Intensely affected by this experience, Reid returned to Toronto, but began to dig deeper. He visited and researched Toronto’s Northwest Coast collection at

Bill Reid

the Royal Ontario Museum, especially a totem pole there from Tanu, his grandmother’s village. He began to develop insights into the forms and symbols of Haida art. At the same time he became interested in silversmithing and studied jewelry making at Ryerson Technical Institute. In 1951 Reid moved back to Vancouver and set up a workshop for making jewelry in his free time, while still working at the CBC. He began to create a kind of hybrid jewelry, using the European metalworking techniques he had learned, but with Haida designs. He continued to explore the visual vocabulary and syntax of the Haida, focusing especially on the work of Edenshaw. In 1954, while attending his grandfather’s funeral, he had his first encounter with actual examples of Edenshaw’s work—in the form of two gold bracelets that his great aunt wore for the occasion. Reid then began an intensive study of pieces by Edenshaw in museum collections, as well as analyzing other Haida works illustrated in anthropological publications. With his rapidly expanding expertise, Reid began to participate in totem pole salvage and restoration projects of the Royal British Columbia Museum and the Department of Anthropology at UBC (University of British Columbia). Through the museum, he got his first professional wood-carving project, working under master Kwakwaka’wakw carver Mungo Martin. In 1958 Reid took a daring step—he quit his CBC job to work full time on a reconstruction project in a Haida village involving two houses and five poles. It was through these experiences that Reid learned the art of pole carving, and the striking results, which were completed in 1962, are on view as outdoor exhibits at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Reid then resumed his jewelry making and started his own business in Vancouver. One of his methods was to copy the work of the ‘‘old masters,’’ according to the traditional method of learning among the Haida. Another approach he used was to translate tattoos (from old ethnographic pictures) into broaches and bracelets. Probably his most important innovation at that time was a transformation of the two-dimensional bracelets worn by Haida women, into sculptural, three-dimensional carvings; they followed all the traditional precepts, but became stunningly relief-like rather than flat. Although Reid thought of himself primarily as a goldsmith, he created a significant number of impressive sculptures. In the early 1980s he created work for several large outdoor commissions, including Killer Whale, a large bronze figure with its own pool for the entrance to the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park. Another work, Mythic Messengers, is a high-relief bronze frieze originally commissioned by Teleglobe Canada and later donated to the Bill Reid Foundation. It is a densely interwoven chain of characters from Haida myth —including Dogfish Woman, the Sea Wolf who eats three whales a day, and Nanatsinget, human wife of the Bear Prince (who is also abducted by Killer Whale). These creatures have a curious relationship, in that each one’s tongue is elongated and thrust into the mouth of another, enabling them to have what the Haidas called an ‘‘exchange of tongues,’’—that is, to share (or ‘‘communicate’’) their mythic abilities. It is an intensely animated grouping—almost a linear free-for-all—and reads as a pantheon of fantastic, clutching creatures

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strung out across the horizon. It clearly reflects traditional Haida art in all its richness, yet introduces fundamentally modern elements, including a use of negative space that was essentially unknown in Northwest Coast art. Probably Reid’s best known work is Raven and the First Men, commissioned for the UBC’s Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. It depicts the Haida creation story, in which Raven, the most powerful of mythical creatures, sits atop a giant clamshell, coaxing out the first human beings. This object represents one of Reid’s greatest triumphs, partly because it takes Haida sculpture out of its traditional form, i.e., bas-relief, and ushers it into completely three-dimensional space. No Bill Reid. Raven and the First Men. 1980. Sculpture. longer is it limited to adorning 188.75 cm  192.6 cm (diameter). © University of British the surfaces of totem poles or Columbia Museum of Anthropology. Photo courtesy of the housefronts; it has entered the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, realm of freestanding objects. Vancouver, British Columbia. Another remarkable achievement here is the totally animated, physically assertive quality of the figures. Their bodily presence is reminiscent of gargoyles and related Romanesque sculpture, where outward appearance reflects internal emotions with a kind of headlong, full-blown insistence. At the same time, this work has a thoroughly modern sense of whimsy, especially in the chunky proportions of the figures; they have an air of quirky caricature that gives them the contemporary feeling of cartoonbased art. Reid’s other famous monumental work, Spirit of Haida Gwaii, achieves similar effects with an even more complex composition. In this work, in particular, we can see similarities between his vision and that of witty New York sculptor Tom Otterness, whose rounded, doughboy figures are forever caught up in their own folly. Haida Gwaii is Reid’s rendition of a great canoe from Northwest Coast tradition, filled with a boatload of fabulous characters from Haida myth. They are each involved in their own self-absorbed actions that reveal various aspects of human nature—most of which are self-defeating. Reid wrote descriptions of this piece, fascinating in their own right, focusing especially on the ironies of personality, societies, and human history.

Jolene Rickard

These and other works attracted the attention of younger artists, especially from the Northwest Coast, who came to Reid in large numbers to learn. Some became assistants and/or apprentices of his. Others learned by just watching him work. But his role was seminal and unique in reawakening the almost lost art of the Haida and passing it on to others. Reid became almost legendary, receiving widespread attention and many accolades during his lifetime—not only for his individual works, but also for his contribution ‘‘in reviving and bringing recognition to ancient Northwest Coast art forms’’ (Hirschfelder 68). He was given honorary doctoral degrees from five Canadian universities, as well as countless awards, including the Vancouver Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Aboriginal Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Order of Canada. After a long and difficult struggle with Parkinson’s disease, Reid died in 1998 at the age of seventyeight. He left behind a generation of artists whom he taught and inspired, a body of striking and innovative work, and a vibrant culture whose revitalization he engineered. Deborah Everett Where to See Bill Reid’s Work Bill Reid Foundation, Vancouver, BC Canadian Embassy, Washington, D.C. University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC Vancouver Aquarium, Vancouver, BC http://www.nativeonline.com/billreid.html

Bibliography Bringhurst, Robert. The Black Canoe: Bill Reid and the Spirit of Haida Gwaii. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992. Hirschfelder, Arlene. American Indian Lives: Artists and Craftspeople. New York: Facts on File, 1994. McNair, Peter, Allen Hoover, and Kevin Neary. The Legacy: Tradition and Innovation in Northwest Coast Indian Art. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1984. http://www.billreidfoundation.org http://www.cbc.ca/lifeandtimes/reid.html http://www.civilization.ca/aborig/reid/reid17e.html

Jolene Rickard (b. 1956), Tuscarora (Iroquois Confederacy) Photographer and Assemblage- and Installation-Artist. Eloquent writer and art historian, insightful curator and devoted activist, Jolene Rickard has many identities. Her photographs and installation works are elegant and deeply thoughtful, offering sophisticated commentary on the adaptation and survival of Native people. As striking materializations of Iroquois culture, her images perpetuate and contemporize her society’s symbols, while deepening the viewer’s understanding of them.

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Born less than a mile from the brink of Niagara’s thunderous falls, Rickard has been immersed in Tuscarora culture all her life. She grew up on her nation’s reservation in northern New York state, where she was raised by her father, who belongs to the Bear Clan, and her mother, who is of the Turtle Clan. Having a profound knowledge of her tribe’s history and lifeways, as well as her family and ancestors, she incorporates elements of both in her work. The Tuscarora people (or Ska ru re) originally lived in ‘‘the land of the floating pine (North Carolina)’’ (Lippard 107), but began to feel the encroachments of outsiders as early as the late 1500s. By the mid-1700s, ‘‘a century of constant pressure from the British and their Indian allies finally forced [the Tuscarora] to migrate for [their] survival’’ (Lippard 107). They were adopted into the Iroquois Confederacy (originally composed of the Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and Mohawk tribes), and became the sixth nation in that group during the 1720s. ‘‘It was [Rickard’s] grandmother Flossie’s great-grandmother who walked from North Carolina to where [her family] lives today . . . The Seneca people gave [the Tuscarora] a gift of one square mile, and [they] worked and purchased the rest of [their] land’’ (Lippard 107). Rickard’s family has always been prominent among the leaders of her nation, and their long history is one of resistance and cultural preservation. The artist’s forebears were close to Cayuga Chief Deskaheh, who appeared before the League of Nations in 1924 to present a proclamation from the Iroquois and document their independence and sovereignty as a nation. Soon after returning from that trip, Deskaheh passed away at the home of Rickard’s grandfather. Her grandfather, Chief Clinton Rickard, was inspired by those events to form the Indian Defense League of America in 1926, whose mission was to fight for justice for Native people. By the early 1980s, the artist was photographing her family, her friends, and the Tuscarora’s land near Buffalo, New York. She had already attended the London College of Printing and earned her B.F.A. from Rochester Institute of Technology. At that time she also began to work with a variety of professional groups, including the College Art Association, and indigenous organizations, such as the American Indian Community House in New York, while exhibiting her photographs as early as 1983. She lived in New York City for a number of years, where she had a successful career in both graphic design and art direction for a television station. However, in her early thirties (1987), she decided to move back to the Tuscarora reservation and to reintegrate herself into tribal life. Rickard has acknowledged that this move has resulted in both deep personal rewards and contradictions. Rickard’s work, in many ways, embodies her culture. She has spoken eloquently about embedding specific aspects of the Tuscarora world within her images. In a stunning essay of 1992, the artist said, ‘‘What we create . . . serves as a reminder of our spiritual, economic and cultural survival. The strongest remaining symbols amongst the Ska ru re are the beadwork and the white corn . . . It takes time to put thousands of tiny beads on cloth; it teaches you the patience to observe, the ability to see things as a whole or as a multitude of parts. It is important to see how things are connected and what gives them life’’ (Lippard 108–9). Ancestral Tuscarora objects, then, represent their system of

Jolene Rickard

values, and serve as monuments to their cultural and social achievements. Gail Tremblay, another gifted Iroquois artist and writer, has spoken of her fondness for Rickard’s work, because the images contain so many visual references to their shared culture (like the richly worked wampum belts that recorded agreements, including the historic and influential Constitution of the Iroquois Nations). A famous example of Rickard’s focus on her nation’s material culture is Photomontage—which incorporates a close-up of a traditional textile with exquisite beadwork, juxtaposed with images of the artist’s grandmother selling beaded tourist mementos. It draws an interesting parallel between the more formal, classic traditions and modern adaptations for economic survival. The gentle interaction between the components of this image yields a striking sense of quiet strength and profound dignity. In addition to her photography and photomontages, Rickard has used photo-based imagery to construct three-dimensional assemblages and environments. In 1995, she created one of her most stunning works: Sky Woman Looks Back. The title comes from the Iroquois creation story, in which a woman who lived in the sky tumbled through it, was eased downward by flying birds and was set to rest on the back of a great turtle. She began to walk about on the turtle, scattering seeds she had brought with her, which grew into vegetation. Step by step, an entire world came into being, with North America at its center, known to the Tuscarora as Turtle Island. In Rickard’s piece, a large oval light box rests on the floor—filled with blue luminescence, like a window into the sky. The blue, which acts as both surface and aperture, is punctuated by a photo-image of a huge female eye, whose surrounding ‘‘flesh’’ suggests fissured ground. Indeed, her ‘‘skin’s’’ network of cracks reveals sprouts of vegetation, as though seedlings are pushing up through it. A wickerwork of twigs wreathes the central image, with delicate sprigs reaching across it. Both ethereal in effect and concrete in form, Rickard’s work invokes the legend vividly, bringing it into the present moment by mixing electronic devices with natural materials. In another work that references Sky Woman, 3 Sisters, Rickard combines black-and-white photography and color Xerox to create a kind of mythic selfportrait. She positions her own face between images of corn, beans, and squash (the offspring of Sky Woman’s daughter and the traditional ‘‘three sisters’’ to all agricultural native people). It is a contemporary, fabricated image that reinvents the Iroquoian female principle in terms of today’s world. At the same time, it emphasizes the matrilineal aspects of the artist’s Tuscaroran identity, in which material inheritance follows maternal lines, and clan-mothers figure prominently in political decisions. Perhaps Rickard’s best-known work is Corn Blue Room, an installation that brings together high technology and organic elements in a focused dialogue between them. Heavy bunches of corn ears hang from the ceiling in a darkened room, changed in color by the blue light suffusing the space. Lining the installation’s perimeter are flat, glowing screens filled with almost neon images—and alternating visions of the natural and the artificial, drawing contrasts between organic entities and electronic superstructures. Ominous beside the flora and fauna, giant hydroelectric towers loom like ruthless automatons, occupying this interior space just as they invaded

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one-third of the Tuscarora’s land (1964). The eerie psychological aura of this work evokes a kind of ‘‘cold war’’ standoff between mechanical Titans and frail mortals. With a wealth of information, often contained in understated cues, Rickard entices the viewer toward a deeper awareness of indigenous culture and history. She offers a challenge to understand as much about her world as she knows of the viewer ’s. With a rich visual poetry and gracious humanity, she opens a larger sphere to her audience by way of an affecting aesthetic experience. Deborah Everett Where to See Rickard’s Work Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa, ON National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. http://www.cooday8.tripod.com http://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/exhibitions/previous/reservationx/ cornblueroom.html

Bibliography Aperture Foundation. Strong Hearts: Native American Visions and Voices. New York: Aperture Foundation Press, 1995. Berlo, Janet C., and Ruth B. Phillips. Native North American Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Bush, Alfred L., and Lee Clark Mitchell. The Photograph and the American Indian. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Farris, Phoebe. Women Artists of Color. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Lippard, Lucy R., ed. Partial Recall. New York: The New Press, 1992. Penney, David W. North American Indian Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, Inc., 2004. Rushing, W. Jackson . Native American Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 1999.

Diego Romero (b. 1964), Cochiti Ceramicist and Graphic Artist. A strikingly gifted and inventive narrative artist, Diego Romero creates his paintings on pottery rather than canvas. His style is a heady hybrid, blending the extreme realities of comic books with the hypnotic forms of Mimbres culture (arguably the most artistic civilization of the ancient Southwest). Romero’s generally black-on-white imagery vastly expands and contemporizes that centuries-old aesthetic, to create works that are as current as anime´, but as timeless as the human condition. Coming from a family of artists, Romero was encouraged to make art from the beginning. His father was a talented painter and art teacher, who always wanted Diego to become an artist. Romero has said that he ‘‘grew up drawing, making pots, and reading comic books’’ (http://www.britesites.com).

Diego Romero

Although Romero’s family continues to be a prominent one in Cochiti Pueblo, the artist was born and raised in Berkeley, California, where his father had settled in the 1960s, attracted by its open environment as one that suited his individuality. Diego, along with his brother (painter Mateo Romero), became a comics fan early on, studying its masters and its quirky visionaries. Later, Diego studied art at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, and then at Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles. Eventually he went on to the University of California at Los Angeles, where he received his M.F.A. in 1993. Romero’s paternal grandmother, Teresita Romero, was an acclaimed potter as well. Her work was most often classified as ‘‘Cochiti polychrome,’’ but Romero has identified it as a reinterpretation of Mogollon pottery (one of three major early cultures of the indigenous Southwest). This reconfiguration of an ancient style is a common thread running through her work as well as her grandson’s; he has remarked that she was drawing on many different influences, just as he does. The body of painting on pottery for which Romero is best known is referenced by the name of its protagonists: the ‘‘Chongo Brothers.’’ These fictional Indian siblings have their long hair pulled back in a knot, a traditional Southwestern arrangement known as a ‘‘chongo.’’ Their features are drawn in a way that combines aspects of cartooning (scrawny legs, bumps for knees, and other exaggerated features) with classic Mimbres conventions (a dotted diamond shape for the eye, a slot-like mouth, and the chongo itself). The ancient Mimbres style is emphatically graphic in its own right, with highcontrast, two-color schemes (generally black and white) that yield an intoxicating engagement of opposites. Mimbres imagery is bold, lending itself perfectly to the drama of comics, in terms of both drawing style and psychological atmosphere. Nevertheless, Romero’s combination of the two is particularly seamless, due to his sophisticated formal insights and cultivated sense of humor. (He has, for instance, compared the original Chongo brothers to the scroungy Simpsons cartoon characters, ‘‘Itchy’’ and ‘‘Scratchy.’’) At the same time the artist draws on the ironies and conundrums of modern life as experienced by Native people. In his bowl Slots, for instance, Romero presents a modern-day Chongo brother confronting slot machines inside a casino. Through strikingly economical means, the artist reveals the depth of this mental dilemma. Chongo sits in profile, with a slip of paper on the table before him (seemingly the ‘‘stakes’’ in this situation—perhaps his stipend or paycheck). A row of slot machines beckons to him with enticing displays of light and sound. The marks radiating from the flashing lights atop the machines are echoed in streaks on the glass doors behind them; the same streaks frame Chongo’s head and can also be read as his own pulsing waves of anxiety. Additionally, his profiled eye is rendered with the typical Mimbres diamond, but in this case, the shape is turned lengthwise and elongated, opening the eye dramatically to reflect the depth of his struggle with temptation. Romero has stated that this image represents ‘‘the addictive side of human nature to which we are all privy’’ (University of Pennsylvania 187). And he masterfully transmits the details of this complex internal

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conflict through a few deftly placed strokes—effortlessly revealing the uneasy world of his subject. The Chongo Brothers, according to Romero, are characters that combine elements from a broad group of Native individuals, including his cousins, uncles, and even people he’s only heard of. ‘‘[The brothers represent] aboriginal people in a 20th century consumer society, and the work narrates the pitfalls and dualities of being a museum artifact in a not-so-museum artifact world. They’re metaphors for the disenfranchised’’ (http://www.britesites.com). Another bowl that reveals this ‘‘outsider’’ status was created in 1997; it shows the two brothers in their broken-down car, one bored and marking time in the back seat, while the other sweats it out in front, watching a mythological creature try to repair the engine. In the background, a factory pumps pollution into the sky, while a cutaway view of the soil reveals shards of ancient pottery and other artifacts. Here the Chongo brothers are theoretical heirs to a cultural treasure trove beneath the ground, while stranded above it in the hostile environment of today’s world. In other works, Romero presents a different side of Native life—where individuals have been seduced by the materialism of the mainstream society around them. In his Chongo Brothers Dough Bowl (note the pun here) of 1994, the siblings are artists with decidedly upscale inclinations. One is shown as a painter at home in trendy dress, holding a wine glass and leaning against a kiva-style fireplace (a symbol of ‘‘having arrived’’ in Santa Fe); his ambition, appearing in a label below, is ‘‘to be the next Indian Market poster boy’’ (Metropolitan Museum 270)—a position that entails a major boost to sales in the Native art world. The other brother is working on a sculpture, but again, his stated goal is to be ‘‘the next Don Trump of Indian gaming’’ (Metropolitan Museum 270)—preferring vast and solid economic gains to the more elusive rewards of his obvious vocation. Other works by Romero comprise the ‘‘American Highway’’ series, where industrial landscapes, rather than figures, become the focus. In On the Rez, for instance, the setting is a Southwestern landscape with buttes and mesas in the disDiego Romero. Muscle Man (from the ‘‘Atlas Series’’). tance. A trailer home sits in the c. 2000. Earthenware. Approximately 3.5 in.  8 in. © Diego foreground, surrounded by Romero. Photo courtesy of Garth Clark Gallery. abandoned cars, while a cross-

Diego Romero

section of the ground is studded with archaeological pots and bones of ancestors. Storm clouds loom overhead, with apparent eruptions of dark thunder that feel like swarming bats. The artist has remarked that the imagery of this genre addresses ‘‘landscape, time, and man’s place within these constructs’’ (University of Pennsylvania 87). In a not-so-obvious corollary, Romero has a deep and abiding love for classical Greek vases and their scenes derived from mythology and heroic epics. By way of this inspiration, Romero takes familiar aspects of the Greek figurative style, and applies them to Native American lore and history. One such work, simply titled Bowl (from 2000), reinvents the Chongo brothers as ‘‘Hero Twins’’—an extremely muscular Native duo navigating a majestic landscape. Now with sinewy, Olympic physiques and focused expressions, they appear in hot pursuit of some all-absorbing objective. Another work, The Knot Bearers, presents runners from the successful Pueblo Revolt of 1680, carrying the legendary knotted cords from pueblo to pueblo to signal the start of the revolution (each knot representing a day in the countdown to ousting the Spaniards). These works locate Native American warriors and athletes squarely within the tradition of classical heroes, as the custom of honoring one’s champions is an ancient and hallowed one in both cultures. Romero has received widespread recognition for his striking creative achievements—having developed a painting style with deep insights into the Native experience, while inventing a provocative visual language of his own. At the same time, he has been questioned for his choice of media, as his innovations are more closely tied to painting than ceramics. But the artist has stated that he is committed to painting on clay specifically because of its roots in his indigenous heritage—and perhaps as something of a joke on the rigidly defined ‘‘Western’’ art world. After all, as the artist once commented, these stunning objects are works of art to him and many in his audience, but at the same time they have the down-to-earth distinction of ‘‘still [being] Indian pots’’ (http://www.britesites.com). Deborah Everett Where to See Romero’s Work Garth Clark Gallery, New York, NY Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY Robert Nicols Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Bibliography Heard Museum. Hold Everything. Phoenix: Heard Museum Publications, 2001. Metropollitan Museum of Art. The Responsive Eye. New York: Metropolitan Museum Publications, 2003. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Native American Voices on Identity, Art and Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Publications, 2005. http://www.britesites.com/native_artist_interviews/dromero.htm

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S Pitaloosie Saila (b. 1942), Inuit Printmaker. Like many Inuit artists, Pitaloosie Saila comes from a family of prominent and gifted individuals. She is married to acclaimed sculptor, Pauta Saila, and her stepmother, Mary Pudlat, is a well-known printmaker, often included in the annual collection of prints issued by Cape Dorset artists. Perhaps Saila’s most famous relative is Peter Pitseolak, her father’s cousin, who was among the first Baffin Bay Inuit to create a large body of artwork over a long period of time. Yet, despite the risk of familial comparisons, Pitaloosie Saila began making her own art in the early years of Cape Dorset’s rise to prominence, and she developed a highly personal style that has won her widespread recognition. Saila’s early life was saturated with harsh experiences, beginning with the sudden death of her mother when she was two and a half years old. At the time, her father was off hunting and returned to discover the shocking loss of his young wife. After that Saila was cared for by both her grandmothers, while her baby sister was taken away for adoption by relatives. A few years later her father brought home a new wife, one of Saila’s mother’s cousins. Saila cried when she met her father’s new partner, but endured the difficult adjustment to a new mother. Within a year or so, at age seven or eight, Saila slipped while playing on an icy hill, and fell hard, all the way to the bottom. She suffered a spinal cord injury and was sent by dog team to Lake Harbour. Among her fellow patients was an acutely anxious man, who cried relentlessly as he jumped off the sled, and finally had to be tied down. After a long and trying journey of many stages, the artist eventually reached the military hospital in Halifax. She spent seven years there (and in a hospital in Montreal) being treated. During that time, Saila learned to speak English and some French, but forgot most of her own language (Inuktitut). By 1957, at the age of fifteen, she was healthy enough to return to Keatuk, the site of her parents’ camp, but it was a rocky readjustment, especially in terms of communication, since everyone at home spoke Inuktitut. Nevertheless, before a year had passed, the artist married Pauta Saila and soon began to make drawings for the budding West Baffin Eskimo Co-op. Pitaloosie Saila once said in an interview, ‘‘I started making drawings on my own, mainly because I wanted to, but also because I wanted to start making an income’’ (Leroux 165). She commented that it was not easy for her to begin

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drawing, and she still finds the blank paper somewhat intimidating. But she has learned to ‘‘first create the drawing in (her) mind’’ (Leroux 165), before taking up her tools. She says, ‘‘I draw what I have seen, what I have heard about, and what I remember’’ (Leroux 165), with the ultimate goal of preserving the traditional lifeways of the Inuit. Saila is particularly known for her images of mothers and children, as well as groups of women. The faces of her subjects tend to be gentle and feminine, with large, doe-like eyes; children are often seated in the adults’ laps, clambering about them, or nestled inside their enormous hoods. In numerous works, Saila uses this clustering of human forms to underscore a powerful interpersonal bond. In Arctic Madonna, for instance, the woman’s amautik, or hood, is raised over her head, looking like a small tent, within which the mother turns toward her child, who places his hands around the curves of her face; two attendant owls bear witness to this tender interaction. In other works, the physical closeness of the creatures seems to dissolve their boundaries, forming a solid mass, as in Departed Souls, where the faces of individuals are all attached to the same amorphous body. Similarly, in Sheltered Owl, the bird sits beneath the arching form of a wolf, so that they meld together, like a figure growing large as it fills up a tiny house.

Pitaloosie Saila. Arctic Madonna. 1980. Color stonecut and stencil on paper (print). 60.5 cm  71.1 cm. © Dorset Fine Arts/Pitaloosie Saila. Photo courtesy of Dorset Fine Arts.

Pitaloosie Saila

Saila’s portraits of birds, especially owls, are widely recognized for their elegance and expressiveness. Their faces tend to display unusually fine detail. Generally staring directly at the viewer, the birds often have beaks that appear foreshortened, or drawn in frontal perspective, for a three-dimensional occupation of space. The owls’ eyes are almost always large and attentive, but it is the handling of the eyelids that makes them startlingly real. Ookpagaq (Young Owl), for instance, shows a flailing, awkward fledgling, and its eyes, appropriately, are saucer-like and partially outlined, driving home its anxiety over the shakiness of its new steps. In Mother’s Warmth, on the other hand, the eyes of the mother owl and her young are almost almond-shaped, half-closed in the soft glow of maternal devotion. The images created by Saila span a wide range of types, but there are a number of characteristics which have become the signatures of her style. She often depicts the clothing of her figures in substantial detail, reflecting the dramatic designs used by the Inuit, especially where patterns of alternating blacks and whites create dramatic effects. In Changing Traditions, she presents three women from successive generations; each is dressed in a related but different fashion from the others (ranging from a classic traditional outfit to a contemporary one). Each one, however, has the graceful contours of the classic Inuit parka, emphasized by striking, high-contrast edging. In a parallel concern, Saila often portrays the hair or fur coats of her subjects with finely rendered, almost tactile, textures. In Loon with Young, the chick is completely covered with fluffy down, so that each tiny feather stands out around its body like a floating fringe. Similarly, in a work titled Summer Breeze, the artist’s attention to the look of layered fibers turns a woman’s tresses into streamers riding the wind. Pitaloosie Saila’s prints have been widely exhibited in Canada, as well as internationally. One of her images, Fisherman’s Dream, was chosen for a Canadian postage stamp in 1977, and her Arctic Madonna was reproduced on a UNICEF greeting card in 1983. Her work has been acquired by numerous private and public collections, including almost every major art institution in Canada. And yet shyly, the artist says, ‘‘I envy the women who are quite talented to make things they want because, even now, I am not a great artist’’ (Leroux 165). Despite her doubts, Saila continues to make her delicate drawings on a daily basis, with the goal of preserving her powerful Inuit culture for her children, as well as future generations. Deborah Everett Where to See Pitaloosie Saila’s Work Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa, ON McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, ON Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, QC National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

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Bibliography Gustavison, Susan. Imaak Takujavut: Paintings from Cape Dorset. Kleinburg, ON: McMichael Canadian Art Collection Publications, 1996. Hessel, Ingo. Inuit Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998. Leroux, Odette, Marion E. Jackson, and Minnie Aodla Freeman. Inuit Women Artists. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996. Peabody Essex Museum (Grimes, John R., Douglas Stenton, and Karen Kramer). Our Land. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum Publications, 2004.

Ramona Sakiestewa (b. 1948), Hopi Textile Artist and Designer. Renowned as a weaver of bold, graphic, painterly tapestries, Ramona Sakiestewa is also widely known for her works on paper, and her work in public art, design, arts administration, and education. Sakiestewa’s highly abstract weavings combine American Southwest aesthetics with modernist elements. Her textiles eschew representational imagery; through form and color they convey her original interpretations of artistic traditions from the American Southwest, as well as other areas of the world where she has traveled and studied. Her mastery of the technology of the fiber arts, including yarn dyeing and diverse textile techniques, make it possible for Sakiestewa to express her individual aesthetic in her ‘‘painterly weavings’’ (Marshall) in ways that push the boundaries of tapestry. In her second field, public art, Sakiestewa has worked on numerous projects, notably as a design consultant (1994–2005) for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. She created the visual vocabulary that was used by the architects throughout the building, while also serving as the conceptual designer of one of its permanent galleries. In her third area of concentration, she creates paintings and monotypes, focusing on the emotive effect of pure color. Sakiestewa was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in the American Southwest. She lives and works in New Mexico. Her parents were Hopi and Anglo; she was raised in a non-Hopi household filled with Native American art. As a teenager, Sakiestewa became extremely interested in Hopi artistic and textile traditions, after her father introduced her to his large family. In traditional Hopi culture, only men weave. Sakiestewa taught herself to weave on the traditional Hopi vertical loom (which also is used by the Navajo). Sakiestewa studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York during 1966– 1968. Subsequently, she traveled and lived in Mexico, then traveled in Europe, before returning to New Mexico and working in arts administration at the New Mexico State Arts Agency. She decided to weave full-time, and in 1981 she established a textile design company, Ramona Sakiestewa, Ltd. Throughout her life, Sakiestewa has researched the technology of ancient Pueblo fiber arts, including spinning, dyeing, weaving, and embroidery. It is her mastery of all the technical aspects associated with tapestry weaving that allows her to create a vast range of visual effects, many of which were previously beyond the scope of the field.

Ramona Sakiestewa

Sakiestewa’s first textile commission was to create a contemporary full-sized copy of a prehistoric turkey feather blanket for Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico. She was awarded a Lamon Fellowship from the School of American Research in 1984 to investigate ancient Pueblo embroidered textiles, working with the Southwest textile scholar Kate Peck Kent, who Sakiestewa shared a studio with starting in 1981. While Sakiestewa’s primary research focus has been Pueblo and Navajo textiles (Sakiestewa 2002), she has studied textiles and lived and worked in Mexico and Peru, China and Japan, and the Mediterranean. Her travels lead her to create tapestry series, based on colors or designs or materials she has observed. Tapestry is a weaving technique known worldwide that allows great pictorial possibilities. Sakiestewa’s textiles are true tapestries: handwoven in the tapestry-weave technique, in which the design is built up row by row and the different colors interlace with one another. She weaves on the American made horizontal-type treadle loom, and usually hires another weaver to work with her (Candace Chipman has assisted for twenty-seven years). Sakiestewa’s early commissions included works based on drawings by artist Kenneth Noland, in collaboration with tapestry designer Gloria Ross, some of which featured Sakiestewa’s custom-dyed yarns and custom Churro wool. Sakiestewa also created a series for Taliesen West (the international headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona). Rather than using Wright’s entire drawing as models, Sakiestewa created abstract tapestries and designs based on small sections of his drawings. Throughout her career, her numerous commissions have resulted in tapestries, floor rugs, and textile designs. Sakiestewa emphasizes the significance of design in all her work. She is particularly interested in stripes, which are essential components of Southwest textiles, as well as other indigenous world textile traditions. Her use of color is based on the landscape and environment of the Southwest. She has said that color is ‘‘the emotional text of what I do’’ (Sakiestewa). Sakiestewa weaves multiple series simultaneously. Her earliest tapestries reinterpret prehistoric and historic Southwest rugs, by honing in on small design areas that she reconfigures—allowing the textiles to fall squarely within American Southwest traditions, while remaining unmistakably her own. Katsina and Basket Dance, for instance, are based on her interpretations of colors —browns, oranges, reds, violet and plum, grey-blue—or design elements— squares and stripes—in Pueblo art and ritual objects. Commenting on a Katsina series rug in the collection of the Cleveland Museum, Sakiestewa notes that the colors and designs in this contemporary weaving have been selected to represent ‘‘ . . . abstracted katsinam forms . . . [Hopi] supernaturals who embodied the spirit of living entities—plants, animals, and clouds, as well as good and evil spirits’’ (Fitzgerald 2005). Sakiestewa has described her life and work as a kutij, a Peruvian Quechua (Inca) term meaning someone or something that returns to where it started. Her Kutij tapestry series draws on the wide and narrow stripes and stepped-frets common in ancient Andean textiles, but she reworks this indigenous tradition by replacing the Andean palette with bold colors from the American Southwest.

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Sakiestewa also has long been involved in arts administration. She was a chair of the New Mexico Arts Commission, advises the National Park Service, and is a director of the Santa Fe Art Institute. Sakiestewa also was the first Native American to direct SWAIA (Southwestern Association on Indian Affairs). She also frequently lectures and has taught weaving workshops. Sakiestewa was one of the founding members of the native arts organization Atlatl, also serving as its director. Sakiestewa was the first Native American artist to design a limited edition series of the popular Pendleton trade blankets, which have long been marketed in the Southwest. The Southwest Trails series, including the Santa Fe, Navajo, and Hopi Trails, is based on extensive research on prehistoric and historic Southwest textiles and ceramics. She has also designed a second series of blankets, called the Ancient Blanket series, for the prestigious New York design firm Scalamandre´. Her public art and design projects include the National Museum of the American Indian, and many others in collaboration with architects, ranging from a performing arts center (Tempe, Arizona) to hotels (Marriott) (Sakiestewa). Sakiestewa’s tapestries have been exhibited in many individual and group shows. Her textiles are in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Heard Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts/Museum of New Mexico, the National Museum of the American Indian, the St. Louis Art Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution. Sakiestewa’s large Migration series, begun in 1998, emphasizes the physical qualities of tapestry, with shaded squares and curved forms overlaid by spiraling calligraphic ‘‘lines’’ on plain grounds of one or two colors. Her knowledge of spinning and natural dyeing allowed her to produce variegated yarns that soften the hard edges of geometric shapes or the density of monochrome backgrounds—such as a brilliant red spiral line atop black, pink and violet organic shapes on a shaded royal blue background. In the series, Urban Galaxy, small neutral or jewel-colored abstract shapes seem to float on deeply colored solid backgrounds. Increasingly, Sakiestewa exhibits her tapestries mounted on stretchers like an artist’s canvas, emphasizing the painterly aesthetic of her work. Her Nebula series (some of which include woven metallic thread) build on an absolute mastery of dyeing and color or, more recently, carefully selected Swedish yarns, to produce haunting fields of multidimensional abstract color. Sakiestewa is concerned with design and color, and also with technology. She says she has created ‘‘a Southwest tapestry style,’’ drawing on that region’s prehistoric and historic weaving traditions. She emphasizes that she considers herself a ‘‘product of the Southwest,’’ where Hispanic, Pueblo, and Navajo traditions coexisted. Sakiestewa continues to develop as an artist; her recent work includes watercolors, works on paper sewn with thread, deconstructed clay prints on spun fiber that are reconstructed and sewn, woodblocks, and engravings. Her bold use of color in her abstract tapestries evokes Sakiestewa’s statement that she wants her work to be ‘‘so strong that it makes your teeth hurt to look at it’’ (Sakiestewa 2001). Elayne Zorn

Jim Schoppert Places to See Ramona Sakiestewa’s Work Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH Denver Art Museum, CO Eight Modern, Santa Fe, NM Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Museum of Fine Arts/Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. Newark Museum, NJ Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. St. Louis Art Museum, MO http://www.deweytrading.com/southwest/list.asp http://www.kinggalleries.com/Ramona_Sakiestewa.htm http://ramonasakiestewa.com

Bibliography Baizerman, Suzanne, and Ramona Sakiestewa. Ramona Sakiestewa. Patterned Dreams: Textiles of the Southwest. Exhibition catalog. Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 1989. Blue Spruce, Duane, ed. Spirit of a Native Place: Building the National Museum of the American Indian. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society/National Museum of the American Indian, 2005. Marshall, Ann. ‘‘Ramona Sakiestewa.’’ Native Peoples, 2002. http://www.native peoples.com/article/articles/141/1/Threads:-Native-Textiles/print/141. Newmann, Dana, and Jack Parsons. New Mexico Artists at Work. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2005. Sakiestewa, Ramona. ‘‘Pueblo Embroidery.’’ Museum Anthropology 13, no. 2 (1989): 9–10. ———. ‘‘Ramona Sakiestewa’s Biography.’’ http://www.ramonasakiestewa.com/. ———. ‘‘Southwest Weaving.’’ In Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation, 1. Contemporary Native American Art from the Southwest, edited by David Revere McFadden and Ellen Napiura Taubman, 108–9. London: Merrell; New York: American Craft Museum, 2002. ———. ‘‘Tapestry and Beyond. Exploring the ‘Slender Margins Between Real and the Unreal.’ ’’ Third Annual Gloria F. Ross Lecture, The Gloria F. Ross Center for Tapestry Studies, McGraw Hall Auditorium, New York, NY, May 10, 2001. http://tapestrycenter.org/resources_lectures.php?page= showcomments&id=16. Touchette, Charleen, and Suzanne Deats. ‘‘Ramona Sakiestewa.’’ In NDN Art: Contemporary Native American Art, edited by Charleen Tourchette and Suzanne Deats, 80–85. Albuquerque: Fresco Fine Art Publications, 2005. Woven Spirits: Navajo & Hopi Weavers. Arts of the Southwest. Video produced by KNME-TV, Albuquerque. Distributed by Tellens, Inc. (25 minutes).

Jim Schoppert (1947–1992), Tlingit Sculptor, Painter, Mixed-Media Artist. An immensely thoughtful and remarkably innovative artist, Jim Schoppert reinvented the art of the Northwest Coast as he focused it through a modern

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lens. His sculpture reveals profound cultural insights embodied in stunning networks of form and color. Capturing the drama and complexity of his culture’s ‘‘formline’’ design, Schoppert recast it in contemporary terms—infusing it with new life and power in a changing world. Born and raised in Juneau, Alaska, Schoppert had German ancestry on his father’s side and Tlingit on his mother’s. His exposure to Inupiaq and Yup’ik art while growing up gave him a deep appreciation of the sense of whimsy and transformation in their objects, complementing his love of his own culture’s art. Oddly enough, he was working as a freelance carpenter when he discovered his true calling at the age of twenty-five. Balancing a tight budget at the time, he became even more pressured when one of his jobs in Anchorage fell through. He then used the last of his savings to buy soapstone, from which he carved two small birds—one of them selling quickly through a local dealer. From that time on, Schoppert had art-making in his system, and he pursued it with fervor and intelligence. Schoppert’s next step was to return to school, earning his B.F.A. in sculpture and printmaking in 1978 from the University of Alaska. During that period, he also spent time in San Miguel de Allende (Mexico), studying bronze casting and stone lithography at the Instituto de Allende. Afterwards attending the University of Washington in Seattle, he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1981. The artist’s career began to move quickly at that point, as he was already showing his work at the Alaska Native Arts and Crafts Gallery. Schoppert was especially concerned with the fact that the art market placed immense pressure on Native artists to maintain the stylistic directions of their ancestors. Opposing that trend as restrictive, he worked from a clear vision of the possibilities yet unexplored by his culture—and a commitment to shift indigenous tradition toward a contemporary framework. His constant question was, ‘‘What would Alaska Native art have become if allowed to progress uninterrupted?’’ (Anchorage Museum 21). In other words, how would indigenous art have evolved in Alaska, if its development had not been rejected by collectors who only valued ‘‘traditional’’ art? Schoppert is best known for his multipaneled relief sculptures based on Northwest Coast imagery. Ranging in size from the monumental to the intimate, these works offer striking parallels to formline, but simultaneously create an aesthetic of their own. The artist had tremendous admiration for the old traditions, but he also felt their natural development had been stalled by social upheaval, as well as by market pressures. He therefore pursued an intensive study of the conventions of Northwest Coast art, internalized their forms, and reworked them as abstractions. Schoppert employed numerous striking techniques to transform existing imagery—both in terms of omitting established characteristics and adding fresh ones. He replaced the customary bold colors with a wider palette, focusing especially on softened, nuanced shades. He also applied the pigment in original and affecting ways, generally following the ridges and contours of the relief (as in traditional work), but much more loosely, abandoning their restriction to discreet, single-hued blocks; instead he smudged colors, broke them up, overpainted them, and even allowed them to drip into surrounding

Jim Schoppert

areas. He also changed the shapes radically, but not unrecognizably—removing them from their original contexts, so it was unclear whether a dotted oval was the eye of a whale or a floating ring. Other forms he abstracted or minimized. Finally he fractured the overall composition, creating smaller segments and recombining them. At the same time, throughout his body of work, unified color schemes, along with repeating angles or forms, bound each work together as a whole. Schoppert used a range of formats to achieve different effects with his fragmented, yet coherent compositions. Teasing Eagle, for instance, a large panel covered with small, jostling ‘‘shards,’’ is the result of cutting the panel into long ‘‘slats’’ which are shifted slightly up or down, and left as a zigzag pattern at the top and bottom edges. Its effect resembles a series of high-tension intersections of angular chips, with a very Cubist feel. But despite the head-to-head energy of its teeming bits, the work as a whole has the pulsing, centripetal unity of a beehive. At the other end of the scale is One September Morn, a work of monumental presence and majestic grace. This rectangular piece is composed of only two, almost square, panels, each suggesting elemental forms so large that only a fraction of them fits on the panels. The shapes lap across both panels, with the left side dominated by sweeping diagonal bars and the right by a set of arched, concentric ellipses (almost connoting a mammoth eye). It is as if the viewer is looking out through a squarish porthole, and watching a towering entity sail by. The paint quality in this work is particularly sensitive and varied, with powerful swaths of purplish-blue, vibrant rose highlights and dazzling passages of golden-yellow. Perhaps Schoppert’s best-known work, Blueberries, falls somewhere between the two previous examples. A six-foot square panel, it is divided into nine smaller squares. Its dominant color is the purplish-blue of its title, interwoven with a variety of related hues—while a dusting of soft whites evokes the blueberry’s frosty surface. The overall image has a pervasive sense of wholeness, realized through the echoing rhythms in Schoppert’s almost calligraphic figures, as they carry the viewer’s eye over the composition, and gesture from one panel to the next. Schoppert was an artist with many gifts, who worked in a number of related styles. Aside from his Tlingit-inspired work, he was fond of the almost hallucinatory masks of the Yup’ik culture and carved a number of figures and musical instruments based on that style. Additionally, he created pastel drawings and paintings on paper that revealed a strong identification with Joan Miro´ and other Surrealist masters. His wide range of talents also included verbal abilities; he was a recognized poet and essayist, tirelessly championing the spiritual core of culture and freedom of artistic expression. Furthermore, Schoppert worked as a teacher at the University of Fairbanks, lectured constantly throughout Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, and became an intellectual and artistic model for countless younger artists. Schoppert’s work attracted a significant audience and was shown in numerous venues around the United States. He was also commissioned to create a number of large sculptures, especially through public art projects. At the same time, during his 1998 retrospective at the National Museum of the American

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Indian, distinguished critic Holland Cotter remarked that Schoppert was the ‘‘kind of artist who too rarely gets a Manhattan showcase’’ (Cotter D14). The exhibition was hailed as a fitting tribute to this imaginative artist, whose ‘‘bridging of sophisticated cultures . . . [achieved] a balance of power . . . [that was] successful and impressive’’ (Cotter D14). Schoppert’s career was cut short by an untimely death in 1992, but he left a stunning legacy to coming generations, through his deeply insightful philosophies, as well as his affecting body of work—a realization of both striking personal expression and innovative cultural resurgence. Deborah Everett Where to See Schoppert’s Work Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, AK Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY Newark Museum, Newark, NJ

Bibliography Anchorage Museum of History and Art. Instrument of Change: Jim Schoppert Retrospective. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum of History and Art Publications, 1997. Cotter, Holland. ‘‘Art in Review: ‘Instrument of Change: Jim Schoppert Retrospective.’ ’’ The New York Times, December 3, 1999, D14. Jonaitis, Aldona. Art of the Northwest Coast. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. Philbrook Museum of Art (Edwin Wade, ed.). The Arts of the North American Indian. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1986. St. James Press (Roger Matuz, ed.). St James Guide to Native North American Artists. Detroit: St James Press, 1998.

Theresa Secord (b. 1958), Penobscot Basketmaker. Theresa Secord is a basketmaker, geologist, cultural leader, and arts activist, who works in an ancient art that she makes modern and vital. Whether creating objects that are traditional in form, such as a cradle, or transformative, such as an ear of corn that on close inspection is a basket, Secord reminds us that ‘‘basketry is the oldest art form that’s been continually practiced here . . . . [but] I like to say that we have always been contemporary’’ (Krol). Theresa Secord, also known as Theresa Secord Hoffman, was born in 1958 in Maine. Her parents were Penobscot. Her great-grandmother was Philomene Saulis Nelson, an ‘‘acclaimed weaver’’ (Krol), and Secord inherited Nelson’s basketmaking tools and hardwood blocks. However, basket weaving ‘‘skipped two generations’’ in Secord’s family (Secord). Her grandmother did not make baskets, nor did Secord’s mother, who became a nurse. At that time, basketry —like other native arts—was poorly paid and held in low esteem, so only very few continued to create baskets.

Theresa Secord

Secord did not plan to become a basketweaver, either. She attended the University of Southern Maine, earning a B.A. in Geology in 1981, and an M.S. in Economic Geology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984. Initially employed by the Mobil Oil Corporation in California, Secord moved back to Maine as Staff Geologist for the Penobscot Nation following the return of land to several Wabanaki groups (including the Penobscot nation) as a result of the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act. Secord worked to develop a land plan, which included mapping forest and mineral resources. At the same time, she studied weaving and the Penobscot language with Madeline Tomer Shay, an ‘‘incredible basketmaker’’ (Krol). Shay was Secord’s mentor until Shay died in 1993. The Wabanaki, or People of the Dawn, today include the Penobscot nation, along with Maine’s Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Maliseet tribes. Penobscot people have long created baskets from brown ash, sweetgrass, and birch bark. (Secord primarily uses ash and sweetgrass.) All these natural materials are becoming scarcer, due to climate change and industrial pollution (Penobscot Nation). Thus, people concerned about preserving basketmaking traditions also must concern themselves with the natural resources from which basketry materials are harvested. Penobscot people traditionally made many types of baskets for varied uses. Functional baskets include ‘‘carrying baskets, sewing, handkerchief, food, potato, pack and storage baskets,’’ as well as fish and eel traps (Penobscot Nation). Penobscot basketmakers have traveled and traded baskets for centuries, and there is a record of Maine basketmakers trading with the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 (Secord). They were renowned for their Victorian-era ‘‘fancy baskets’’ made for the tourist trade, for use as sewing baskets, napkin rings, purses, and so on, as well as decorative baskets, often with elaborate curlwork, formed into whimsical shapes such as a strawberry, with curled seeds and green cap (Hudson Museum). Secord’s traditional-style baskets are elegant and perfect. The subtle gradations in a round basket’s natural colors of grays, tans, and light browns may be marked by a rose-pink or contrasted with a tan braid centered precisely on the lid. The same shiny tans and grays of the sweetgrass meet the bright white of a lid’s center or the base of one of Secord’s whimsical baskets that masquerades as an acorn. The strong ash splints meet and contrast with the soft, tightly worked, repetitive woven fibers of the sweetgrass. Other baskets make bolder use of color; in a square basket, the sweetgrass colors contrast with the distinctive clear red cedar, from the Pacific Northwest, set off by pink and yellow. The baskets manage to be soft and inviting, and also stiff and solid. Secord is perhaps best known for her corn baskets, which stun the eye with their elegantly curved white leaves, and multicolored ear with perfect white, yellow, blue-gray, purple, and black kernels. It seems impossible that these ears and leaves could be artificial, except that they must be. Stiff, smooth, curved ash splints form the bundled dried leaves by which corn is hung and stored; the kernels spiral irregularly around the cob, on the outside of a basket that delights with its surprise that it can be sealed with the curved leaves. These elegant corn baskets have smaller, bicolored variations: some made with

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narrow black leaves and variegated red kernels, others with gathered red leaves joined to deep blue, red, orange, and yellow kernels. In 1993, while working full-time as a geologist, Secord cofounded MIBA (Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance) with other Maine native artists, who wanted to help preserve Wabanaki weaving traditions. At that time, there were only fifty-five basketweavers left, whose average age was sixty-three. Today, MIBA has more than 200 members; their average age is forty-three, showing that younger people are now creating baskets (West). As a nonprofit native arts service organization, MIBA has been recognized internationally for helping preserve and expand sweetgrass and ash basketmaking among the Wabanaki. MIBA has an annual summer gathering, and a rigorous yearlong apprenticeship program to train new artists. The Wabanaki Arts Center Gallery exhibits and sells baskets. Secord currently is MIBA’s executive director and director of the Art Gallery. In 2003, Theresa Secord became the first U.S. citizen to be honored with the Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life, awarded annually by WWSF (Women’s World Summit Foundation). That year, thirty-three women from twenty-three countries received that award. Secord was one of five asked to present their work at the Headquarters for the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. Secord was honored for contributions in both geology (including advocacy to defeat a proposal for a lowlevel nuclear waste depository on Penobscot land) and in basketmaking arts advocacy for cofounding and continuing to codirect MIBA (WWSF). In addition to her activities as an artist and executive director of MIBA, Secord also is involved in regional arts administration. She has served on the Maine Arts Commission (1994–96), the New England Foundation for the Arts (2004–present), and the New England Council’s ‘‘Creative Economy Council’’ (2003–present). She lectures widely about basketry, native arts, and the importance of programs that validate and honor elders, and train young people. Secord enjoys working within a long artistic tradition. ‘‘I like the help from my ancestors, not just in the physical presence of wooden forms, but also the history and spiritual presence of the basket makers in my family . . . . It all comes through in the basket: tribe, family, tradition’’ (Nangle). Yet her work and activism in art reinforces how this tradition shows no sign of ceasing to evolve: ‘‘there will be more basket-makers after us, and they will be contemporary, too’’ (Bernstein). Elayne Zorn Where to See Theresa Secord’s Work Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, ME Wabanaki Arts Center Gallery, Old Town, ME (Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance) http://www.nativepeoples.com/article/articles/162/1/Basketry:-Weaving-NewLife-into-Ancient-Forms

Tanis Maria S’eiltin

Bibliography Baumer, Jim. ‘‘Preserving Ties to the Past: Native Artisan Revives Tribal Basketmaking.’’ MaineArts Mag, Spring 2004. http://mainearts.maine.gov/news/ newsletter/2004-1/basketmaking.shtml. Bernstein, Bruce. ‘‘Theresa Hoffman.’’ The Language of Native American Basketry: From the Weaver’s View. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. 2003. http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/baskets/subpage.cfm? subpage=view_theresa. Hudson Museum. ‘‘Tree and Tradition: Brown Ash & Maine Native American Basketmaking,’’ 2003. http://www.umaine.edu/hudsonmuseum/tree2.htm. Krol, Debra Utacia. ‘‘The Art of Basketry: Weaving New Life into Ancient Forms.’’ Native Peoples Magazine 162, no. 1 (January/February 2006), n.p. http:// www.nativepeoples.com/article/articles/162/1/Basketry:-Weaving-NewLife-into-Ancient-Forms. MacDowell, Marsha, ed. Gatherings: Great Lakes Native Basket and Box Makers. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Museum in collaboration with the Nokomis Leaning Center, 1999. Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance, http://www.maineindianbaskets.org/ Nangle, Hilary. ‘‘Ancient Art Form Feels Rejuvenated in Maine.’’ The Boston Globe (Boston.com), December 3, 2006. http://www.boston.com/travel/explorene/ maine/articles/2006/12/03/ancient_art_form_feels_rejuvenated_in_maine/. Penobscot Nation. ‘‘Penobscot Basketry.’’ http://www.penobscotnation.org /museum/benewabskiegbasketry.htm. Secord, Theresa. ‘‘Beantown Remix: 2006 Conference Proceedings. Theresa Secord: Keynote.’’ Grantmakers in the Arts [GIA]. http://www.giarts.org/library_ additional/library_additional_show.htm?doc_id=466728. West, Jr., W. Richard. ‘‘Native Weavings: Enduring Traditions of Life and Commerce.’’ Keynote address, Craft Australia Research Centre, Darwin, Australia, August, 2006. http://www.craftaustralia.com.au/research/20070228.php. Women’s World Summit Foundation [WWSF]. ‘‘Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life.’’ http://www.woman.ch/women/laureates03/laureates-america10.php.

Tanis Maria S’eiltin (b. 1951), Tlingit Painter, Sculptor, Printmaker, and Installation Artist. The work of Tanis Maria S’eiltin represents a kind of ‘‘golden mean’’ between Native traditional and contemporary aesthetics. She trained as a child with her mother, an acclaimed Chilkat blanket weaver and creator of garments, learning the exacting Tlingit standards for objects incorporating fur, hides, skin, and beads. Born in Skagway, Alaska, she has vivid memories of the vibrant cultural environment there, with storytelling and art-making occurring daily. When she became a young adult, she received formal academic instruction in the arts, and she then developed her own signature style, combining elements from both her worlds. As a child, S’eiltin did piecework (sections to be used in larger works) for her mother, Maria Joseph Miller. They frequently traveled together to Haines,

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Alaska, to see S’eiltin’s aunts and uncles and grandmother. Such family visits involved extended conversations in the sonorous Tlingit language—along with the recounting of traditional tales, whose symbols, concepts and imagery form the basis of Tlingit culture. Continually encouraged by her mother, S’eiltin attended art classes at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, studying printmaking and earning a B.F.A. there in 1986. Like many Native artists, she found art school inhospitable to indigenous ways of thinking and seeing. Not surprisingly, her work during that period became essentially abstract. Afterwards, she went on to do graduate work at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and there she came across political art created by fellow students whose heritage was Latino. This was an exciting encounter for her and something of a revelation. Later she commented, ‘‘At that time I was questioning the relevance of fine art and realized that contemporary art could contribute to society, [just] as traditional Native art has always done . . . ’’ (Nottage 97). She began to research the history of indigenous people of the Southwest, finding much in common with her own nation’s experiences. For her thesis exhibition, S’eiltin created a series of monumental drawings dealing with issues of conquest and Native survival. From that time forward she has experimented with a wide range of materials, using both Native and Western academic techniques, to create works of aesthetic power charged with political content. Soon after graduate school, S’eiltin created an eerie, almost otherworldly painting titled Coho’s Final Journey. It revolves around the survival crisis of the coho salmon, which is central to her nation’s diet, as well as a key element of their culture. The population of the coho has been dangerously declining in recent years, partly due to commercial overfishing. The salmon is also threatened by environmental damage from lumber companies, mining, and industrial-scale agriculture. At the same time, fish farms are creating genetically altered salmon, which are weak and biologically compromised, and they in turn contaminate the wild salmon when released into the ocean. S’eiltin’s painting shows an animated human skeleton, dropping an ominous substance into the water, filled with coho. At the same time, two salmon are suspended in midair, totally out of their element, although on closer inspection, they seem to be carcasses rather than live fish. It is a chilling vision of destruction, in which man is a sinister purveyor of unnatural death. Similarly, in Spawning a Red Millennium, S’eiltin works in a Western academic technique (the woodcut), while making it serve an indigenous perspective. Its subject is the breeding salmon, but the title and symbolism point to her people and the coming of a Native resurgence. The thrashing turbulence of the image, where water churns and surges about the wriggling fish, suggests both the struggle of the upstream battle to mate, and the fish’s eagerness for natural contests of survival. The fact that S’eiltin has chosen to render the work in emphatic, roughhewn strokes, much like German Expressionist woodcuts, gives the print a potent impact, especially against the textured rawhide ground on which it is printed. In an extension of this approach, S’eiltin created what is probably her most complex work to date, Resisting Acts of Distillation, shown at the Eiteljorg

Tanis Maria S’eiltin

Tanis Maria S’eiltin. Resisting Acts of Distillation. 2002. Mixed-media Installation. Dimensions variable. © Tanis Maria S’eiltin.

Museum in Indianapolis. A major component of this large installation is a series of woodcuts on jagged-edged rawhides, depicting a mask-like Tlingit war helmet that the artist saw as a child. A domed shape inscribed with the features of a warrior’s face, it is fierce, indomitable, and battle-ready. Much like a guardian figure from the Himalayas, its menacing expression both threatens foes and reassures the populace it defends. At the same time, there is something very contemporary about this image, reflecting the intensity of emotion in graphic novels and the tension beneath the surface of our often politically correct society. Multiple versions of this oversized image hang in the artist’s installation, set against ‘‘curtains’’ made from suspended vials of ‘‘blood.’’ The array of ‘‘bottled’’ blood is eerie, with the suspense of clinical situations where test tubes imply internal damage and the invisible foes that cause it. Here S’eiltin creates a sense of invasiveness and betrayal—while alluding to the negation of Native birthrights by ‘‘blood quantum’’ policies. That practice is used by the U.S. government to identify ‘‘real Indians’’ (since few indigenous people are ‘‘full-blooded’’—having one or more non-Natives in their family tree). ‘‘Blood quantum’’ first requires the documentation of one’s Indian forebears, for which the original records are often sketchy or lost. Then, to that ‘‘proven’’ ancestry, a confusing and questionable formula is applied—to compute the percentage of Native blood an individual has inherited. This approach has been used to the disadvantage of countless Native people, often denying them their rights in issues like land settlements. The helmet on S’eiltin’s print embodies a warlike response to such injustices. Its message is a bold

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one—that the definition of indigenous identity is a matter to be settled by Native people, not by non-Native clerks and statisticians. In addition to her work in non-Native media, S’eiltin has used classically indigenous materials to create a number of highly original objects. In her series Savage Apparel, the artist employs beaver fur, smoked moosehide, bear claws, fish skin, honeycomb paper, and beeswax to convert everyday bait boxes into engagingly mysterious regalia. It is clear that these articles represent some type of gear; they might be general carrying bags, protective cases for delicate items, or small cages of some kind. Their exact purpose is elusive, but their plays on form are witty and fresh—as in a tandem row of bear claws that hugs the contours of one bait box, each claw repeating the curve of the box’s lid. S’eiltin is ultimately an artist whose sensibilities span the spectrum of postmodernism. She incorporates a surprising range of materials in her work, both natural and fabricated, while maintaining her focus on Native issues. She is a gifted and articulate artist whose work bears out her humanistic principles and her commitment to her community and her environment. Deborah Everett Where to See S’eiltin’s Work Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN University of Alaska Museum, University of Alaska at Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AL Washington State Arts Commission, Olympia, WA http://www.ebuynativeart.com/Tanis/Daybreak/p04.htm

Bibliography Eiteljorg Museum (Nottage, James H., ed.). Into the Fray. Indianapolis, IN: Eiteljorg Museum Publications, 2005. Heard Museum. Watchful Eyes: Native American Women Artists. Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum Publications, 1994. Museum of Arts and Design (McFadden, David Revere, and Ellen Napiura Taubman, eds.). Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 2. New York: Museum of Arts and Design Publications, 2005. http://www.nuvo.net/archive/2005/11/09/spiritual_pathways.html

Pamela Shields (b. 1956), Blood (Blackfoot Confederacy) Photographer, Printmaker, and Digital Media Artist. Pamela Shields is concerned with memory as a means of survival. As part of a culture that has outlived all attempts to destroy it, she knows too well that the unrecorded past must be remembered to exist. At the same time, a culture recalled in distorted form is only partially saved. In light of these realities, Shields brings to her audience enduring truths—reclaiming her heritage and shifting the balance of ‘‘history’’ in the process. Born in Salt Lake City, Shields and her family moved to Alberta, Canada when she was a child. She was raised in Calgary, where she had numerous

Pamela Shields

painful experiences—including being taken away from her family and home, to spend years in a repressive government boarding school. She eventually returned to the United States as an adult, earning her B.A. in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University in 1992 and her M.F.A. from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1994. Working with personal memorabilia as well as archival photography, she creates what she calls ‘‘contemporary Native Americana’’ through a blend of ‘‘pop culture, historical imagery and personal stories’’ (http:// www.neshkinukat. org/artists/shields.html). She often uses the classic studio techniques of collage and montage to juxtapose contrasting images. Additionally she recreates many of her collected images with special darkroom processes, like Van Dyke printing (to get the warm, aged look of sepia tones), cyanotype (for a melancholy blue cast) and digital media, for a number of unusual effects. Drawing on almost all aspects of ‘‘(her) past, (her) ancestry and (her) current reality . . . (she) creates images that speak of old and new’’ (http://www.neshkinukat. org/artists/shields.html). Shields builds her images in layers, printing photographs over other images and passages of color, as well as onto unusual materials like rawhide, handmade paper, muslin, and leather. In a three-dimensional work titled Footprints, for instance, she presents the cut-out soles of a baby’s moccasins in a small wooden box with scattered porcupine quills. On the surface of the leather soles are photographic images: the left one shows Shields’s three-year-old brother in a cowboy suit on a pony, while the right one has Shields’ great-aunt’s tipi for Sun Dance ceremonies (an important ritual of rebirth). The picture of the child establishes an atmosphere of family mementos, as do the child-sized soles (like baby shoes that are saved and bronzed). But from that point on, this keepsake box departs from the usual kind. The presence of porcupine quills implies the family is of Native origin, as does the image of the tipi. Then the question arises as to why the child is dressed like a cowboy, the perennial antagonist of the Indian. The apparent implication is that the outside world is unavoidable, and even traditional Native families may have children who want to look like cowboys. Other works by Shields extend this dialogue on the conflicting cultural influences experienced by Native people. In her digital print Motoki in SoHo, the image of a Blood Indian in ceremonial deerskin dress (the Motoki society conducts rituals honoring the buffalo) is laid over a view of a SoHo street in New York. These two elements reflect the antithetical cultures that pull Shields’ life in opposing directions: the traditional Native American approach with its stately calm and reverence for life versus the modern city that suppresses Nature with flat pavement and boxy structures—even in art districts where rigidity seems incongruous. Similarly, in her diptych Bird Woman, Shields uses an archival image of a Blood Indian woman that she alters and repositions. In the left panel is the full photograph of a vulnerable young woman—small, alone, and bare-chested in the open courtyard of a grim, institutional building (much like the boarding school of Shields’ youth). The atmosphere all around is evanescent, with fog-like overlays of red, green, and gold, yielding a sense

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of shifting realities and impermanence. In the foreground an enlarged image of the woman’s face comes close to the viewer, so that her pinched expression is magnified. Now all doubt is removed—she is not squinting against the sun; she is shrinking from her observers, the photographer and his audience. The diptych’s right panel is filled with an amplified detail from the image on the left—a large area of empty ground where a small bird pecks for food, struggling for survival in a hostile environment. It is a haunting image of bleakness and mental suffering, one that clarifies the subject’s reality for the viewer, while ‘‘repatriating’’ a ‘‘historical’’ photograph—by returning it to the realm of Native American thought. Often exhibited and reproduced, Ghost Dance Remnant is perhaps Shields’ most complex and multilayered work. It collages together a variety of images from different sources and periods, along with translucent passages of color that heighten the effect of transience and passage. Many smaller images seem reprinted from nostalgic Western postcards, including one of a warrior with the heading, ‘‘Buffalo Headdress,’’ two braves stiffly demonstrating ‘‘sign language,’’ and a woman in traditional garb labeled ‘‘beaded buckskin dress.’’ These images project a sense that the accoutrements are more important than the individuals, who in fact are posed to evoke the flavor of a Wild West show. At the same time, toward the center of the work is an imposing portrait of an elderly Indian, very much an individual, with downcast eyes and deeply furrowed skin; the weight of his life is palpable, and his presence is riveting. Additional elements cut through the postcards’ sense of caricature, including a contemporary ID certifying ‘‘Indian Status’’ for its bearer, silhouettes of damaged feathers, and imprints of hands that seemingly push against the loaded ‘‘wall’’ of images. All these elements swirl in a shifting atmosphere of washlike color and shadowy forms. Here Shields has created a visual barrage of conflicting depictions, whose periphery is filled with misconceptions and stereotypes. Yet the center of this confusion is anchored by the dignity and humanity of the Elder’s portrait, whose integrity overrides the frivolous portrayals around him. The artist shows us that despite the jumbled naı¨vete´ that surrounds her culture, its true identity persists at the heart of the whirlwind. In a statement for the 1994 exhibition ‘‘Watchful Eyes’’ at the Heard Museum, Shields challenged her audience: How do we choose what will be preserved and recalled? We remember through photographs, and those moments are suspended in time . . . Academic disciplines . . . seek ‘to remember’ for entire cultures . . . I want to ask questions of both Native and non-Native use of personal history and to question ideals of authenticity. (Harlan 21) Deborah Everett Where to See Shields’ Work Carl Gorman Museum, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Light Work, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

Duane Slick

Bibliography Aperture Foundation (Peggy Roalf, ed.). Strong Hearts. New York: Aperture Foundation Publications, 1995. Fuller, Diana Burgess, and Daniela Salvioni, eds. Art/Women/California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Harlan, Theresa. Watchful Eyes. Phoenix: Heard Museum Publications, 1994. http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/Jensen/NAW.html http://www.neshkinukat.org/artists/shields.html http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=4667

Duane Slick (b. 1961), Mesquakie (Sauk and Fox)/Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) Painter, and Print-Maker. Sometimes described as a ‘‘walker in two worlds,’’ Duane Slick moves deftly through both Native and non-Native terrain. An original thinker of depth and complexity, he has created a distinctive personal style—where indigenous forms loom hauntingly between layers of light and shadow. His orchestrated elements evoke ancient realities caught in modern dilemmas, while timeless questions hover just below the surface. He once remarked, ‘‘The focus of my work revolves around my identity as a Native American man, one who understands Native issues and lives in an urban world’’ (Lasting Impressions http:// www.arts.arizona.edu). Born and raised in Waterloo, Iowa, Slick was always artistic, even as a child. He spent much of his time drawing, and he went on to study painting in the University town where he grew up. His mother was unusually talented at beadwork and always wanted to spend more time on art-making; he once said that her gifts and aspirations were part of the reason he was drawn to the arts. Slick’s father’s family comes from the nearby Mesquakie settlement—a community of Mesquakie individuals living on their own tract of land. The artist’s mother’s nation, the Nebraska Winnebago, live on their reservation in the next state. Since jobs were scarce in and around the settlement, Slick’s parents moved some distance away, closer to employers. As a consequence, their cultures’ traditions were passed to their children mostly through the local Native American Church. The Church stresses the importance of visions and dreams, as well as moral behavior; its emphasis on traditional Indian values has helped strengthen many indigenous communities, and it was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964. The artist credits the Church’s worldview with the perspective that underlies his work, and his imagery is fueled by tenets common to many tribes’ creeds—including harmony with nature and high regard for kinship and ancestors. As a young man in his twenties, Slick approached the decision of whether to pursue art professionally with uncommon clarity. Before taking that leap, he carefully considered the range of possible paths it encompassed. Ultimately, he concluded that he wanted to be an artist of his own time—that is, an artist whose visual language confronts the conditions of the present. He then

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enrolled in the undergraduate art department at the University of Northern Iowa and undertook notable residencies at the renowned Skowhegan School of Painting and the Vermont Studio School. Afterwards he was accepted into graduate school at the prestigious UCD (University of California at Davis), where he would receive his M.F.A. in 1990. In the process of earning his degrees, Slick studied with numerous distinguished artists, including Bill Jensen, Peter Saul, and Judy Pfaff. His early work was characterized by abstraction, with undercurrents of the natural world. During the 1990s, however, Slick began to develop a loosely painted, montage-like style. Many of these works functioned as encounters between opposites—with chalky streaks of gesso set off by airy washes, deep indigoes bordering pale yellows, and figures (and text) framed by patches of solid color. Some of his most evocative images from that period revolve around Wovoka, the Paiute prophet who initiated the Ghost Dance phenomenon, a new religion and Native movement of the mid-1860s through 1890s. The Ghost Dance engendered the kind of fervor that surrounds a Utopian vision, as its practice promised freedom from White persecution and reinstatement of the Native world. Tragically and horrifically, this ritual (and the hope it sparked) were dealt a crippling blow in 1890 by the U.S. cavalry at Wounded Knee, South Dakota—in a cold-blooded massacre of the Indians who had gathered there to dance. In many ways, Slick’s Wovoka is more shadow than substance—embodied by a fluid, stain-like form hovering somewhere beyond the picture plane. His presence is filmy but powerful, like an indelible imprint on the senses. The artist has commented that he began ‘‘ . . . focusing on Wovoka when my work became more political . . . . [in] 1990, [Native artist] Jaune Quick-to-See Smith invited me to participate in the Submuloc Show [Submuloc is Columbus spelled backwards], and I was asked to do something overtly political . . . I was trying to make . . . [a] connection [to] issues dealing with the history of Native American people’’ (Abbott 124). The smoky evocation of Wovoka led to the next stage in Slick’s art. In the late 1990s, the artist began building tiered images of wispy silhouettes, one on top of the other (often in gray on white, or occasionally tones of blue or another single color). These phantom outlines have precisely defined, naturalistic forms that directly invoke their source. Additionally they darken wherever they overlap, for a sense of sliding movement in real space. In The Power of Anecdote, multiple images of a coyote’s face are layered, each out of kilter with the next—with ‘‘lips’’ drawn into an openmouthed smile, and eyes half-closed in mirth. Each occurrence of these expressive features tilts at a different angle, as though rocking in place with laughter; collectively they yield the effect of time-lapse photography, with a series of slightly changing positions. Similarly, Oration and Shadow presents double images of an arm raised in solemn gesture —where the first hand is slightly out of sync with the second, as if movement has taken place. The scene becomes additionally complicated by the dappled ‘‘ground’’ of this image, with its digit-like tonal passages, seeming to pulse through the space, as if echoes of the central hand’s outstretched fingers. Like a shadow play against a screen, these images have a startling immediacy, but

Duane Slick

they also suggest figures caught in a parallel universe, where their animated contours (human or animal) are ‘‘frozen’’ in the act. Often referred to as ‘‘white paintings,’’ Slick’s shade-like images are ghostly and disembodied. But despite their human (or animal) silhouettes, the shadows seem to exist as autonomous entities, rather than projections of something else. Ephemeral in appearance, they also exude a quality of persistence in time. Perhaps because the images suggest iconic portraits, they read like the permanent residue of an encounter—a memento that takes on a life of its own. Slick’s work is strikingly elegant. It often appears ceremonial—partly because of its formal (often somber) palette. His colors tend toward black, white, and gray, and he frequently employs them in the service of contrast, underscoring the contours of his figures and the occasional presence of ornament or pattern. The muted tones reinforce the spectral impression of a photographic ‘‘negative,’’ and create atmospheres that range from the funereal to the otherworldly. In other images, he introduces scorch-like tints that imply exposure to flame or the first stages of parching with age. Their mood is one of loss and memoriam, along with the tenuousness of existence. At times, Slick incorporates linear elements into his work from other sources: photographs, line drawings, graphic symbols. These components expand the levels of meaning, while broaching painful subjects from the cool distance of visual codes. In Slick’s powerful painting The Necessity of Snakes, the viewer confronts vintage photos of Native warriors, precision renderings

Duane Slick. The Necessity of Snakes. 2005. Acrylic on linen. 24 in.  35 in. © Duane Slick. Photo courtesy of Nielson Gallery.

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of endangered plants, and floating industrial logos. Like an existential stage set, this work evokes a Garden of Eden gone wrong, where a stealthy menace —the corporate culture’s greed and pollution—hides behind clever, ecofriendly icons, blending into the very world it is destroying. The painting’s multilevel space is a psycho-social one, where commerce confronts individual experience, the toxic converges on the organic, and the past intersects the present—projecting dire consequences for the future. Ultimately, Slick’s world is one of shifting luminosity and rival forces held in balance. He leads the viewer into the territory of the psyche, where the visible reality of forms overrides logic and debate. In this fluid, dream-like world, dangerous encounters occur freely, but signs of life also surface from the depths of consciousness—and reveal themselves as anchors in the storm. Weaving together indigenous emblems and universal truths, Slick gives us a world that is both cerebral and physical—like a somatic memory transcending the numbness of modern life to open new paths to the senses. Deborah Everett Where to See Slick’s Work Addision Contemporary Art Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Nicole Fiacco/Modo Gallery, Hudson, NY Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA Provincetown Arts Center, Provincetown, NM

Bibliography Abbott, Larry. ‘‘A Walker in This World: An Interview with Duane Slick.’’ Canadian Journal of Native Studies 14, no. 1 (1994): 14–28. Bordewich, Fergus, Richard Klein, and Paul Chaat Smith. No Reservations. Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Museum Publications, 2007. Busa, Chris. ‘‘Care and Instructions on the Use of White Space: An Interview with Artist Duane Slick.’’ Provincetown Arts, 1999. Glueck, Grace. ‘‘From the Wry Side of American Indians Clash with Whites.’’ The New York Times, June 26, 1998.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940), Salish (Flathead) Painter. Perhaps the best known of all contemporary Native American artists, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was born on the Flathead Reservation in St. Ignatius, Montana. Widely revered as a painter, lecturer, curator, and activist, she has modestly called herself a cultural worker. Having shown her paintings nationally and internationally for decades, she has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, and almost every major arts publication. Her work figures in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Walker Art Center, the Museum of Women in the Arts, the National Museum of the American Indian, and countless other institutions. Having received numerous awards for her accomplishments, Smith continues to work

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

tirelessly in both the art world and the arena of social issues, and she may well have advanced the careers of more Native American artists than any other person. Raised primarily by her father, Smith is an enrolled member of the Salish (Flathead) nation, but her heritage also includes the French-Cree and Shoshone peoples. During childhood, the artist and her siblings worked as field hands, with intermittent stays in foster homes. They lived in some fifty different places, including the Flathead Reservation, the Hupa Reservation in California, and the Nisqually Reservation in Washington. In many ways, her life was difficult, but it always remained creative. Smith had a vivid imagination, but she had no toys as a child—so she explored her aesthetic interests in unusual ways, like drawing in the dirt with sticks. Smith was named by her Shoshone grandmother, but feels that she learned about ‘‘seeing and feeling’’ from watching her father. He was a horse trainer and trader with a special sensitivity to animals; he could run his hands over a horse and understand its entire life history. He knew how to braid lariats that were both beautiful and functional, and how to build corrals that had the presence of sculpture. He had been raised by his grandmothers in the ‘‘old ways,’’ and he was able to observe in a manner that was less about gathering information, and more about sharing the realities of others. As an adolescent, Smith used what she saved from her earnings to order a correspondence course in art. After graduating from high school, she attended Olympic Junior College and continued to attend college part-time as a divorced, single mother for years. In 1976, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Art Education from Framingham State College (Framingham, Massachusetts) and four years later received a Master’s degree in Art from the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, New Mexico). Smith’s best-known style is collage-like in approach, with patches of strong color intermingled with layered imagery. It often overlays icons of Native culture (like buckskin clothing or canoes), as well as text, on a painterly ground in which small vignettes develop aspects of larger themes. This way of working has much in common with the composite imagery of Robert Rauschenberg, whose paintings did indeed influence Smith. But Rauschenberg’s effect of a jostling, fractured reality gives way, in Smith’s work, to a more meditative state, where elements are not so much in competition with each other, as they are in dialogue. Smith is particularly fond of allowing the paint to drip from one area into another and focuses on painterly strokes to build her imagery. Much of Smith’s work revolves around what she calls the ‘‘inhabited landscape,’’ and her sociopolitical message is often a plea to save the environment. Many works, including Tree of Life, reference the natural world and are populated with a wide array of animals, birds, and plants. Other works, such as Rain, evoke elements of nature, but with a concern for their increasingly unnatural presence. In that painting, Smith creates a runny-looking backdrop like sheets of moving liquid—but rather than a crystalline shower, we see a sludgy, murky cascade. Here and there a silver-plated spoon suggests a raindrop, but each is imbedded in what seems to be a curtain of pollution. The

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subject, as one might guess, is acid rain, created by elite industrialists, whose presence is indicated by the silver spoons. Smith’s earlier work clearly reflects the influence Paul Klee had on her, both in terms of ‘‘drawing’’ style (a hybrid of primal and graphic/cartoon-like imagery), and in terms of the physically shallow, but psychologically open, space. The forms generally depict figures and elements of nature, while having a strong flavor of the pictographic and the rune-like. Osage Orange is a striking example from this period. Its black and white ‘‘hieroglyphs’’ around the edges reveal horses, fish, and indigenous-looking figures, as if recreating their world. The vibrant geometric forms in the center are highly animated and imply forces of nature, like storms and lightning; incorporating numerous zigzags and arrow marks rendered in high-energy strokes, they almost seem to rumble in place. The title refers to a type of wood used by the Osage people for making bows; the shrub that supplied the wood later was used by Whites as an alternate to barbed wire as they fenced in their land, restricting the movement of animals and people (mostly Native) across it. Here, as always, there is political content to Smith’s work, even when it appears neutral. Aside from her general support of Native American artists, Smith has encouraged many of them to begin making art with political content. One of her most important endeavors in that direction was a remarkable show she curated for the Columbus quincentennial: the ‘‘Submuloc Show’’ (Columbus spelled backwards), with a range of works protesting the European invasion of North America, and the countless injustices that accompanied it. For that exhibition, she encouraged a number of artists to collaborate with each other, in what she sees as a tribal way of making art. She also created ‘‘The People’s Show,’’ with the work of sixty Native American photographers—shown at the American Indian Community House Gallery in New York, as well as at the Heard Museum. Another of her highly respected projects, ‘‘Our Land/ Ourselves,’’ dealt with indigenous artwork as an expression of a landbased culture and was shown at the State University of New York in Albany, New York. Smith’s many endeavors have been widely documented in a host of books and articles, as she has worked unceasingly in the areas of art-making, lecturing, and curating. She has commented that the two nuclei of her life are working in her studio, and spending time with her family, both immediate and extended (tribal). At the same time, she says, she spends a great deal of time working for organizations, attending conferences, and organizing exhibitions. She says, ‘‘The central link is the idea of giving back. That’s an innate responsibility when you are born a tribal person’’ (Abbott 230). Deborah Everett Where to See Smith’s Work Flomenhaft Gallery, New York, NY Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ LewAllen Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Leon Polk Smith

Bibliography Abbott, Lawrence. I Stand in the Center of the Good. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990. St. James Press (Roger Matuz, ed.). St. James Guide to Indigenous Artists of North America. Detroit: St. James Press, 1998. Touchette, Charleen, and Suzanne Deats. NDN (Indian) Art. Albuquerque, NM: Fresno Fine Art Publications, 2003.

Leon Polk Smith (1906–1996), Cherokee Painter. An internationally acclaimed abstract painter, Leon Polk Smith was entirely at home in the larger art world. He warmed to both New York City and Modernism the moment he encountered them. His almost intuitive gift for geometry allowed him to create a stunning body of work that charted new territory in geometric abstraction and set a cornerstone for hard-edge painting. His intriguing, elegant work continues to fascinate art audiences today, offering them a freshness impervious to time. Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma during the state’s last year as ‘‘Indian Territory,’’ Smith seemed destined for a long journey from his beginnings. Both his parents had Cherokee ancestry and had traveled from Tennessee, to settle in a part of Oklahoma occupied by Choctaw and Chickasaw people. The artist grew up on the family farm there, and as a child, he constantly listened to Native American stories and songs, which he would recall with fondness as an adult. He would ultimately, in fact, attribute his art to his grounding in Native American culture. About the time Smith finished high school, the Depression was affecting his family’s financial situation. For several years the artist worked on ranches in Oklahoma (and later on construction crews in Arizona), and faithfully sent money to his parents to help pay their mortgage. Later Smith attended Oklahoma State College, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in English in 1934. During his last year of study there, he said, he discovered his hidden thirst for art. While walking down a hallway in an unfamiliar building, he happened to pass the open door of a studio art class. He immediately felt a twinge of excitement and attraction. Going in, he asked the teacher if he could join the class for the rest of the term, and that event launched his introduction to artmaking. Following his graduation from college, Smith taught in Oklahoma public schools for a year and then moved to New York City (1936) to attend graduate school at Columbia University, where he was awarded an M.A. in 1938. One of his teachers there took him to see the Gallatin Collection of modern art, then on loan at New York University. In this exhibition, Smith saw for the first time masterworks by Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, and especially Piet Mondrian, and their impact on him was like a revelation. Smith later said that seeing these works made him understand spatial relationships in a completely new way,

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and he then began working on a series of cityscapes defined by structures and volumes. By 1942, his work had become entirely geometric and abstract. Many of Smith’s early works reflect the degree to which Mondrian had affected him, but at the same time they reinvent and extend Mondrian’s vision. Many of them remove the grid that was central to the Dutch painter ’s approach, allowing the remaining spaces (squares and rectangles) to converge upon each other. Other paintings by Smith from the same period deconstruct the grid and rearrange its fragments in shifted configurations, like a discontinuous labyrinth. Still others seem to zoom in on small areas of what could actually be a Mondrian, changing the sense of space and compression by limiting what is seen. There is often a feeling in Smith’s work of viewing something enormous through a keyhole, where the canvas acts as a window on the image and large parts of the subject are obscured by the wall. During the 1950s, the tondo format (a disc-shaped canvas) came to dominate Smith’s work, as he became captivated by curvilinear geometry. The artist had already arrived at numerous breakthroughs in the Modernist quest to make form and color inseparable (by using flat color to create illusions of volume without modeling)—as well as contributing to the interchangeability of form and space (through ambiguous spatial relationships in which the figure and ground seem to switch back and forth). Having attained major accomplishments in those areas, Smith wanted to inject the curve into Modernism’s dialogue with the plane. Oddly enough, the key to this riddle arrived in the mail, when Smith received a catalogue of sports equipment. Its illustrations were pencil drawings rather than photos, and the artist found himself riveted to the drawings of baseballs, volleyballs, and soccer balls. Each ball had a different pattern of flat sections (of hide or rubber) joined together to make a sphere, and the artist understood this immediately in terms of flatness versus illusionism. One of Smith’s most famous tondos from this time is simply titled Red-Black and is composed of alternating bars (or pieces of bars) of red and black —that meet in a slightly zigzagged seam down the middle. Leon Polk Smith. Nowata. 1956. Oil on canvas. 33.5 in. in It has been suggested that this diameter. © Leon Polk Smith Foundation/Washburn Gallery. work was inspired by the drawPhoto courtesy of Washburn Gallery. ing of a volleyball that Smith

Leon Polk Smith

saw in the above-mentioned catalogue, and in many ways it does evoke that structure. On the other hand, the central ‘‘border ’’ also evokes an almost stair-stepped edge between what resemble two accordion-folded planes. From yet another view (especially when seen at close range), the reds and blacks break apart (as the corners of the bars don’t actually meet), so that the ‘‘black elements can be read as hovering over the red field, or vice versa’’ (Buck 35). Following these groundbreaking works, Smith continued to explore new territory, sometimes in a rectangular format, sometimes with shaped canvases in a range of contours. He created numerous delightful fan-shaped compositions, as well as many that suggest folded, Origami-like forms. But regardless of format, his work continually taught the viewer new lessons in space, color, movement, and perception. As a mature artist, Smith commented that he could never have created his body of work if he had not come from the panoramic West, and especially from a Native American background. The openness in his work—both its sense of endless space and its broad range of possible readings—is something he saw as an extension of Native identity, perception, and expression. He once remarked that ‘‘In the Indians’ philosophy, thinking, and way of talking or telling stories, so much detail was left out, so much was abstract’’ (Danto 28). Smith was famous among friends and colleagues for his liveliness, his forceful personality, and his strength of will. When he was struck by polio (or possibly a related virus) early in his teaching career, he rejected his fatal prognosis from the Mayo Clinic and rehabilitated himself within a year’s time. He traveled extensively in the United States, as well as throughout Mexico and Europe, and he lived for several months in Cuba. He also appreciated other art forms and artists, meeting renowned dancer and choreographer Martha Graham after a performance in 1937 and developing a lasting friendship. Smith’s accomplishments have been praised by numerous distinguished critics, and among the many honors he received was a Guggenheim Fellowship. His imaginative, innovative works paved the way for many succeeding trends, including Minimalism, monochrome painting, and Op Art. Smith’s work has been collected by some of the most important museums in the country—including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and the National Gallery of Art—as well as by art institutions in Europe. In 1996, the Brooklyn Museum held a stunning retrospective of Smith’s work that received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Art in America, and other important periodicals. Shortly after that, critic Carter Ratcliff commented, ‘‘Smith [once] said, ‘I can’t imagine that there is an end to space,’ and he saw a meaning in that endlessness . . . a glimpse of faith in possibility and [an optimism linked] to the American infinite’’ (Ratcliff 23). Deborah Everett Where to See Smith’s Work Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

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C. Maxx Stevens Joan Washburn Gallery, New York, NY Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Forth Worth, TX The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Bibliography Danto, Arthur C. Leon Polk Smith: American Painter. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum of Art Publications, 1996. Parks, Addison. ‘‘Leon Polk Smith: American Master.’’ Arts Magazine (New York), 1985. Ratcliff, Carter. ‘‘New World View: Leon Polk Smith.’’ ArtForum, (New York), March 1997. Russell, John. ‘‘Art: Leon Polk Smith, Uptown and Downtown.’’ The New York Times, (New York), March 20, 1981. University of Oklahoma (essay by Robert T. Buck). Leon Polk Smith: American Original. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.

C. Maxx Stevens (b. 1951), Seminole Installation Artist, Printmaker, and Sculptor. Born in Wewoka, Oklahoma, C. Maxx Stevens is part of a large family. Her seven siblings span an age difference of thirty-one years, resulting in ‘‘different levels within our family . . . in how (we) relate to each other’’ (Nottage 87). Being part of that group has defined her reality in ways that are deep and lasting. As a result, both her personal identity and the art she makes are rooted in the family’s structure and the individual personalities within it. At the age of five, Stevens moved with her family to Wichita, Kansas; in the 1950s many native people were relocating to Wichita from Oklahoma and other parts of Kansas, in order to get work in the airplane factories there. Those same Indians, coming from numerous tribes, were buying homes from the government, mostly within a deserted Air Force base nearby. This population shift produced a Pan-Indian community in that city, along with a change in Stevens’ sense of identity, as she came to see herself as an ‘‘urban Indian.’’ At the same time, her creative gifts were becoming apparent, and she was advised to go her own way artistically, and avoid ‘‘the kind of generic Indian art that’s taken from different tribes’’ (Nottage 22). These disparate, sometimes conflicting, influences, strongly affected her youth. But most importantly, the stable base of her family and their stories formed a permanent framework for all other experience—eventually becoming the narrative of her art. As Stevens puts it: I tend to return to the family in my work . . . how we are connected, how we relate to each other . . . it is who I am. (Nottage 83) Stevens studied sculpture at Haskell Indian Junior College, where she earned both an Associate of Arts degree and one in Indian Arts Studies. At that

C. Maxx Stevens

time, she was encouraged by her mentor, Richard West, Sr. (a noted Cheyenne painter who taught at Haskell), to pursue her education further. She then entered Wichita State University, where she earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in sculpture and ceramics, as well as a Metals Certificate from United Welding Institute. From there she went on to get a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University, where she also started to explore theatre design. ‘‘It was through working with the lighting designer and the set designer,’’ says Stevens, ‘‘that I really began to understand ‘space’ and how light can affect a piece . . . ’’ (Nottage 83). She soon realized that installation was an optimal medium for her—with its capacities for different relationships between objects, for the interaction of objects with the space around them, and for evoking different atmospheres according to the light being used. One of Stevens’ first works to gain wide attention introduced the element of sound; it was an installation titled If These Walls Could Talk—shown in New York in May of 2000. It recreated a schoolroom for Native American youngsters, complete with a list of Native nations on the blackboard. The books on the desks were repositories for Stevens’ family history but were solidly coated in an amber-like substance, while an ongoing chorus of narratives softly filled the space. As a review in the New York Times remarked, the ‘‘ . . . voices [of] dozens of speakers [are] embedded in the walls . . . as a kind of collective whisper’’ (Cotter 32). As the viewer got closer to the walls, it was possible to differentiate one speaker from another—recounting their experiences away from their families, while attending the government’s repressive boarding schools for Indians. Also in 2000, Stevens created the installation Gatherers: Seven Sisters, representing the seven siblings in her family. The presence of each of them was indicated by a beautiful, handmade basket hanging from the ceiling. These woven vessels were powerful examples of the artist’s sensitivity to both natural materials and the expressive qualities of form. Each ‘‘gatherer’’ had its characteristic ‘‘zone’’ within the larger space. Some were off to the side, some clustered more than others, so that each reflected a particular pattern of interaction. Their configurations and underlying substance (often twigs, vines, or fabric) gave further clues to the personalities symbolized. One basket appeared extremely delicate, with walls so spare that it almost felt disembodied. Another had highly distinct areas of concentration, with a thick outer ring, projecting extremities, and a recessed central core. Some were elegant, others almost raw; but their construction from various organic materials made each of them unique, while forming an affecting and cohesive group portrait. In an even clearer delineation of siblings’ personalities, Stevens created Three Graces in 2004, based on the three oldest sisters in her family, Lou, Molly, and herself. This piece has strong feminist overtones, based on powerful female characters, represented by three elaborate ‘‘ball-gowns.’’ (In terms of form, they are not far removed from traditional dress for Seminole women, which also includes a long and intricately applique´d full skirt.) Regarding the inspiration for this piece, Stevens has commented:

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C. Maxx Stevens. Three Graces. 2004. Installation (mixed media). Dimensions variable. © C. Maxx Stevens. Photo courtesy of the Eiteljorg Museum.

In the society that we are from, the women are the head of the family, and they are the ones who sit together to make family decisions. And so we happen to have a lot more power . . . And others are not allowed to sit with us at certain times . . . it’s not even spoken, it’s just common knowledge . . . (Nottage 84) Accordingly, this female triumvirate presides over (and controls) the space they occupy, seemingly enthroned within their stately attire. Lou is the ‘‘archivist’’ of the group, holding all the family information; her skirt is covered with dozens and dozens of family photos, and her ‘‘bodice’’ takes the shape of a home. Molly, a storyteller and strong speaker, is surrounded by storybooks; she is also the sister who is thought of as beautiful and graceful, so that her skirt is delicately fashioned of thin paper and lattice strips, and covered with swirling wisps of horsehair. Maxx’s figure is the toughest one— almost ‘‘crusty’’ with an outer armature of bristling twigs. Her structure is a ‘‘shielded’’ one, almost suggesting a lair or fortified dwelling, rather than a dress. Stevens feels this design suits her personality because, she says, ‘‘I am hard to get to know [and have] . . . hard layers [outside] . . . In the piece that represents me, the vines are exposed . . . [you see] the boundaries set around the inner me’’ (Nottage 86). In addition to creating moving installations, Stevens is also a gifted printmaker and sculptor, who has created a sensitive and highly unusual body of work. Building upon her cultural heritage and its matriarchal structure, she reveals the essence of specific family members, as well as their strength and unity as a group. While constructing objects of freshness and beauty out of

C. Maxx Stevens

delicate (mostly natural) materials, she provides important insights into the power of the family—as the primary network and first social unit in every human being’s experience. Deborah Everett Where to See Stevens’ Work Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN http://www.boiseartmuseum.org/exhibit/past.php http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/reservation_x/eX tras/stevX traB.htm http://thepiz.org/dogheadstew/ms.html http://www.umt.edu/montanamuseum/LCReflections.htm

Bibliography Cotter, Holland. ‘‘Art Review; ‘The Rez’ as a Metaphor for Indians’ Creativity.’’ The New York Times (New York), May 5, 2000, 32. McFadden, David, and Ellen Napiura Taubman. Changing Hands 2: Art without Reservation. New York: Museum of Art and Design, 2005. McMaster, Gerald. Reservation X: The Power of Place in Aboriginal Contemporary Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998. Nottage, James H., ed. Into the Fray. Indiana, IN: Eiteljorg Museum Publications, 2005.

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T Jennie Thlunaut (1892–1986), Tlingit Weaver. Jennie Thlunaut was one of the last traditional master weavers of the Chilkat blanket, a stunningly beautiful ceremonial textile that is created and prized by the Tlingit of Alaska. The blanket’s strong stylized forms, bold colors, unusual materials, and the visual impact of the blanket’s heraldic crests reflect its power in native Alaskan life. Thlunaut’s exceptional level of skill and astonishing productivity maintained this important art at a time when it appeared it might die out. Thlunaut was born in 1892 near the Village of Klukwan, in Chilkat Territory of the Northern Tlingit people, in Alaska. Thlunaut’s Tlingit name was ‘‘Shax’saani Keek’ (Younger Sister of the Girls)’’ (Worl and Smythe). Thlunaut’s mother belonged to the Eagle clan and the Wolf House, so Thlunaut was Kaagwaantaan (Eagle-Wolf). Her father was a member of the Raven clan and the Frog House. Thlunaut was raised in the traditional way of life of Tlingit children, playing and helping her parents, and traveling in war canoes to attend potlatches and visit relatives. Her ‘‘recollections of her early childhood are happy memories,’’ according to her granddaughter Rosita Worl (Worl and Smythe). When Thlunaut was about age ten, her mother taught her to create baskets, weave blankets, and sew and bead moccasins. She was talented and ‘‘making baskets was easy to her’’ (Worl and Smythe). Her father traveled away from the village each spring to sell the family’s production of baskets, moccasins, and miniature totem poles. As was traditional, Thlunaut’s parents arranged her first marriage, in 1905, to John James, a Tlingit nobleman. According to her granddaughter, Thlunaut wove her first Chilkat blanket in 1908, following her mother’s death, when Thlunaut inherited a blanket her mother had started to weave, along with weaving materials. Several years after her first husband died, she married John Mark Thlunaut; he died in 1952. Following his death, Thlunaut returned to Klukwan, the village of her birth. Though commonly known as a Chilkat ‘‘blanket,’’ this spectacular textile is actually a ceremonial robe, worn by Tlingit nobility as dance regalia at potlatches (gift-giving feasts) and other ceremonies. This textile features stylized forms in bright yellow and blue-green, outlined by thick and thin lines in pure black on a white field. When draped over the wearer’s shoulders, the robe’s

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vast fringe swirls around the dancer in motion, leading to its Tlingit name Naxein, meaning ‘‘a fringe about the body’’ (Chandonnet). This textile art dates from the early nineteenth century (Samuel). This five-sided textile is a two-dimensional interpretation of threedimensional carvings, featuring crests of animals—raven, wolf, killer whale, eagle, and others—that belong to families or clan groups. The crests are ‘‘property markers and emblems of the group’’ (Worl and Smythe). The stylized, abstracted body parts of the animal figures have rounded outlines. A Chilkat blanket is covered with at least one crest figure. Some elements are recognizable (feet, eyes), while others need interpretation. As in printmaking and other visual arts based on Northwest coast traditions—from totem poles to tools—the features of the animal must be stretched to conform to the shape of the space. Weavers work from pattern boards, carved and painted by a male artist, which depict part of the image (usually the right side and center). The images are symmetrical, so an experienced weaver creates the left side in symmetry with the right. Color use is set by tradition, so although the pattern board is outlined in black formline (see Glossary) designs, a Chilkat weaver knows which areas should be woven in yellow and blue-green (or rarely, red). Although Chilkat blankets are described as woven, they are twined tapestry (twining is used to create baskets). The same twined tapestry technique is used to create tunics, shirts, leggings, dance bibs, and other clothing items worn on ceremonial occasions. The yarn used to create Chilkat textiles is spun by combining mountain goat fiber and cedar bark; the warp is spun into strands by rolling the fiber on the thigh (some weavers spun the weft on a spindle). Some modern weavers supplement mountain goat fiber with sheep wool, or commercially spun yarn. Months of preparation are required to spin and dye the yarn; the weaving is demanding and advances slowly. Thlunaut’s artistic production was unprecedented. A Chilkat blanket typically requires a year of full-time work. Thlunaut’s granddaughter Rosita Worl compiled a list of thirty-three blankets and six shirts, Thlunaut recalled weaving (Worl and Smythe). Thlunaut did this while working, gathering and preserving food, and raising a family. Hudson recalls that when she apprenticed in 1985 to Thlunaut, the weaver (who was then ninety-three years of age) wove so quickly that it was impossible for Hudson to follow Thlunaut’s motions (Hudson). Thlunaut credited her mother for ‘‘teaching her to make things properly’’ including working ‘‘ ‘steady’ until her task is completed’’ (Worl and Smythe). Thlunaut’s Chilkat blankets impress and mesmerize the viewer with their fluid movement and powerful imagery. Like other Chilkat blankets, a narrow white band is on the periphery; inside this is a wide black band, and inside this a yellow band. The interior design field contains the crest figure. In Thlunaut’s last blanket, modeled by her daughter Agnes Bellinger, the Wolf emblem of her House, which she had the right to display, powerfully fills the space, with its enormous blue-green eyes, yellow-taloned feet, unusual orange face, and dramatic (and rare) blood-red mouth and protruding tongue.

Jennie Thlunaut

These elements are outlined in pure black formline that echo the outer black band. The blanket’s unusually visible white background emphasizes the textile’s characteristic heavy double-fringe, which swirl and accentuate the dancer’s movements. Thlunaut’s textiles are part of a living tradition of objects created for use in public and family ceremonial events. Nearly all of her weavings were made for individuals. A few textiles are in museum collections, including the University of Alaska Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. The level of mastery in Thlunaut’s work was recognized by the Smithsonian Institution when they invited her to be the sole representative of her art form at the 1984 Festival of American Folklife. Thlunaut assured the continuity of this unique art form by taking on apprentices when she was in her nineties. She taught in the traditional way, which requires careful looking and little or no verbal instruction. ‘‘Watch me!’’ was Thlunaut’s favorite phrase (Hudson). Thlunaut told her granddaughter that ‘‘if you are willing to do it you’ll learn it, but if you don’t care you can’t do it’’ (Worl and Smythe). Elayne Zorn Places to See Jennie Thlunaut’s Work Sheldon Museum & Cultural Center, Haines, AK Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, AK http://sheldonmuseum.org/chilkatblanket.htm

Bibliography Chandonnet, Ann. ‘‘Preserving the Tlingit ‘fringe about the body’.’’ Juneau Empire, April 21, 2004. Sealaska Heritage Institute. http://www.sealaskaheritage.org /news/news_article_jennie_thlunaut.htm. Dauenhauer, Nora Marks, and Richard Dauenhauer, eds. Haa Tuwuna´ agu Yı´s, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990. Hudson, Clarissa. ‘‘My Apprenticeship with Jennie, Part One.’’ http:// clarissahudson.com/Chilkat_Jennie1.php. ———. ‘‘My Apprenticeship with Jennie, Part Two.’’ http://clarissahudson.com/ Chilkat_Jennie2.php. ———. ‘‘My Apprenticeship with Jennie, Part Three.’’ http://clarissahudson.com/ Chilkat_Jennie3.php. Jones, Cynthia. ‘‘The Chilkat Blanket.’’ Haines, AK: Sheldon Museum & Cultural Center, 1987. http://sheldonmuseum.org/chilkatblanket.htm. Samuel, Cheryl. The Chilkat Dancing Blanket. Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1982. Worl, Rosita, and Charles Smythe. ‘‘Jennie Thlunaut. Master Chilkat Blanket Artist.’’ In The Artists Behind the Work: Life Histories of Nick Charles, Sr., Frances Demientieff, Lena Sours, Jennie Thlunaut, edited by Ann Fienup-Riordan and Suzi Jones. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Museum, 1986.

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Gail Tremblay (b. 1945), Onondaga-Micmac Basketmaker, Multimedia Installation Artist, and Writer. Gail Tremblay is renowned as a writer and a visual artist who creates beautiful but provocative work that contains hard-hitting messages, about age and loss, stereotypes of Native Americans, environmental justice, and the fate of humans on our planet. Her poetry treats subjects as varied as her ancestors, the Mexican Malinche, longing for lost love, and scorn of homeless native people. Tremblay’s multimedia installations challenge the viewer to confront the destruction that has been done to native peoples and the Earth, and work for change. Her baskets pay homage to long-standing craft traditions at the same time as they leave them forever altered, through her use of modern materials and ironic subjects. Tremblay was born in Buffalo, New York. Her parents are Onondoga from upstate New York, Micmac (Mi’kmaq), who are the First Nations People of Nova Scotia, Canada, and are French Canadian. She attended the University of New Hampshire, studying for a B.A. in Drama (1967), and then the University of Oregon, where she earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (1969). That year, Tremblay was awarded the Alfred E. Richards Poetry Prize. She taught first as a lecturer at Keene State College in New Hampshire, then as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska. Since 1981, Tremblay has been on the Arts and Humanities faculty at The Evergreen State College, teaching a remarkably diverse range of classes, in ‘‘English composition, expository, technical and creative writing, contemporary Native American literature, weaving, art history, Native American studies, poetry, and multicultural literature’’ (Evergreen). Tremblay is a poet whose work is powerful, lyrical, and searchingly honest. She has published five books of poems (Tremblay 1979, 1980, 1981, 1990, 1998); her poetry, reviews of other writers in publications such as Art Papers, and essays on artists (on George Morrison, in Lowe) are published widely in anthologies, journals, and catalogues. Tremblay’s visual art explores diverse materials and subjects. Like much of the best of contemporary art (particularly art created by native peoples), her baskets are both traditional and modern. Basketry is an ancient art in which the native peoples of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy, including the Onondaga, excelled (see Theresa Secord). Using natural materials such as ash and sweetgrass, basketmakers wove functional baskets in a plethora of shapes and sizes, and in the nineteenth century created ‘‘fancy baskets’’ for the tourist trade. Those Victorian-era baskets were sought after for their elaborate curlwork and fanciful shapes; baskets in the form of acorns or strawberries were particularly popular. Tremblay’s baskets appear to be quintessential examples of traditional Victorian-era fancy baskets. However, upon closer view, we see that their bright-colored curls are not made from carefully dyed natural materials, but instead are woven from a modern material: 35 mm film—from which Hollywood Westerns, and other movies, were made.

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Tremblay is a writer, so we should not be surprised that her baskets’ titles inform us about them. According to Tremblay, ‘‘I began making film baskets when I taught with Marge Brown, a filmmaker at The Evergreen State College where I work. I asked our students for the outtakes from their films so I could make her a present. It was an interesting material, and I enjoyed the notion of recycling film and gaining control over a medium that had historically been used by both Hollywood and documentary film makers to stereotype American Indians’’ (Tremblay). She made increasingly complex baskets, using the full range of traditional basketweaving stitches and experimenting with different kinds of film: fullcoat (used for sound editing) and leader (trailer), as well as the exposed film outtakes with which she started. Baskets such as Putting a Lid Gail Tremblay. Strawberry and Chocolate. 2000. Sculpture on Wild America (2002–2003) (16 mm film and fullcoat). Height: 229 cm. © Gail Tremblay. are made from leader for films Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian. with the same name as the object (University of Washington). Putting a Lid on Wild America is black and shiny; its basketry stitches all point menacingly downward, but they are contained by its perfect square lid. Tremblay’s Remembering Wild Strawberries uses strong color: red, of course, for the curls made using the strawberry stitch, but also black (instead of the traditional green of a strawberry basket) and white (stitched as traditional baskets would be). Wild strawberries were esteemed by native people in the northeast. The earliest strawberries were thought to have medicinal properties, and a Strawberry Ceremony was held when strawberries ripened. Remembering Wild Strawberries simultaneously links the worlds of Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 classic film ‘‘Wild Strawberries,’’ itself a meditation on age, death, and reconciliation, and of Iroquois people, for whom strawberries symbolized life’s renewal. Tremblay’s visual work has been exhibited in galleries, colleges, and museums. In Reflecting on Pocahontas (1998), Tremblay explores European stereotypes of Indians (Tremblay 2002). On a small boxed stage, a scantily clothed

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Barbie-type doll is on display, complete with museum-like label; next to her, a coffin-like box (also labeled) holds dolls in American Colonial-era dress. An audio track by Tremblay presents an historical essay about Pocahontas and how she, and contemporary native women, have been eroticized and demeaned: ‘‘And so, in America, yet another generation plays Indian, imagining native women’s bodies . . . ; our Native cultures, a magic show—doomed to feed other people’s fantasies’’ (Tremblay 2002). Tremblay’s mixed-media installation Io´kste: Akweria`:ne: It Is Heavy on My Heart (2002), first shown in a twenty-year retrospective of her work, then at Evergreen and online in an issue on Aboriginal Performance in e-misfe´rica (2005), explores the terrible effects of nuclear waste on reservation land and people. Four figures occupy the installation space: a larger than life-size tan and brown figure; a round shape parallel to the ground; and two half-moon shapes, in the same dark-earth red as the round shape. Singing and a speech emanate from the tall figure, which has an embedded DVD. The hour-long narrative makes it impossible to hear the singing, as voices recount stories of displacement and disease (especially cancer) resulting from nuclear waste. With time, the vaguely human-like tall figure is revealed, not as a respected elder or ancestor, but as Lung and Diaphragm Tumors in a case of Epithelial Mesithelioma. Similarly, the round shape near the floor turns out to be Sclerosing Heptocellular Carcinoma, and the paired moon-like sculptures are twin lobes of Papillary Carcinoma in both Lobes of a Thyroid Gland. Will it be possible, Tremblay asks us, for humankind to survive the negative effects of nuclear power? In addition to writing, making art, and teaching, Tremblay has served as board member and president of the Indian Youth of America, board member of the USA National Committee of the International Association of Art UNESCO, and board member and president of the Women’s Caucus for Art. As a member of WoCA (Women of Color in Art) Committee of the Women’s Caucus for Art, Tremblay and another committee member saw the groundbreaking eight-year WoCA Slide Project through from beginning to end. (That project produced the first comprehensive and widely available set of slides of works of art by U.S. women of color.) Tremblay’s writing and visual art has been recognized with awards, including the Washington Governor’s Award for the Arts in 2000. Tremblay’s visual work allows us to delight in apparently charming objects while leading us to consider matters apparently distant from those objects’ usual frames of reference, such as baskets woven in traditional techniques using the modern material of film that invite us to consider how the movie industry has misrepresented native peoples. Tremblay makes the powerful argument that traditional ways, reinterpreted anew by each generation, may be the only way to help solve contemporary problems: her work shows us that ‘‘it is time for all Americans to stand up for the health of the planet and the health of all the beings on it’’ (Tremblay 2005). Elayne Zorn Places to See Gail Tremblay’s Work National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY http://www.froelickgallery.com/Artist-Detail.cfm?ArtistsID=282

Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie http://www.hemisphericinstitute.org/gallery/exhibit2_esp/gail1.html http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/who_stole_the_teepee/changing/ index.htm

Bibliography Europa Publications. ‘‘Tremblay Gail Elizabeth.’’ In International Who’s of Authors and Writers, 547. London: Routledge, 2004. Evergreen State College. ‘‘Faculty Directory.’’ http://www.evergreen.edu/faculty/tfaculty.htm. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. Forms of Exchange: Art of Native Peoples from the Edward J. Guarino Collection. Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College. http:// www.tfaoi.com/aa/6aa/6aa298.htm. Internet Public Library. ‘‘Native American Authors Project. Gail Tremblay.’’ http:// www.ipl.org/div/natam/bin/browse.pl/A175. Lowe, Truman, ed. Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution, 2004. Mcintire, D. ‘‘Tremblay Gail Elizabeth.’’ In International Who’s Who in Poetry and Poets’ Encyclopaedia, 515. London: Routledge, 2001. Platt, Susan. ‘‘Seattle, Washington.’’ Art Papers 26, no. 6 (November/December 2002): 57. Shen, Fern. ‘‘Strawberry and Chocolate, a Basket by Gail Tremblay.’’ In ‘‘The Past Is Present: American Indian Museum: 8,000 Objects, Countless Stories,’’ KidsPost. The Washington Post, September 21, 2004, C15. http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36350-2004Sep20.html. Tremblay, Gail. ‘‘Artist’s Statement.’’ In Visualizing Indigeneity. New York, NY: Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, New York University. http://hemisphericinstitute.org/gallery/exhibit2_esp/gail1.html. ———. Close to Home. Omaha: University of Nebraska, 1981. ———. Indian Signing in 20th Century North America. Corvallis, OR: Calyx Press, 1990. ———. Indian Singing: Poems. Rev. ed. Corvallis, OR: Calyx Press, 1998. ———. ‘‘It Is Heavy on My Heart.’’ Aboriginal Performance, edited by Raquel Chapa and Jolene Rickard. e-misfe´rica. Performance and Politics in the Americas. 2, no. 1 (Spring 2005). http://hemi.nyu.edu/journal/2_1/tremblay.html. ———. Night Gives Women the Word. Omaha: University of Nebraska, 1979. ———. ‘‘Reflecting on Pocahontas.’’ Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 23, no. 2 (2002): 121–26. ———. Talking to the Grandfathers. Omaha: University of Nebraska, 1980. University of Washington. ‘‘Contemporary Native American Art in the Gallagher Law Library.’’ http://lib.law.washington.edu/services/artwalk.html#fish.

Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (b. 1954), Navajo/Seminole/Muskogee Photographer, Videographer, and Multimedia Artist. A deeply committed activist, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie uses photography to create arresting political statements within the context of her art. It has been said

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that her work is directed at Native audiences because it contains layers of meaning that are not always clear to non-Natives. At the same time, her work is thoughtful, elegant and sometimes even humorous, in ways that engage audiences regardless of their background. Tsinhnahjinnie is the daughter of well-known Navajo artist Andrew Tsinhnahjinnie, while her mother, from Seminole and Muskogee families in Oklahoma, was known for her devotion to community. Born in Phoenix, Tsinhnahjinnie was raised both there and in Rough Rock, Arizona—almost always on, or around, the Navajo nation. Her parents and grandmother all possessed great strength and survival instincts, as well as expansive knowledge and understanding of the world. Indeed, much of the artist’s work suggests that she learned a lot about life from an early age—its beauties and richness, as well as its pain and ironies. Often using text as part of her image, Tsinhnahjinnie stated in one work, ‘‘[I was] born on occupied land where the American dream creates environmental nightmares . . . My existence has been influenced by the flotsam and jetsam of a navigational error [i.e., Columbus’s landing in North America rather than India], influenced by the ever present strength of Native thought, influenced by award winning advertisement firms [i.e., commercial usage of imagery from Native cultures]. An existence that would make it easy to become a Native Louis Farrakan’’ (Tsinhnahjinnie Aboriginal Savant). Tsinhnahjinnie started out as a painter, in many ways following her father’s lead. She studied at IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts) in Santa Fe and then went on to the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, where she completed her B.F.A. in 1981. She remained in the Bay area, developing strong ties and intertribal friendships over the next sixteen years. Actively involved in various Native organizations, she became a Board member at both the Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland, and the American Indian Contemporary Art Gallery in San Francisco. At the same time, she was exhibiting her art in a number of spaces, while also creating images for the community in the form of posters and t-shirts. Throughout her career, Tsinhnahjinnie has participated in projects involving multicultural organizations and students. In 1997, she was commissioned by Bread and Roses (the cultural arm of Union 1199 in New York City) to create Native American and Hawaiian Women of Hope, a suite of portraits of twelve women dedicated to the cultural survival of those indigenous groups. She was presented with the First People’s Fund Community Spirit Award in 2000, in recognition of her contributions to Native communities. Tsinhnahjinnie also works annually to teach young Anishinaabe students in Minnesota the techniques of digital and multimedia art. Beyond that, she has taught in a number of higher education institutions, including the IAIA, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of Arts and Crafts. One of the guiding principles of Tsinhnahjinnie’s work is what she calls ‘‘photographic sovereignty’’—that is, the reassumption, by Native people, of control over their own image. Although not often realized by non-Natives, photography has been used against Native Americans (throughout the history of the medium), creating portraits that fostered dehumanizing stereotypes and

Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie

prejudices. Even when there was little or no such conscious intent, Americans of European descent have rarely approached Indian portraiture without injecting their own misconceptions and egocentric cultural viewpoint. Renowned critic Lucy Lippard has described with great insight the ‘‘nefarious history [of portrait photography] among Native peoples’’ (Lippard, in Rushing 135). In particular, she notes that Indian women have often been portrayed either as idealized ‘‘Pocohontas/Sacajawea [princesses]’’ or as the ‘‘submissive squaw crouched in front of the tipi’’ (Lippard 135)—with neither extreme being real, of course, or allowing for any individuality. Within this context, Tsinhnahjinnie was one of the first Native artists to work toward reclaiming Indian identity through the medium of photography. Since her beginnings as an artist, Tsinhnahjinnie has presented Indians in ways that break through non-Native misconceptions. One method of doing that is to show indigenous people participating in the larger world—to undo the stereotype of an existence limited to (and defined by) the reservation. In an early series called Metropolitan Indian, she shows Native individuals in ceremonial regalia (perhaps on their way to a powwow) moving tranquilly down an urban street or within a subway scene. In another affecting series—Portraits Against Amnesia—she created individual and small group portraits of Native people, in which the original (often sepia-toned) photos come from bygone eras, but seem to be surfacing in the present, in a setting of modern visual effects. They become ancestors who cannot be relegated to a romantic past; they are individual human beings, resuming their rightful place among the forebears of today’s world. One quietly spectacular example is Portraits Against Amnesia: Idelia, in which a young Native woman, dressed in a stunning outfit of beaded deerskin, meets the viewer’s gaze head-on, unflinchingly—while a satellite’s precision image of the moon wraps around her, along with banks of ‘‘virtual’’ clouds and a set of jazzy, almost ‘‘syncopated,’’ chevrons. There is a sense here of radiant calm—a feeling that the traditional and the modern can coexist, and even complement each other. In other works, Tsinhnahjinnie has expressed a more pointed protest against specific wrongs done to Native peoples. For instance, her series Photographic Memoirs of an Aboriginal Savant comes to grips with her own life experience— presented as wall-mounted pages from a personal journal. Among its family pictures, and childhood reminiscences, is a diary-like text on the misguided (sometimes cruel) treatment she received from the non-Native world. Other images present strong messages in reaction to official suppression of Indian freedom. One image posits a government ID card for Indian activists (and even for artists and cultural ambassadors) with the implication that their movements are being closely monitored; the work’s text, referencing the ID, wryly quotes from a credit card ad—warning readers not to leave ‘‘the rez’’ without it. Tsinhnahjinnie was showing her work regularly throughout the 1980s, but it was during the 1990s that she became widely recognized. Not only was she exhibiting across the United States (including venues like the prestigious International Center for Photography in New York), but also abroad, in New Zealand, Canada, Slovenia, Turkey, and England. Despite the even greater

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cultural gap that these audiences might feel with Native references, her work was received enthusiastically. Her Damn Series of 5 was shown at the Barbican Gallery in London in 1998, where it pulled in exuberant crowds. Part of its draw may have been the universal outrage felt toward advertising that exploits natural beauty. One of the works in this series presented a sublime vista of red mesas on Navajo land; the work’s title (as well as the text within the image) is This is not a commercial, this is my homeland. Another very popular work was titled Damn! There goes the Neighborhood! That text also appears in the image—as the speech of an Indian man (actually the Ute Chief Shavano), who seems to have just shot up an Oscar Meyer Weiner-mobile invading his pristine environment. The humor here—and the gratification in battling the intrusions of commerce—are clearly global in their appeal. Since the outset of her career, Tsinhnahjinnie has continued to explore new territory—both technically and stylistically. Her first photo collages were created by hand. During the 1990s, Tsinhnahjinnie began extending her technical grasp by working with the vast possibilities of digitized imagery. In 2000, she entered graduate school at the University of California at Irvine, where she concentrated on digital videography. She earned her M.F.A. there in 2002. At that time, she began to focus on the advantages of the ‘‘hybrid’’ perspective and its natural empathy with other groups outside the dominant culture. Tsinhnahjinnie then collaborated with San Francisco performance artist Leilani Chan to produce a complex video-installation work that addressed crosscultural issues, titled An Aboriginal World View with Aboriginal Dreams. An articulate writer as well as gifted artist, Tsinhnahjinnie creates thoughtful and affecting works that are political in a strikingly positive way. She reveals hidden realities that beg to be exposed, she asks questions that bring about greater understanding, and she bridges gaps in experience. She creates the kind of open atmosphere that allows human beings to grow and learn from encounters with very different cultures, ultimately contributing to the growth of a world community. Deborah Everett Where to See Tsinhnahjinnie’s Work Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Kane Hall Collection, University of Washington, Seattle, WA National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. http://www.hulleah.com (The artist’s Web site) http://www.kathleenewinggallery.com/shows/nativeamericanart.html

Bibliography Lippard, Lucy R. ‘‘Independent Identities.’’ In Native American Art in the Twentieth Century, edited by Rushing, III, W. Jackson. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America. New York: Pantheon, 1990.

Marion Tuu’luq Neumaier, Diane, ed. Reframings: New American Feminist Photographies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Passalacqua, Veronica. ‘‘Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie.’’ In Path Breakers: The Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2003, edited by Eiteljorg Museum. Indianapolis: Eiteljorg Museum Publications (in association with the University of Washington Press, Seattle and London), 2003.

Marion Tuu’luq (ca. 1910–2002), Inuit Printmaker and Fiber Artist. Marion Tuu’luq was a member of the first generation of Inuit artists. Known for drawings and prints depicting arctic life, as well as beadwork, her large works on cloth are her strongest legacy. Tuu’luq’s extensively embroidered and applique´d wall hangings, characterized by a delicate sense of color and fluid shapes, present a dynamic universe where humans, animals, the sun, and spirits commingle. Marion Tuu’luq was born around 1910 in the Chantry Inlet/Back River area of Nunavut, Canada (formerly a part of the Northwest Territories). (Other names include Marion Tuu’luuq, Anguhadluq, Tudluq, Tulluq, and Toodlook (CHIN)). She was a member of the mainland Inuit people. Like others of her generation, she grew up in the traditional way, living a seminomadic life on the land—fishing, hunting, and trapping—but her early life was marked by loss. Her mother died when Tuu’luq was a year old, and her father when Tuu’luq was ten, when she was living with relatives near Garry Lake (Marion Scott Gallery). She married a cousin, Ujarai, in 1928. The marriage ended with his death in 1954. They had thirteen children, but only four survived to become adults (Marion Scott Gallery). Like other Inuit women, Tuu’luq mastered the craft of making fur and skin clothing, and this essential arctic art provided both sewing skills and an intimate knowledge of shape and color that she drew on in later life to create wall hangings. Tuu’luq married for a second time in 1955 to Luke Anguhadluq; they were married until his death in 1982. Following the years of famine in the 1950s, Tuu’luq and her husband, and other relatives, moved to Baker Lake (Qamani’tuaq) in 1961, where their children could attend school (Marion Scott Gallery). Many Inuit made the same move. Those years were extremely difficult for Inuit; they could no longer successfully live on the land because the caribou herds had diminished, but there was almost no employment in their new home. The Canadian government sent arts advisors to develop programs, and both Tuu’luq and her husband quickly became key in the development of new arts: he in drawings and prints, and she in drawings, prints, and textiles. Prints by Tuu’luq and her husband were issued in most of the annual Baker Lake collection. Tuu’luq’s drawings, some of which were translated into prints, feature animals or humans juxtaposed with animals, shamans, or spirits. In many of her prints, the arctic creatures—suspended in space and in silhouette—radiate around a center, formed by a group of animals or a human face. In Tuu’luq’s earlier work, figures are formed from solid, bright colored shapes. Work from

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the 1980s reveals her detailed knowledge of animals: the careful lines of a bird’s tail feathers, the curves of colors in an animal’s fur. Humans transform because they are shamans. Predators chase prey, as in Caribou Being Chased by Wolf and Owl (1978) and Umingmak (Muskox) Surrounded by Dogs (1983). In addition to drawing, Tuu’luq worked with art advisors Jack and Sheila Butler at Baker Lake in the textile project, the Butlers started in 1970 with the goal of increasing Inuit women’s income. (In earlier projects, in the 1960s, Tuu’luq created beaded collars and parkas.) Tuu’luq was one of the first Inuit women to use imported materials—duffle (heavy wool), stroud (coarse wool), felt, embroidery floss, sewing thread—to create works in cloth in the form of large wall hangings. Tuu’luq’s interest in shamanic transformation, intimate knowledge of arctic animals, use of symbolism (such as the women’s ulu knife), and concern with detail are evident in her textiles. The textile project gave little instruction in embroidery, but Inuit women invented stitches to achieve the effects they desired. Some artists, such as Jessie Oonark, preferred applique´ to embroidery, but Tuu’luq explored the potential of embroidery during more than two decades of work. Her early works on cloth are quite varied. Some combine figures arrayed in lines with large areas filled with embroidery. In Manitoba (1971), yellow and light brown polar bears dominate atop isolated white human faces surrounded by yellow and brown vegetation; the bottom third, composed of lines of brown and red embroidery shows plowed farmland. This work, based on Tuu’luq’s trip to that city for surgery, presents humans and animals living in separate realms. Other early works are filled with animals or, sometimes, humans, energetically revolving around a center. In Sun Woman (1975), dozens of arctic land, air, and sea animals circle a sun, whose schematic face is surrounded by thick radiating rays of multicolored embroidery—red and yellow, pink and blue, red and pink—that resembles Inuit beadwork. The embroidered and applique´d black, brown, red, orange, and yellow animals move through a light blue field. In Inuit culture, the sun is female, and the moon, male; two ulus (crescent-shaped Inuit woman’s knife) sit above and below the sun; the lower one merges with a fecund bird figure. In making this, Tuu’luq said ‘‘I was thinking of the bright sun in the sky, and the tundra, and caribou, and wolf, and all the little things that live and walk upon the tundra’’ (Textile Museum of Canada). While most of Tuu’luq’s textiles feature the animals, humans, and spirits of the tundra, she also experimented with abstract works composed of circles and ovals repeated inside multiple borders, such as Untitled (1975), which is embroidered and carefully pieced, in complex circles inside circles that resemble the inset colors in traditional Inuit fur clothing. In her last years of work, Tuu’luq returned to the theme of the centrality of the sun as giver of life to all creatures. One Man’s Dream (1988) contains more than 150 applique´d and embroidered figures of humans, animals, and plants, plus a row of hearts, disposed in circles around a sun. The dozens of figures encircling the sun in bands are surrounded by yet more figures that fill the entire space of the work. Included among so many animals is a small human,

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in red, along the textile’s left border. The figures and hearts appear in tones of red, orange, white, and blue, and pink, arranged throughout the piece with great visual force. The delicately embroidered female sun is tattooed, as were Inuit women in the past. In this piece, in contrast to nearly all other Inuit wall hangings, Tuu’luq embroidered the theme in Inuktitut syllabics in a balloon above the small red figure’s head. ‘‘It is, she said, just one man thinking, dreaming, about all the animals and people in his life’’ (Textile Museum of Canada). Tuu’luq was forced to stop making art in 1989 due to a skin allergy. However, ‘‘she continued to enjoy life and her family until her death’’ (Marion Scott Gallery). In 2002, the National Gallery of Canada organized and circulated a major solo exhibition of Tuu’luq’s work. The thirty-seven works on cloth revealed the remarkable combination of playfulness, vivid color, delicate embroidery, and vision of interconnection among animals, humans, and the spirit realm that characterize Tuu’luq’s art. Though she died two weeks before the exhibition opened, the works resoundingly conveyed her ‘‘singular vision [that] celebrated the eternal recurrence of life and the conviction that what the Inuit dread most—extinction—will not occur’’ (National Gallery of Canada). Elayne Zorn Places to See Marion Tuu’luq’s Work Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON http://www.uoguelph.ca/msac/Tuuluq.htm

Bibliography Berlo, Janet Catherine. ‘‘Marion Tuu’luq (1906–1985).’’ In North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by Jules Heller and Nancy G. Heller, 420. Vol. 1219, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. New York: Garland, 1995. Blodgett, Jean, Marie Bouchard, and Jennie Tuu’luq. Marion Tuu’luq, A Retrospective: 16 November 1986–15 February 1987. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986. The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN). ‘‘Tuu’luq, Marion.’’ http:// daryl.chin.gc.ca:8015/Webtop/Searchapp/ws/aich/user/wwwe/Record? upp=0&m=1&w=NATIVE%28%27ARTIST_NAMES++++ph+words+%27%27 ++++TUU%27%27%27%27LUQ%2C+MARION+++++%27%27%27%29. Crandall, Richard C. Inuit Art: A History. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Co., 2000. Marion Scott Gallery. ‘‘Marion Tuu’luq (1910–2002).’’ http://www. marionscottgallery.com/artists_work_biographies/inuit_artist-Tuuluq-bio.asp. National Gallery of Canada. ‘‘Marion Tuu’luq. May 6 to July 18, 2004.’’ http:// www.uoguelph.ca/msac/Tuuluq.htm. Textile Museum of Canada. ‘‘Marion Tuu’luq.’’ http://www.textilemuseum.ca/ exhibitions_tuuluq.html.

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Marion Tuu’luq Tuu’luq, Marion. ‘‘A Story of Starvation.’’ In An Anthology of Native Canadian Literature in English, edited by Daniel David Moses and Terry Goldie, 3rd ed. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2005. University of Guelph. ‘‘Marion Tuu’luq. May 6 to July 18, 2004.’’ http://www. uoguelph.ca/msac/Tuuluq.htm.

W Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935), Cherokee Painter. The first woman artist in a family of artists, Kay WalkingStick was born to a Scotch-Irish mother and a Cherokee father. Her father was from Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, and he worked as a geologist in the oil fields of his home state. WalkingStick’s parents had several children (her older siblings) during the early part of their marriage; however, at a certain point, her father lost his job and subsequently became alcoholic. With the Depression in full swing, many people were caught in desperate situations. Worried and pregnant with the artist, WalkingStick’s mother took her children and moved to Syracuse, New York, where Kay was born shortly afterwards. Because of that move and the separation of her parents, WalkingStick was raised outside her Native culture—but her biracial identity and her efforts to balance both sides became the driving force behind her work. WalkingStick’s indigenous heritage may not have been physically present as she grew up, but it was hovering all around her. Her ‘‘mother talked constantly about our being proud to be Indians’’ (Abbott 276) and about their intelligent, handsome father—an All-American football player at Dartmouth and an early enlister during World War I. Additionally, the artist’s siblings had spent their childhood with both parents in Oklahoma, and they had listened to their father speak and read the Cherokee language. They experienced much about their Native culture directly and told ‘‘Indian stories’’ to their younger sister frequently. The artist, however, found that being Native was more of an idea than a reality for her. But one part of her identity was clear from the outset—she was always drawing throughout her childhood. She remembers happily passing the time during tedious sermons in church with crayons and paper that her mother supplied. From this creative, though mostly mainstream, upbringing, WalkingStick went on to earn a B.F.A. from Beaver College in Glenside, Pennsylvania and her M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, one of the foremost art schools in the country. Her development as an artist, therefore, was heavily influenced by modern art movements, rather than by indigenous aesthetics. As WalkingStick got older, she experienced a growing number of questions regarding her Native origins, and she began to investigate. She started reading extensively about Native American cultures and history, and she also explored the subject visually. She looked at aboriginal art from around the world, and she realized that the power of that work was bound up in its formal aspects.

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This conclusion prompted her to concentrate more on the materials she used, and she started mixing her acrylic paints with wax, to make them more dense and tactile. She wanted her paintings to have a kind of visceral, primordial quality, and she focused on archetypal imagery, especially lines and arcs within rectangular formats. She developed an important, early series of abstract work with a group of small, bright forms that stood out against the darkness surrounding them; she called this series ‘‘Chief Joseph,’’ dedicating it to one of the great leaders from Native American history, whose courage in the face of dire circumstances became legend. Her journey into Native culture brought WalkingStick back to her father in 1974, even though by then he was dead. At that time she created a teeKay WalkingStick. Chief Joseph Series # 17. 1976. Painting pee, ‘‘a one-person teepee . . . (acrylic and wax on canvas). 20 in.  15 in. © Kay just big enough for me’’ (Abbott WalkingStick. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the 272) and called it Messages to American Indian. Papa. Inside it she hung pieces of a letter to her father, telling him that she understood, that she forgave him, and that she hoped he forgave her for hating him. (Like many children whose parents were absent early in life, she hated him for not being there when she needed him.) And even though the teepee is not a Cherokee structure, the artist has said that this one influenced everything she did after that, opening up her inquiry into symbols and their meanings. In the mid-1980s, WalkingStick was asked to create a piece about trees for a show in homage to the elm. She painted an abstract work for this particular exhibition. But, prodded by the curator to create a more naturalistic image, she then made a painting of an elm tree and mounted it, edge to edge, with the abstraction. She found there was ‘‘a kind of symbiosis that was quite remarkable, . . . [that] they became more than what they were alone . . . [and] that’s how I started doing the diptychs’’ (Abbott 274), which became a signature format for the artist.

Kay WalkingStick

WalkingStick has remarked that the two parts of her diptychs almost always deal with ‘‘dichotomies,’’ and therefore contain tension, but also a balancing of opposites. The works most often present a landscape image on one side and an iconic shape—sometimes a ‘‘fan’’ or other geometric figure—on the other side. In 1991 she commented, ‘‘the two portions represent two kinds of memory. One is momentary and particular, the other is permanent and non-specific’’ (Eiteljorg 22). The representational side of the diptych, in other words, is something individually experienced, an image from a specific time and place; the abstract portion is an essence, an emblem for something universal. Indigenous writer/curator Margaret Archuleta has concluded that WalkingStick’s paintings achieve an equilibrium between extremes like ‘‘order/chaos, austerity/ sumptuousness, symbolic/pictorial, spiritual/material, concealment/ revelation’’ (Eiteljorg 22). Further change came about in 1989, when the artist was traumatized by the death of her husband of thirty years. In response, WalkingStick substituted portraits of herself in mourning for the outdoor scenes formerly occupying one side of her paintings. Soon after, she said, she realized that the landscapes she had created in previous paintings ‘‘had become a stand-in for my body’’ (Eiteljorg 28). She then began to populate her work with human figures, generally nude, either in flat silhouette (instead of her abstract ‘‘icons’’), or as outlines, superimposed on her painted vistas. WalkingStick became solidly established in the mainstream art world during the 1980s and 1990s, through numerous exhibitions at both national and international venues. The artist is also an educator, having held an appointment as Professor of Art at Cornell University from 1988 through 2005. She is currently represented by June Kelly Gallery in New York, and has shown her work at Artists Space (New York), the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Heard Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Cairo Biennial of 1994, which subsequently traveled throughout Africa. She has received numerous awards and in 1995 received an especially rare honor, reserved for a very select group of contemporary artists—that of being cited in H. W. Janson’s History of Art, the premier sourcebook for teaching the history of art. Deborah Everett Where to See WalkingStick’s Work Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ June Kelly Gallery, New York, NY LaJolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON

Bibliography Abbott, Lawrence. I Stand in the Center of the Good. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.

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Star Wallowing Bull Eiteljorg Museum. Path Breakers. Indianapolis, IN: Eiteljorg Museum Publications, 2003. Farris, Phoebe. Women Artists of Color. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. St. James Press (Roger Matuz, ed.). St. James Guide to Native North American Artists. Detroit: St. James Press, 1998.

Star Wallowing Bull (b. 1973), (Chippewa/Arapaho Painter, Printmaker, Draftsman, and Mixed-Media Artist). Star Wallowing Bull is one of those artists whose approach, in many ways, defies definition. He has created some of the most daring works any viewer is likely to have seen—ranging from extremely sophisticated, cartoon-like scenes to iconic portraits, and feverish, cataclysmic visions. Their intensity of feeling may be barely held in check, or balanced against elegant abstract passages—or poised on the brink of explosion. Their range of styles, alone, is dizzying, and their technical bravura somehow counterpoints their probing content. In the end, the fact that one individual’s creativity could encompass all these disparate elements, without splitting into multiple personalities, seems entirely miraculous. When one looks at Wallowing Bull’s family tree, the mystery begins to clarify. The artist’s father is Frank BigBear a renowned painter in his own right—whose work is owned by prominent art institutions like the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and has been written about by critics in distinguished publications such as Artforum and Artpaper. Big Bear is credited with inventing the teeming, jam-packed style that both he and Wallowing Bull tend to use—and Big Bear’s apocalyptic turbulence has often been compared with that of fifteenth-century visionary Hieronymous Bosch. The sources of Big Bear’s imagery are many, and the style often feels hallucinogenic, loaded with grotesque distortions and references to the unconscious. Wallowing Bull’s work has many similarities to his father’s, but at the same time, is unquestionably a world of its own. Wallowing Bull is said to have started drawing at one year of age. His father says that he put a pencil in Star’s hand at that time and would often invite neighbors to come over and ‘‘watch the baby draw’’ (Tamarind Institute 44). When he was older, Wallowing Bull found this hard to believe, until his mother later told him the same story. When the artist was still an infant, his parents separated, and his mother took him and his younger sister to live with her. This period was a painful one for all, because his mother’s chronic alcoholism kept her from caring for the children as she would have liked. After two years had passed, the artist’s father regained custody of Wallowing Bull and his sister, and they returned to live with their father in Minneapolis’s south side. Wallowing Bull remembers his early years on the reservation with his mother. His experience, he says, was shared by many children on reservations and was one of innocence exposed to profound despair. In The Curious Crawler (Self-Portrait), he gives us a deceptively funky, humorous portrayal of home. The large infant in the foreground fixes our attention with his cuddly form,

Star Wallowing Bull

animated features and amazingly wide, bright eyes (oddly resembling a pair of fried eggs). Although the circumstances of the household are obviously strained, with many holes in the wallpaper and only a bare bulb for a light, the usual clutter of toys is reassuring. It is only as we look deeper that the baby’s plight becomes clear: empty beer cans dot the scene, food is burning on the stove, and a trail of overturned objects leads to the legs of an adult on the floor—apparently passed out behind the kitchen wall. Wallowing Bull has said that, as a child, ‘‘a lot of drinking’’ was going on all around him. One of his early memories is that of picking up a beer can from the floor with some liquid left in it and tasting it, as children do; he now feels that that’s when he started drinking and didn’t stop, until he went into recovery five years ago (2001). In many ways, Wallowing Bull’s story is a familiar one to Native Americans —born into an atmosphere of poverty, almost nonexistent opportunities and hopelessness, he followed the escape route taken by preceding generations: alcohol. Drinking became more and more of a problem for him, until he found himself living under a bridge and feeling suicidal. He was twenty-five years old. At that moment of greatest despair, however, he found a pencil in his pocket, and he began to draw again, after a hiatus of twelve years. That was the start of regaining his sense of self. He began working his way back into making art then, and because of his unusual talent, made great strides rapidly—although the recuperation from early trauma seldom occurs without setbacks. By 2001 (three years later), he had been awarded a national fellowship in a major metropolitan area. But the intense loneliness of an unfamiliar urban environment felt oppressive to him, and he temporarily fell back into drinking, which erupted in an episode of rowdiness. Because of that incident, he lost the fellowship, but he says it was the ‘‘best thing that ever happened to him’’ (Wallowing Bull). He felt the sting of that loss deeply, and he then committed himself wholly to sobriety. With time, his fellowship was reinstated, and he now has gallery representation, collectors, and upcoming exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Wallowing Bull’s work is almost always autobiographical in some sense— whether he is portraying his own home-life, other Indians in whom he sees his origins, the chaos he has felt in life, or scenes generated by his imagination. Many images reflect elements of his vivid dream-life—both positive and negative. Eerily, in June of 2001, he dreamed of the World Trade Towers engulfed in flames and collapsing; he committed that image to paper, which was later bought by the Weisman Art Museum. Some works by the artist reflect actual experiences, as when he includes portraits of the Statue of Liberty (from his trips to New York). Other works contain metaphorical allusions, like a reappearing monkey (sometimes a ‘‘Bonzo the Chimp’’ as in the movies, other times a chain of plastic orangutan toys), standing for ‘‘the monkey on [my] back’’ (Wallowing Bull). Many of Wallowing Bull’s overflowing images have flatly drawn figures with compartmentalized hues—forming the most complex arrays imaginable of two-dimensional symbols and color blocks. Black Elk’s Little Sandman, with its myriad figures and design components, alternately suggests a complex

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mosaic, towers of acrobatic figures, the shifting facets of a kaleidoscope, and/ or a cast-of-thousands on a monumental stage or screen. At the same time, it brings together abstracted Northwest Coast carvings, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a mounted medieval knight in armor, a rainforest frog, a hyperrealist portrait of a villain from ‘‘Star Wars,’’ an abstraction of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, and the Lakota holy man Black Elk. The logic used to integrate these forms, styles, and meanings remains known only to Wallowing Bull. Yet the artist demonstrates a striking grasp of the imagery overload in our society and its pop-culture implications. He shows us the illusory nature of our reality, in terms that are both familiar and unequivocal—often revealing the fantasy as nightmare. Perhaps his most powerful work to date, Windigo versus the Cannibal Man, reveals Wallowing Bull’s abilities at full tilt. In a diptych-like scene of battle, an Anishinaabe Manitou (spirit) on the left faces off with a Northwest Coast deity on the right. Both of them scintillate with power, as their hair glows supernaturally and they call forth throngs of animated Native talismans from the surrounding air. Confronting each other with extended, bear-like claws, maniacal gaze, and flickering tongues, they seem to set the world on fire around them. Even the sun at the horizon is split between the two, with a Chinese character for the woodland owl on one side, and the sign for a Northwest Coast raven on the other. It is a deeply affecting and oddly classic embodiment of epic struggle. The terrifying fierceness and might of the combatants leaves no doubt as to the stakes involved. Their battle goes far beyond an individual clash for dominance; it involves the survival of meaning, culture, and all that makes life worthwhile. It is mortal combat—the kind in which the world itself hangs in the balance. The artist has spoken of his desire to include references to multiple indigenous traditions in his work—including Plains, Southwestern and Woodland. But his favorite ‘‘other’’ culture to date is the Northwest Coast. It seems a natural match, given his predilection for compartmentalized color—so similar to the outlined anatomical sections of Northwest Coast imagery, known as ‘‘formline.’’ (In that style all areas of an animal’s features are outlined, making smaller boxes within the larger box of the head, or trunk or limbs, in a network of interlocked body parts—so a set of teeth becomes an outlined grid within the muzzle and eyes become an outlined window occupied by the outlined iris.) These creative abstractions fit perfectly within Wallowing Bull’s puzzlelike cosmos. Wallowing Bull has stated that he was fascinated as a child by toy robots, partly because of the intriguing shapes within their geometric appendages, and the fact that many of them could be taken apart and reconstructed in new configurations. This is clearly reflected in one of the artist’s more humorous works, New Age Fancy Dancer #2. Anyone familiar with ‘‘fancy dancing’’ (a style often performed at powwows) can easily make out the traditional posture in this image, including the tilt of the head to the side and downwards. At the same time, this dancer has a curious extremity that strangely resembles a lobster claw; the artist says this comes directly from one of his childhood favorites: ‘‘Transformer’’ robots that came with various weapon-like limbs.

Marie Watt

Beyond the impact of content, style, and composition in this work, Wallowing Bull never allows us to forget that it is art, and therefore a study in perception. He constantly inserts small devices that make us reevaluate the spaces we are viewing. In the work cited earlier (New Age Fancy Dancer #2), for instance, he surrounds the figure’s head and one arm with wavy marks indicating motion, as seen in cartoons. These ‘‘ripples,’’ however, also resemble solid, wafer-like objects floating in the air, which falls back behind them; this illusion allows us to see the dancer as existing in three-dimensional space, rather than as a flat design embedded in the surrounding ‘‘sky.’’ In another type of effect, the artist sets a ball with colored stripes on the floor in the Curious Crawler—placed so that the ball’s dividing midline (between its colored sections) aligns exactly with the edge between the kitchen floor and the living room rug—for an intriguing note of spatial ambiguity. Wallowing Bull’s art reflects the concerns of a true artist—taking on wideranging perceptual issues as well as the pivotal battles of life. He welcomes visual challenges of daunting proportions while revealing his own inner world with stunning candor and courage. He surveys contemporary culture with a fluency matched by his fascination with the Native world. Instead of existing ‘‘between two cultures,’’ Wallowing Bull inhabits, and bridges, many cultures —giving his audience riveting glimpses of each, through the interplay of his dazzling ‘‘global village.’’ Deborah Everett Where to See Wallowing Bull’s Work Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND

Bibliography Plains Art Museum. Between Two Cultures: The Art of Star Wallowing Bull. Fargo, ND: Plains Art Museum Publications, 2005. Tamarind Institute. Migrations. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Wallowing Bull, Star. Interview with the author (DE), 2006.

Marie Watt (b. 1967), Seneca Sculptor, Mixed-Media Artist, and Installation Artist. Marie Watt was born and raised in Redmond, Washington, far removed from the Seneca homeland of her mother—the Cattaraugus Reservation in New York State. She received a Bachelor’s degree from Willamette College in Salem, Oregon, afterwards attending IAIA in Santa Fe. IAIA has always drawn students from many different tribes and points of view, and studying there gave Watt the chance to encounter multiple styles and approaches, along with both

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specific and general political issues addressed in much indigenous art. She then received scholarships from a number of prominent foundations, as well as the Seneca Nation and American Indian Graduate Center, which financed her study of painting and printmaking at Yale University (MFA 1996). Those two very different art school environments (diverse Native and cutting-edge postmodern) gave her an unusually broad perspective on both art-making and the art world. Much of Watt’s recent work has centered around one of the primary icons of Native/non-Native interaction: the woolen trade blanket. As early as the seventeenth century, the French observed Indians wrapped in English blankets acquired through trade—some of them unchanged in form, others loosely fashioned into overcoats. From then on, blankets were the basic medium of exchange between Natives and Euro-Americans. While Europeans brought many industrially manufactured goods to North America for trade with indigenous people, blankets were the most important item: thousands and thousands of blankets were bartered each year, as Native women immediately recognized the potential of woven blankets and yard goods. At that point, rather than painstakingly spinning and weaving gathered fibers from which to make clothing, they could cut and sew items relatively quickly from trade cloth; the blanket in particular became a popular alternative to handmade textiles. Native women added other European goods to their repertoire for garment making, including silk ribbons, commercially made buttons and glass beads—using them to create tribal designs which evolved over time. Taking her cue from that cultural blend of traditions and materials, Watt has made numerous small, pieced-together ‘‘samplers.’’ Ladder, for instance, is a small-scale work, made by joining sections of ‘‘reclaimed wool’’ (used blankets), satin bindings from blankets, and an overlay of running stitches, in a pattern resembling a ladder. Here the artist reveals her interest in the potential of textiles for creating shifting spatial implications. The samplers are wall-hung, and therefore become a flat surface, suggesting a two-dimensional panel; at the same time their diminutive ‘‘drawings’’ (like the ladder) convert them, as she says, to ‘‘tapestries’’ with illusionistic representations of three-dimensional objects. This dynamic, at times, becomes even more complex, when some of the fabric’s edges remain loose and may protrude into space, like ruffles, in yet another reference to the third dimension. In related works, Watt has created a number of large, target-like images, where concentric circles of applique´d fabric offer gentle variations of color and create stimulating tonal plays. In one called Flag, the central target figure is ‘‘pierced’’ at top and bottom by a vertical satin ribbon, yielding the effect of a stiff banner hung from its side, as if on a flagpole. At the same time, part of the outer concentric circle is replaced by a darker piece of wool, which changes the figure’s occupation of the picture plane. This spatial ambiguity, along with the work’s strong geometry, evokes various target images of modern painters like Kenneth Noland and Jasper Johns. Additionally, this piece references a kind of Pop Art pun on the life of forms, since it is an objet d’art, but it is also an actual blanket—calling up the effect of Andy Warhol’s famous construction, Brillo Box, which was essentially indistinguishable from its real-life

Marie Watt

counterpart. A final aspect of this work is its hint of danger—since anyone who wrapped themselves in this blanket could theoretically ‘‘draw fire’’ (much like images of targets on students’ tee-shirts in the 1970s—worn in solidarity with student-protestors killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University). This underlying implication of risk and harm calls up one of the many dark facets of Native/non-Native relations; at various times since European contact, Whites who wanted to decrease the Indian population, presented ‘‘gift’’ blankets contaminated with smallpox to Native communities. The number of indigenous people killed by this means appears to be substantial, but has never been exactly determined. In other geometric pieces, Watt has created wall-sized images that contain impressive combinations of effects. Perhaps the best known of these works is Braid, a diptych more than twenty-two feet across. Spreading over two panels, it contains a ‘‘recumbent’’ figure-eight (also the symbol for infinity), but each ‘‘half’’ differs significantly from the other. On the left side, the figure angles downward, partially disappearing beyond the lower border of the textile. The right side, on the other hand, is shown in its entirety. The left-hand pane is considerably wider, and its portion of the figure is brightly colored, with a vivid sense of three-dimensionality—especially where the ‘‘eight’’ crosses over itself in the middle. The other side of the image (except for its variegated trim) is limited to gray, black, and white, resulting in the flattened feeling of a photograph. The overall effect is a kind of shifting, granulated flux, as the eye moves back and forth between two dimensions and three, illusion and depth, stasis

Marie Watt. Braid. 2005. Textile panel. 128 in.  259 in. © Marie Watt. Photo courtesy of the Eiteljorg Museum.

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and movement. At the same time, the title, Braid, evokes indigenous identity by referring to the classic style of Native hair arrangement. Watt sees that word, however, as a metaphor for the link between textiles (with their interweaving of fibers), and human beings, with their plaited hair. She also considers the process behind the work as a weaving together of lives, as her friends and family joined in the communal activity of stitching together the small sections to make the entire piece. At the other end of the scale, Watt has created works that are purely sculptural—often consisting of stacks of blankets (many of them heavily used) in various sizes and configurations. Such stacks refer directly to the Indian practice of exchanging blankets at special occasions, in recognition of important life events. The artist has commented, ‘‘It’s one of the most special gifts you can ever be honored with’’ (Cowan 25). For the 2006 exhibition ‘‘No Reservations’’ at the Aldrich Museum, Watt created Dwelling, an eight-foot tower of blankets (over 1,000 of them), many of which were donated by individuals and have ‘‘extraordinary histories.’’ The donors often shared the stories behind their gifts, which were written on tags and attached to each blanket, providing each blanket’s respective ‘‘life story.’’ Probably the most stunning narrative belonged to Peter Kubicek’s blanket, which he was issued in a German concentration camp in 1945, and which he had carried on a twelve-day death march, when the Nazis retreated with their prisoners before the advancing allies. Sleeping outdoors during the march, Mr. Kubicek said the blanket became his ‘‘only shelter’’ from the elements, and he remembers waking in it, to find that his captors had fled and he was free. The sense of highly personal, hidden experiences and encapsulated lives gives Dwelling a poetic sensibility. Watt makes us aware of these humble objects in deeply resonant ways. In her hands, they emerge as essential elements of human existence—from swaddling to shroud, they become our close companions and ‘‘second skins’’ through life’s most vulnerable moments. Watt’s work creates an unusual blend of a traditionally crafted object, the blanket, and sophisticated visual and conceptual effects. Beyond the freshness and innovation they reveal, her pieces pose stimulating questions about definitions of art. Are they sculptures? Are they drawings? Are they textiles? Their ambiguous relation to the viewer makes a striking contribution to the broader dialogue on the roles of design media (and/or craft) versus fine art. But perhaps more importantly, she makes us see this functional article, so central to Native culture, in a new light—suffused with the humanism of her own perspective. Deborah Everett Where to See Watt’s Work Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN PDX Gallery, Portland, OR Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

Emmi Whitehorse

Bibliography Cowan, Alison Leigh. ‘‘A Pile of Blankets, with Personal History Woven into the Fabric.’’ The New York Times, August 25, 2006, 25. Eiteljorg Museum (James H. Nottage, ed.). Into the Fray. Indianapolis, IN: Eiteljorg Museum Publications, 2005. Kanjo, Kathryn. Oregon Biennial. Portland, OR: Portland Art Museum Publications, 1998. Lohrman, Charles J. ‘‘Colorful Exchange: American Indian Trade Blankets.’’ In Chihuly’s Pendletons. Portland: Portland Press, 2000. http://www.chihuly.com /essays/lohrmannessay.html (August 28, 2006). Shales, Ezra. Horse Tales: American Images and Icons. Katonah, NY: Katonah Museum of Art Publications, 2001. Watt, Marie. Blanket Stories: Receiving. Portland, OR: Lewis and Clark College Publications, 2005.

Emmi Whitehorse (b. 1957), Navajo Painter and Printmaker. Raised by her grandmother in the region northeast of Gallup, New Mexico, Emmi Whitehorse has vivid memories of her childhood. Her grandmother, a Navajo weaver, gathered a wide variety of plant materials, to make vegetable dyes for her yarns. An important part of that process was hanging the plants upside down to dry. Recalling those botanical arrays, Whitehorse has said that her biomorphic paintings are, more than anything, a ‘‘re-examination of what my grandmother did’’ (Regan 1). Whitehorse’s childhood was very traditional. Her family spoke only Navajo at home and lived on the land, herding their flocks of sheep. In a 1997 interview she described their way of life. ‘‘We had no running water or electricity . . . and we [lived in] a tent . . . We would [often] be outside. We had our table there, and we’d hang our food in sacks. Lots of stuff was dried . . . ’’ (Regan 1–2). Like many Native children, Whitehorse spent time in a repressive government boarding school, and while she was there (at about age ten), her mother and grandmother resolved to abandon the healing rites of the Navajo. Although the reasons for this decision were never clear to the artist, the effects were crushing. Pottery and fetishes, wedding baskets, and other materials were all thrown away. Nonetheless, Whitehorse had already come to know her heritage and traditions, which have remained in her mind and supported her creative endeavors. While attending public high school in Page, Arizona, Whitehorse was encouraged to express herself through the arts. At the urging of an enthusiastic teacher, she took drama classes and also explored the works of the old masters. Eventually, she entered a student art competition, and when she won the state prize (along with its monetary award), she began to see art as a possible career path. In 1975, Whitehorse began studying at UNM in Albuquerque. In many ways it was a disappointment to her. She found it ‘‘rigid, academic . . . [and] male-

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dominated’’ (Regan 2). The faculty at that time seemed almost exclusively committed to the Euro-American perspective in the arts, which often made Whitehorse feel like an outsider. There were, however, a number of important bright spots. Feminist artist Harmony Hammond was one of her teachers and encouraged her to break traditions, as well as to work larger. Whitehorse started to spread out her work on a table and to move the paint around with her hands instead of a brush. That was a turning point for her. ‘‘After that,’’ she says, ‘‘things clicked’’ (Indyke 44). She then encountered Garo Antreasian —a teacher there and a well-respected lithographer—who was very supportive of her work. In 1980, she received her undergraduate degree in painting and went on to earn her M.A. in printmaking two years later. While at UNM, Whitehorse developed a close friendship with fellow student Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. When Smith founded the Grey Canyon Art Group, Whitehorse immediately became a member. Her work was included in the Group Exposition of Native American Art at UNM in 1977 and was shown at the Wheelwright Museum in 1980, when she was still a student. When she graduated, however, Whitehorse felt it important to spend some time in the East. Although she found the atmosphere and living conditions difficult there, she profited immensely from hours spent in the museums of New York City, as well as the constant exposure to developments in contemporary art. While there, she also took advantage of her location as a departure point and traveled to Italy and Germany, studying European trends and showing her work there. In 1987, Whitehorse returned to New Mexico and began ‘‘an exploration of her background’’ (Regan 2). She worked through figurative references to many aspects of her Navajo heritage, including elements of Nature, figures from traditional stories, animals associated with the clan system and more. Eventually her work evolved into a nonobjective blend of her native background with her training in the techniques of modernist painting. Much of Whitehorse’s mature work has a thoroughly organic feel, populated by small, wriggling figures (alternately protozoan or calligraphic in nature). The diminutive ellipses, loops, spirals, and ‘‘tadpoles’’ seem to float in a kind of biomorphic soup, whose banks of atmosphere (or fluid layers) stretch out in the distance like an evolutionary playground. They seem to exist in suspended animation—or, when the watery depths suggest movement, it is a slow and dreamy one. Some works are so abstract, they suggest only currents of liquid itself, with overlapping stretches of watery, luminous color. In the end, many of the floating, linear elements strongly suggest plant matter, like dried flowers, bark fragments, seed pods, or dandelion puffs. These same features have been compared to pictographs, like bits of an ancient code, at once intriguing and indecipherable. Another perspective has cast her figures as microscopic entities—amoebas and algae perhaps—the single-celled organisms among the first life-forms. Full of blooming, transparent color, Whitehorse’s work has a vulnerable, ephemeral quality. The sense of Nature in her work comes, not only from the imagery, but also from the freshness and delicacy of the paint application. The seemingly liquid colors often create an internal glow that heightens the effect of fragile animation.

Emmi Whitehorse

The artist employs unusual and elaborate processes to build her paintings in stages. In 1999, her technique was described as one involving ‘‘layers of colored pigment [rubbed] into a base of acrylic medium . . . [and enlivened] with vigorous strokes of graphite and other drawing materials’’ (Wolf Krantz 1). Another writer remarked, ‘‘She layers chalk, turpentine and oil on paper, then draws with oil bars and litho crayon’’ (Indyke 44). Additionally, when finished, the work on paper is mounted on stretched canvas. This process is one that Whitehorse has adapted to working on board, although she says that this support is more inflexible, less ‘‘forgiving.’’ Whitehorse tends to think of herself as an artist who happens to be Native American (as do many Indian artists). She has said that her influences include experiences from her own culture, and even that she uses some imagery from the Navajo world. But at the same time, she bristles, naturally, at assumptions that her ethnicity sets limits on what goes into her art. She has described her exasperation when her early work ‘‘invited questions like, ‘Is this about ritualistic ceremonies that happened on the Navajo reservation in the middle of the night?’ ’’(Bensley 6) She has also remarked that much of her imagery comes from living in the open and spending time with nature—more so than any cultural leanings. Whitehorse has had an unusual career path, starting with professionally showing her work while still in art school. Philosophical about the challenges artists face in the studio, she talks candidly about the frustrations of getting ‘‘blocks’’ and starting over in a different direction. At the same time, she is buoyed up by her success, both in terms of her aesthetic achievements, and her professional presence in the world. In an interview in July 2000, she said, ‘‘This has always been a personal journey for me and always will be. It’s amazing how far I’ve traveled, that I can make a living at my art. I think I’ve survived because of my own stubbornness and determination’’ (Indyke 46). Deborah Everett Where to See Whitehorse’s Work Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE LewAllen Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, NY St. Louis Museum, St. Louis, MO

Bibliography Bensley, Liz. ‘‘Emmi Whitehorse.’’ The New Mexican: Pasatiempo, May 30–June 5, 1997, 6. Indyke, Dottie. ‘‘Nature’s Calm: The Atmospheric Paintings of Emmi Whitehorse.’’ Southwest Art 30, no. 2 (2000): 44–46.

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Richard Ray Whitman Rabgay, Pema. ‘‘Emmi Whitehorse Retrospective Opens.’’ The New Mexican: Pasatiempo, February 15–20, 1991, 7. Regan, Margaret. ‘‘Mixed Media Memories: Emmi Whitehorse’s ‘Stonewall’ Exhibit at TMA Blends Abstraction with the Navajo Aesthetic.’’ Tucson Weekly, December 1, 1997, 1–3. Wolf Krantz, Claire. ‘‘Emmi Whitehorse at Jan Cicero.’’ Art in America 87, no. 9 (1999): 133.

Richard Ray Whitman (b. 1949), Yuchi Photographer, Painter, MultiMedia Artist, and Videographer. Born and raised in Oklahoma (the state with the largest Indian population in the United States), Richard Ray Whitman has direct knowledge of the disturbing history of Native/non-Native relations. Originally known as ‘‘Indian Territory,’’ Oklahoma was the final destination of thousands of Indian people who were forcibly removed from their land during the 1800s and marched there from other parts of the country. As Whitman says, ‘‘(The state) became the dumping grounds for many of the tribes who stood in the way of progress’’ (http://www.britesites.com). It is both this systematic displacement of Native Americans, and their ongoing ability to survive it, that form the backbone of Whitman’s work. Whitman’s hometown is a small Yuchi community near Bristow called Gypsy. He was raised there by his grandparents, and he has an unwavering commitment to family and community. He speaks the Yuchi language—an unusual ability in the present day—and is thoroughly grounded in the traditions of his nation. Originally from Tennessee and Georgia, the Yuchi are part of the original Moundbuilders culture in the Southeast (flourishing from 800 A.D. to 1600 A.D.). With a rare dedication to fully understanding his roots, Whitman traveled back to his tribal homelands with his brother in 1995, in search of their beginnings. For the artist, it was not only a personal odyssey, but an aesthetic one, out of which Whitman created an affecting film—a montage of abstract, changing images which were then projected through the eye sockets of a skull. What is seen through those eyes is partially the landscape between Georgia and Oklahoma, as the Yuchi saw it when they traveled this route into exile in the 1830s—with many dying along the way. The mental and physical dislocation of that journey becomes inverted through Whitman’s award-winning film, The Grand Circle—in which the Mound structures, as well as the natural features of the land, reveal themselves as the source (and environmental counterpart) of the region’s first society. Whitman began studying art in 1968 at IAIA in Santa Fe, where he became friends with Native American artists whose work would become prominent in the coming years. But after a few years he migrated to the West Coast to attend Cal Arts (California Institute of the Arts), eventually leaving school again in 1973. This time, however, he was headed for a real-world battle over indigenous rights, joining the Indian occupation of Wounded Knee in South

Richard Ray Whitman

Dakota. The protest lasted for seventy days and turned into an armed confrontation with federal marshals. It did not occur without casualties or repercussions, but it focused worldwide attention on injustices suffered by Native Americans—including America’s long history of broken treaties, confiscation of Native lands, and the loss of sovereign status by Native nations. Participating in this historic event influenced Whitman deeply, and made him much more aware of his tribal citizenship, as well as the potential effect of political statements. At this point, his work began to reflect his conclusion that ‘‘America is based upon and built upon displacement, displacement of indigenous people, the host people of this country’’ (http://www. britesites.com). After leaving Wounded Knee, Whitman felt compelled to pursue an image he had first encountered years before. When he originally set off for art school, he had had a short stopover in Oklahoma City, where, for the first time in his life, he saw numerous homeless Indians on the streets. They were draped across sidewalks or in front of high-rise buildings, alone and adrift in a way that he was not accustomed to seeing. He returned to Oklahoma in 1973 and began a series of portraits that he would develop throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, and which eventually became his best-known work—Street Chiefs. For Whitman, this turned into one of the essential symbols of Native American experience—the ‘‘contradiction of being landless in your own land’’ (http://www.britesites.com). It was something he approached with great sensitivity and respect, as he documented the circumstances of these people who faced the daily trials of life on the streets. He refused to just snap their pictures and leave; he spent time with the men he photographed and got to know them personally. He once commented: I saw urban Indians who were very proud of being Indian . . . I was able to see that that experience doesn’t make us less Indian . . . I gained a lot from many people that I met . . . They had the spirit of resistance . . . [beyond] their street survival code, . . . they were able to maintain another kind of code, an indigenous code . . . [that] helped them function, or survive . . . It was more of a survival of the spirit. (http://www.britesites.com) Among the affecting images in the Street Chiefs series is Walter Straight, a portrait of a homeless but elegant, elderly Indian man. Despite the fact that he is seated on the ground, keeping one hand (which appears to be fingerless) off to the side, he is, without doubt, an individual of great dignity. His long, silver hair is immaculate and gently frames his warm, still handsome, face. He squarely confronts the camera, gazing deeply at his viewers, with an expression of wisdom and candor. He seems to challenge the audience to meet the vicissitudes of life with the same courage and endurance that he has. Similarly, Secret Patriarch, from the same series, shows an older Indian man, shaded by his baseball cap, waiting by the roadside with a plastic bag of belongings. Despite his homeless condition, he sits erect, one hand holding a long, makeshift ‘‘staff of office,’’ quietly confident in his ability to lead, if called

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upon to do so. These portraits suggest the keys to an honorable life—a clear knowledge of oneself and faithfulness to one’s principles, regardless of personal misfortune; they are deeply humbling lessons from those whose example might otherwise seem doubtful. Numerous curators have recognized the staying power of these images—which have been presented at the National Richard Ray Whitman. Bloodlines Two. 2007. Photograph. Museum of the American 13 in.  19 in. © Richard Ray Whitman. Indian, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and in ‘‘The Decade Show,’’ a three-museum exhibition held in New York in 1990. Additionally, they have been published in Lucy Lippard’s Mixed Blessings and the Aperture Foundation’s survey of Native American photography, Strong Hearts. A man of numerous talents, Whitman is also a painter, noted poet, and actor. Additionally, he is recognized for his eloquent essays, particularly about Native American issues and other indigenous artists. More recently, he has curated exhibitions, and sees that as an important role in achieving fair representation of Native American artists in the broader art world. Whitman has stated that he is a traditional Indian and a contemporary Indian at the same time, drawing deeply on his heritage, while exploring his individual identity in terms of political content. He has remarked that when one comes from a culture that has been colonized, the nature of one’s experience is, by definition, political. As an artist, he says his influences are both Indian and non-Indian, including the painters Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, as well as Native printmaker T. C. Cannon. In bringing all these facets together, he bears witness to his indigenous culture, while addressing a postmodern world. ‘‘It is the Indian way to be involved in defining who we are in the universe, to be concerned about our identity, and how we go into the future’’ (http://americanindian.si.edu/exhibitions/continuum/files_pdf/ richard.pdf). Deborah Everett Where to See Whitman’s Work Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN http://www.banffcentre.ca/wpg/exhibitions/pre2001/2000/0204_whitman/ http://www.britesites.com/native_artists_interviews/rwhitman.htm http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=10763553465

Charlie Willeto

Bibliography Abbott, Larry. A Time of Visions: Richard Ray Whitman (Interviews by Larry Abbott). http://www.britesites.com/native_artist_interviews/rwhitman.htm (accessed July 3, 2006.) Aperture Foundation (Peggy Roalf, ed.). Strong Hearts. New York: Aperture Foundation Publications, 1995. Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990. Peabody Essex Museum. Gifts of the Spirit. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum Publications, 1996. Rushing, W. Jackson. Native American Art of the Twentieth Century. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Charlie Willeto (1897–1964), Navajo Sculptor.

Also known as Alfred Walleto (a kind of nom de plume started by a trading post selling his work), Charlie Willeto was a very unusual self-taught artist. Viewed as a ‘‘folk artist’’ during his lifetime, he has recently become more widely known (this time as an ‘‘outsider artist’’—see Glossary) and has commanded attention at museums, metropolitan galleries, and art fairs. Much about his imagery and his worldview remains mysterious, but his work is now claiming new territory—as the art world comes to a new perception of his gift and the strength of his vision. Born in Ojo Encino near Torreon, New Mexico, Willeto grew up very traditionally. His father was a medicine man, or ‘‘singer’’ (so called because of their ceremonial role and their knowledge of scores of ritual songs). Willeto never attended school, like many Native children of his day; instead his time was spent herding sheep, carrying out household chores, and learning the complexities of Navajo culture and beliefs. Willeto grew up especially focused on the myriad details of the Navajo religion, as well as the rules that structured its healing ceremonies. By the time he reached adulthood, he was an accomplished practitioner of the Windway, a winter ritual (held for either five or nine nights) that cures a range of illnesses. Additionally, he practiced the Blessingway, an essential protective ceremony at the core of all rituals. He also occasionally participated in yeibichai dances—an important element of winter rites like the Nightway, which heals seasonal confusion, distraction, and depression. Willeto’s father, Pablo Walito, was a distinguished Windway practitioner who taught his son the fine points of that complex ritual early on. Willeto also studied under Juan Bitonie, another Windway singer and a friend of the artist’s father. In 1944, the two elder medicine men decided to unite their families by arranging a marriage between their children. At the time, however, Willeto was approaching fifty, and Bitonie’s daughter, Elizabeth, was only eighteen. Nevertheless, the marriage was very successful; the couple had six children, and their marriage lasted for twenty years (ending at the time of Willeto’s death).

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Like all singers (as well as ceremonialists in many cultures), Willeto was compensated for his services, usually with goods like blankets or sheepskins. He could, in turn, barter or sell the goods at local trading posts. However, after marrying, Willeto started a large and growing family, which made him increasingly concerned about providing for his wife and children. For that reason, he took on additional, part-time jobs: silversmithing, making moccasins, and working on a railroad—but the supplemental income from these activities was never enough. Gradually a solution materialized. Willeto’s profession as a healer sometimes involved making carvings, a custom that has been explained in several ways. Shonto Begay, Navajo artist and son of a medicine man, has remarked that ‘‘illness dolls’’ were used to absorb a patient’s sickness, after which they were buried in the ground to lock the illness away. Willeto’s first carving (described by his family) was a dog with blue eyes—made for a child who fell ill after seeing a dog killed by a car. In this case, the healing principle is that the dog took away the boy’s health and was therefore capable of restoring it; after Willeto placed the carving on different parts of the child’s body, the patient became well again and immediately regained his appetite. It is not clear how Willeto came to the decision to make carvings to sell. He may have seen figures for sale made by people from other cultures. It was certainly not a Navajo practice; Navajos regularly made jewelry and weavings to sell or trade, but not figures. In point of fact, it was expressly forbidden in that culture to make such images, except for curing purposes, and even then they were hidden away afterwards or quickly buried. Perhaps Willeto had heard of Clitso Dedman—the first Navajo artist known to defy tradition in this area; Dedman had begun carving figures of yeii (holy people—see Glossary) for sale a few years earlier. Alternately, Willeto may have been influenced by the fact that Navajo weavers were making blankets with yeii figures for sale (another highly controversial practice). But whatever the impetus, Willeto began to pursue the endeavor vigorously during his later years. The subjects of many of Willeto’s carvings, like the first one, were animals. A number of them were desert dwellers, such as lizards with patterned skins, as well as skunks and snakes. He also carved birds and was particularly fond of owls. These chunky, wide-eyed watchers seemed to connote the playful side of life for Willeto. His owl figures are particularly solid with heavyset legs and a variety of sporty, ‘‘feathered’’ patterns. Their eyes are completely round—as if they had just been spooked, while their wedge-like heads are topped by alert, horn-like ears. Most enigmatic of all, their expression resembles a beaming grin, sometimes with large rows of teeth, framed by frisky whiskers. (All owls have ‘‘whiskers,’’ or small, feeler-like feathers around the mouth, but Willeto’s have a distinctly jaunty, moustache-like quality.) The artist’s most unusual animal figure is Tiger Jumping Through a Hoop, reportedly based on a circus poster he saw at a local trading post. Another subject of Willeto’s work is ‘‘everyday people’’—that is, figures from the world around him. His Navajo Man has his long hair pulled back in traditional ‘‘chongo’’ style, a dark ‘‘velvet’’ shirt painted on, and a painted squash-blossom necklace and concho belt. Similarly, his Navajo Weaver is

Charlie Willeto

Charlie Willeto. Untitled (Navajo Man and Two Spirit Figures). 1960–64. Polychrome on wood. Height of tallest figure: approximately 19 in. © Willeto Family/John C. Hill Gallery. Photo courtesy of John C. Hill Antique Indian Art Gallery.

decorated with Southwestern colors and designs, as she holds aloft a weaving comb and batten. Many of his weavers have an archetypal, almost goddesslike quality. Perhaps the best known group in Willeto’s work comprises his ‘‘spirit figures.’’ Some of them have feather headdresses that suggest yeii or yeibichai figures. Many of the male figures have what appear to be horns on the sides of their heads (a frequent feature of masks and ceremonial headgear from the Southwest). Almost all of the ‘‘spirit figures’’ have their arms raised, suggesting an attitude of blessing or praise. Beyond these characteristics, the figures display considerable variety. Painted patterning varies from one ‘‘doll’’ to the next, at times clearly referencing specific designs from Navajo textiles. Other times, feather adornments are painted on the figures. A number of them hold aloft what appears to be ceremonial gear, perhaps rattles, prayer boards, or sacred plants. But certain references remain enigmatic, like the strange horned-man whose body is becoming enveloped by a large, black bull’s skull —or the Lizard Man who is being scaled by a giant reptile (or what looks like a desert cat to some). Perhaps both figures have begun a process of metamorphosis. Such tantalizing riddles are central to Willeto’s work, heightening its appeal with hints of the metaphysical.

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Willeto was a prolific artist, who created hundreds of figures in the last years of his life. The period of his artistic creativity is most often reported as lasting from 1960 to 1964. Recently, however, his widow Elizabeth has said that it may have actually been longer, perhaps starting as early as 1955. Either way, it constituted a relatively short time for creating such a large body of work. Today, with his sculptures on display in galleries and museums across the country, Willeto is reaching a new and larger audience. At the same time, his wife and sons continue to carve figures in the style that he established, extending his legacy far into the future. Deborah Everett Where to See Willeto’s Work David Cook Gallery, Denver, CO John C. Hill Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, NM Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, NY Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Bibliography Begay, Shonto, Walter Hopps, Lee Kogan, Greg LaChapelle, and John and Stephanie Smither. Collective Willeto. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2002. Carlano, Annie, ed. Vernacular Visionaries. Santa Fe: Museum of International Folk Art Publications, 2003. Hamera, Judith. ‘‘Disruption, Continuity, and the Social Lives of Things: Navajo Folk Art as Performance.’’ In TDR (The Drama Review). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Winter 2006. Patterson, Tom. Contemporary Folk Art. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Publications, 2001.

Y Steven Yazzie (b. 1970), Navajo/Laguna/Anglo Painter, Installation- and Performance Artist. A sensitive and multifaceted artist, Steven Yazzie creates a range of vibrant images with metaphysical twists and psychological undertones. Almost a contemporary Symbolist (see Glossary), he comments on life’s surprising possibilities and unexplained events, balancing the absurd with the idyllic. The underlying narratives, derived from his own life experience, make these works all the more provocative. Born in southern California, Yazzie comes from a family that understands what it is to struggle. His biological father, Lemuel Steven Yazzie, was half Navajo and half Laguna, and his life was filled with thorny battles, including shuttling in and out of prison. The artist (only four at the time his mother divorced his father) had little contact with his paternal relatives until he was an adult. Yazzie’s mother Kathryn is a non-Native from Michigan, and less than a year after divorcing, she married Richard Little, also Navajo, a born-again Christian, and a welder. In 1976, Little moved his new family to the Navajo reservation at Black Mesa, Arizona, close to his job at the Peabody Coal Mine. The artist has said, ‘‘My fondest memory of that time is [my mother] playing a baby grand piano in the single wide trailer we lived in. I still can’t figure out how she got that thing in there’’ (personal journal). The oldest of four brothers, Yazzie had an unusual childhood, both difficult and buoyant; the everyday joys were abundant, sandwiched between stunning natural beauty and extreme incidents. From his public school years, he has memories of building a fort with a coffee-can stove, but also of getting beaten up on two separate occasions. He often went fishing on majestic Lake Powell, catching striped bass and other striking creatures; he also watched his dad wreck the family boat there, during one of numerous drinking bouts. Yazzie has described his family as ‘‘very holy-rollerish’’ during that time, which he found perplexing and distressing. At the same time, it produced some touching moments—particularly the time his parents saved a runaway from suicide, pulling her off a highway and crying and praying with her. The girl became their foster daughter, until she left to raise her own family and was never seen again. In the end, the artist says, ‘‘Our small town church and my step-dad’s drinking problem set us up for all the classic struggles of a

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family of mixed race, cultural identities, religious bewilderment and community disenfranchisement’’ (personal journal). After high school, Yazzie enrolled in the Marines for a four-year tour of duty, which made him a foot soldier in the front ranks during Desert Storm and Desert Shield. He participated in ‘‘securing the Kuwaiti airport and dealt with walking through minefields, taking prisoners, firefights, sleeping with his gear on, and putting on and off his gas mask during daily patrols’’ (Rose 27). The artist’s experience there was intensely challenging, both physically and psychologically—and ultimately it was life-changing. After returning from combat, Yazzie learned that his paternal grandfather, Lemuel Yazzie, was a code talker during World War II, and the two then discovered they had a profound link—the one that exists between comrades-in-arms. Despite a delayed beginning, the two have developed an uncommonly close relationship, and the artist has created a number of paintings with his grandfather’s image. Yazzie has two personal tools that have gotten him through innumerable rough spots in his life: his sense of humor and his art. During his time in the military, he was known as the artist of his unit, and other soldiers would ask him to draw naked women for them, giving detailed descriptions of the attributes they wanted. Ever amused by the follies of human behavior, Yazzie ‘‘would think, ‘Don’t get too excited—all I have is a pencil’ ’’ (Rose 27). Yazzie’s narrative images are often executed with softened strokes in a painterly style, revealing scenes that range from the familiar to the bizarre. He may depict a farewell scene between a departing soldier and his dog, set against an ominously dark nighttime sky. Or he may paint a man and a boy performing the male ritual of flexing their muscles, but the man—inexplicably—has the head of a duck. In other works, Yazzie creates a collage of overlaid images, with the kinds of concrete symbols that appear in children’s educational games (where ‘‘A is for apple’’). Important among their meanings is that Yazzie was never taught the Navajo language and accordingly, has suffered communication gaps with his family. Other painted series include luscious, iconic images of a lone bird or cactus, almost like a Tarot card, with a suggestion of singular, almost mythical, meaning. And furthering his connection with the intuitive, the artist has created abstract paintings of smeared, sensual color, where selected spots are smudged free of paint—disclosing layered realities beneath. More recently, Yazzie has begun to delve into other forms of art-making. In 2006, Yazzie created an exhilarating multimedia work that bridges performance, drawing, and film: Drawing and Driving. Its concept was to explore perception as altered by our motorized, multitasking society. To that end, Yazzie built a small wooden car (much like a ‘‘go-cart’’) and attached an easel to it. Racing through the lofty spaces of Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border, Yazzie created exuberant drawings of the buttes and mesas he was passing. In many ways they bear a strong resemblance to the real thing—with jagged, layered textures that suggest interaction with natural forces. Additionally, Yazzie’s trajectory through the landscape was caught on film, revealing the parallel course between the ground he traveled and the marks he made.

Steven Yazzie

Another important project is Yazzie’s work with the creative collective that he cofounded, ‘‘Post-Commodity.’’ Composed of himself, Kade Twist (Cherokee) and Nathan Young (Pawnee/Delaware/Kiowa), the group experiments with contemporary American Indian expression in numerous forms. Their goal is ‘‘to create art that builds a culturally relevant bridge for American Indian people between inherited cultural traditions and the dynamic innovations of contemporary global society’’ (http://postcommodity.com). They have just returned from a stay in the Czech Republic (2007), where their installation Intersections explored the conflict between externally imposed borders and indigenous people who become displaced by them. In the process, PostCommodity discovered many unexpected connections between the resistance struggles of American Indians and the Czech social and cultural underground during the reign of Communism. An essentially self-taught artist, Yazzie’s accomplishments are feats of skill and daring. He has held numerous important residencies, including one at the Heard Museum and the renowned Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work figures in important public collections and is represented by several prominent galleries. He has received grant awards from such prestigious organizations as the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Perhaps more important than all the recognition is the fact that he allows himself to be vulnerable and real. He takes risks and follows their lead wherever that takes him. He says, ‘‘I truly think it’s because of my time in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait that I became an artist . . . [although] it wasn’t for another five years . . . that I realized making art was what I was going to do the rest of my life’’ (personal journal). Deborah Everett Where to See Yazzie’s Work Berlin Gallery, Phoenix, AZ Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ LewAllen Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ

Bibliography Esser, Greg. ‘‘Trailblazer, Twenty-First Century.’’ Phoenix Downtown Magazine (Phoenix), January 2007. National Museum of the American Indian. Remix. New York: NMAI Publications, 2007. Rose, Joshua. ‘‘Exile’s Return: Steven Yazzie Climbs His Family Tree.’’ Shade Magazine (Phoenix), September 2002. Tucson Museum of Art. Arizona Biennial ’03. Tucson: Tucson Museum of Art Publications, 2003. http://www.stevenyazzie.com

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Glossary

Abstract Expressionism

a style of making art that is generally abstract and in which the emphasis is on the artist’s expression of his or her subjective experience, rather than on ‘‘objective’’ reality; the visual impression derived from this category of painting often suggests strong emotions conveyed through sensuous and/or aggressive paint quality. Abstract Illusionism

a style of painting that employs trompe l’oeil techniques to create the illusion that abstract marks exist in three-dimensional space (often appearing to float in front of the canvas). alternative space

a gallery or viewing space that is not commercial; a nonprofit venue that is not directly affected by the art market and often tends to be more open to art beyond the established trends. anime´

although in Japan it refers to any form of animation, this term is used by the rest of the world to mean animation that is created in Japan and that almost always has cartoon figures with extremely large eyes, brightly colored hair, and other exaggerated features; Japanese anime´ is generally based on stories from manga (Japanese graphic novels), which are generally concerned with more serious issues than many American comics, but are still based in fantasy, and often feature toy-like animal characters, as well as human beings with child-like faces and sensual bodies, often acting within a futuristic setting. Art Brut (‘‘raw art’’)

art created by people outside the established art world and generally on the fringes of society (for example, recluses, prisoners, patients in psychiatric hospitals); also known as ‘‘outsider art.’’

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Glossary Arte Povera (‘‘poor art’’)

term coined in the 1960s to describe work in which the materials (such as twigs, soil, newspaper, etc.) are selected for their ‘‘worthlessness’’ in a commercialized art world and/or society. bas-relief (also known as ‘‘relief sculpture’’)

frontal sculpture on a planar support (a wall or panel, for instance), created by cutting away parts of the surface material to leave raised forms that constitute an image; this formal arrangement is distinct from ‘‘sculpture,’’ which may be ‘‘sculpture in the round,’’ or else the general category of any art object with some three-dimensional component. biomorphic

a type of form that resembles living matter. Blood quantum

an official measure of the percentage of an individual’s ancestry that is Native American. Chilkat blanket

a robe intended for ceremonial display and used during dances; a heavy garment with long fringes along its edge, which stream outward and swirl when the dancer wearing it whirls (the Tlingit term for it is naaxein, meaning ‘‘a fringe about the body’’). chongo

a term for the traditional hairstyle worn by indigenous men of the Southwest, in which their long hair is pulled back in a knot that resembles a bun or chignon. collage

a technique involving smaller components (which are sometimes cut from paper or other source) that are arranged together, usually on a planar surface, and fixed in place to make a composite image. Conceptual Art

a genre of art in which the concept, or idea, at the core of the artwork is more prominent and/or more important than the form or execution of the work.

Glossary Constructivism

an art movement in Russia around 1914 that later broadened in scope and spread to the West—originally characterized by industrial materials, clean lines, and clear relationships; it evolved into a term suggesting that art must serve a social purpose (that is, be useful) and later became more generalized, often used interchangeably with terms like ‘‘geometric abstraction,’’ ‘‘hardedge painting,’’ and related styles. Cubism

a style of making art (introduced by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque) that generally used more than one viewpoint to depict the subject matter and seemed to break up the exterior of its subjects into many smaller pieces—so that the world and its inhabitants appeared fractured and fragmented. Day of the Dead

a traditional holiday originating in Mexico, but now spreading to other countries, during which the souls of the dead are believed to return to earth; customs associated with this holiday include decorations and family feasts in the local cemetery to commune with lost loved ones, special sweets and breads in the shape of bones and skeletons, and small figures of skeletons in a variety of extravagant clothing and humorous situations. de Stijl (‘‘the style’’)

a group of mainly Dutch artists who came together in 1917, whose aim was to find rules of equilibrium and harmony that applied to life and society as well as art; their style was one of severe abstract clarity. Expressionism

modes of creating art in which distortion and exaggeration are employed for emotional and psychological effect; a specific style of art-making whose most important forerunner was Vincent van Gogh, whose vibrant and personal interpretations of outward form were aimed at expressing human passions. fansub

a genre of animation in which anime´ films are given subtitles created by their fans. Fauvism

an art movement at the beginning of the twentieth century in which wildly intense, exuberant hues were substituted for the natural colors of figures and objects.

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Glossary figuration

the creation of images, whether visual or literary, that depict figures (human or otherwise) that are generally recognizable as such; representationalism. ‘‘figure versus ground’’

a spatial differentiation in works of art between the field (overall space or ‘‘ground’’) of the image and the forms (or ‘‘figures’’) which appear on it or in it. first nation

a term used in Canada equivalent to ‘‘indigenous nation.’’ foreshortening

an art technique involving perspective and used to represent a form which looks distorted because of its spatial position in reference to the viewer (as when the arm of a figure is extended toward the viewer). formline design

the style of design used by Northwest Coast people to cover surfaces of an object, in which all forms are interconnected and suggest a network, almost as though they are extensions of each other (covering the surface with multiple forms without obscuring or foreshortening anything often forces the shapes to be bent or altered). gestural painting

a style of painting (often referenced in regard to Abstract Expressionism) in which the artist makes bold, assertive paint-strokes as though produced by broad, sweeping gestures of his or her arm. graffiti art

a style of making art that incorporates, or is based on, graffiti (the covering of a wall or public surface, usually in the medium of spray paint, with writing and/or images, often in a style that appears spontaneous and rough and may contain references to mass media and popular culture). graphic art

a general term for the category of print-making (including etching, lithography, silkscreen, wood-block prints, and other approaches).

Glossary hard-edge painting

an approach to painting that is stylistically crisp, involving extreme precision in the definition of forms and often tending toward flat colors and geometric, minimal shapes. iconography

a range of imagery and/or symbols that are characteristic of a specific style (which may be associated with a ‘‘movement’’ in modern art, with a certain period or area of art history, or with the traditional forms used by an indigenous culture). illusionism

the use of various techniques in painting (including linear perspective and the modeling or shading of forms) to create the illusion of real space. impasto

the heavy application of paint to a surface, which is then allowed to dry that way (rather than being blended in), often creating thick, rich textures. Impressionism

an art movement that began in the late nineteenth century, principally in France, that attempted to present visual reality as affected by the transient effects of light and color. Installation/installation art

a work of art that suggests or creates an environment within an interior; a large-scale assemblage work conceived for, and usually filling, a specific room space. Inuit names

single names were traditionally given to each Inuit individual; in the 1940s, however, the Canadian government conducted a census in which each person of Inuit descent was given a multidigit number (rather than surname) to differentiate between individuals with the same name; by the late 1960s, the Inuit sought the replacement of their hated serial numbers with a surname of their choosing, which was accomplished between 1968 and 1970. Kachina (katsina) dolls

small, carved cottonwood figures representing spirit beings (kachinas) that guide and protect the Hopi people; the dolls are traditionally given to children

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Glossary

by costumed dancers during ceremonies to teach them about their religion and to serve as blessings. ledger drawings

drawings made by Plains Indians usually in an active, linear style during their incarceration by U.S. troops, mostly during the 1880s–1910s; the drawings had roots in a style of painting developed by warriors and used to decorate their shields and war-shirts (and other objects made of skin) with depictions of their war exploits, but these drawings were made on pages pulled from ledger books and supplied to the warriors by the wardens of their prisons at various forts or by colonists. linear perspective

a structural device for two-dimensional artworks that converts actual parallel lines (often the edges of buildings) into ones that converge at the horizon, thereby creating an illusion of depth as objects disappear into the ‘‘distance.’’ Minimalism

a style of making art that involves extreme reduction of form and color, often resulting in highly geometric, flat-color images. mixed media

the combination of a number of media in creating an artwork (as in paintings that include collaged objects as well as painted sections). modernism

an approach to art that rejects academic traditions and particularly representationalism as being worn-out and overly burdened by concerns with artistic technique, without allowing for fresh modes of expression or risk-taking; as a philosophy, modernism attempted to revitalize the experience of art by linking it more fully to the exploration of perception, ideas, and internal realities, particularly through emphasis on abstract form. monochrome painting

a genre of painting where only one color or hue is used. naturalism

the term for styles of art-making that conform to representation of forms and spaces according to photographic realism.

Glossary Neo-Expressionism

an art movement that began in the 1970s that rejected the formal restrictions of Minimalism and Conceptualism, reintroducing both subject matter and gestural, expressionistic paint strokes. Neo-Plasticism

a term invented by Piet Mondrian for his severe, geometric abstract painting style, linked to his philosophy of art geared toward an ideal purity of form. new media

a term generally applied to any nontraditional medium, but especially to electronic media. Op Art

an art movement, or style, in which the active, optical properties of visual perception are stressed (for instance, the edginess created by juxtaposition of strong color contrasts or optical illusions—especially when resulting in kinetic qualities like the vibrating, flickering, or pulsing of the image). Outsider Art

see ‘‘art brut.’’ palette

literally the board on which a painter arrays dabs of paint for a painting session, but figuratively a general range (or combination) of colors that a painter tends to favor. performance art

an artwork that involves a performance of some kind, either through some form of action (by human beings or other components) or involves an implied social interaction through the presence of an individual. permafrost

ground in northern latitudes that stays frozen all year round; the term is now becoming an oxymoron, as the ice in the ‘‘permafrost’’ is now melting with global warming, leaving the ground waterlogged and spongy—and littered with the bodies of ancient trees, whose roots have been released by the soggy soil as they succumb to the force of gravity.

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Glossary petroglyphs

images carved onto boulders, cliff faces, and other outdoor rock surfaces (usually by indigenous cultures). pictographs

images painted on rocks in the landscape (usually by indigenous cultures). Pop Art

an art movement based on the imagery of consumerism and popular culture. Postmodernism

a term describing the era following Modernism and characterized by a multiplicity of styles and a questioning of the rigid movement of art and culture in a specific, linear direction. potlatch

a ceremonial event held by indigenous cultures of the Northwest Coast of North America, with emphasis on feasting, dancing, and especially the giving away of material goods; this formal occasion may serve many different purposes, but almost always involves a communal redistribution of wealth. prayer boards (and/or prayer sticks)

a ceremonial object of Native cultures, made from a stick or a flat piece of wood and decorated with specific imagery and materials, generally used to support the power of the prayer and to please the spirit being addressed; they may be used as sacred objects within a dance or ceremony, or left as offerings at altars or other sites. quill-work

images created (usually on garments or objects made from animal skin) by the application of small pieces of colored porcupine quills by Native people; this extremely difficult and painstaking art form was joined (and eventually almost replaced) by beadwork, after the introduction of glass beads by Europeans. relief sculpture

see ‘‘bas-relief.’’

Glossary representationalism

an approach to making art (especially painting and sculpture) based on the ‘‘realistic’’ representation of the world—that is, in a style as close to photographic reality as possible. sandpainting

a ceremonial method of making images that originated in Native pueblos of the American Southwest in which pictures are slowly formed by a holy man who dribbles colored sand upon the ground (or other surface); sometimes said to have originated with the Hopi or other pueblo people, sandpaintings have become an extremely complex art form associated particularly with the Navajo; traditional sacred imagery is used, but each painting differs according to the situation it seeks to ameliorate (sickness of various kinds, loss, etc.); traditionally, after the ‘‘painting’’ and its ceremony are complete, the holy man destroys the image, but popular copies of sandpaintings are now being created in a number of media as tourist art, or incorporated into other permanent artworks. sculpture

see ‘‘bas-relief.’’ sculpture in the round

art objects which are fully three-dimensional and which a viewer can walk through or around; also referred to as ‘‘freestanding sculpture.’’ Surrealism

an art movement begun in the 1920s and 1930s that explored and celebrated the irrational and subconscious aspects of the psyche. Symbolist art

an art movement of the late nineteenth century that valued dreams and spirituality and aspired to addressing basic human truths through metaphor and other indirect methods. trompe l’oeil (‘‘fool the eye’’)

a style of artmaking in which extremely realistic rendering of forms makes them appear to exist in three-dimensional space.

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Glossary yei

Navajo deities traditionally depicted in the imagery of sandpaintings (often as rather stiff, stick-like figures with extremely elongated necks, torsos or limbs), but in modern times also appearing in secular weavings. yeii’bichai

human ceremonial dancers (wearing masks and corresponding regalia) representing the yei, but generally depicted (on textiles or in other images) in a more ‘‘realistic’’ style, with more human proportions and gestures.

General Bibliography

Abbott, Lawrence. I Stand in the Center of the Good. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Anthes, Bill. Native Moderns. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Aperture Foundation. Strong Hearts. New York: Aperture Foundation Publications, 1995. Archuleta, Margaret, and Rennard Strickland. Shared Visions. New York: New Press, 1991. Berlo, Janet C., and Ruth B. Phillips. Native North American Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Fane, Diana. Objects of Myth and Memory. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1991. Farris, Phoebe. Women Artists of Color. Hartford, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Grimes, John R., Christian F. Feest, and Mary Lou Curran. Uncommon Legacies. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum Publications, 2002. Hessel, Ingo. Inuit Art. New York: Abrams Art Books, 1998. Lippard, Lucy. Mixed Blessings. New York: New Press, 1990. McFadden, David R., and Ellen Napiura Taubman. Changing Hands I: Contemporary Native American Art from the Southwest. New York: Museum of Art & Design Publications, 2002. McFadden, David R., and Ellen Napiura Taubman. Changing Hands II: Contemporary Native American Art from the West, Northwest, and Pacific. New York: Museum of Art & Design Publications, 2006. McMaster, Gerald, and Lee-Ann Martin. Indigena. Roseville, New South Wales, Australia: Craftsman House Publishing, 1992. Nemiroff, Diana, Robert Houle, Charleen Townsend-Gault. Land, Spirit, Power. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada Publications, 1992. Penney, David. North American Indian Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Rushing, W. Jackson. Native American Art of the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge Press, 1999. Seattle Art Museum. The Spirit Within. New York: Rizzoli Publishers, 1995. St. James Press (Roger Matuz, ed.). St. James Guide to Native North American Artists. Detroit: St. James Press, 1998. Touchette, Charlene. NDN (Indian) Art. Albuquerque: Fresco Fine Art Publications, 2002. Wade, Edwin. Arts of the North American Indian. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1986.

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General Bibliography Winch, Terrence, ed. All Roads Are Good. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004.

Helpful Web sites Aboriginal Curatorial Collective: http://www.aboriginalcuratorialcollective.org/ mainpage.html American Indian Community House Gallery: http://www.aich.org/aboutgallery. html Amerinda: http://www.amerinda.org Art Institute of Chicago: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/amerindian Canadian Museum of Civilization: http://www.civilization.ca Crow’s Shadow: http://www.crowsshadow.org Eiteljorg Museum: http://www.eiteljorg.org Heard Museum: http://www.heard.org Institute of American Indian Art—Museum: http://www.iaia.edu/museum/ National Gallery of Canada: http://www.gallery.ca National Museum of the American Indian: http://www.nmai.si.edu Native Networks: http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu Native Web: http://www.nativeweb.org Peabody-Essex Museum: http://www.pem.org/collections/native_american.php Wheelwright Museum: http://www.wheelwright.org

Index Aboriginal Achievement Award in Arts and Culture, 163 Abstract Expressionism, 67, 68, 91, 136 Abstract Illusionism, 68 AICH (American Indian Community House) Gallery, 27, 85–86, 174, 204 Aldrich Museum, xvii, 50, 55, 236 Aleut/Aleut artists, 49–52 Alfred, Eugene, 1–3 Algonquin/Algonquin artists, 140–142 Allan Stone Gallery, 67, 69 Alternative space, 92 American Indian, xvii. See also Indian; Native American American Indian Movement (AIM), xvi, 35 Anime´, 119, 176 Anishinaabe (also Chippewa, Ojibwa)/Anishinaabe artists, xv, 14–17, 17–19, 31–34, 55–57, 67–70, 78–81, 136– 40, 230–33 Apache/Apache artists, 57–60, 110–12, 117–20. See also Chiricahua Apache; Jicarilla Apache; Kiowa Apache Aperture Foundation, 27, 112, 176, 199, 242–43 Arapaho/Arapaho artists, 230–33 Art Brut, 68 Artforum, 19, 202, 230 Art in America, xvi, 113, 202, 207, 240 Art News, xvii, 54 Artists Space Gallery, 133, 229 Ashevak, Kenojuak, 3–6, 39 Athabascan (also Athabaskan, Athapascan, and other spellings), 1–3, 87–90, 95–99. See also Dane-zaa; Tutchone

Bartow, Rick, 7–10 Basketry/basketweavers (also basketmakers), 83–87, 155–58, 190–93, 216–19. See also fiber arts Begay, D. Y. (also D. Y. or DY), 10–14, 73 Begay, Gloria. See Grace Henderson Begay, Mary Lee. See Grace Henderson Belmore, Rebecca, xvii, 14–17 BigBear, Frank, xvii, 17–19, 230 Biomorphic, 53, 96, 237, 238 Blackfoot Confederacy. See Blood Blood (Blackfoot Confederacy)/Blood artists, 70–72, 196–99 Blood quantum, xvii, 159, 195 Bockley Gallery, 17, 233 Brooklyn Museum, The, 16, 163, 207 Caddo/Caddo artists, 167–170 Canadian Museum of Civilization, The, 106, 154, 163, 176, 183 Catriona Jeffries Gallery, 90 Ceramics/ceramic artists, 167–70, 176–79 Cherokee/Cherokee artists, 27–30, 34–37, 49–52, 205–8, 227–30 Chicago Art Institute, 29, 37, 52, 169 Chilkat blanket, 11, 193, 213, 214 Chipewyan/Chipewyan artists, 161–65 Chippewa. See Anishinaabe Chiricahua Apache, 117–20. See also Apache Choctaw/Choctaw artists, 52–55, 67–70 Chongo, 177, 178, 179, 244 Clayton, Lorenzo, xiv, 21–24 Cochiti (Pueblo de Cochiti or Cochiti Pueblo)/Cochiti artists, 176–79 Collage/collage artists, 22, 68, 198, 199– 202, 203, 222

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Index Colville/Colville artists, 45–47 Conceptualism/conceptual artists, 87–90, 158–61 Cooday, Jesse, 25–27, 129 Cooper, Thomas Joshua, xvii, 27–30 Cotter, Holland, 30, 190, 209, 211 Cree/Cree artists, 161–65 Cubism, 17, 26, 136, 189 Dane-zaa/Dane-zaa artists, 87–90 Decade Show, The, xvi, 121, 242 Deitch Projects, 94 Design/designer, 184–87 Devine, Bonnie, 31–34 Dine´. See Navajo Dorset Fine Arts, 5, 6, 40 Drawing Center, The, 92 Drawings/draftsmen, 3–6, 17–19, 39–43, 91–95, 147–51, 181–84, 230–33, 223, 234 Durham, Jimmie, xvii, 34–37, 79, 133 Eiteljorg Museum, The, xvii, 21, 109, 146, 194–195, 196, 210, 211, 222, 229, 235, 236, 239 Etidlooie, Sheojuk, 39–43 Evergreen State University, 47, 216–18 Exit Art Gallery, 118 Expressionism/expressionist style, 9, 58, 91, 93, 113 Fansub, 119 Feddersen, Joe, 45–47 Fiber arts/fiber artists, 10–14, 72–77, 99– 103, 147–51, 184–87, 213–15, 223–26. See also tapestry; weaving Figure versus ground, 18, 54, 127, 206 Film/filmmakers, 103–6, 127–32, 240 First Nation/First Nation artists, xv, xvii, 14–17, 31–34, 49–52, 61–64, 70–72, 78–81, 87–90, 140–42, 143–46, 158–61, 161–65, 170–73, 213–15 Fisher, Jean, 17, 18, 133 Flatness, 206, 234 Flomenhaft Gallery, 204 Formline design, 1, 26, 50, 96, 188, 215, 232 Froelick Gallery, 7–10, 45–47 Galanin, Nicholas, 49–52 Garth Clark Gallery, 178, 179 Gestural painting, 7, 54, 59, 60, 68, 93 Ghost Dance, 200 Gibson, Jeffrey, 52–55 Glass/glass artists, 45–47

Global warming, 99 Glueck, Grace, 90, 202 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, 163 Graffiti-art/graffiti technique, 36, 54, 59, 68 Grant, William J., 55–57 Graphic art/graphic artists, 1–3, 3–6, 21– 24, 39–43, 45–47, 57–60, 112–17, 117–20, 138, 143–46, 147–79, 181–84, 193–96, 196– 99, 199–202, 208–11, 223–26, 227–30, 230– 33, 233–37, 237–40 Gray, Darren Vigil, 57–60 Guggenheim Fellowship, 207 Guggenheim Museum, 68, 207 Haida/Haida artists, 170–73 Hannan, David, 61–64 Hard-edge painting, 205–8 Harvey, Sheldon, 64–67 Havard, James, 67–70 Heard Museum, xvii, 18, 19, 26, 29, 63, 116, 135, 141, 190, 204, 229, 239, 249 HeavyShield, Faye, 70–72 Henderson, Grace (and family), 72–77 Ho-Chunk (Winnebago)/Ho-Chunk artists, 112–17 Hopi/Hopi artists, 127–32, 184–87 Hupfield, Maria, 78–81 Illusionism, 68, 206, 233, 234, 235 Impasto, 68, 137 Impressionist technique, 58 Indian, xvii. See also American Indian; Native American Indian Act, 140–41 Indian Arts and Crafts Act, xvi Installation art/installation artists, 14–17, 21–24, 31–34, 34–37, 52–55, 61–64, 70–72, 78–81, 87–90, 95–99, 112–17, 120–23, 140– 142, 143–146, 158–61, 173–76, 193–96, 208–11, 233–37, 247–49 Institute of American Indian Art, xvi, xvii, 26, 55, 57, 58, 177, 220, 233, 240 International Center for Photography, 221 Inuit/Inuit artists, xv, xvii, 3–6, 39–43, 103– 6, 147–51, 153–55, 181–84, 223–26 Inuit names, 3 Inupiaq/Inupiaq artists, 95–99 Jason McCoy Gallery, 205–8 Jicarilla Apache, 57–60. See also Apache Joan Washburn Gallery, 207 Johnson, Terrol Dew, 83–87, 157

Index June Kelly Gallery, 229 Jungen, Brian, xvii, 29, 87–90 Kachina (also katsina) dolls, xiv, 92, 185 Kahlhamer, Brad, xvii, 91–95 Katsina. See kachina Kelliher-Combs, Sonya, 95–99 Kennedy Museum of Art, 13 Kiowa Apache, 57–60. See also Apache Klah, Hastiin (also Hosteen), 65, 99–103 Kunuk, Zacharias, 98, 103–6 Kwakiutl. See Kwakwaka´wakw Kwakwaka´wakw/Kwakwaka´wakw artists, 143–46 Laguna (Laguna Pueblo)/Laguna artists, 247–49 Lavadour, James, 107–9 Ledger art, xv, 92, 93 Lew-Allen Contemporary Art, 57–60, 202–5 Lippard, Lucy, 27, 37, 45, 60, 120–21, 134, 174, 205, 221, 222, 242 Little Turtle, Carm, 110–12, 129 Long Walk, The, 76, 100 Lowe, Truman, xvii, 112–17, 123, 139 Luisen˜o/Luisen˜o artists, 120–23 Lujan, Jason, 117–20 Luna, James, xvi, 120–123 Martinez, Mario, 125–27 Masayesva, Victor, Jr., 127–32 Mesquakie (Saux and Fox), 199–202 Me´tis Nation/Me´tis artists, 61, 61–64, 158–61 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 229 Michelson, Alan, 132–36 Micmac (also Mi’kmaq)/Micmac artists, 216–19 Minimalism/minimalist style, 153, 207 Miwok, Coast/Miwok artists, 155–58 Mixed media, 21–24, 31–34, 34–37, 49–52, 52–55, 61–64, 70–72, 78–81, 87–90, 95–99, 112–17, 132–36, 140–42, 143–46, 158–61, 161–65, 173–76, 187–90, 193–96, 196–99, 208–11, 216–19, 219–23, 233–37, 240–43, 247–49 Mohawk/Mohawk artists, 132–36 Monochrome/single-color painting, 96, 137, 200–201, 207 Morrison, George, xvi, 17, 113, 136–40, 216 Multidisciplinary artists, 49–52, 61–64

Museum of Modern Art, The, xvi, 92, 202, 207 Muskogee/Muskogee artists, 219–23 Myre, Nadia, 140–42 Nadle (third gender), 99 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow, 155, 157 National Gallery of Canada, The, 14, 16, 37, 135, 163, 183, 225, 229 National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), xvii, 13, 22, 24, 53, 54, 86, 109, 127, 132, 135, 140, 141, 144, 157, 169, 176, 179, 184, 186, 189–90, 202, 222, 228, 233, 242 Nations, xv. See also First Nations; tribes Native American/Native American artists, xvii, xiv, 91–95. See also American Indian; Indian Native American Church, 199 Navajo/Navajo artists, 10–14, 21–24, 64– 67, 72–78, 99–103, 219–23, 237–40, 243– 46, 247–49 Neo-Expressionism, 59 Neo-Plasticism, 205–8 New Museum, The, xvi, 90, 134 Nicolson, Marianne, 143–46 Northwest coast/Northwest coast artists. See individual First Nations and tribes: Haida; Kwakwaka´wakw; Tlingit Ojibwa. See Anishinaabe Okanogan/Okanogan artists, 45–47 Onondaga/Onondaga artists, 216–19 Oonark, Jessie, 147–51, 154 Op Art/optical effects, 139, 207 Outsider Art, 67, 243. See also Art Brut Pace Wildenstein Gallery, 30 Paintings/painters, 7–10, 17–19, 45–47, 52– 55, 55–57, 57–60, 67–70, 91–95, 95–99, 107–9, 125–27, 136–40, 143–46, 161–65, 176–79, 187–90, 194, 199–202, 202–5, 205– 8, 227–30, 230–33, 237–40, 240–43, 247–49 Pangnark, John, 153–55 Parker, Julia, 155–58 Peabody Essex Museum, xvii, 6, 42, 43, 106, 184 Penobscot/Penobscot artists, 190–93 Performance art/performance artists, 14–17, 34–37, 78–81, 120–23, 132–36, 247–49 Permafrost, 99

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Index Photography/photo-based artists, 25–27, 27–30, 31–34, 55–57, 110–12, 117–20, 143– 46, 173–76, 196–99, 219–23, 240–43 Phyllis Kind Gallery, 246 Poitras, Edward, 158–61 Poitras, Jane Ash, 161–65 Pomo, Kashiya/Pomo artists, 155–58 Pop culture, xiv, 18, 88, 91, 92, 197, 232, 234 Potawatomi/Potawatomi artists, 167–70 Potlatch, xv, 25, 144, 213 Pottery. See ceramics Prayer boards/prayer sticks, 245 Prints/printmakers. See graphic art/graphic artists Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life, 192 Public Art Fund, 133 Pueblo. See individual Pueblos: Cochiti; Hopi; Laguna Que´be´cois, 140 Ratcliff, Carter, 207, 208 Redcorn, Jereldine, 167–70 Reid, Bill, 170–73 Rhode Island School of Design, 137 Rickard, Jolene, 129, 173–76 Romero, Diego, xiv, 176–79 Rushing, Jackson, xvi, 243 Saila, Pitaloosie, 181–84 Sakiestewa, Ramona, 184–87 Salish, Flathead/Salish artists, 202–5 Sandpainting, 22, 64, 66, 68, 100, 101, 102 Santa Fe Indian Market, 66, 178 Saux and Fox. See Mesquakie School of Visual Arts, 25, 55, 184 Schoppert, Jim (Robert James), 96, 187–90 Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMOCA), 95, 249 Sculpture/sculptors, 1–3, 3–6, 7–10, 21–24, 31–34, 34–37, 49–52, 53, 61–64, 70–72, 78– 81, 87–90, 91–95, 95–99, 112–17, 132–36, 136–40, 140–42, 153–55, 158–61, 170–73, 187–90, 193–96, 208–11, 233–37, 243–46 Secord, Theresa, 190–93, 216 S’eiltin, Tanis Maria, 193–96 Seminole/Seminole artists, 208–11, 219–23 Seneca/Seneca artists, 233–37 Shields, Pamela, 196–99 SITE Santa Fe, 16 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 200, 249

Slick, Duane, 199–202 Smith, Jaune Quick-to-See, 26, 200, 202–5, 238 Smith, Leon Polk, 205–8 Stevens, C. Maxx, 208–11 Studio Museum of Harlem, The, xvi, 211 Studio School, The (Santa Fe), xv Surrealist influence, 5, 17, 18, 189 Tapestry, 10, 100, 184–87, 214, 234. See also fiber arts; weaving Tarahumara/Tarahumara artists, 110–12 Tate Gallery, 6, 30, 89, 90 Textiles, textile arts. See also fiber arts; tapestry; weaving Thlunaut, Jennie, 11, 213–15 Tlingit/Tlingit artists, 1–3, 25–27, 49–52, 187–90, 193–96, 213–15. See also Chilkat blanket TOBO (Tohono O’odham Basketweavers Organization), 85 TOCA (Tohono O’odham Community Organization), 85 Tremblay, Gail, 174, 216–19 Tribes, xv. See also First Nations; Nations Trompe l’oeil (fool the eye), 68 Tsinhnahjinnie, Hulleah, 29, 129, 219–23 Tuscarora (Iroquois Confederacy)/Tuscarora artists, 173–76 Tutchone (Athabascan)/Tutchone artists, 1–3 Tuu’luq, Marion, 141, 149, 223–26 University of Wisconsin-Madison, 45, 113, 114, 191 Venice Biennale, 16, 34, 122, 160 Video art/video artists, 51, 103–6, 117–20, 132–36, 140–42, 219–23, 240–43, 248 Wabanaki. See Penobscot Walkingstick, Kaye, 227–30 Walla Walla/Walla Walla artists, 107–9 Wallach, Amei, xvi Wallowing Bull, Star, 17, 230–33 Watt, Marie, 233–37 Weaving/weavers, 10–14, 72–77, 99–103, 184–87, 213–15. See also fiber arts Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 58, 101, 238 Whitehorse, Emmi, 237–40 Whitman, Richard Ray, 129, 240–43 Whitney Biennial, The, 34, 37, 122

Index Whitney Museum of American Art, The, 37, 121, 134, 136–37, 207 Winnebago. See Ho-Chunk Willeto, Charlie, 243–46 Winnipeg Art Gallery, 43, 63, 150, 155 Wiyot/Wiyot artists, 7–10 Yale University School of Art, 161, 234

Yaqui/Yaqui artists, 125–27 Yazzie, Steven, 247–49 Yei (also Ye’ii), 22, 64–65, 101, 102, 244 Yeii’bichai, 64, 243, 100–102, 244. See also Yei Yuchi/Yuchi artists, 240–43 Yurok. See Wiyot

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About the Authors DEBORAH EVERETT is a critic and arts writer who has covered the art scene in New York and internationally for over ten years. Her reviews and articles deal with contemporary art in all media, as well as providing analyses of art issues and trends. She has also written about art historical subjects and architecture, and she has composed catalogue essays for exhibitions at the Architectural League in New York City, Kentler Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), and Long Island University. Her work has been published previously in ZingMagazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and articlemagazine.com. She currently writes for Sculpture magazine and NY Arts. ELAYNE ZORN is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida. Her research during the past twenty-five years has examined community tourism and traditional and tourist arts in highland Peru and Bolivia, focusing on how indigenous Quechua-speaking people build on traditional cultural practices to cope with globalization. Publications include Weaving a Future: Tourism, Cloth, and Culture on an Andean Island (2004), and articles, book chapters, and Web sites on topics including textiles, tourism, food, and Latin American folk artists in Florida.