Spring Semester Initial studio objectives:

• continue to work towards ways of making that more fully integrated my chosen mediums with whatever message I might be expressing.
• research into painting traditions of the Bitterroot Salish and, ancillary that, the painting traditions of Northwest Coast, Plateau, and Plains tribes as these were points of contact for trade with the Bitterroot Salish.
• continue to work my way through oral histories of the Bitterroot people, some of which goes into depth on the type of pigments available, how to harvest them, what their significance was, and how they were used.
• I would like to more fully pull “traditional” aspects of NA painting into my contemporary practice.
• working to better write about my work.

Long-term goals:

• Consider and explore concepts of monumentalism, memory, and sacredness through various narrative methods as well as building on what I have discovered from Fall semester.

 

Reflections on process, new thinking, etc.

The Medium Is The Message vs. The Medium Supports The Message.

I wasn’t satisfied with the original aphorism so I changed it. I disliked that the original statement centered the medium over the message. For my work, the message is as important (if not more so) than the medium. The changed aphorism better resonates with me as I consider what it is that my mediums might say, what it is that I want my work to say, and how best I can tie those two aspects of my practice together.

Editing to create a clear, strong message in the work.

I realized, this semester, that I am prone to muddying things up by trying to push too many messages into my work. So I’ve been purposely focusing on the one message I want a piece to communicate and then working to stay focused on that.

Artistic References

I took the opportunity to attend a number of Visiting Artist talks. The two which stood out most for me were Nicholas Galanin and Curtis Talwst Santiago. The way in which they both approached identity through their work and the way in which Nicholas Galanin talked about his thinking and process were really informative. Both artists gave me ideas for how to rethink or think differently about my art practice and the way in which materials and focused message work in tandem to create a solid piece. 

Remaking The Thing I Don’t Like Into Something I Do Like.

During one meeting with my mentor, I told a story from when I was a little girl. Beads were scarce in the area so I had to come up with different ways of obtaining them. There was a dime store in my home town that sold “Indian bead work” to tourists. This bead work wasn’t locally made; it was probably made in China or somewhere else overseas. The pieces were generic but colorful and cheap. So I would buy a few of them at a time, take them home, painstakingly pull them apart, sort the beads by color, and then use them to make something I did like. I realized that a lot of what I am doing right now speaks to this urge to take something I don’t like (history, historical amnesia, identity, loss of culture, loss of territory) and make it into something I do like. Most of what I am focused on currently is speaking directly to pushing against the purposeful amnesia of Indigenous history in this country. And I am focused on remaking with the beaded portrait of the Flathead woman from Curtis’ photograph. I’m also considering delving more deeply into Indigenous Futurism where I take apart the history I don’t like and re-imagine it in a way that I do like.

 

Current Studio Outcomes, Experiments, Explorations, Concerns. 

I am mostly satisfied with my studio work this semester. I didn’t get as much completed physically as I would have liked but I did a lot of conceptual thinking, writing, and reading. All of which takes time. I did find it difficult to balance a more writing/reading studio focus with the Artists Writing class. My plan had been to do a writing focused studio mentorship next Spring as well but I’m rethinking that.

Continuing work from last Fall was mostly focused on the Boundaries Project, Beaded Portraits, and The Long Walk. New and experimental work was comprised of The Blood Quantum project, Treaty Quillwork experiments, and some new thoughts on drawing as an endpoint.

Historical/Contemporary Research Undertaken This Semester.

• I began delving more deeply into family history, family stories, etc. as a way to “speak” with and “listen” to my ancestors.
• I continued to read through published oral histories of my tribe to look for references to colors and pigments.
• I’ll be attending a local NW Coast Indigenous pigment symposium at the end of May.

Annotated Bibliography/List of Readings

• I’m still continuing to add to the annotated bibliography when time permits. I’m currently searching for readings that talk about non-Colonized Art Theory. 
• I’ve kept a list and copies of articles that my mentor asked me to read or, in some cases, re-read. These include Barthes (Rhetoric of the Image), bell hooks (The Oppositional Gaze), Alleva (Reception), Donnelly (Indigenous Futures), and Winterson (Art Objects). 

 

Current Studio Work:

The Boundaries Project (WIP). Materials: wood, paper, canvas, maps, iron nails. Iron oxide acrylic paint. Dimensions variable.

This sculpture/installation project started last Fall. The initial idea was to rip up facsimiles of a Montana map, circa 1881, reassemble the pieces into Montana reservation shapes, and then splatter blood colored paint on the shapes to form faces. I felt that, right from the start, this initial idea was fairly solid. I liked what it said about ripping up a huge territory and reassembling it into a small space that didn’t make sense. I liked that the viewer clued into these being maps but that, on closer inspection, the maps made no sense. I liked the physicality of ripping something up as I felt that spoke to the entire process of establishing and then forcing Indigenous people onto reservations. I also liked the idea of splatters in Iron oxide which is an ancient pigment used globally by humans for thousands of years. I took this idea still further to take advantage of how the human brain looks for faces which spoke to the invisibility of Indigenous people in America. Once the viewer saw the face in the blood, they would not be able to un-see it.

Where this project became tricky was when I moved on to thinking through how I wanted to frame these pieces. I went through several iterations, added items and then removed those items, and so forth. Finally, after a conversation with my mentor this semester, I did some free writing to explore what it was that I was trying to say with these and came to realize that the reassembled pieces looked like hides – the idea that a hide is a stand-in for the body and that it is a way of identifying a being also came to the fore. Once I had that idea on board, I was able to move forward and think about how hides were obtained and prepared which led to this framing concept of hide stretcher frames. The reassembled pieces became hides that stood for the previous life of Indigenous people which were now removed and being processed on white washed wood frames. The language of the various treaties was used to make lashings which bound and stretched these pieces to that frame.

Boundaries Project Images:

Blood Quantum Project (WIP). Materials: Ink on paper, dimensions variable. Done in an analogous palette of reds (Iron oxides, vermilion, etc.)

So much of modern Indigenous American identity is dictated by blood quantum – what percentage of Indian blood, listed on the Certified Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB), a person can show that they have. It leads to a very colonial way of thinking about Indigenous belonging, Indigenous culture, who is “enough” and who isn’t enough to claim Indigeneity. This system was imposed on Indian people by the Federal government as a way to measure “Indian-ness” through a construct of race. Eventually, through this policy, the government planned that Indians would breed themselves out of existence and the federal government would no longer have to uphold legal duties and treaty obligations. The damage that this system does to Indian identity is immeasurable. Indians are the only minority in the US that are required to prove their minority status. It’s a kind of slow genocide that was begun in the 1800s and continues to this day. Blood quantum was a very important part of many of my ancestors’ identity. These portraits of people I am closely related to speaks to how these fractions, based on different relationships, ancestry, and government control were an embedded part of their identity. Just as it is for me.

This project is done by taking a stamp which has the blood quantum amount of the person and then using Pointilism to create the portrait. The current incarnation is a bit unsatisfying. In thinking about how blood quantum is a form of erasure, I think the portraits are too defined. The next iteration will be much less defined; almost as if the person is dissolving.

Secondary to this thought is that the portrait of the woman emerging from the herd of buffalo feels like a different direction than these blood quantum portraits and should be its own distinct project. In that portrait, the woman is made of buffalo and that is a kind of celebratory idea. So rather than using my ancestors for the blood quantum portraits, which I’ve been having some issues with, I will use them for portraits similar to the red buffalo woman.  

Blood Quantum Images:

Beaded Portraits: Materials: canvas, Pellon, glass beads, and thread. 8.5 inches diameter.

I have a love/hate relationship with Edward S. Curtis’ work. On the one hand, the photos of indigenous people are precious in that they are a historical record of Indigenous Americans. On the other, most are so stage managed and created from a non-Indigenous point of view. In many ways, Curtis’ work was meant to show that Indigenous people were a vanishing culture and that they were less sophisticated, less educated, and less civilized than non-Indigenous Americans. For this beaded portrait, I decided to reclaim the humanity and Indigeneity of this person – who is listed in Curtis’ portfolio simply as “Flathead Female Type”. The title dehumanizes this woman by naming her as more of a specimen, a curiosity, than a human being. I wanted to remake her portrait in a way that humanized her and in a way which was more Indigenous so that she wouldn’t continue to only be known only by that title. There are several portraits with this kind of titling in Curtis’ work. I’m planning on doing a few more of these beaded portraits of them as well.

Beaded Portrait Images:

The Long Walk (WIP). Materials: cast foam, hydrocal, acrylic paitng, and paracord. When this sculpture is finished, it will be 37 feet long x 24 inches wide x 3 inches thick. Each bead is 3.5 inches diameter x 2 inches thick.

I continue to work on this very large sculpture. As of this week, 1690 cores have been cast, 500 cores have been skinned, and 300 beads have been painted. I’m currently in the skinning phase – adding a layer of reinforced hydrocal to each cast foam core so that the surface is smooth and paintable. My goal to finish this piece is October 15^th of this year – the 130^th anniversary of the removal of the Bitterroot Salish from the Bitterroot valley. It’s a fairly simple piece with a nicely focused message. The medium of giant beads elevates the piece into the realm of sculpture; which avoids the art world penchant for labeling Indigenous work as “craft”. The size also acts as a monument to the Salish while at the same time reclaiming gallery floor space and forcing the viewer to confront it and move around it. It will be installed at the King Street Station in Seattle, hanging from the rafters, flowing down the wall, and out into the gallery space. The dashes represent footsteps on the red road. There are a few aspects I am still working my way through but conceptually, I am very satisfied with it.

Long Walk Images:

Drawing: Hands/As An Endpoint

Drawing has always been a means to an end for me. Mid summer, last year, I began to look at my drawings and consider how they functioned as stand-alone work. I really liked they way they operated and began to consider how I could work that into painting. The reductive painting experiments I did last Fall were a direct result of this line of thinking. This semester, I started to consider drawing as a finished work. All of the compositions are circular – this is a response to thinking about how Time is viewed by many Indigenous peoples as a less linear concept than it is for modern Western European and American culture. I also focused on just hands as a means to think about how message can be conveyed through simple gesture by both the subject and the medium of graphite. 

Drawing: Ancestors Studies

I started these drawings as a prelude to the Blood Quantum project. Many of the photos I’ve been able to obtain of my ancestors have been very old and grainy. Some were taking in the late 1800s so the amount of information available was limited. I’ve been working on creating portraits of several individuals as a way to enlarge them without losing details. In the course of doing these drawings, I found it interesting to see facial characteristics that have been passed down through subsequent generations. As an example, when doing the portrait of my great grandmother, it almost felt like I was doing a self portrait. 

Painting

Not a lot of painting happened this semester. When I did paint, I was engaged in color exercises, concept ideas, and a different method of reductive painting which mirrors my drawings. Or, I just painted for the fun of it. 

Traditional Quillwork with Treaties

When I started creating the lashing for the Boundaries project, there was a lot of vinyl cuttoffs. Materially, they reminded me of porcupine quills so I experimented with them to do some traditional quillwork. This led to some thoughts on how I might manage composing the treaty words so that the text was mostly readable while being quilled. I’m very undecided about this aspect. Since quillwork is something of beauty, I feel that using treaty words may not work. Instead, I may look for other words that are more about survivance and use those instead.