This was a refreshing interview on so many levels. First, Cara is such an open person, so willing to talk about herself as she relates to the work in a very personal way.
Water Memories, photograph, 40×40 inches
I left this interview feeling incredibly inspired.
One of the things that stays with me–that I think of almost every day–is how she decided to invest in herself and her career. She’d been making photographs and exploring themes of her culture and, at the same time, being a mom and wife and all the other myriad roles women artists take on. Then is occurred to her: she needed to take some of her savings and invest in her career. The result are the three photos we have in the Allegories of Transformation exhibition–and that are featured in the video interview I did with Cara.
Ufala Girls, photography, 40×40 inches
These photos exploded on the scene and made Cara a known entity. They have since been collected by major museums including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and the American Museum of Britain.
I had so many questions for Sonya Kelliher-Combs that I didn’t know where to start. An Inupiaq artist from Alaska, Sonya’s work feels different than most, like it’s of the earth, as if her installations were harvested from the land not made in a studio. Pieces like Red White and Blue Secrets are sewn and stapled and adorn with beads and fibers and hair. Each segment is a word in a poem, a note in a song; they are unique and can stand alone, but together a story emerges.
Red White and Blue Secret, Variable size Cotton fabric, human hair, glass beads, nylon thread, steel pins, 50 parts
Sonya uses everything, as is her ancestor’s tradition–indeed, the tradition of all native people–but that’s where tradition ends. She takes objects and uses them to form ideas. Red White and Blue Secrets is made from an American flag. The shapes are that of walrus tusks, an animal Alaskans have subsisted on and needed for clothing and shelter. And the tusks, they were uses in adornment to ward off evil. Interesting juxtaposition of materials and ideas.
Mark, Polar Bear is made from polar bear fur. The animal had been harvested for food and the hide given to Sonya to create her art. The fur is adhered to another flag.
If you ever get the chance to stand in front of her work, I urge you to do so. It is quite yet incredibly powerful. As Americans, we bring strong ideas of country and land, power and boundaries. Sonya’s work challenges all these notions. And, truly, this is the artist’s job: challenge ideas, show us the world in a new way, make us think and ask questions.
To learn more about Sonya, check out her page on the PACE Center site or on her website.
Oh, Joe Feddersen. What a beautiful soul. To hear him tell the journey from his home in Omak to college in Wisconsin to teaching at Evergreen College in Washington and then back home, to Omak, back to the place where he is surrounded by his family and friends, members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, is so centering. Home is where you find your people, the ones who know your stories and share them.
Freeway with HOV Lanes, 6.75×6.5 inches, waxed linen
Over the course of his career, Joe has eloquently kept his vision and his voice to the fore. And, equally as important, he has recognized that when things become easy or feel repetitive, he has, without regret, moved on to explore new and different ideas. Take for example, his weaving. They are all based on traditional weaving techniques and patterned work of his ancestors but with a twist. The traditional idea of patterning was based on things like crops and animal shapes. Joe takes that concept and bases his work on the patterns he sees every day: HOV lanes and parking lots.
In our conversation, we talked mostly about the weaving and his work bringing his Native American community together–young and old–to create a book on print work. But, if you have the time, check out some of Joe’s other works at Froelick Gallery. And to read more about Joe, go to his page on ourPACE Center site.
I took title for the PACE Center exhibit, Allegories of Transformation, from an essay Norman Akers wrote. The full quote is:
The use of narrative in my workacts as a continuation of theNative American storytelling tradition.Ancestral tribal stories and sayingsexplained the world in which we lived.New and emerging stories serve asallegories of transformationin an ever-changing world.
Alien Conquest, 20.5×15 inches, lithograph
Norman is Osage and teaches at University of Kansas. Throughout our conversation, two clear ideas remained ever-present: where he finds himself in the land is directly influenced by his deep sense of home. And, as an Osage, he is constantly looking to the future; the idea of looking back in time and painting that version of reality is an anathema to Norman.
Dark Reign, 18.75×15 inches, lithograph
It was interesting to dig into this idea of home, especially with someone like Norman whose ancestors have had a very different experience with the concept, from being migratory to being removed from their lands. For Norman, home is a vast place that reaches from the prairie lands his ancestors roamed and hunted t, the small town he grew up in. His sense of home, then, is not necessarily attached to specific objects–a mailbox, an easy chair, pots and pans in a kitchen, but is instead a more conceptual idea with a broader reach.
Uneasy Welcome, 20.75×16.5 inches, lithograph
And, being forward facing, there is an optimism Norman brings to his work. He was, early on, a plein air painter. He still considers himself to be a painter of landscapes but these landscapes are the interior spaces in his mind, his heart and his soul. The paintings and print work he does now sheds light on his travels and speaks to his ancestors, but is decidedly contemporary in every way possible from subject matter to technique. His work truly embodies the notion of allegories and how important they are to tell stories and help society through vital and ongoing transformations.
To learn more about the Allegories of Transformation exhibition, please go to PACE Center.
The Weight of Thought, 30×22 inches, Xerox tone ink on paper
I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with Neal Ambrose-Smith, in advance of the Allegories of Transformation exhibit at the PACE Center. We had never met–never even talked to each other, but in this time of COVID, we just jumped in. We had set a time to talk for an hour, if need be. Two hours later, we were still talking and laughing and having a great time.
Do Fish Dream? 30×22 inches. graphite, India ink, house paint
The amazing things I learned about Neal that didn’t make it on the video are that he is keeping the archive of all his mother, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s work. The two of them often critic each other’s work and freely admit that they borrow ideas, an exchange that has made for a dynamic explosion of work, thoughts and ideas.
The other incredible aspect to Neal’s life and work is his commit to youth and teaching at the Institute of American Indian Art. I was able to leave in part of that conversation–incredible, truly, the issues he and his team deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Visit the Allegories of Transformation exhibit online at The PACE Center.
When curating Allegories of Transformation for the PACE Center, I was amazed and delighted by Linley Logan’s work for the show. His ingenious way of seeing the world around us and presenting alternative ways of thinking about life and…the detritus surrounding us.
Linley’s life and art revolve around family, culture and heritage. In his art, he freely uses everything and anything he can get his hands on–a skill he learned out of the necessity to complete projects in college on a meager budget. The beauty in his work lies in the humous way he uses new and discarded materials to form a bridge between his culture and heritage to the modern world.
About Linley Logan
Coyote’s Recycled Transformation, 8x8x10 inches; Wolf with Lipstick Rattle, 3×4.25×37 inches; Toying with Stereotypes of Tribal Dada, 3×5 inches
Multidisciplinary artist, curator and author, Linley Logan grew up in the Tonawanda Seneca Nation. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico where he earned an AFA in Two Dimensional Arts and another AFA in Three Dimensional Arts and engaged museum studies. He went on to study ceramics at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle Main, then earned a degree in Industrial Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology for a BFA.
He has curated and co-curated contemporary Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy) art exhibits, including “Iroquois Art in the Age of Casino’s,” Iroquois Indian Museum. He authored articles and presented cultural programing for the Smithsonian Institution. He has been a participating artist in International Indigenous Visual Artists’ Gatherings in Hawaii and New Zealand. He believes strongly in serving on local and regional arts boards and working with youth to maintain traditional language studies. His own work is rooted in the traditional art forms—printmaking, painting, carving, silver jewelry, pottery and found art creations—but is conveyed through contemporary artistic expression.
His writing extends to traditional dance and indigenous internet implications. “Native American Dance, Ceremonies and Social Dance Traditions,” was published by the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, and “Dancing the Cycles of Life” published by the Festival of American Folklife was part of the social dance in the America’s program for the Center for Folklife and Cultural Studies, Smithsonian Institution.
What a thrill to meet such a talented artist approaching social and environmental issues facing her community in Alaska with poignant work and new mediums. I did know of Anna’s work before curating Allegories of Transformation. Since her thesis project that brought Indigenous artists together in an exhibition featuring imagery that was used to create t-shirt designs creating awareness around the Pebble Mining project that would severely impact the salmon industry and the environment.
Anna is the daughter of John Hoover, the renown sculptor who passed away in 2011. She does not, however, lean on her father’s fame but has instead carved her own path. In a way, this has given her a certain freedom to explore different topics such as her outrage to mining operations threatening the pristine lands she knows and loves, and the ever present fact of suicide among Alaskan natives and the toll is takes on families. Following this path has lead her into film making, printmaking, script writing, and administration of a non-profit group that brings art into underserved communities in Alaska.
Mapping Qayaq, 8 x 20 inches, serigraph
About Anna Hoover
Oral history is integral to our being; it molds our foundation of history, genealogy, utilitarian skills, and ongoing life lessons. Through storytelling, we learn how to behave and interpret good reasons to continue sustainable life-practices. Narrative forms of knowledge entertain us in ways that help us to laugh, cry, heal and grow. Demonstration and interactive learning are a function of storytelling and knowledge sharing. For millennia, these deep pools of empowering knowledge have solely been documented through the reciting of collective memories by orators; expressed live and in person.
Word from Our Mother, 18 x 12 inches, Photocorrect
The harsh reality is that many of these important people work within imposed economies that relegate traditional cultural roles to the wayside. In turn, I observe within my region of the Alaska Peninsula and the eastern Aleutian Islands, many of our stories and age-old memories are being forgotten, to only exist within the silent cosmos. With another generation of elders passing away, we are losing our tangible connection to ancient ways and it is a crucial time to record these respected people in video and audio recordings.
Cinematic storytelling that inspires our young people and reminds them how amazing their relatives are imparts a sense of potentiality; it shows us ways these instructions on balanced and healthy ways of living can be celebrated and nurtured into the future. I am passionate about bringing Alaskan perspectives and stories to the mainstream and am enjoying finding my voice in this important conversation that shapes our international culture.
Check out more of Anna’s work on her website, annahoover.net. And, check out my interview with Anna here.
Pinning down Jaune Quick-to-See Smith for an hour is no easy feat. At 80, Smith is actively making art that responds to social, environmental, and political issues–subject matter that is not short on these days–she is lecturing, teaching and curating, connecting her fellow Indigenous artist with each other to find opportunities. And, if all that wasn’t enough, she’s raising her young granddaughters.
For this interview, her son, a well-respected artist in his own right, as well as a professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Neal Ambrose Smith, orchestrated our call on Zoom. While most interviews have been edited down to seven to eight minutes, I decided to let this one ride. Partly because talking to Smith is a bit like getting an audience with the Oracle, but also because one hour turned into nearly three; every bit of which was full of her forthright and learned insights into her work and the Native American way of life.
And, I loved the crazy thing that happened as we were starting the conversation–talk about an icebreaker. Something popped in front of her camera and blurred her image then, just as quickly, darted away. Her reaction to that was priceless and a great way to kick things off.
To download a copy of the article I wrote on Smith for Western Art & Architecture,CLICK here. Also, to read my full interview with Jaune, CLICKhere.
And so, without further ado, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
Corky Clairmont was one of the first artists I interviewed for the Allegories of Transformation exhibition I curated for the PACE Center, which opened in Parker, CO, September 18 and runs through November 18.
I Had This Idea
When my team at the PACE won a National Endowment for the Arts grant to put on a show of Indigenous artists work, I planned to fly artists in for a series of lectures and panel discussions and to introduce them to schools in the state to talk to kids and…then COVID hit.
OK, change of plans. My next great idea was to conduct interviews that I would edit down to, I don’t know, five minutes for so, and have those available online. Zoom was the technology of choice but it didn’t always cooperate, which made the editing process a bit tedious.
Here’s the amazing thing that happened though. As I was editing interviews that were, in some cases, an hour and a half long, I started to hear a much deeper dialogue that I somehow missed when I was talking to each artist in the moment. I was so consumed in making the tech work and asking the right questions that I wasn’t listening as closely as I should have.
Corky’s interview is a case in point. Listening to it a second time, I was totally caught off guard by a long silence as he searched for words to explain the devastation he witnessed at Fort McMurray, part of the Alberta Tar Sands Mining operation, which is the subject of a major installation piece we have in the show.
Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada is the world’s largest industrial project. North of Fort McMurray, the boreal forest has been razed and bitumen mined from the ground in immense open pits.
According to a government report, Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.
A study publishedin April in Nature Communications found that emissions from the Canadian oil sands, measured directly from aircraft, are about 30 percent higher than the figures reported by the industry.
Bitumen, which is mined and then transformed into light crude is normally found deep below the surface. However, the bitumen found north of Fort McMurray is in a layer shallow enough that it can be strip mined in huge open pits…once the boreal forest covering it is destroyed.
The world’s largest collections of tailings waste ponds—able to fill more than 500,000 Olympic swimming pools—line the banks of the Athabasca River and are so toxic, they have had to set up scarecrow like object and set off sound cannons to prevent birds from going near them.
Some of the ponds filled with tailing are leaking into the Athabaskan River, and air pollution and acid rain, one study found, will eventually damage an area o Canada the size of Germany.
The impact on the Indigenous communities who once roamed this land has been devastating. The destruction of pristine lands and wildlife and the increase in cancer and other debilitating diseases caused, it is believed, by the pollution from the mining operations has robbed them of their traditions and ability to hunt and grow food.
The Impact of Art: We All Have to Chewz
Listening to Corky, and taking in the shattering silence of those long seconds he took to compose his thoughts, I found myself reduced to tears.
Reflecting on this show and the conversations I have had with these eleven amazingly generous and insightful men and women hailing from various tribes across the western United States, I can honestly say I’ve never been so deeply moved by works of art and the stories behind them. I am so very grateful for their trust in me to present this body of work and them as best I can.
About Corky Clairmont
Hailing from Ronan, Montana, Corky Clairmont is a celebrated visual and conceptual artist whose decades of work have included printmaking, mixed media, sculpture and installation. He’s also a professor and former fine arts department director at Salish Kootenai College.
Raven Speaks to Friends: “The DJ Trump Virus is More Menacing and Deadlier than Smallpox Blankets or the Covid19 Virus” (Your Vote is the Cure), 22 x 30 inches, Collagraph, Silkscreen, Relief, Collage, Stencils, Rit Dye
After earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Montana, Clairmont continued his graduate studies with a fellowship at San Fernando State University and in 1971 completed his education with a Master of Arts degree from the California State University in Los Angeles. He spent the next 14 years within the Los Angeles art scene and worked as the printmaking department head at the Otis/Parsons Art Institute. During this period, he received visual arts grants from the Ford Foundation (1971) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1979).
In 1984 Clairmont returned to Montana, where he developed close personal ties both to the fledgling tribal college and the reservation community. Clairmont’s works of art continued to challenge the cultural and ecological effects of European settlement upon the land previously inhabited by his indigenous ancestors for thousands of years. From Salish Kootenai treaty rights to Montana highway development, Clairmont has addressed both deep-seated and contemporary issues.
…or What We Talk About When We Talk About Black Women Artists
The following interviews were done in conjunction with a show I curated in honor of Black History month. It was an exhibition that had been on my mind for a while. In the art world, the dearth of women artists in museum collections, galleries and major private collections has finally made headlines. The scene is even more bleak for women of color and almost non-existent for Native American women. By calling attention to this issue, change is coming, albeit slowly.
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