Artist Herman Pi'ikea Clark installing work in Evergreen Gallery.

There is an art opening at Evergreen Gallery, at The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, WA this Friday evening, from 5-7pm, December 9th, 2011, with an artist talk by Herman Pi’ikea Clark (Kanaka Maoli), artist in residence.

All works in the exhibition were produced on-site at The Evergreen State College in the past year. This exhibition is emblematic of the creative energy and cultural capital of the region, which capitalizes on the northwest coast as an economic hub and center of cultural exchange. The exhibition includes local artists as well as transplants and visitors from other regions, including visiting artist Herman Pi’ikea Clark, who is from Hawaii  and  teaches at the university level in New Zealand.

Prints by Linley Logan, Kayeri Akweks, and Ron Alphonse

Curatorial Statement:

The vision of the Longhouse as a gathering place for people of all cultural backgrounds is celebrated in Cultural Connections, a collection of artworks that honors the diversity of indigenous arts and cultures in today’s world. The exhibition features art by lead artists Marwin Begaye (Navajo), Peter Boome (Upper Skagit), and Herman Pi’ikea Clark (Kanaka Maoli), along with Northwest artists who participated in printmaking workshops led by Marwin Begaye and Peter Boome.

Participating artists include: Kristina Ackley (Oneida), Kayeri Akweks (Mohawk), Ron Alphonse (Cowichan), Bobbie Bush (Chehalis), Lara Evans (Cherokee), Louie Gong (Nooksack), Jeremiah George (Squaxin Island), Laura Grabhorn (Tlingit), Bonnie Graft (Muckleshoot), Michael Holloman (Colville), Charlene Krise (Squaxin Island), Tina Kuckkahn-Miller (Ojibwe), Greg Lehman (Squaxin Island), Linley Logan (Seneca), Alex McCarty (Makah), Kris Miller (Skokomish), Margie Morris (Tlingit), Paul Nicholson (Legacy Art Gallery), Erin Oly (Studio Technician), Ruth Peterson (Peterson Art Gallery), Yvonne Peterson (Chehalis), Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama), Arlen Speights (Houma), Andrea Wilbur-Sigo (Squaxin Island), and James Youngs (Squaxin Island).

Partners: The Longhouse Education and Cultural Center, the Squaxin Island Tribe, and Evergreen Gallery. Funding support provided by the Ford Foundation, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Evergreen Gallery is located in Olympia, Washington, one hour south of Seattle, on the campus of The Evergreen State College, 2700 Evergreen Parkway, Olympia, WA. Evergreen Gallery is located in the Library Building on the main floor.

Gallery Hours: December 7, 2011 – January 18, 2012 (winter break closure Dec. 12 – Jan. 6) hours Dec. 7-10: 10 am – 5 pm. Phone: (360) 867-5125

Evergreen is a public liberal arts college, founded in 1971. This exhibition was organized through the Longhouse Education and Cultural Center.

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For more than a decade the mission of the “House of Welcome” Longhouse Education and Cultural Center at The Evergreen State College has been to promote indigenous arts and cultures. In the beginning, the Longhouse focused on six local Puget Sound tribes and their artists; today they work with indigenous artists throughout the Pacific Northwest region, nationally, and with other Pacific Rim indigenous peoples.

Preview of the exhibition "Cultural Connections"

John Feodorov, "Annoyed Indian Clip Art"

This September 28th is American Indian day. I’ve seen several different accounts of the call for this unofficial holiday – from Arthur C. Parker (Seneca) and Congress of the American Indian Association in 1915, to the Boy Scouts in 1916, the State of New York (1916), the state of California Assembly  (1968 and/or 1998). Regardless of the history of this date, some communities, native and non-native, are recognizing it with some sort of event.

How do I know? I’ve had a couple web-hits this week that resulted from google searches for the terms “Native American Day clip art,” and “American Indian Day clip art.” I was puzzled as to how people ended up on my blog with those search terms, but figured out after a few minutes that the search engine (Google) was coming up with those particular words as a combination from different postings. I write about performance art so I have included video “clips” as documentation of those performance art events. My whole blog is about indigenous art and I use American Indian, Native American, First Nations, and indigenous, etc., according the particular preferences of the artists and institutions addressed in my postings. And presto… a few people came looking for clip art.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see what the other search results would be. Below is a screen shot from a section of clip art choices from one typical website. I intentionally blurred the edges (below) so that no one would actually use it as clip art from MY blog. Typically, the representation of an Indian in clip art is male, plains clothing,  an abnormally large or small head, or an abnormally puffed-out chest. Also common: canoes and teepees, eagle-feather headdresses.

Typical (and problematic) Indian-themed clip art sample. I blurred the edges intentionally.

For anyone genuinely in need of clip art for your American Indian Day event, I suggest finding an actual indigenous artist from YOUR GEOGRAPHICAL/CULTURAL REGION, and PAY THE ARTIST. Looking for suggestions for non-offensive content? Solicit a version of a geometric or floral pattern from beadwork, basketry, weaving, or rock art. If you need a graphic for your celebratory community event, consider that soliciting design work from local tribally-enrolled or tribally-recognized artists and designers helps build community relationships for the longterm. Clip art is all about short-term, shallow appearances.

I complained about the clip art issue on Facebook and was sent the image at the top of this post by artist John Feodorov. He is Navajo and lives in the Seattle, WA area. Annoyed Indian would be a great graphic for an American Indian day event that addresses the history of colonialism or the effects of stereotype (in any community).

 Don’t let clip art undermine your institution’s intentions!

John Feodorov, "Annoyed Indian Clip Art"

Need a laugh? There is a You Tube video about clip art. It is NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Only the first minute or so are relevant http://youtu.be/GTjTXOtff8A

I took some video footage as I walked around the space and I’m posting it here.

There is also a QuickTime panorama view of the installation of Corn Blue Room from one of the Reservation X installations HERE: (Links will open in a new window).

From NMAI's "Reservation X" website. The photo is in black and white, but you can see the installation was done in a white-walled room.

The new installation is in a very dark space. It creates a different effect from the white-box gallery installation I was familiar with from the Reservation X documentation. Is the new installation better? I would have to answer a tentative “yes.”

If you’re not already familiar with this work, you’ll need to know something about Jolene Rickard’s Tuscarora family and their history in the forcible development of American the electrical grid. Laura E. Smith wrote the following about Rickard’s Corn Blue Room:

The space of Indians within North American history has generally been a story of displacement. For the Tuscarorans, this legacy continued into the twentieth century when in 1958 the Power Authority of New York announced plans to flood approximately one-fifth of their reservation. Rickard’s grandfather, Chief Clinton Rickard, was one of the leaders in the ensuing demonstrations and legal battles, which the Tuscarorans eventually lost. Women’s activism in this conflict was most prominently displayed the day they sat down in front of the arriving bulldozers and by their subsequent assaults on the policemen who tried to remove them.25

For most Tuscaroran viewers, it was immediately clear that the photos of water, corn, power lines, and dams represented this struggle. The floor-standing metal frames recall the stance and structures of the electric towers, now present on their former lands. The wooden extensions and their post-like position reference the poles made of saplings that provided the structural support for a Longhouse, the traditional Iroquoian home.[2]

If you would like to know more about this artwork, read the Reservation X exhibition catalogue and Laura E. Smith’s article “Photography, Criticism, and Native American Women’s Identity: Three Works by Jolene Rickard,” in the journal Third Text. Citation information is in the footnotes.

Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers, Vestige Vagabond, performance, August 2011

This blog post presents performance documentation from a performance I attended on August 20^th, 2011. Vestige Vagabond was a public art performance by artists Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers. It was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Counting Coup at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The piece has been developing over the past couple years, but the locale for it’s most recent presentation is particularly significant.[1] The version I witnessed took place in the midst of SWAIA’s[2] annual Santa Fe Indian Market. The event has been held every year since 1922. The streets around the central plaza become an open-air market that attracts indigenous North American artists to sell their work. Indian Market brings an estimated 80,000 people to Santa Fe.[3]

Santa Fe Indian Market, August 2011.

Artists Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers described their intentions this way: In this performance, the value of Native American culture, ingenuity, function, aesthetics, and sharing will be emphasized through a series of new and unexpected objects and actions in a public interactive open market setting – under the museum’s portal.[4]

I saw the performance on the first day of Market, August 20^th. It was repeated the following day. All the photographs accompanying this article are from this first performance. The heart of Vestige Vagabond is the street-market dynamics played out in a cultural market, where artists/artisans lay their handmade objects on a table for the perusal of buyers. Hupfield and Vickers began their performance with arrival and set-up, like the hundreds of artists at market, by pulling roller bags behind them, unpacking, and laying out objects on a market table. Ordinarily, there is a look-but-don’t-touch-without-permission standard for behavior at market. Many of the art objects for sale come with prices in the tens-of-thousands. The performance artists overcame audience reticence by demonstrating the use of some of the objects, such as the braids/Walkman/rock apparatus, and then passing the object to a bystander. They never gave verbal instructions and only spoke to each other. As the performance progressed, people in the audience became braver about exploring and using the objects being passed around. At the end of the performance, the artists wiped their sweaty faces with the napkins printed to resembled Canadian bills.[5]Then they gathered up and arranged all the objects in an attractive sales display, positioning themselves behind the table, much like the artists selling their work at the market.

I did not get to see the second performance, on Sunday, August 21st. Hupfield sent me the following statement about changes she and Vickers made to the second performance:

For the second day we wanted to find ways to help the santa fe crowd break through their role as passive observers and get them really involved. To help with this we started the performance by hand-printing two signs that read “not for sale” and “demos here now.” We also integrated a few more staged style actions together and responded directly to individuals in the crowd. For example we singled out Amber Dawn (Bear Robe) to wear our fringe gloves, distributed and boxed with the beads and did an impromptu honor dance with the tea cup for a mother who was carrying her child on her back. It was good times!

Welcome sign describing the performance outside of Museum of Contemporary Native Art.

The artists arrive.

Set-up begins.

Set-up continues.

Hupfield looks into a box with an eyepiece before handing it to someone in the audience.

The audience begins examining the objects.

Hupfield with rock, walkman.

The walkman, with braids and a rock attached, plays language lessons in indigenous languages.

Charlene Vickers presents a second walkman. This one played pow wow music.

A birch bark basket with wooden nickels and a magnifying lens.

Paper napkins printed to look like Canadian bills were kept in the back pockets of both artists.

The display table. The large squishy vinyl cylinder on the right corner of the table is huge pony bead.

The display table at the end of the performance.

Printed napkins used in the performance.

Artist Biographies:

Maria Hupfield works across disciplines to engage in intersecting points of dialogue between Western and non-Western visual representations and philosophies. Her practice evidences the body as a site of resistance, agency and social engagement. She is a member of Wasauksing First Nation and is of Anishnaabe/Ojibway Heritage. A graduate of the MFA program at York University, Maria holds a BA Specialist in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto and Sheridan College. Hupfield lives and works in New York City.

Charlene Vickers is an Anishinaabe artist living and working in Vancouver. She graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1994 and Simon Fraser University, Critical Studies in 1998. Born in Kenora, Ontario and raised in Toronto. Her art explores ancestry and living in urban spaces.[6]

Related Blog Entries: Native Performance Art and Performance Theory Rebecca Belmore: Vigil

Artist Marwin Begaye hard at work in the TESC printmaking studio

Three weeks ago, I attended a three-day workshop hosted by the Longhouse Education and Cultural Center on the campus of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. The Longhouse brought together master artist Marwin Begaye (Navajo) to work with a group of Native artists on linoleum-block cut printmaking. Many of the artists in the workshop are well-established in other media, but relatively inexperienced with printmaking or lack ready access to these particular materials.

The workshop was funded by the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, which awarded the Longhouse a grant to bring 5 artists to the Longhouse. The NACF was established in 2007 as a national granting organization dedicated to the revitalization, appreciation and perpetuation of Native arts and cultures. Marwin Begaye is the third master artist to lead a workshop through the NACF Longhouse program. John Smith (Skokomish) inaugurated the program by leading two workshops on making cedar canoe paddles. Louie Gong (Nooksack)  led a later workshop in which he worked with Native 6th-8th grade youths making their own designs on shoes.

The three-day printmaking workshop was very intensive – we worked in the printmaking studio from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Marwin Begaye introduced us to his own printmaking practice, showing us carved wood blocks and the prints he made with them. His work is incredibly detailed. Each of the prints in the series he brought featured a particular species of bird, such as a scissortail hawk, against a complex background of a repeating pattern.

Marwin Begaye got us started drawing out the designs we wanted to make for our linocut prints. We got right down to business, talking about the ideas for our designs and sharing sketches with each other. The participants in the workshop came from many different backgrounds, and we shared the inspiration for the prints, including traditional stories, family stories, stories about the plants, animals, and cultural practices at the center of our artistic ideas. Here are the artists who participated in the workshop, and their affiliations:

Michael Holloman (Colville)

Van Holloman (Colville)

Alex McCarty (Makah)

Paul Nicholson (Legacy Art Gallery)

Louie Gong (Nooksack)

Yvonne Peterson (Chehalis)

Kayeri Akweks (Mohawk)

Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama)

Laura Grabhorn (Tlingit)

Bonnie Graft (Muckleshoot)

Tina Kuckkahn-Miller (Ojibwe)

Lara Evans (Cherokee)

Marwin Begaye (Navajo) is a professor in the fine arts department at University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK.

Here is a video showing the steps of printing from a linoleum block.

It was a great experience. I finally developed some basic proficiency, at least in terms of keeping my hands clean enough not to leave smudgy fingerprints everywhere – that’s what happened to last time I did any printmaking. My husband came to visit and recorded some footage of me pulling a print. I definitely still feel like a beginner at printmaking, but came away with twenty new prints and stories, laughter, and a sense that art is at the center of survival – it ties together many forms of knowledge and keeps us talking and sharing across cultural and geographic boundaries.

Interested in the technical aspects of the printmaking process we used?

1) Remember, everything will be backward! When including text, write the words out on a transparency with a Sharpie, flip the transparency over (so your writing is backward), place it on top of carbon paper on top of your lino block, and trace the words.

2) Draw out your design with a Sharpie on the lino block. Stay consistent – ask yourself if you’re drawing the sections you want to carve out, or the sections you intend to leave uncarved. Only the relief (raised) area will print.

3) Use a rag to rub a light coat of india ink over the rubbery linoleum surface. When you carve away the top surface, it is easier to see what you’ve carved.

4) Warm up your lino block! It’s easier to carve when it’s warm. We used a special hot plate designed for this purpose. Using heat will make the block curl a bit, but that won’t matter if you’re using a press at the printing stage.

Carving on a linoleum block. Photo by Laura Grabhorn

5) Done carving? It’s time to prep your paper and make a registration page. The registration page is the same size as the paper you will finally print on, but it can just be cheap paper, like newsprint. Use a ruler and pencil to mark out where on the page the printed image will go. Usually, you want the image centered left-to-right, but with about a third more empty space along the bottom edge than the top edge. Trace around the edge of your lino block.

6) Prep your ink. We used Daniel Smith’s Relief Oil-based Ink. It’s high quality and manufactured right here in Washington State. It also cleans up with in a two-step process with vegetable oil and Simple Green. Use a brayer to spread the ink out evenly. See the video above for a demonstration, including the special sound you hear when the ink is the right consistency.

Brayer - always set it down on its "foot," as you see in this picture. If not placed on the "foot," the weight of the tool will compress the rubber cylinder and ruin the tool eventually.

7) What about the paper? We used Rives Lightweight Paper. It’s 100% cotton and does well with small-scale printmaking.

8 ) Roll your ink onto your lino block with the brayer and then place the block on top of your registration page. WASH YOUR HANDS! I got ink on mine every time. Grrrr!

9) Match up the edges of your good paper with your registration page – gently, carefully!

10) You can get a decent print at home without using a press. Use the back of a wooden spoon and move it in small, even circles over the back of your paper while it is sitting on top of your inked block. I’m not that patient. I used the brand new Takach Etching Press in the printmaking studio. It was really neat to see by its metal manufacturer’s tag that it was made just this past February in Albuquerque, New Mexico. All our materials were American-made, except for the Rives paper (made in France).

11) It takes a long time for the ink to dry – don’t underestimate it!

Prints drying on a rack. It took about 5 days for these to dry completely.

12) Label your print in pencil and you’re done. Ever wonder what the numbers mean? The first number is the order in which you pulled the impression. The second number is the number of impressions made from that block. If you only make one, then switch ink colors or change the block, then that one you printed can be labelled AP, for “Artist’s Proof,” instead of using numbers.

While I work on writing about Vestige Vagabond, a performance by artists Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers performed at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art last weekend, I thought I would share a four-minute podcast by students from The Evergreen State College. My thoughts are with Maria Hupfield and her family in NYC as hurricane Irene heads in that direction.

Last year, Maria Hupfield’s installation work Double Tripod Inverters was part of the exhibition titled It’s Complicated: Art about Home at The Evergreen State College Gallery in Olympia, Washington. Several academic programs used the exhibition as the taking-off point for assignments for students. The video above was created as a podcast by first-year students Joe, Alex, and Jesse. This was a project they completed in five weeks. The team of students viewed the artwork by Maria Hupfield in the art gallery, researched the artist’s career, devised interview questions and corresponded with her, wrote and recorded voice-over narration, edited a digital recording sent by the artist, and selected images to accompany the audio track. They began the project with no previous training in art or podcasting, just a desire to better understand an artwork they found interesting. The college’s excellent media staff made it possible for these students to learn the technology and quickly put it into practice.

If you would like to download this student podcast or others from the exhibition,  please visit  http://blogs.evergreen.edu/visionsandvoices/ and follow the download instructions.

detail view of Maria Hupfield's installation "Double Tripod Inverter" at The Evergreen State College

This fashion event features designs by Patricia Michaels, Pilar Agoyo, Penny Singer, Teri Greeves, Margaret Roach Wheeler, and TahNibaa Naat’aanii.

Information about ART FOR WEAR can be found at the Wheelwright Museum’s webpage: http://www.wheelwright.org/auction2009artforwear.html

For in-depth coverage of Native fashion designers, visit Jessica Metcalfe’s blog BEYOND BUCKSKIN at http://beyondbuckskin.blogspot.com/

It’s Indian Art Market week, and that means a slew of gallery openings and film screenings in addition to official SWAIA events. Two art openings worth seeing tonight are at Margaret Moses Gallery and Blue Rain Gallery. The artwork pictured above is a detail of Chris Pappan‘s painting “Entitled,” featured at Margaret Moses Gallery.

Blue Rain Gallery features work by painters Marla Allison and Norma Howard, and pottery by Jody Naranjo.

Both openings take place from 5-8pm on Wednesday, August 17th. They are within walking distance of each other.

For more information:

http://www.blueraingallery.com/
130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite C, Santa Fe, NM

http://www.margaretmoses.com/
410 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM

While I sat in the gallery, numerous visitors came through the space and talked about their previous visits and the progress they had seen made over the months. It was great to see so many people were making return visits and speaking with each other about their experience of the artistic process.

My initial experience using the Art Stor image database produced some disappointing results. When I searched for Native photography, or even just the terms Native or American Indian, what came up was many hundreds of photographs OF Natives, not BY Natives. I was an early user, back in 2005, and complained about it. Art Stor made some changes and now there are many images of historical objects made by indigenous peoples that turn up with those searches, but the database of photographic works is still primarily anthropological and studio portraits by non-Natives from before 1930. They have a few photos by Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie and Shelley Niro, but not much else. I’d love to see that particular mainstream teaching resource expanded to include more Indigenous photographers… And I’d like them to be easily searchable, too. I found myself thinking about how crucial exhibitions and their catalogues have been for Native photography. When I teach about the subject, I’m using exhibition catalogues instead of textbooks. I can’t count on having an exhibition on display within a 100 mile radius for a timely field trip. Usually, the exhibitions are quite far away and only last a couple months at best. The exhibition catalogue becomes the most stable way to bring the artwork and issues to my students. When Tsinhnahjinnie brings up the aspect of collecting, she explains in more depth farther along in the essay that it is more common for a collecting audience to come across indigenous art forms that are considered “traditional,” like basketry, pottery, weaving, carving, etc., than to come across photographic work by indigenous artists. It is possible that there could start to be a shift in that pattern this summer, or at least, that’s the hope. In conjunction with SWAIA’s Indian Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico this coming August, there will be a juried photo exhibition for the first time. The juried exhibition is being hosted by the New Mexico Museum of Art. Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Larry McNeil, and Katherine Ware will be selecting works. THE DEADLINE IS JULY 5th. Here is the call for entries: _________________________________________ Call for Entries Hosted by the New Mexico Museum of Art in partnership with the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA), the competition and exhibition are designed to encourage Native American artists working with photography to share their recent work with a broad audience of viewers. Artworks will be judged on the basis of vision, technical execution, and cohesiveness as a body of images. All subject matter is welcome. The competition winners will be invited to show their work in an exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art, opening August 12, 2011, during SWAIA’s 90th annual Santa Fe Indian Market, as well as in an online version of the show. Jurors: Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Diné/Seminole/Muscogee) is an artist serving as Director of the C.N. Gorman Museum at University of California Davis and Associate Professor in the Department of Native American Studies at University of California Davis. Her photographic works have been extensively published and exhibited nationally and internationally. Katherine Ware is curator of photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art. She is a frequent juror and reviewer of contemporary photography and has published numerous books and essays on both historic and contemporary photography. Larry McNeil (Tlingit and Nisgáa) is a scholar and artist serving as professor in the Art Department at Boise State University. He taught previously at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He is a contributing author to numerous publications and has won many fellowships and awards for his photographs. Artist Eligibility: The competition is open to all Native artists who are enrolled members of federally recognized US and Canadian tribes, nations, first nations and pueblos who work with digital or traditional still photography or two-dimensional mixed-media work that is photo-based. How to Enter: All submissions must be of work made within the past three years. Submissions can be made electronically or through the mail. Please send electronic submissions to photoexhibit@swaia.org. For questions about electronic submission, please contact Lisa Morris (lmorris@swaia.org). Mail disks to SWAIA Photo Exhibition, P.O. Box 969, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504. The submitted images must be jpegs, no larger than 1960 pixels, with a maximum file size of 1.8 MBs. You may submit up to 12 images. Each submission should include a statement about the work of no more than 200 words. Deadline: All submissions must be received by July 5, 2011. Notification: Winners will be notified by July 13, 2011. All other entrants will be notified thereafter. Winners wishing to participate in the exhibition must send ready-to-hang work to arrive at the museum no later than July 29. Winners will be provided funds for framing and shipping. The art must be sent to the museum framed or ready for installation. Final dimensions are not to exceed 5’ x 5’. Neutral mat colors and simple frames are preferred, unless the style of presentation is integral to the work of art. Glazing must be acrylic – no glass. If the presentation of the art does not meet the museum’s standards, the museum reserves the right to request modification. Artists will receive museum loan agreements for accepted works of art, which must be completed and returned by mail. For general questions about the competition, please contact Kate Ware (kate.ware@state.nm.us) Terms and Conditions: The New Mexico Museum of Art, in consultation with the jurors, reserves the right to select or decline any artwork submitted. By submitting work for consideration, the artist agrees to allow accepted art to be reproduced for publicity and/or educational purposes. Funding is generously provided by Andrew Smith Gallery and Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser. _________________________________________ http://blog.larrymcneil.com/2011/06/21/new-native-photography-get-your-stuff-together/