Intertribal Competitive Shows Coming Up

The two major annual, competitive art shows are coming up. Both are great opportunities for emerging Native artists to showcase their work and are free to enter.

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The 41st Annual Trail of Tears Art Show takes place at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma. This year the Chickasaw Nation is the primary sponsor of the show. It's open to all members of any federally recognized tribe, pueblo, or Alaskan village, over the age of 18. Categories are painting, graphics, sculpture, pottery, basketry, and jewelry. Digital images of entries should be emailed to Mickel-yantz (at) cherokee.org (ignore what the rules pdf says; the cherokeeheritage.org e-mails don't work anymore). Accepted entries will be posted on March 21. The show runs from April 8, 2012 to May 8, 2012.

A pdf entry form and rules can be downloaded here.

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The 44th Annual Red Cloud Indian Art Show takes place at the Red Cloud Heritage Center and Museum in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. This show is open to all members of US federally recognized tribes, as well as Native Hawaiians and First Nations and Inuit of Canada. Divisions are painting, drawing, graphics, photography/computer generated art, mixed media, three dimensional, and contemporary or traditional cultural items, such as beadwork, quillwork, musical instruments, textiles, and clothing. An email or letter stating intention to enter that show must arrived by May 1, then entries must be delivered by May 11. The show runs from June 3 through August 12, 2012.

An entry form and rules can be downloaded here.

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There's actually a third, annual intertribal show. The Cherokee National Holiday Show, sponsored by the Cherokee Nation, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma over Labor Day weekend is actually open to all US federally recognized tribes; however, I'm not sure they are equipped to receive and ship artwork out of the region. Check this website closer to the date for more information.

54th Annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market

Singers at the Fair modeling awesome regalia

The weather for this year’s Heard Fair was perfect. Cool and calm, which set the tone for the weekend. Comparisons to SWAIA’s Indian Market are inescapable, and the Heard is much more relaxed, genteel affair, being affiliated with and taking place on the grounds of the Heard Museum. Due to the accessibility of Phoenix, being a major hub for air travel, the Heard draws proportionally more artists from farther regions, especially Alaska, than Indian Market, which has a specific focus on southwestern/ Oasisamerican tribes. I wonder, though, how many non-artist visitors travel into town for the weekend or if the main draw is from residents of the Phoenix metropolitan area?

For some reason I have a strong desire to understand how the fair, the museum, and the Phoenix art scene tick, since it’s clearly very different than New Mexico or Oklahoma. Native Peoples Magazine and Southwestern Art Collector cover the fair. The Arizona Republic ran a preview in February saying that 20,000 visitors attend the fair, garnering $200,000 in proceeds, which makes the fair the Heard Museum Guild’s largest annual fundraiser. The article confirms that the number of artists, expanded last year, is still 700. Perhaps the expansion was made for financial reasons for the Heard Guild, but the number of artists seems to overwhelm the space, and certainly the facilities.

Best of Show: Techno Kid on the Run

The Heard does a fantastic job getting through own information out through the Heard Guild’s and the Heard Museum’s websites museum store’s and Berlin Gallery blogs, twitter, and other social media. I found out who the Grand Prize winner was when my friend from Tahlequah posted it on Facebook.

Stetson Honyumptewa (Hopi) won Best of Show with his action-packed, intricate, and humorous carving, “Techno Kid on the Run,” which, to the best of my limited understanding on the subject, features Wiharu, the white-faced ogre, attacking a misbehaving youth.

Classification winners include Samuel LaFountain (Diné/Ojibwe, from New Mexico) for Jewelry and Lapidary; Anita Fields (Osage, from Oklahoma) for Pottery; Micah Wesley (Kiowa/Muscogee Creek, from Oklahoma) for Paintings, Drawings, Graphics, Photography; Stetson Hunyumptewa (Hopi, from Arizona) for Wood Carvings; Ryan Benally (Diné, from

Pima-Maricopa Roy Manuel's kiaha, burden basket, in action

New Mexico, born in Arizona) for Sculpture; Catherine Blackhorse (Seminole, from Washington) for Textiles, Weavings, Clothing; Dyanni Hamilton-Youngbird (Diné) for Diverse Art Forms; and Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy, from Maine) for Baskets. Each category had three judges, except Wooden Carvings and Sculpture, which were combined, for a total of 21 judges. I’ve never heard an estimate of how many of the 700 artists enter the competition.

Entries must be delivered by 5pm on Thursday and can no longer be mailed in due to widespread damage to works in shipping (or so goes the word on the street). Judging takes place that evening. The Heard doesn’t have a ceremony to announce the winners, but by the time the dinner and Best of Show reception, which are quite wonderful, takes place, visitors are treated to a printing listing of the winners and brief biographies of the judges.

Good news about the economy flooded the airwaves in days leading up to the fair. This, like all other markets, is a jeweler’s market. I would love to see an overview of who was buying what. Some new artists did extraordinarily well. Many established artists whose work I have the utmost respect for sold nothing all weekend. Many veteran artists didn’t attend due to the economy, and several others said they couldn’t return next year. Even if you want to attend, the expenses are steep and it’s just not feasible, even if the event is enjoyable. Since I quizzed so many friends about how their market went, I made a chart to show the ups and downs of my own sales at the Heard.

The Heard used to permit artists to sell two reproductions in their booths but ceased. Unfortunately many fairgoers can’t afford major original works. The prints and note cards were the artist’s gas money. While a booth entirely of reproductions isn’t desirable, allowing two reproductions would not lower the quality of the market; and certainly not as much placing as a kettle corn booth across from an art booth.

The courtyard at times was swarmed, as was the museum store and bookstore. Several authors were honored at the event. A variety of musicians and dancers performed, including Navajo flautist R. Carlos Nakai. In the Berlin Gallery, Sarah Sense (Chitimacha-Choctaw) signed copies of her newly published catalog, Weaving the Americas, which documents artists she interview on her travels through North and South America.

People from the Heard Guild do definitely take care of their artists. The dinner reception was, as always, really wonderful, as was Native Peoples party. Thanks so much to Jose and Frances for their annual parties. And thanks to my two major artist collectors who like to fly under the radar! Maybe next year I’ll finish up my painting before the weekend and actually get to see some of the art shows around town again.

• McClellan, Jennifer. 3/3-4: Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market in Phoenix. Arizona Republican. 28 Feb 2012. Web.
• Heard Fair on the Heard Museum Website
• Berlin Gallery Blog (they now represent me - ᎠᎴ ᎦᎵᎡᎵᎦ!)

Narcissa Chisholm Owen: The Mother of Cherokee Painting?

Narcissa Owen, 1907, WikiMedia Commons

If Cecil Dick (1915–1992) is the “father of Cherokee painting,” then would a Cherokee woman born 84 years before him be the “mother of Cherokee painting”? Narcissa Chisholm Owen (1831–1911) won awards for her naturalistic oil painting, and several of her works survive in museum collections today.

Narcissa was born on October 3, 1831 at Webber Falls, Indian Territory (Jacobson and d’Ucel 265). Her father, Thomas Chisholm, was a third chief of the Old Settlers, the Cherokees who migrated west prior to the 1838 forced removal known as the Trail of Tears.

She gave an extremely colorful version of her family tree, describing Thomas Chisholm as the “last hereditary head of the seven great clans that comprise the Cherokee Nation,” giving his Cherokee name as “Heil-Steky-Yearle” or “Little-Rusty-Knife.” She also described her ancestor as “Queen” Quatsis (NYT 1911), completely bypassing and overshadowing others’ claims of Cherokee Princess ancestors. Emmet Starr writes that Thomas Chisholm, who married Malinda Wharton, was elected Third Chief of the Western Cherokees on 16 July 1834, under the Principal Chief John Jolly (Starr 474). The Owen family was predominantly of Scots-Irish descent; however, her father belonged to the ᎠᏂᎩᎶᎯ, Anigilohi, or Longhair Clan (NYT).

Narcissa majored in music and art at the Anderson’s Female Seminary in New Albany, Indiana (Owen and Kilcup 56; Cocker), and graduated from the Fayetteville Female Academy. In 1853 in Tennesseee, she married Robert Owen, a European-American railroad tycoon, and the couple eventually moved to Lynchburg, Virginia (265). The Civil War and aftermath left the family in poverty. Robert died in 1873, so Narcissa taught music to support herself and her two sons (265). in 1850 (OHS). By 1880, Narcissa moved back to Indian Territory, with Robert Latham “Oconostota” Owen Jr. who served as an Indian Agent in Muskogee before being elected as one of Oklahoma’s first US senators. Narcissa Owen taught music at the Cherokee Female Seminary, one of the first institution of higher learning for women west of the Mississippi.

At the age of 62, Narcissa devoted herself seriously to painting (NYT). “In oil painting and miniatures I have of late years found great interest,” she told the New York Times reporter. "I also sometimes indulge in sketching in watercolors as an agreeable pastime."

Both Narcissa’s father and grandfather had been friends with Thomas Jefferson (Jacobson and d’Ucel 265). Her two oil paintings, Thomas Jefferson and His Descendants, won a medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, more commonly known as the St. Louis Exposition, in 1904. An additional painting won a diploma (NYT). Her three painting and several of her tapestries “were admired by the many thousands who visited the Territory pavilion” (US 270).

Thomas Jefferson and His Descendants

is now part of the Herman Collection of the University of Virginia Art Museum. The medal belongs to the Oklahoma Historical Society, who also owns her 1896 self-portrait and a copy she made of Charles Bird King’s portrait of Sequoyah (Jacobson and d’Ucel 266).  Three portraits, including one of her stepfather, William Wilson, are the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa (Cocker).

In 1907, Owen published the book, A Cherokee Woman's America: Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, which has recently been republished in 2005 in a version edited by Karen L. Kilcup. Owen died on July 16, 1911 in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Both her self-portrait and the surviving Thomas Jefferson painting are technically adept and rooted in realism. Attention is lavished on details such as hair, faces, furniture, eyeglasses, and jewelry. The backgrounds and textiles are soft and muted, showcasing the warm, glowing flesh tones of the subjects. Even with such a small corpus of surviving known works, Owen’s pride in her Cherokee heritage is evident in her portrait of Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary.

With her academic American art education and embrace of contemporary easel art techniques, Owen joins the ranks of Angel De Cora (Hochunk) and Edmonia Lewis (Ojibwe). Although these 19th century indigenous women artists had an education based on European-American perspectives, they used Native subject matter in their works, albeit not exclusively. Most significantly they exhibited their art in the mainstream art arena and kept abreast of new developments of the art world.

Bibliography

Sequoyah, Narcissa Owen after Charles Bird King

• Cocker, Jordan Poorman. "Narcissa Chisholm Owen." Gilcrease Museum. Web.
• Jacobson, Oscar B. and Jeanne d’Ucel. “Art in Oklahoma.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 32, no. 3 (1954): 263–77. Web.
• “Mother of U.S. Senator an Indian Queen; Mrs. Narcissa Owen, Daughter of the Last Chief of the Seven Great Cherokee Clans, Is a Charming Old Lady of Distinction Whose Talent in Art Has Won Recognition.” New York Times. 22 Jan 1911. Web.
• Starr, Emmet. History of the Cherokee Indians and Their Legends and Folk Lore. Oklahoma City, OK: The Warden Company, 1921. Web.
• United States, Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission. Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission, 1906. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1906.

Upcoming Art Events

In the juggling act between writing about and creating art, the latter has taken the front seat recently. Some upcoming art events I'll be participating in include the following.

Facing the Sunland: Works by America Meredith + Sally Ann Paschall + Kay Walkingstick
Jan 20–Feb 13: Berlin Gallery at the Heard Museum
2301 No. Central Ave, Phoenix, Arizona
Opening reception: Friday, Jan 20, 6–8pm
Indigenous Visions artist talk: Saturday: Jan 21, 1:30–2:30pm

Lumen: IAIA
Jan 27–Feb 20: Red Dot Gallery, 823 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM
Opening reception: Friday, January 27th, 5-7pm

H2OK: Native Responses to Water Issues
February 10—March 10:  120 E. Main Street, Norman, OK
April 6—May 13: Bacone College Art Gallery, Art Building, Old Bacone Road, Muskogee, OK
Website.

Heard Museum Guild Indian Art Market
March 3 & 4: Heard Museum, 2301 No. Central, Phoenix, Arizona
Sharing a booth with Linda Lomahaftewa, Roger Amerman, and Marcus Amerman.

Review | Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism, Part 2

Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism features four essays by Nancy Marie Mithlo, Stephen Fadden and Stephen Wall, Sherry Farrell Racette, and Mario A. Caro. These alone are worth the price of the book.

The First Wave… This Time Around

In “The First Wave… This Time Around,” Nancy Marie Mithlo discusses the Vision Project in terms of the current state of affairs in Native contemporary art. She sees mainstream art critics being impatient with Native artists’ insistence on referencing their tribal communities and histories, but “Indian people continue to insist on being Indian” (Mithlo 18). “Why,” she asks, “when it would be so much easier to simply seek out hybrid, transnational, post-Indian or some such trendy association, do we insist on claiming our identities as Native peoples?” (19).

Mithlo asks the compelling question, “Is there bad Indian art?” (21), but doesn’t answer it, instead pointing out that markets and artists institutions make qualitative evaluations of indigenous art, as does the “intellectual capital” an artwork earns, through art writing. Most of the writing about Native art comes from the non-scholarly, “light press” (21). That’s especially evident here in Santa Fe, where local newspapers and magazines repeat each other’s same factual errors. She writes, “non-intellectual sources are guiding the assessment of contemporary American Indian arts, and that this casual, cultural art-of-the-week variety of arts writing has exerted a harmful influence on the development of a more serious field of inquiry” (21). She concludes that “[t]he ability to represent ourselves as Native peoples—intact and collectively—is a human right, too frequently ignored” (27).

“Indigenous curatorial methodologies” Mithlo says are defined “by four criteria: it is long-term, reciprocal, mutually-meaningful, and includes mentorship” (24-5). To art critics that question the need for self-defined indigenous criteria, she writes, “A dismissal of the logic and strategies of Native nations (and their artists) to move forward with their own communities intact mirrors the logical colonialism” (25).

Invisible Forces of Change:

United States Indian Policy and American Indian Art

Steve Fadden and Stephen Wall, both professors in IAIA’s Indigenous Liberal Studies Department, co-wrote “Invisible Forces of Changes: United States Indian Policy and American Indian Art.” They share US Indian history 101 and put forward three examples of artists that exemplify major eras in Indian policy. David Cusick, a founder of the Iroquois Realist School, illustrates the Formative Era of 1776–1810 when tribes were relatively as strong as the fledgling United States (29-30). Angel DeCora, whose life and work is defined by Indian boarding schools, defined the Allotment Era of 1880-1932, when assimilation into European-American society was the government’s mission (32, 34). Allan Houser, the first Chiricahua Apache born outside of captivity since 1886, is part of the Indian Reorganization Era of the 1930s and 1940s. Houser directed benefited from the Indian New Deal reforms allowing tribal governance, education, and self-expression in the arts (34-35).

As destructive and capricious as US Indian policy has been, Fadden and Wall argue, it’s impossible to ignore its role in Native art history. They do not describe any of the three artist’s work. Is familiarity with Cusick and DeCora’s art a given for the general readership? It’s curious that they do not reference Rennard Strickland and Margaret Archuleta’s Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century, which also traces the influence of US federal Indian policy on Native arts.

Encoded Knowledge: Memory and Object in Contemporary Native American Art

While pointing out the dangers of generalization about Native art, Sherry Farrell Racette puts forward some of the underpinnings of indigenous art theory, which takes a great deal of bravery. She does so in a lyrical manner, showing respect for the subject matter—cherished belief systems and values—which, in print, have most commonly been written in print in the cold, reductionist language of Western anthropologists. Racette quotes the Traditional Care Committee of NMAI: “Objects are alive and must be handled with respect” (Mithlo 41). Contemporary mainstream Western art tends towards the nonreligious, but for indigenous art, an animist reading is appropriate and should be explored further, because that quote is literately true.

“Oral traditions were never solely oral,” Racette writes (41), as many artworks are mnemonic devices with their own visual language. Through examples, she illustrates the need of living Native peoples to engage with Native art for meanings to be activated and realized. The challenges of writing about traditional knowledge is the vulnerability of sharing long held beliefs with the public and that, in my personal opinion, all Native artists and writers have a gate-keeping role—determining what is appropriate to share with the public and what is not.

Continuity is a guiding principle in comparing Native art throughout time. “New objects become the storied object,” Racette writes (43). The one aspect of Native art theory that seems most agreed upon is the narrative quality of the art.

In the section “To Make It Correctly” (43-45), Racette points out that process and materials can have meaning and significance beyond simply being a means to an end. Technique has been exalted in the Native art world; however, Racette writes that the attitude and energy of the process has its own importance (45).

Artists, such as Diego Romero and Nicholas Galanin, use “strategies of deconstruction and contradiction” to explore and disrupt colonial attitudes and racism (50). Because what is familiar to a Natives can be jarring and challenging to a non-Natives, artists have to be conscious of the multiple audiences for their work.

“Many objects are a form of visual literacy,” Racette concludes, “not only in terms of the symbols coded on their surface or the actions and gestures that provide their human context, but for the words, prayers, tears and fervent hopes that are spoken into them at the moment of their creation and over their lifetime” (52).

Owning the Image: Indigenous Arts since 1990

In his overview of developments in the last twenty years of Native arts, Mario A. Caro covers a lot of ground in a short space. He sees “a vibrant field with every-increasing participation by … Native practitioners involved in determining how Native art is contextualized” (56). He chose 1990 as a starting point, since that is when NAGPRA and the American Indian Arts and Crafts Act were both passed into legislation, rapidly followed by the 1992 Columbus quincentenary (57).

In the 1990s, identity politics figured largely in the mainstream art world, when James Luna participated in the Whitney Biennial and later collaborated with outspoken Latina/o artists Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

Art history and anthropology have guided Native art writing, often with damaging effects, leading to their reassessment. Caro sees Native Art History finally emerging as a coherent discipline, and “it is the entry of Native scholars into the field that advanced theoretical frameworks based on paradigms of thought originating from within their communities” (60). The exoticism, objectification, and general “Other-ing” of Native art are cut through by self-representation.

Jolene Rickard’s doctoral thesis states “that Native art is, and has always been, a form a knowledge production informed by Native perspectives” (60). This might seem obvious but it is anything but, especially in light of the abundance of narcissistic 20th-century writing by European-Americans suggesting Native art was created and controlled by European-American institutions for a European-American audience.

The increasing corpus of Native art writing is rich in exhibition catalogs and anthologies, but still lacking general art surveys and scholarly art criticism (61). What surveys exist do not begin to cover the last several decades of artist production. Monographs are slowly increasing in numbers. Writing about individual might go against the collectivist impulse of Native scholars but are opportunities for in-depth investigation and analysis often lacking in Native art writing.

Museums have been primary sources of information about Native art, and the increase of tribal museums founded on indigenous perspectives, as well as the establishment of NMAI in DC, has drastically changed the institutional landscape of the indigenous art world (63). NMAI and indigenous curators participating in major biennial art fairs creates an international presence for indigenous arts of the Americas (64). Museum collections have influenced the market value of art.

The gallery system is not as strong, and prominent contemporary Native art galleries are located away from major art centers such as New York or London. Indian art markets have increased dramatically in number; however, these compete against themselves.

A lack of support network and infrastructure hampers the growth of many indigenous artists; however, community-based non-profit centers have increased and provide some mentorship (66-7).

Thoughts

Perusing the footnotes, one can see the impact of the internet in fostering dialogue. Personal interviews and correspondence directly with the artists is common. One of the draws of Native art, for natives and non-natives, is that most of the artists are accessible and willing to communicate to the public.

While certainly valuable for a collective updating of contemporary art for the general readership, is Manifestations really art criticism? W. H. Auden (Anglo-American, 1907-1973) is quoted in A Short Guide to Writing About Art defining what functions a critic can provide:

1. Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware.
2. Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I have not read them carefully enough.
3. Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I could never have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.
4. Give a “reading” of a work which increases my understanding of it.
5. Throw light upon the process of artistic “Making”
6. Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, religion, etc. (Barnet 8).

Seen in this light, Manifestations is a success. Evaluation is only one aspect of art criticism and not the most vital. Introducing and mapping the artists’ perspective backgrounds and philosophical perspectives as well as their cultural contexts is invaluable. The book lets the public know that the Native American art world is building firm ground on which to stand.

So far the book is only available through the MOCNA gift shop. Their website is "under construction," but their phone number is 1-888-922-4242. It's finally available on Amazon.com, at a good discount too.

• Mithlo, Nancy Marie, senior editor. Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism. Santa Fe: Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 2011. ISBN 978-0-615-48904-9.
• Sylvan, Barnet. A Short Guide to Writing about Art. 6th ed. New York: Longman, 2000.
• Video interview with Will Wilson about the Vision Project, by DeCoy Gallerina (Chiricahua Apache). Indian Country Today.
• The Vision Project website

Review | Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism, Part 1

Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism, the culmination of three years’ work, is finally available. This book is part of the Institute of American Indian Arts’ “Vision Project,” an effort to showcase Native American art writers and new artists, through discussions, writing, and a series of solo exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Arts (former IAIA Museum). The project involved 21 Native art writers and 60 artists.

What I witnessed of the process of the Vision Project was painful to watch, but, nonetheless, the results are inspiring. A committee chose the artists, selecting living artists, established, mid-career, and some emerging artists, who were active last three decades.

Only artists from Canada and United States, including Hawaii, were chosen. Why? Perhaps it’s an Anglophone bias, one certainly found in Canadian and United States academia but one that doesn’t conceptually hold any water. James Luna (Luiseño/Mexican), Mario Martinez (Yaqui), and Jennifer Vigil (Diné/Latina) represent the Americas south of the Rio Grande, and hopefully future projects of this nature will be hemispheric in scope, since innumerable cultural exchanges have taken place from South to North.

The writers were limited to only 500–word essays on each artist; somewhat hamstringing any attempt at in-depth analysis. On the plus side, given such a limited space, the writers chose their words carefully, resulting in beautifully written biographies of contemporary artists. Many of the artists are also writers and vice versa, so meeting and collaborating on this project will no doubt spark future collaborations. Magazine and book editors now have a showcase of talented Native art writers—with many more accomplished Native writers who were not part of this project. The Vision Project shows the world that Native art writers more than up to the task to write about Native art.

How does this differ from projects such as American Indian Art Magazine’s selection of 35 Native artists’ profiles for their 35th anniversary issue? In fact eight artists (Marcus Amerman, Arthur Ammiotte, David Bradley, Bob Haozous, Shelley Niro, Preston Singletary, Roxanne Swentzell, and Denise Wallace) were included in both projects. The immediately difference is that the magazine primarily chose non-Native authors.

Diane Pardue’s profile of Denise Wallace uses more marketing-inspired adjectives, “graceful,” “enchanting and engaging,” (AIA 73) and discusses technique in great detail, while Barry Ace goes more into the context of art in tribal society (Mithlo 186), but the profiles are astonishingly similar. Jennifer Vigil discusses Roxanne Swentzell’s art about women’s body issues (Mithlo 174-5) while Zena Pearlstone doesn’t even touch on the subject but does mention Swentzell’s work in permaculture (AIA 70). Both Mary Jan Lenz and Mique’l Icesis Askren describe Preston Singletary’s being raised away from his culture and his initial pursuit of music; however, Askren, the Manifestations author, looks at the irony of European techniques reconnecting Singletary with his people and that his glass sculptures take become kinetic, when illuminated by light. Ryan Rice touches on Shelley Niro’s “multi-nationality” but gives more straightforward resume information (awards, collections, degrees) than Zena Pearlstone does in her essay, which describes a range of Niro’s works (Mithlo 148-9, AIA 61). And so on it goes.

Trust me, I desperately want to see wide disparities between the two publications approached to art writing; however, the differences are subtle. Over time, the subtleties add up—aesthetics and techniques or content? Tribal ethnologies or contemporary tribal political realities? Some Manifestations art writers make a more dramatic departure. Overall the Vision Project's selection of artists lean towards the more conceptual, more difficult, and not always aesthetically pleasing artwork and there’s more space to discuss harsh realities. But as Nancy Mithlo points out, "the presence of contemporary Native art made from the broken legacy of America's attempt to destroy our communities is powerfully compelling, stark and well, I'll just say it, beautiful" (Mithlo 19).

In this project, women writers were able to analyze women artists and discuss women’s issues, which upon reflection, is not all that common. My personal observation has been that women artists are much better represented in the Native art world than in the mainstream art world; however, gender inequalities do exist. Of the 60 artists, 24 are women. 40% is a positive sign.

It so good to see the focus of Native art writing on content for a change. Thanks to Nancy Mithlo, Manifestations editor; Stephen Wall; Will Wilson, Vision Project manager; Sarah Sense, former Vision Project Director; and everyone else who made this project and publication possible. So far the book is only available through the MOCNA gift shop. Their website is "under construction," but their phone number is 1-888-922-4242.

• Mithlo, Nancy Marie, senior editor. Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism. Santa Fe: Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 2011. ISBN 978-0-615-48904-9.
• Taylor, Tobi, ed. American Indian Art Magazine. Volume 36, Number 1. Winter 2010: 36–74.
• Video interview with Will Wilson about the Vision Project, by DeCoy Gallerina (Chiricahua Apache). Indian Country Today.
• The Vision Project website

Questionart #4

Do you think Native Pop is an art movement? If so, what are some of its characteristics and the thoughts that inspire it?

First of all, yes I do think it is a valid/vibrant subcategory of Native Art. Some characteristics would include the visual cacophony that a lot of us grew up with from Saturday morning cartoons to films like Star Wars, and other types of things grew out of mass media in general. I also think that these various things get filtered through the lens of our particular

Kill Your Idols, Hoka Skenandore, acrylic on canvas

experience,  (urban/rez/young/old/traditional/etc.) and the end result is something not quite like the Pop art of the 1960's, but is perhaps a little more personal because it resonates and sometimes clashes with our individual tribal backgrounds.

In terms of thoughts that inspire it I think that all Native Art has been influenced by outside materials/terms/experiences from contact until today, and a lot of the time what is right in front of the artist can readily become art. Speaking for myself, I find it amusing that what I do is considered Pop, a lot of the imagery that I appropriate/steal/make ugly is old, literally taken from really old sources or from magazines thrown out in the garbage. I've found that Pop Art imagery tends to lean toward the "Now" and I tend to pilfer the past... anyhoo, I digress into the "me-me-I-me" artist-ego, let-me-talk-some-more-about-my-vision crap...

–Hoka Skenandore

(Luiseño-Oneida-Oglala Lakota) | website

You're My Best Friend, April Holder, acrylic

I totally think native pop is an art movement. If Native Americans live in two worlds, then native pop is the bridge between those two worlds. Native pop art is the combination of the essence of traditional identity and the embrace of the ever changing world around us. I love native pop; this is a cool question. Hope my answer helps.

–April Holder

(Sac and Fox-Wichita-Tonkawa)

I don't know if Native Pop is so much a movement as it is an instinct to decide to do whatever you desire to do. When I first learned beadwork, I did Mickey Mouse. I didn't know anything about art or native art. I was doing beadwork and I wanted to do what I liked.

A friend in high school commissioned me to do a "Rush 2012" beaded belt buckle and I did it. I don't think I had created any boundaries at that age about what I could or couldn't, should or shouldn't, or if it was Indian. It was me. From the beginning, I and other people thought my stuff was cool and different. There was no intellectual discussion of it's artistic merits, it was just neat.  I consider myself a citizen of the world and as such I feel enabled and maybe entitled to do or depict or comment on anything in my world.

Marilyn Monroe, Marcus Amerman, beaded rosette

I also consider myself an Indian and therefore more closely related to the Indigenous populations of America, North America and the Americas. Because I felt like the same blood courses through my veins that coursed through all Indians, I felt comfortable and proud to depict great chiefs and leaders from all tribes. Perhaps, marketing is a factor that can encourage or support the use of popular imagery in Native Expression. I did beaded bracelet series of musicians, actors and civil rights leaders and they all sold.

I really never had to think about what I was doing, because I was too busy doing it. I later discovered that I was making art and specifically, pop art.

–Marcus Amerman

(Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) | website