Statement/Introduction
My work explores my identity and experiences as a mixed blood person, fusing Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of seeing and making in order to navigate the space between.
Born and raised in Northwestern Montana, I grew up on the Flathead Indian Reservation. My father was Qlispe’, Seli’š, and Ksanka (Upper Kalispel, Bitterroot Salish, and Kootenai) and my mother was the daughter of non-Indigenous settlers who moved to the reservation in the 1920s when it was opened for white settlement. I grew up with access to these two different worlds and to their histories and traditions.
My work creates “stories” that investigate concepts of erasure, kinship, belonging, transition, transformation, reclamation, and ambiguity. My work also celebrates the resilience and survivance of Indigenous people, giving voice to that part of me that has survived and thrived. I consider myself and my work as a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures, between Western European art and Indigenous art, and between the past and the future.
Current Projects and Works-In-Progress
Boundaries Project: The Impact of Loss of Place
Place and identity are inextricably linked for Indigenous people. These “hides”, made from ripped up and reassembled facsimile maps of Montana circa 1881, are stretched and lashed to whitewashed wood frames with the official treaty language used by the US government to create each reservation located in the State. Indian peoples were ripped from their larger territory and confined to the much smaller reservation which was not enough territory to sustain their way of life. They often did not understand the full language of the treaties they signed and were expected to change from hunters to farmers almost over night, This work directly refers to this process by referencing the skin of an animal which has been removed and then stretched out to tan so that it can be changed and used for a different purpose.
The blood red painted faces of Indian people, splattered on the “hides” takes advantage of the human brain’s propensity to see faces – which, once seen, can’t be unseen – pushing against the purposeful amnesia regarding the US history of its treatment of Indian peoples and the idea that Indian people are invisible or “extinct”. The “hides” and “blood” are stand-ins for Indian bodies, referring to US government policy on blood quantum – dictating who is and isn’t “Indian” in order to allot reservation resources.
Plans for the Future
I’m currently workshopping installation ideas. I wasn’t happy that the viewer is looking down on these so I am currently thinking through a different install approach. The drawing represents the current idea that I’m working at the moment.
These pieces have always been representative of the Indigenous body so I decided to really lean into that (the drawing). One of the reasons these have faces is to humanize the people to whom the trauma of removal happened. Elevating the pieces to eye level in a way that suggests a human body supports that representation. This taller install would also take up more space and would confront the viewer in ways the floor install just doesn’t.
Beaded Portraits: Counting Coup on Curtis
As a medium, beads are a symbol of resilience, survivance, and thriving for Indigenous people. Post First Contact, Indigenous peoples readily adopted European glass beads as an art form and took the medium to artistic heights not attained in Europe at the time – taking control of a European medium and making it their own.
The legacy of Edward S. Curtis is a problematic one. So many of his photos don’t note the name of the subject. The photo title is the name he gave them, stripping a part of their Indigenous identity and renaming them in a non-Indigenous way. The Curtis photo “Flathead female type”, which is the basis for one of these pieces, was especially painful to me. This was a Bitterroot Salish woman photographed by Curtis who used only her image for his own purposes. She might be an ancestor, she might not. I don’t know because her name was lost.
In these beaded portraits, the whole impetus is about “renaming” the subject from Edward S. Curtis’ dehumanizing titles to something more Indigenous. This is done most directly with the title of the work – Sunwoman. But the beads, their dimensionality, and their colors also function as a kind of language which renames and reclaims these people. Beads and color, especially in the way I have used them, mark this subject as “Indigenous”. The material “names” the subject and “identifies” the subject. This woman has become more than just a nameless person in a flat, black and white photo taken by a non-Indigenous person for Colonial/Capitalist reasons bankrolled by a 19th century robber baron (JP Morgan).
Plans for the Future
I have just recently finished the second portrait and have prepared the ground for the third one, based on a photo entitled “Nespelem Maiden” which has all sorts of problematic connotations that I’d like to address (the fetishizing use of the word “maiden”). These portraits, at this size, take about 55 to 60 hours – it’s a slow medium to work in. So I am not anticipating getting this latest portrait finished until well into Fall semester.
Painting: Indigenous/Non-Indigenous Fusion.
Continuing a trajectory that I started last Fall semester, I am exploring ways of using pigments, color, subject matter, method (reductive and additive), and symbiology in my painting practice. I recently attended the Native Pigments Revealed symposium a few weeks ago and have come away with a renewed interest in exploring the pre-Contact Indigenous painting traditions of Qlispe’ and Seli’š people. The idea that earth pigments – rock, plants, etc. – tie a work to a certain place because the materials have been gathered from that place is really appealing to me. Much of my painted work contains visual references, overt and covert, to landscape. I’d like to push this further.
Plans for the Future
The images below represent what I’m experimenting with right now. The left most painting was done right after the Native Pigments Revealed symposium and represents the direction I’d like to go with foraged pigments. Finding pigments in the landscape, making them into paint. And then painting with them. This field of enquiry will very likely extend through Summer, through Fall semester, and into Spring semester.
Print
I started thinking about the use of print in my practice when I started working with the facsimile 1881 Montana map and the treaties that established the reservations in the state. These were printed works on paper – in some cases, mass produced in order to disseminate information. I’m interested in this communication method when thinking about the purposeful amnesia of the general American public with regards to Indigenous people and history. I’ve also branched out to thinking about print and symbols, especially the use of multiples, to create meaning and to tie that into my current work. I’m still investigating this tangent by creating my own blocks for printing/stamping and thinking about the symbols I want to weave into images. I really like the idea of using one symbol to build a portrait or picture of a subject in a Pointillist manner.
Plans for the Future
Along with continuing these lines of thought, I am taking a Print workshop this Summer and the Graduate Print Portfolio elective this Fall. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this focused time.
Drawing
A regular part of my practice includes almost daily concept sketching but I have recently gone back to creating drawings as “finished” work. Like my painting practice, this is another area where I am exploring style and symbolism to create specific messages.
Experimentation: Quilling with Paper
There is a European tradition of “quilling” with curls of paper which looks nothing like Indigenous quilling with porcupine quills. I’ve been experimenting with quilling paper in the Indigenous quilling tradition. These are tests, using treaty text, to see how much of the wording can be read and how I can manipulate the text. This is an offshoot of the Boundaries project lashings which are vinyl encased strips of treaty text. It has a very quill-like materiality to it so I wondered how it would behave when quilled onto a surface.
And, As Always, Long Walk…
I still continue to work on this very large bead sculpture. Currently, all foam cores have been cast and I am in the process of skinning each bead with hydrocal, sanding them, and then painting them. It takes time for the clear, top coat to cure so I’ll be working on these, this summer, in between all the other projects and school work.
The 130th anniversary of the removal of the Bitterroot Salish from the Bitteroot valley is October 15th, 2021. I am hoping to finish this by then but may not make that deadline.
For a more in-depth discussion of this project, please go here.
