"Kanutche Dogs: Contemporary Cherokee Art" at Firegod Gallery, Opens Friday, May 6th

Image: detail of Commodity, Roy Boney

Albuquerque, NM — Eleven Cherokee artists will participate in an upcoming group art show at the Firegod Gallery, 3413 Central Ave, NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106.

An opening reception will take place Friday, May 6th, from 6:00 – 9:00 pm. This event is free and open to the public. The show will run through May 31st.

On Saturday, May 7th, from 2:00 – 4:00 pm, computer animation and claymation videos in the Cherokee language by Roy Boney, Jr. and Joseph Erb will be displays, following by question and answer period about using art to preserve tribal languages. This lecture is also free and open to everyone.

Artist America Meredith will present a two-part presentation, free and open to the public, about Cherokee art history from precontact times to the present, on Saturday, May 28th, from 2:00 – 4:00pm.

The Cherokee tribe is an enigma. Over 800,000 people claimed Cherokee descent on the 2010 US Census; however, very few people are familiar with Cherokee culture or arts. Of the 300,000 actually enrolled in of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, only about 10,000 people speak the Cherokee language–mostly in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Only an estimated 500 Cherokee people participate regularly in stomp dances, the traditional expression of Cherokee religion, at the seven ceremonial grounds in Northeastern Oklahoma.

This show hopes to share culturally-informed contemporary Cherokee art with the general public and Cherokee people in New Mexico. New Mexico has such a large Cherokee population that it is home to the Southwest Cherokee Township, a satellite community of the Cherokee Nation.

The show’s title comes from a folk term, Kanutche Dogs, for the America dingo or Carolina dog, the indigenous dog of the American southeast that has been an important part of Cherokee society. “Kanutche” (pronounced kah-NUH-chee) is a traditional Cherokee food made from hickory nuts.

• Roy Boney, Jr. (Cherokee Nation), from Locust Grove, Oklahoma, is a painter, illustrator, digital artist, and computer animator, who uses the Cherokee language extensively in his work. He also created a series of zombie comics for Slave Labor Graphics.
• Ross Chaney (Cherokee Nation/Osage Nation), from Santa Fe, New Mexico, is an emerging expressionist painter and draftsperson.
• Joseph Erb (Cherokee Nation), from Gore, Oklahoma, is a painter, digital artist, and computer animator, working to preserve the Cherokee language. Mixing new and old technology, Joseph also paints on gourds, an ancient Cherokee art media, and uses imagery from the Booger Dance, a masked dance unique to the Cherokee people.
• Lara Evans, PhD. (Cherokee Nation) is an experimental photographer and painter, as well as a professor of Native art history at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her work was recently published in Art in Our Lives: Native Women Artists in Dialogue.
• Fran Hill is a contemporary ceramic artist from Albuquerque, who is an active member in the Southwest Cherokee Township.
• Daniel Horsechief (Cherokee Nation-Pawnee) is a bronze sculptor, wood carver, and painter from Sallisaw, Oklahoma. He is an alumnus of the Institute of American Indian Arts.
• America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) is a painter and printmaker from Santa Fe, who is also an IAIA alumna. She will exhibit her recent experiments in fumage (smoke art).
• Mary Beth Nelson (Cherokee Nation) is a painter specializing in wildlife. She lives in Guthrie, Oklahoma.
• Lisa Rutherford (Cherokee Nation) of Tahlequah, Oklahoma specializes in southeastern beadwork and ceramics, but is also experimenting with traditional featherwork clothing. She showed at SWAIA’s Indian Market for the first time in 2010 and won an award for ceramics.
• Sean Ross (Eastern Band Cherokee) from Cherokee North Carolina combines humor, social commentary, and Cherokee culture in his paintings.
• Arlo Starr (NTA Cherokee-descent), a painter, currently lives in Albuquerque but was active in the development of the Squirrel Ridge Ceremonial Ground in Kenwood, Oklahoma. He worked with Cherokee elders to create a healthy cookbook based on traditional foods.

Firegod Gallery specializes in quality and innovative contemporary Native American art. It is owned by Silvester Hustito (Zuni), an artist and curator.

• Firegod Gallery website
• Kanutche Dogs show website

Upcoming symposium: Essentially Indigenous

Essentially Indigenous?: Contemporary Native Arts Symposium
Thursday, May 5, and Friday, May 6, 2011
National Museum of the American Indian in New York
George Gustav Heye Center; Diker Pavilion
One Bowling Green, New York, NY

This is a free event. I can't go (someone has to create the art and curate the shows, right?), but if you're in the New York area - check out it. If anyone wants to share feedback about the symposium, I would be very grateful! Session topics include:

• Essential Images: On the Critical Production and Reception of Contemporary Native Art
• Essential Place: The Relationship between Native Art and Place
• Blood Memory: Indigenous Genealogies and Imagined Truths
• Indigenous Aesthetic Paradigms: Community and the Artist.

Registration info.
Schedule online.

In Praise of Annual, Competitive Art Shows: The Trail of Tears Art Show

Resurgence, Daniel Horsechief, at the CHC

While new Indian art markets seem to pop up like mushrooms – despite the horrible economy – annual, intertribal competitive art shows have decreased, not increased, in number. With the loss of the Lawrence Indian Art Show in Kansas, which operated independently of the Haskell Indian Art Market, the number of annual shows open to all tribes is down to two. As far as I know, there is only the Red Cloud Indian Art Show and the Trail of Tears Art Show.

A few more annual shows are limited to certain tribes. Founded in 1997, “Here Forever” is an August show at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute in Pendleton, Oregon. It’s open to enrolled members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, that is Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla tribes. The Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma sponsors a competitive show each June and July that is open to members of all federally and state recognized Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole tribes. Each August/September, the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma hosts the Cherokee Homecoming show open to enrolled members of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. For the last three years, the Cherokee Nation hosts the Cherokee National Holiday Art Show in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Both markets and art shows serve worthy purposes. While art markets are exciting events for socializing and networking, they can also prove expensive and exhausting for artists. Many emerging and elder artists might not have the inventory to fill a booth, and familial, academic, or job commitments or health issues prevent many artists from traveling to markets. Art shows, as opposed to markets, allow these artists to participate and share their work and ideas. And unlike markets, the art, not the artist, is showcased. One can quietly spend as long as one wants examining and reflecting on the work, allowing for a deeper understanding of content and underlying crosscurrents between works.

Both the two annual intertribal art shows are in Indian County: Pine Ridge, South Dakota and Park Hill, Oklahoma, which allows the local Native communities to see what’s going on in the contemporary indigenous art world. And both are free to enter, which in the art world in extraordinary. Usually art spaces will host a competitive art show as a fund-raiser, since it’s common to charge $5 to $50 just to enter.

The Trail of Tears show is near to my heart because it the first place I ever exhibited my art. Since 1995, I’ve shown in it every year. Now in its 40th year, the Trail of Tears art show (TOTAS) was founded in 1971 by the Cherokee National Historical Society at the Cherokee Heritage Center. All entries to first shows were limited to the Trail of Tears theme, which proved too narrow a focus. My mother says that at the shows’ low point less than half a dozen people showed up at the reception to see the four or five entries for the entire show. The following year, the show opened up to new categories.

Categories now include painting, graphics, pottery, basketry, miniatures, and Trail of Tears theme. This year was exciting because, thanks to sponsorship by the Chickasaw Nation, a jewelry category was added. The show now allows photography and digital art, but these compete with hand pulled prints, drawings, and even scrimshaw. Every year I crack up when I read the rules explicitly prohibiting painting on saw blades.

This year had an excellent turnout, and visitors at the opening reception said it was too crowded to even see the art (which is why you have to visit more than once). The show had 155 pieces from 95 different artists, but representing only 13 tribes. It seems that is has been more tribally diverse in the past, and I hope it will be in the future. I didn’t see any non-Cherokee baskets. Attention indigenous basket makers of America, please enter next year! Both sales and prize money are good, and it’s a great opportunity to share your work with a largely Native audience.

The grand prizewinner was Putting the Pieces Together, a gorgeous and haunting ceramic sculpture by Troy Jackson (Cherokee). The foot tall figurative work has an elegant Mississippian-esque man composed of black and white jigsaw puzzle pieces, holding black and white pieces in his hands. The figure sits on a blanket on top of a container bearing the word, ᏣᎳᎩ (Cherokee). The lip of the bowl has a lug of copper wire holding a white cross. Small coiled, copper earrings also provide a touch of color. Representing a mixed blood individual’s identity struggles and that of the entire tribe, the piece is ultimate serene, suggesting a resolution and acceptance of a mixed identity.

Shan Goshorn’s High Stakes; Tribes Choice won best of graphics category. Her photograph of a traditionally dressed Eastern Cherokee man is accented with an array of glitter, suggesting the glitz of casino lights more than the spiritual sparkle of mica or other sacred minerals. Sharon Irla’s very classically painted Corn Mother is a beautiful, naturalistic, oil painting of Selu as a tattooed woman with closed eyes, clad in a fur robe, and wearing wampum and shell necklace and pearl bracelets. She holds a white swan feather fan, symbol of a Beloved Woman’s authority. Before her sits a shallow tray of ripe corn. Irla delicately implies erotic energy in manner that doesn’t cross local sensibilities.

David Pruitt's Fire Carrier, a raku clay sculpture of the southeastern Mississippian water spider who brought fire to humanity, won best of the ceramics category. The large number of ceramics entries is a testimony to the work of Anna Sixkiller Mitchell and recently Jane Osti, who offers pottery classes from her studio in Tahlequah.

Lisa Forrest won best of the basket category with her ambitiously large Traditional Storage Basket, woven from vegetal dyed honeysuckle runners. This basket is a foot in diameter, with a delicately woven lid, embellished with seedpods and hazelnuts. Gathering one’s own materials and dyeing with natural dyes is greatly prized in Oklahoma basket weaving; however, I saw some nice doubleweave baskets in commercial reeds. At least the lesser materials allow new weavers to master the art of doubleweaving.

Best of sculpture category was a naturalistic wooden carving, Redtail Hawk by Darrell Smith (Cherokee Nation). The attention to detail was extraordinary with every single feather carved out.

Navajo jeweler and teacher Fritz Casuse won first place in the new jewelry category, with his impressive towering Cala ring with abstract floral designs. His wife Wanesia Misquadace (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) won second and third places. Misquadace is one of possibly a dozen birchbark biters active today, and she travels to northern Minnesota each year to harvest the bark. She incorporated birchbark bitings of turtles in her second place winner, A Song and Prayer for Mother Earth, a canister of birch embellished with silver. Personally I also greatly enjoyed Charley Johnson’s Man from Etowah.

The Trail of Tears category, open to work about any forced removal such as The Long Walk, was won by James Wing with his oil painting, Trail of Tears Water Crossing, a realistic narrative piece portraying two men and a woman trudging through the snowy forest.

Because of the nature of the show, many emerging artists participate, and the quality is uneven. Due to the uncurated nature of the show, one get a more direct feel for trends in styles and subject matter, where genre and figurative art well represented. Many works reflect agrarian culture, such as Choctaw artist Norma Howard’s painting of working cotton fields or Amy Smith’s still life of eggs. Relationships between artists are evident everywhere with relatives and teachers and students showing together. Rose Drake entered a tribute, Quiver for Gunter, in memory of the Cherokee basketweaver, Gunter Anderson, who recently passed on.

The Trail of Tears art show runs through May 8.

If you are interested in entering the Red Cloud Indian Art Show, the information is online here. You have until May 1st to let them know what you want to enter.

Revitalizing Bacone College's Native Arts Program: An Interview with Tony Tiger

Ataloa Lodge, Native art museum on campus

Turning off Highway 62 onto Old Bacone Road in Muskogee, Oklahoma will lead you to a cluster of native red stone buildings with blue slate rooftops. Some buildings date to the 1880s. This is the campus of Bacone College, the oldest continuing Native American institution of higher learning. The school boasts the oldest continuing Native American art program in the country. Celebrating its 75th year, the Art Department was founded in 1935 and is unique in that Native American artists have always directed the program. Bacone College itself was founded in 1880, when it was simply known as Indian University. While its campus stands within the Muscogee Creek Nation’s tribal jurisdictional area, and the college maintains close relationships with area tribes and the American Baptist Churches, the school remains an independent four-year liberal arts college.

Professor of English and Philosophy Mary Stone McClendon (Chickasaw) founded the Art Lodge at Bacone in 1932. Her Chickasaw name was Ataloa, and the art museum was later renamed the Ataloa Lodge in her honor. The comfortable, home-like museum exhibited her extensive collection of Native American art. “Many of the beautiful things created by Indians have been taken far away, to museums in the east, where the Indians rarely see them,” she said at the museum’s dedication. “We want to bring many of those things here… where Indians may see them and be inspired by them” (Elder 64).

In 1935, the charismatic dancer, actor, and artist Acee Blue Eagle (Pawnee-Muscogee-Wichita) helped establish the college department and became its first director. Studying under the Kiowa Six’s mentor, Oscar Jacobson (Swedish-American), Blue Eagle helped create the Bacone style of painting, which was in the flat-style popular among Native artists at the time. He drew upon his Southern Plains and Southeastern oral history and worldviews, as well as Modernist influences such as Art Deco. This syncretic, versatile style became a vehicle for expression for artists whose tribes had, due to Removal and cultural upheaval, lost their tribally-specific traditional painting styles.

Tony Tiger (Sauk and Fox-
Muscogee Creek-Seminole)

Woody Crumbo (Muscogee-Potawatomi) replaced Blue Eagle in 1938. Crumbo was a dancer, musician, muralist, and easel painter. In 1947, Crumbo was succeeded by Dick West, a Cheyenne peace chief and father of the National Museum of the American Indian’s founding director, Rick West. Ruthe Blalock Jones (Shawnee-Delaware-Peoria) directed the art program from 1979 and now works as a fulltime artist. Tony Tiger (Sac and Fox-Muscogee-Seminole) took the reins from Jones as Director of the Art Department. He has extensive experience and working with Indian young people in the US and Canada, and is an award-winning mixed media artist. Tiger’s work incorporates images of family photographs with vividly hued, transparent layers of paint, and, often, sculptural elements, which differs dramatically from the work of his predecessors.

I was highly impressed by the Bacone students who attended last year’s Native American Art Studies Association (NAASA) conference in Norman. A Kiowa student in particularly was quite articulate about how his art was created for family and community, not for the larger art world. Listening to these young Bacone artists made me curious to know more about the new director’s efforts to revitalize this long-standing art program.

Why did the faculty of Bacone back in the 1930s feel the need to create a visual art program? Why are visual arts important to Native students today?
From what I have heard and read, the study of the visual arts was a natural progression in Native education. Many students created and excelled in many art forms already, such as pottery, weaving, carving, and painting. The forms were primarily either utilitarian in nature or history based, items such as baskets, pottery, and ledger paintings. The study of art, form, subject matter, and content, for the Native student has evolved. Technology and the influence of contemporary society on the Native population is evident in the art that young Native artists are creating.

How large is the art program? What tribes are most represented?
The art program at Bacone is continuing to expand, and each semester we are accepting more art majors. There is also a growing interest in the art program, enticing students from other disciplines to take the classes we offer. The tribes most commonly represented on campus are Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole, but there are students from tribes throughout the United States and Canada studying at Bacone.

What are some common themes you see emerging in your student’s work? What are their goals are artists?
Technology and mass media are very influential, and as a result themes emerging from both technology and mass media are quite prevalent. Many students are also interested in mixed media and digital imaging. As far as their goals as artists, we have students who desire to go into many different aspects of the art world. I considered it the program’s goal, since we are still an associate’s degree program, to give the students a strong foundation in the arts. We want to prepare the student’s for the next level of study.

You’ve been cleaning out storerooms filled the artwork. What was your most unexpected find?
I found the original ink drawing by Dick West, The Founding of Bacone.

Do you find time for your own artwork? Has your experience at Bacone so far changed your art?
Yes, I have a studio in McCombs Art Building. I teach a class, go down to my studio and work until my next class. I have an upcoming solo exhibition at the Southern Plains Indian Museum which will run from July-September 2010. I have found the history of the institution has influenced my new work. My grandfather attended Bacone in the early 1900s, and that family history combined with the names and images of the past is fueling a new body of artwork.

Your mixed media work is a dramatic departure from the art for your predecessors. What kind of response does your work receive in northeastern Oklahoma?
I have received good reviews in the media and in responses from fellow artists. The word “new” is used a good deal, and the mixed media applications create interest and questions about the content and form.

Cited Work:
• Elder, Tammy Liegerot. Lumhee Holot-Tee: The Art and Life of Acee Blue Eagle. Edmond, OK: Medicine Wheel Press, 2006.

Review | Double Vision: New Works by Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie

Recovering forgotten histories of 19th century Native American photographers, curating shows, and organizing international indigenous photography conferences, the self-identified “aboriginal savant” Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie has dedicated herself to furthering  the cause of Native photography. The Diné-Seminole-Muscogee artist created a new series of digital prints on fabric at the Great Plains Art Museum in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. She responds to photography by non-Natives — photographs in the Great Plains Art Museum’s permanent collection.

When invited to view early photos of indigenous peoples, Tsinhnahjinnie writes that she does “hesitate when invited to view or respond to them. I scan the messages, intentional and unintentional messages” and “reflect[s] upon the intention of the ‘subject’."

“It is my hope that these new works present a visual confrontation,” Tsinhnahjinnie writes, “an argument with premise that should be critically reviewed and endless questioned.”

Tsinhnahjinnie created large-scale digital prints on poly-satin, hung from curtain rods. Digital art, existing in the zero-space of a computer, can take a range of forms from computer monitors, light projections, or on prints on paper resembling traditional photographic prints. By choosing poly-satin, a polyester fabric with a dramatic sheen, Tsinhnahjinnie ‘s pieces become movie theater-esque — "silver screens."

Her dark palette of blacks, silvery blues, purples, browns, and a process cyan referencing CMYK prints, imbues the work with a dreamlike or nightmarish quality, punctuated by bright citron, red, and orange accents.

The first piece that confronts the viewer is one of the strongest, A Penny for Your Thoughts, derived from Laton Alton Huffman’s Stereoscope postcard, Taking the Tongues. Images of the buffalo nickel form a border below a giant buffalo nickel combines with Huffman’s print, featuring a man stretching a tongue for cutting from a buffalo corpse, one of eight – some partially butchered. The overarching, larger buffalo from the nickel resembles snowcapped mountains. Tsinhnahjinnie  changed the nickel’s text to “United States of Amnesia,” which is a little predictable; however, the text E Pluribus Unum takes an ominous tone, when one considers that the buffalo were slaughtered almost to extinction to destroy Plains Indians way of life and pen them on reservation to ultimately try to assimilate them in mainstream American society; that is, to make many people into one.

Laton Alton Huffman’s Taking the Tongues, is displayed next to Tsinhnahjinnie’s response. It’s a diminutive and faded sepia-toned Stereopticon (think View-Master) from Miles City, Montana, of the lone hunter butchering the eight buffalo carcasses; his rifle resting on one. I studied the piece carefully to clues to the hunter’s identity–was he Native or not? Ultimately it didn’t matter; one man killing eight buffalo at once is excessive no matter what their background is.

This image and the presence of the “Buffalo Nation/Bison Nation,” as the artist describes the animals so crucial to Plains culture, form a backbone to the show. The second work by Tsinhnahjinnie, Taking the Tongues, shows the same image darkened with the right image reversed to form a mirror with Ronald McDonald leaping through the frames. Ronald McDonald, who looks fairly demonic even in the best of times, presents a jarring representation of contemporary consumer culture, the demise of buffalo, and our own health – a food imperialist.

Another of Tsinhnahjinnie’s digital collages, Five Minutes Work, uses an earlier photo from the same series. The inversed image, mostly cyan, reminiscent of an architect’s blueprint, features the same eight buffalo carcasses with a lone horse instead of a man. In the first panel, “Excuse me” is scrawled above the horse and in the second, “I did not sign up for this!” Tsinhnahjinnie’s multilayered, darkly humorous work, braiding together history and 21st century banality,  reminds me of my favorite contemporary British artist, David Godbold. Anticolonialism figures strongly in both the artists’ work.

Two photographers provide Tsinhnahjinnie with the majority of her inspiration: Laton Alton Huffman (1854-1931) from Iowa, learned photography from his father, was attached once by Dull Knife (Cheyenne), and settled in Fort Keogh, Montana in 1879-1880. He later became a hunting guide and rancher and sold buffalo hides to supplement his photography sales (Sharyl Ferrall). The second photographer is William Henry Jackson (1843-1942), who owned a portrait studio in Omaha, Nebraska and was the first published photographer of Yellowstone National Park and the Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde (Getty Museum).


The Jackson Brothers provide the albumen print, Pawnee Indian—the inspiration for Mega Sale.  The Pawnee man in a fur hat and buffalo space is given a black scrawl down his face (a single tear?) and is treated to either the “dry brush” or “watercolor” filter in Photoshop, a program that also surprisingly has a “smudge stick” filter. A graffiti monkey and writing complete the piece, which is captioned by a Hawaiian Punch-esque font proclaiming: “The idea that history is about us.”

Since Photoshop is so associated with advertising and desktop publishing, it’s disconcerting when the rules of typography and graphic design are broken. For instance, The Special features a variety of disconcordant fonts from the original William Henry Jackson photograph, with “Pawnee, Omaha Special, specializing in authenticity!”  added in a font featuring stars for the i-dots. This piece is flanked by several 19th century photographs of the photographer’s work places — ranging from a cowhide tent, with a railroad and power lines faintly visible in the background to images of large interior spaces with workers a sinks, revealing that photography of Native Americans and the West were big business.

The show concludes with a tetraptych, Today I Was Thinking… At first it seemed like an afterthought, but luckily the space is ideal for sitting with the art. After awhile it began working on me. The four horizontal printed textiles were inspired by L. A. Huffman’s hand-colored platinum print, copyrighted in 1912, Buffalo Grazing the Big Open, shot in northern Montana in 1880. They feature the buffalo herd on a black background, accents with yellow and orange. The first has a photographs of moon phases, the second warped citron moons arching over the sky, as if referencing the eons passing with the buffalo herds shaping the Plains landscape; in the third Ronald McDonald once again rears his ugly head; and finally peace is restored and the buffaloes quip that “Real Indians eat curry.” This piece seems like Paiute prophet Wovoka’s vision of the buffalo returning but really says they never left the Plains and contemporary consumerism is just a blip in the timeframe of the Bison Nation/Buffalo Nation.

• Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie's website

Images: © Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie. Nota bene: Images in art show reviews fall under the doctrine of fair use. Landes, William M. “Copyright, Borrowed Images, and Appropriation Art: An Economic Approach.” George Mason Law Review. Fall 2000: 6.

Meta-Criticism: Responding to the Response to the Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains at the Brooklyn Museum, Conclusion

First and foremost, open, honest dialogue that is ongoing is good. Not every Native artist wants a non-Native audience, but for those that do, the response is informative. Several of the writers were receptive and responsive to the works in Tipi but others had points of serious disconnect.

If this show were at the National Museum of the American Indian, the response would no doubt be different. Perhaps the show is experiencing some of the backlash Nancy Mithlo has described that happens with Native artists step outside the Native art arena for the larger art world.

With various levels of elitism in the art world, some writers from Manhattan might be prejudiced against Brooklyn or shows designed for the general public instead of a specific art world audience. Many writers geared towards children, which perhaps in their views negates the seriousness or sophistication of the art presented. Museums are constantly looking at ways to reach out to new audiences and create interactive exhibits, so is this regard, I’ll wager the show will be a success.

By disconnect, I refer to instances the writer is literately not responding to what in the show at all but writing about their own preconceptions. One writer laments the fact that buffalo hides are no longer used for tipi construction; another writers points out that a buffalo hide tipi is being constructed as part of this very exhibit. All the references to tourist kitsch were not only insulting but illuminating. It is important that non-Native youth experience Native culture outside the arena of highway souvenir shops (never mind that the souvenirs certain writers might be writing about were most likely not made by Natives).

While tourism was mentioned, hippies, New Agers, and hobbyists were not mentioned in context of tipis, even though these three groups are often the owners and residents of tipis. However, these groups might be just as exotic as Native Americans to the writers.

The requests for more tragic historical information surprised me, but part of the cultural imprint of Native Americans in the current US psyche is the tragic figure, or as Mary Brave Bird (Brulé Lakota) puts it, “Lo, the Poor Indian.” That Natives’ right to be happy is an issue is evidenced by Ryan Red Corn and Sterlin Harjo’s recent video, “Smiling Indians.” The artists aren’t being superficial or avoiding hard discussions when they tone of the work presented is cheerful. There’s a direct message there: we have the right to be happy and to be three-dimensional living people instead of walking stereotypes of tragic loss. Trust me, every one of the participating artists is keenly aware of their tribal histories, of land loss, massacres, and other human rights’ violations. They are saying that there is more to them and their tribes than loss.

A happy surprise was that none of the art writers mentioned problems with “craft” and “fine art,” and they do not question the state of contemporary works as art. Since that false dichotomy refuses to die here in New Mexico (I am personally committed to helping kill it), it’s encouraging to not see in the East.

Since I’m used to hearing complaints about Native art being too interested in the past, I was surprised and troubled by the repeated complaints about the contemporary work being “problematic.” I did notice none of the writers mentioned Vanessa Jennings (Kiowa-Pima) — were they not aware that she’s also a living, contemporary artist? 19th century Plains Indians are locked into the American consciousness but more and more, contemporary Americans seem to not know how to deal with living Indians. Are there mental blocks? Absolutely. Living indigenous artists don’t want to be the Exotic Other or assimilated, so a new conceptual space for contemporary Native art must be carved out in the mainstream art world.

Joseph Sutton’s point that Native American cultures are “integral to our country’s history” is one approach. Despite assimilationists’ best efforts, tribal cultures have touched every aspect of American society — government, agriculture, medicine, pop culture, etc. To fully live in the US, one should know about Native cultures. None of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution, but I definitely study both, and pay attention to contemporary political art. Commonalities arising from sharing a land could be emphasized in promoting living Native arts to non-Native peoples.

Cross-cultural communication is possible. Curators Nancy Rosoff and Susan Kennedy Zeller are knowledge and sensitive to Native American art, artists, and greater cultures. I believe through their efforts, as well as the artists’ and consultants’ effort, cross-culturally conceptual bridges will the built and strengthened.

For a person such as myself, who is 2006 miles away from the art show, the museum published an amazing catalog, featuring a dozen essays and excellent photography. The artists contributed essays, as well as curators and other art writers.

Rosoff, Nancy B. and Susan Kennedy Zeller. Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, 2011. Hardcover, 304 pages. ISBN 978-0295990774.

Meta-Criticism: Responding to the Response to the Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains at the Brooklyn Museum, Part Two

Continuing to look at writing about the Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains currently at the Brooklyn Museum...

Rosenbaum, Lee. “Beyond the Tepid Tepees: Brooklyn’s Engrossing Plains Indian Show.” CultureGrrl. 17 March 2011.

The New York Times disabled comments to Ken Johnson’s article, so award-winning art writer Lee Rosenbaum responded to him on her blog in “Beyond the Tepid Tepees: Brooklyn’s Engrossing Plains Indian Show.” She said she “loved this show!” and yet, she delivers one backhanded insult after another. Rosenbaum feels the contemporary art “don't measure up to their antecedents.” Teri Greeves’ Great Lakes Girls, a fully beaded pair of high-heel shoes, which Rosenbaum labeled as “kitsch”; however, Greeves’ beading ability compares very favorably with many 19th beadworkers, and she uses finer materials. Rosenbaum describes Lyle Heavy Runner’s tipi as “big” and “garish.” Perhaps if it were a century old, then it would be “prodigious “ and “graphically bold.” The contemporary artworks are “modern knock-offs.” What are these 21st century post-modern artists “knocking off”? Are they not allowed to bead, carve buffalo horns, weave baskets, or sew tipis? By what authority? Is there any aspect of these works that suggest they were finished quickly and without care?

Rosenbaum shares information text from and even photographs of the museum labels, demonstrating that Ken Johnson’s criticism that the exhibition "offers no revelatory perspective on its [the show's] contents” is unwarranted.

As she brings up in her Wall Street Journal article, Rosenbaum has major issues with the curators choosing to not display culturally sensitive shield covers imbued with medicine. You either respect Native culture and appreciate that some things are not made for general public to view, or you don’t. Attempting to divorce the aesthetics of an artwork from its content is to undermine the intentions of the artist. When it comes to culturally sensitive items that cannot be seen by the public, the only parallel in Western culture I can think of is the Ark of the Covenant (burned into our collective psyche by Indian Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark). Rosenbaum writes she “was of course disappointed that Brooklyn had to fall back on a newly created substitute.” So Marcus Amerman’s fused glass sculpture can’t be seen as an art piece in its own right, with its own aesthetic qualities and content? Am I to assume Sherrie Levine’s photography is also “a newly created substitute?” Does Amerman and the other contemporary artists simply have nothing valid to say? That would make them unique among artists—being devoid of independent viewpoints or experiences.

Rosenbaum wraps her response up with her view that those interfering tribal consultants “restricted Brooklyn's display of pipes” by having the pipe stems and pipe bowls displayed separately because inserting the stem into the bowl “activates the power of the pipe,” as curator Nancy Rosoff explained to Rosenbaum. Kudos to Rosoff for being respectful and showing the pieces separated allows the viewers to see more, not less, of the pipe’s components.

Rosenbaum, Lee. “Shows That Defy Stereotypes.” Wall Street Journal. 15 March 2011.

“Today's curators want visitors to view Indian artworks not as quaint ethnographic artifacts, but as vital expressions of a living culture, spanning prehistory to the present,” writes Lee Rosenbaum about Denver Art Museum’s new Native American galleries. I can’t agree enough. While praising the museum, Rosenbaum finds the juxtaposition of old and new works “exasperating” and is troubled by Bently Spang’s photography war shirt. She describes the Northern Cheyenne artist as “suddenly ubiquitous,” which is ironic, since the artist has been steadily exhibiting for two decades. His works “are meant to be seen, not worn, are also on view in Manhattan and Brooklyn.” So, is this a problem? He’s an installation artist, performance artist, photographer, and filmmaker. Should I be sad that I can’t wear Guy de Cointet’s or Nairy Baghramian’s artwork? Should Sprang not exhibit his artwork in Manhattan or Brooklyn?

Nancy Blomberg, curator of Native American art at the Denver Art Museum, is quoted saying, "Everything in this gallery was new when it was made. . . . I didn't want to separate prehistoric from historic from contemporary.” Yes! This simple statement is powerful. We want our present, our future, and our past, and to acknowledge the continuity between them all. Someday the mainstream art world will accept the fact that Native cultures evolve just like every human culture the earth.

The oddest comment by Rosenbaum was suggesting that museums working with Native advisors can “diminish” art exhibits and cites Nancy Rosoff and Susan Kennedy Zeller’s decision to not display warrior’s shield imbued with medicine in the Brooklyn Museum’s Tipi exhibit. I applaud Rosoff and Zeller for their decision, which honors the deceased warriors, their medicine, and their tribes and protects the audience from exposure to potential danger. By being respectful of culturally sensitive materials, tribes will want to work with these curators in the future and will most likely be more forthcoming with information and artworks to share with the museum.

Rosenbaum suggests the two curators had to “settle” for a fused glass shield by Choctaw artist Marcus Amerman. I would love to “settle” for one of his five-digit glass sculptures, which win awards and are in major collections throughout the country. But a profound ambivalence to contemporary indigenous art permeates all these critiques.

Karlins, N. F. "At the Brooklyn Museum: Tipis of the Brooklyn Plains." Artnet. 2011.

N.F. Karlins, a New York critic and art historian, wrote a highly informative and straightforward piece for Art.net, “At the Brooklyn Museum: Tipis of the Brooklyn Plains.” Karlins discusses gender roles in art, ownership of designs, aesthetics, and changing traditions. One line strikes an strange chord: “…Native Americans had architecture as well as art’’ – are there cultures without architecture? But overall, this is a well-written, concise critique. Of the 11 illustrations, the only contemporary images were two works by Teri Greeves.

Deliso, Meredith. “Home on the Range! Brooklyn Museum Reaches New Heights with Tipi Exhibition.” The Brooklyn Paper. 15 Feb 2011

Melissa Deliso’s description of the Tipi show is enthusiastic, and she took the time to personally interview curator Susan Kennedy Zeller. She writes about a “Southern Shayne tipi.” I make type-o’s and spelling errors too, but I don’t have paid copy editors reading my text. “Cheyenne,” besides being the capital of Wyoming, is a standard word in all computer spellcheckers. In composing her title, Deliso was most likely unaware that Kansas’ state song, “Home on the Range” has a verse devoted to the ethnic cleansing of Natives from Kansas: “The red man was pressed/from this part of the West,/He's likely no more to return/To the banks of Red River where seldom if ever/Their flickering campfires burn”.* Fortunately the ethnic cleansing was unsuccessful and Kansas is home to four federally recognized tribes and Haskell Indian Nations University.

* Higley, Brewster and Dan Kelley. “Kansas State Song: Home on the Range.” State Symbols USA.

Sutton, Benjamin. “The Brooklyn Museum Turns Tipis Inside Out.” The L Magazine. 2 March 2011.

Benjamin Sutton wrote about the functional and conceptual aspects of a tipi and about the complex and interdependent Plains gender roles. He points out that the exhibit included tipi liners painted by Rain-in-the-Face, a 19th century Lakota warrior, and Harvey Pratt, a living Cheyenne Vietnam veteran. He makes the interesting observation that tipis are “places to display pride and admit vulnerability.” Unfortunately, Sutton also seems to be troubled by contemporary Native art, writing that “Contemporary pieces problematize such functions” and is concerned that Crow artist Mary Lou Big Day’s dolls are sold in galleries instead of being played with. So the problem isn’t that Mary Lou Big Day has chosen a potentially utilitarian or “craft” form of art; it’s that they are valuable and featured in art institutions. Maybe the longstanding tradition of highly valuable Japanese ningyō would be an appropriate comparison?

Levin, Ann. “'Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains’ on view at the Brooklyn Museum.” The Associated Press. Via North Jersey.com. 1 March 2011

Ann Levin wrote a descriptive piece literately with when/where/how much information about the show. She describes practical details of the “tepee” and paraphrases the rules of behavior in a tipi as outlined in the show’s signage. She described lessons Dennis Sun Rhodes (Northern Arapaho) learned from his grandmother and Levin concludes, “Maybe all of us should be living in tepees.” Her description of the show was concise, precise, and thoughtful.

Sutton, Joseph. “Review of the Tipi Exhibit: Wandering the Great Plains at Brooklyn Museum.” Brooklyn Exposed. 21 Feb 2011.

Joseph Sutton is the first writer who comes out and speaks to the unrealistic perspective about Native Americans that is so pervasive in the United States. He mentions that Brooklyn only has 0.3% Native American population, which acknowledges that Brooklyn has a Native American population. Sutton encourages his readers “to satisfy their curiosity of a culture integral to our country’s history.” This is profound; the Native American isn’t the Other. Natives and non-Natives are united by a common national history. Sutton describes Harvey Pratt’s Vietnam War Experiences Tipi Liner and discusses Native military traditions. He talks about earlier works being functional first and aesthetic second. A basket by Arapaho-Seminole artist Carol Emarthle-Douglas (not Carole Emarthele-Douglas),“Gathering of Nations” is presented as an example of the shift towards aesthetics over utility in contemporary Native art. Sutton’s statement that “the basket is strictly art” is huge in a climate when “crafts” are frowned upon.

Sutton writes, “It’s a privilege to have such insight on a culture we do not pay enough attention to outside of stereotypical portrayal in the media.” The “we” implies that the readers cannot be Native themselves, but other than that, his critique was well written and thought out. He suggests the show is didactic, which is a legitimate criticism.

ICTNM Staff. “Brooklyn Exhibit Focuses on Plains Culture.” Indian Country Today. 2 March 2011.

I had hoped to close by writing about Indian Country Today’s assessment of the Tipi exhibit; however, all they had was a brief blurb and a slide show. There’s an enigmatic, uncensored comment questioning Lyle Heavy Runner’s Blackfeet heritage, a subject I know nothing about. But if you want anyone to seriously consider what you have to say, LAY OFF THE CAPS LOCK. Native magazines tend to be uniformly promotional in tone. So no criticism from the Native side, yet… I’ll definitely watch for more Native responses formal and informal. Hopefully a Native critique will be forthcoming.