Phone Interview by Anastasia Mejia

Spring 2011 

I had the privilege to interview self-taught painter James Lavadour. When viewing James Lavadour’s paintings for the first time I was immediately drawn to their expressive vibrant colors and the gestural abstract landscapes which are inspired by the Blue Mountains surrounding his home in Eastern Oregon. I’m away from my home in the Columbia River Gorge attending school at Portland State University. Seeing Jame’s paintings gives me a sense of the comfort, energy, and familiarity of my home terrain. James Lavadour doesn’t simply depict the land, he is constantly in a state of investigation asking questions and creating energy in the form of pouring, dripping, scraping, and layering paint. What blew me away about James in our interview was the pure excitement in his voice and the absolute passion and dedication he has for his art as well as his community on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. James Lavadour has been such an inspiration to me it was an honor to interview this profound and prolific artist. 

The Interior, 2011, Oil on Wood

Geographies of the Same Stone: for TT 2, 2010, Oil on Panel 

Blue Basalt, 2010, Oil on Panel

Silk, 2008, Oil on Panel

Transcribed Phone Interview

Anastasia Mejia: In a review from OregonLive about your solo show at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in 2008 the article talks about the influences of jazz music, Asian Art, and Abstract Expressionist painting in your work. I am interested to learn how these influences have weaved into your paintings? This article was written in 2008 have you acquired new sources of inspiration? If so what are they and how have they affected your work now?

James Lavadour: There is a certain thing that jazz, Chinese painting, abstract painting, Asian music, all have in common and that’s improvisational thinking. This institutionalizing sense of being able to jump out into the unknown and discover things. I’m a self-taught painter. That’s kind of the main skill of my artistic thinking is the improvisation of looking into things that I don’t know anything about or nobody has informed me of. I’m just discovering things and the properties and potentials of all the things I’ve discovered. Whether it be color or paint or composition or flow or any other process or process oriented way of thinking.

So when I began my personal body of work about ten years ago in 2000 I had ended another way of thinking prior to that. I think painting is a developmental thing. You go through all these different stages to become what you are and I was at a point where I couldn’t go any further doing what I was doing back in the nineties. I had to go back and reconsider everything, what it is I do, how I do it, and why and where it comes from. I kind of tie that into printmaking which printmaking taught me the discipline of visual analysis.

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Interview by Angie (Kichi) Collier

Winter 2011

Rose Bean Simpson is a multi-media artist from Santa Clara Pueblo. I was immediately drawn to her work because of her diverse styles, including comic art, sculpture, music, and spray paint. After watching Artisode 1.3- KNME (Rose Bean Simpson) I knew right away that I wanted to interview her for this project. I felt very encouraged by her voice, and that she was someone I could identify with. I have a great respect for any woman who is creating art that challenges mass media and objectifications. Rather than numbing one’s soul, Rose Bean Simpson is trying to enliven, strengthen, and build the soul.  She is not afraid to be who she is, in her natural, beautiful state, and this not only shows through her voice, but through her artwork as well. I am honored that I was able to interview someone who is actively transforming the negative effects of our media, and someone who is honestly connected to the purity of life. Through my own journey as an artist, I have experienced moments of complete frustration, and even oppression, due to the domination of our media society, so not only was discovering Rose a breath of fresh air, but I was truly inspired.

Kichi Sol: I am very interested in your sculpture “To Fill That Hole.” I was wondering if you could explain the meaning behind the ‘hole’ and also give some information about what you placed inside the hole, and what those objects are representing. I also noticed a similar hole on your sculpture “Protector.” Are these sculptures connected? 

Rose Bean Simpson: In the sculpture “To Fill That Hole”, I had placed within the bars, multi-colored small faces. Much of my work is about looking inward, and trying to see or expose what is on the “inside”. (Emotionally, psychologically). I put small viewing spaces in my work for a while because they were all about revealing an inner truth.

In the piece “To Fill That Hole”, the hole represented the sense of emptiness we may feel, or not feeling whole until we “have” something else, other than ourselves. In this specific piece, the “hole” through is the space of pain, abuse, or lack. It has been filled with people, that being relationships with the outside world in order to fulfill something within. No matter how many people I try to fill the hole with, I am still not whole. The piece then must find something else, because her view has been directed and judgmental, which makes her helpless.

It is displaying a state of disempowerment.

In “Protector”, the piece has found something beautiful within, which is manifested in the form of a pinecone. This particular piece was about sexuality, and the judgments behind what the western world considers “sexy” to be. The most incredibly sexy thing I had seen was a pinecone, bursting with creation. In that space I felt that true sexuality and understanding needed to be protected from the negative, abusive, and destructive sexual energy that pervades our media society.

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Interviewed by Linda Meanus

 Winter 2012

Linda Meanus: Where do you see your work fitting into the contemporary Native world as a nationally renowned sculptor and mixed media artist?

Lillian Pitt:  Primarily a sculptor and mixed media artist, I am renowned for my extraordinary masks in various media (including astounding ones made of glass). My best known works are the series of portraits of “She Who Watches,” a famous petroglyph in the Columbia River Gorge.  “Tsagaglal” is the image called by the First peoples, has long been a symbol of conscience, of death, and of endurance among the people of the mighty river. I am also an artist of International stature. Still my goal is to incorporate as best as I can, the traditional Native American arts of my ancestors into the contemporary art that I create for people living in these modern times.

“She Who Watches” sculpt in 1950’s or early 60’s.

LM: When you interact with other artists, is it important to understand each person/artist experience with their cultural connection? Do you give voice to the Ancestors as you work?

LP: I am pretty well known and regarded highly among other artists in the Native American art world, and works in collaboration with other artists on public art projects and special projects. I have worked with Phillip Charette, James Lavadour, Joe Fedderson, and Rick Bartow.  

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Interviewed by Rebecca Leiv

Winter 2012

Duane Slick, North American Palindrome with Portrait of Bull Ghost, 2003

Rebecca Leiv: I looked at your paintings for the Art in Embassies program. Please tell me what was involved in having your work chosen for display at an American Embassy? 

Duane Slick: The work was initially chosen after being reproduced in a book titled, “The Telling of the World; Creation Myths from Native America.” I was approached after being referred by one of my galleries, that was in the 1990’s. In fact I have had the same painting selected for the Embassies program, the first exhibition went to Dusseldorf and the second went to Vietnam. Generally, it has been the galleries who are placing the work in these exhibitions. 

RL: Was it more important for the program that you are an American artist or a Native artist?

DS: I believe in all instances the work had some hyphen regarding the Native artist. 

http://art.state.gov/default.aspx

RL: Is it important that your work, as a Contemporary Native artist, is viewed in another country?

DS: Of course it is. I would like to get my work out into the world in as broad a way as possible. These exhibitions often featured traditional work alongside the contemporary, and that is a point of honor as well. I am guessing you are alluding to the artist-who-is-Indian or Indian-artist argument. In which case I am in agreement with the faction that says, “Why do I have to choose?” I have colleagues who are African-American and refuse to be in exhibitions that say African-American Artist in the title. I am guessing they are referring to a type of essentialism or the accusation that such titles, “ghetto-ize” the artist of color. I can see that, but at the end of the day the framework of my identity as a native man is part of the content of the work. I have known adults from different generations who hid themselves, I just cannot do that. My parents and elders would not be happy about that, they too worked hard to make certain we are standing where we are today.

RL: How does your background and history affect your work? Does either your schooling or your upbringing affect your work more? How does your family react to your work?

DS: My background and history inform my work every day. We juggle many things in the process of research, process and execution. I had written a statement that accompanies my current lectures and exhibitions that follows my idea that the past is in the present. It is titled “The Untraceable Present,” and it goes like this:

In narrative traditions, to tell the story of tragedy one must always begin by telling the ending first. I once believed that the weight of such expectations functioned as a cultural given for the artist of Native American descent. Its rules stated that we cry for a vision and place ourselves in a single grand narrative of history and representation.

…but the laughter of Coyote saturated and filled our daily lives. It echoed through the lecture halls of histories and it was so powerful and it was so distracting that I forgot my place in linear time and now I work from an untraceable present.
  
I have been gifted or cursed with a really strong memory. I can recall details from childhood, from discussions with my family and relatives at different points in their lives, from events I have participated in that involve family or events with other Native people. This includes my readings of histories and theory. I don’t see a simple line of cause and effect, rather a network of intertwined lines of cause and effect. I also come from two often very different tribal nations and I was raised urban. I would speculate that such insider/outsider status at all levels creates such a need for this “condition of vision.”

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Interviewed by Elizabeth Neal

Winter 2012

Dana Claxton, a First Nations artist, was born in Yorkton in northeastern Saskatchewan, and incorporates themes from her Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux heritage into her film, performance art, and photography.  Her work explores ecological themes, ideas about beauty, spirituality, and the impact of colonialism on indigenous North Americans, the latter being particularly personal, as her family migrated to Canada from the United States with Sitting Bull.  Her works, such as Buffalo Bone China (1997), which cast a light on the slaughter of the wild buffalo for a European luxury item, bring together historical actions and their lasting consequences.  Although her work exposes the darkness of American imperial injustices, she has also cited “the beauty of Lakota culture and teachings” as equal inspiration for her artistic endeavors.

Elizabeth Neal: You have exhibited your work overseas, including in Australia, France, Hong Kong, and Poland. How does that experience differ from exhibiting in North America? How do those audiences receive your pieces? 

Dana Claxton: Many years ago, I thought I only wanted to “talk” to North Americans through my work regarding Native American history and contemporary life, since I felt that so few people knew the history of the land and the ancient people. The exhibition space is a complicated site. After having several shows internationally, I realize that my art is for all people  - in all countries and hopefully they all engage with the ideas - which are really based in honesty, respect and courage. The courage to know really the history of this land and ancient people and the courage to know Indian people now. 

EN: Your recent performance piece The Elsewhere (September 2011) has been cited as an attempt to “Indianize space” through the use of gesture, music, and natural and man-made objects. I interpret the title of the piece as a reference to transporting the viewer/participant to a space that is in between a gallery for observation and a space that is much more personal in nature. Would you please elaborate on what you had in mind with the title? What would you like the audience to relate it to in a broader sense, if anything? 

DC: For me the elsewhere is going beyond matter into the realm of spirit and I was hoping to take the audience with me, which I am told some did! Also, at the end of the performance I had a “giveaway” and offered the audience to come up and have something from the performance  - either stones or shells. 

The Elsewhere (2011)

EN: What is your favorite kind of space to present your work? Do you have any specific criteria when you consider a space? 

DC: Space is a funny thing. Sometimes I like spacious white spaces, other times small and intimate. Indian and non-indian spaces. I don’t have a fav or criteria and try and work with the space that is provided and then sometimes I make works with spaces in mind. Space can be political, nurturing, disturbing, spiritual, demanding, aloof, controlling, liberating…. space is a complex place for artists and the viewer as so much takes place between the art and the viewer. Sometimes joy, sometimes sadness, sometimes confusion, sometimes deep connections…. the room is full of thought and experience really, besides just simply viewing the “object”, the space provides a site for an enormous exchange between art and the viewer. 

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Interviewed by Chela Perley

Winter 2012

Kathleen Ash-Milby is an associate curator of contemporary Indigenous art at the National Museum of the American Indian – George Gustav Heye Center, Smithsonian Institution in New York City. She was born and raised in the Southwest. I chose Kathleen in part because I have been drawn for so many years to the Southwest and its rich cultural heritage. I was introduced to Kathleen when I was looking in the HIDE: Skin As Material and Metaphor publication that was one of many books available to introduce us to contemporary Indigenous artists and curators. This publication and the HIDE exhibit were her inspiration and brainchild, through which she was introduced to Sonya Kelliher-Combs, an artist I interviewed for the Contemporary North American Indigenous Artists blog. Kathleen worked closely with Sonya, as well as other contemporary indigenous artists to create artwork that explores the aspects of skin within the Native American and Alaska Native community. Through this interview process and getting to know Kathleen and her work, I found her to be deeply committed to bringing more attention to contemporary Indigenous artists and their artwork. One of the most moving things that Kathleen said during the interview was that curating is her “life’s work.” I find that very inspiring as an artist and as a person. Her responses were thoughtful, thorough, intelligent, and very informative. I would like to thank Kathleen for her participation in this interview.

Chela Perley: I’ve read that you were born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and that you are part of the Navajo Nation. What were some of the earlier art influences in your life that made you interested in pursuing a degree in art history?

Kathleen Ash-Milby: Even though both of my parents had degrees in the sciences, many of my Navajo relatives worked in the arts, either as art teachers or practicing artists. My maternal grandmother taught Navajo art, language and culture at Fort Lewis College, and after she retired she was always working on one project or another. Art was just part of this part of my family’s life. And even though my parents weren’t “arty,” as my Dad would say, they taught my brother and I to appreciate things like fine art and music by taking us to museums during our travels and letting me take art classes in the summer and afterschool.

CP: I see that you have a B.A. in Art History from the University of Washington and a Master’s Degree in Native American art history from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. How did you decide to focus on art history as your concentration in undergraduate school? At what point did you decide that you wanted to pursue a Master’s in Native American Art History?

KAM: As an undergraduate in a small liberal arts college, I actually started out as a studio art major. I was most interested in 2-D work, such as drawing, but spent a year in the ceramics studio. I enjoyed trying out different media and didn’t feel ready to choose a concentration. At the same time, I was taking art history courses and just loving them. When I transferred to the University of Washington, I discovered I could major in art history and switched my focus immediately. There were just too many courses that I couldn’t pass up.

As a senior, I was looking into graduate programs with strong contemporary and modern art history programs. Around the same time, I was introduced to contemporary Native art while poking around in the library researching something for a historic Native art history class. Something just really clicked for me at that moment. The University of New Mexico seemed to have the most comprehensive Native American art history program that wouldn’t dictate my focus from day one, plus they ended up offering me a great package of support.

CP: Can you talk a little bit about your experience as a curatorial research assistant at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and how that played a part in your decision to become a curator? What were some of the influencing factors?

KAM: I assisted visiting researchers, helping them access records and assisting them in the collections. I also, of course, assisted the curators with research and exhibitions development. I gained experience in several areas of the collection, but my interest was really in contemporary art, which wasn’t getting much attention by the museum at the time. So, I pursued my own research of the museum’s collection of paintings and works on paper in between my research assistant duties and assignments. In 1998 I received a Collections Research Award to support my research on an obscure deceased artist in our collection. My proposal included interviewing contemporary artists from this artist’s tribe of origin as well as archival research. It was a terrific opportunity and really cemented my interest in pursuing contemporary art projects.

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Interview by Eliza Gregory

Winter 2012

Paul Chaat Smith is a Comanche author, essayist, and curator. His books and exhibitions focus on the contemporary landscape of American Indian politics and culture. As an Associate Curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, his projects have included the NMAI’s history gallery, performance artist James Luna’s Emendatio at the 2005 Venice Biennial, Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian (2008), and Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort (2009). With Robert Warrior, he is the author of Like a Hurricane: the Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New Press, 1996), a standard text in Native studies and American history courses. His second book, Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong, was published in 2009 by the University of Minnesota Press, and is now in its second printing. An extended version of this bio can be found on his website, www.paulchaatsmith.com.

Paul Chaat Smith is incredibly fun to listen to. His ideas are exciting, refreshing, and never static. He breaks down the false barriers people perceive between Native and Non-Native American culture, even as he also acknowledges important differences between people and places. As he says in this interview, “I write to make sense of my own confusion.”

http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/everything-you-know-about-indians-is-wrong

Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong, by Paul Chaat Smith, published by the University of Minnesota Press. This book is great.

Eliza Gregory: “Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong” strikes me as one of those books that can be revelatory for a lot of people—it certainly was for me. I felt like I was waking up a number of times as I read it. Has it had the sort of impact you hoped it would? And how have you become aware of its impact?

Paul Chaat Smith: I wasn’t sure whether it would be successful as a book, since it’s a collection of essays going back almost twenty years. I was confident that at least some of the essays would connect with readers, because of the response when they were originally published or presented. Overall I’m very pleased with the book’s impact. Lots of reviews, sold well for an academic title, and has become a required text for lots of intro Indian studies classes. (Which means lots of people not interested in art, much less Native art, are reading about our scene.) Sometimes I think if I hadn’t relied so much on existing essays on perhaps too many different topics, I might have been able to write a more cogent book that might have crossed over and reached a much larger audience.  At the same time, if it reads as revelatory for some readers it’s because it was revelatory for me when I wrote it. For example, I don’t think “On Romanticism,” which I wrote in the early 1990s, would have read the same way if I had substantially revised it in 2009 for the book. I’ve lived with those ideas for twenty years now; they aren’t fresh to me and today I don’t even agree with some of them. Which is okay, I think. On my first web site, the tag line was “Art, politics, and honest confusion.” I write to make sense of my own confusion. Which often makes me even more confused!

EG: You’ve had a few different professional incarnations. Why do you think that being a curator fits you so well? What makes coming at some of these ideas through art more satisfying to you than coming at them from other fields?

PCS: For me, writing and curating are mostly the same enterprise. I see my job as something like a talk show host, someone who stages an interesting conversation.  Which is odd, since I’m not an extroverted personality, quite the opposite. The magical thing is that you discover other people are thinking about the same questions you are, and you don’t feel so crazy or so alone.  I ended up writing about art because the Indian political world had become tiresome, and it seemed to me that artists were asking the most interesting questions.  Also, better parties. 

Curating fits me because curating is a dubious, mostly invented profession, with no firm requirements and elastic definitions. Good for someone who never graduated from college!

http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/emendatio/jamesluna.html

James Luna, rehearsal for Emendatio performance, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. 2005. Photo by Katherine Fogden.

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Interviewed by Chela Perley

Winter 2012

Sonya Kelliher-Combs is a prolific artist that creates compelling and unique artwork. Her work stood out to me when I was looking in the HIDE: Skin As Material and Metaphor publication that was one of many books available to introduce us to contemporary indigenous artists and curators. As I was deciding which artist to choose, I visited Sonya’s website and was so taken with her work, I knew immediately I wanted to interview her. Like Sonya, I was born and raised in Alaska. I grew up in direct and indirect contact with the indigenous people of Alaska as well as the artwork. As a child and on into adulthood both contemporary and traditional Alaska Native artwork was a natural part of the landscape and in my day to day world in Anchorage where I lived. I saw totem poles, basketry, beadwork, clothing, dolls, drums, ivory and fossil bone carvings, jewelry, masks, paintings, weaving, and wood carvings. Only now am I aware of what a rich heritage I was exposed to and living in the midst of being raised in Alaska. Sonya has taken elements of traditional artwork and practices as well as items from day to day living transforming them into a captivating body of contemporary work unlike anything else I’ve seen. She addresses issues such as abuse, addiction, and suicide within her community. Using elements of subsistence living and harvesting, and she explores her multicultural identity in her artwork. I have found her to be a deeply committed and talented artist and as such, very busy! I would like to thank Sonya for taking the time out of her hectic schedule to participate in this interview. 

Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Guarded Secrets, 2005, walrus stomach, porcupine quill and nylon thread.

Chela Perley: I have read that you were born and raised in Alaska. Would you please tell us about your background and how you got interested in making art?

Sonya Kelliher-Combs: Growing up I did not think I would be an artist but was always doodling and making things. It wasn’t until I took a class at the University of Alaska Fairbanks that I realized it was much more than a hobby to me.

Chela Perley: Having been born and raised in Alaska myself, I have an understanding of how remote the community of Nome is, along with the extremes of the seasons and as such, the extremes of dark and light during the seasons. I am very interested to know how you feel growing up in Nome in these unique conditions  and how they may have influenced your life and artwork.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs: The sense of light and dark as a condition was not something I gave much thought to growing up. These were just different times of the year to do different things. It wasn’t until I lived away from Alaska that the light began to affect me and I understood how much of an impact it had on me. Today there are times, almost like an internal clock, in which I want to bead, sew, fish or berry pick, and make art.

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Interviewed by Elizabeth Neal

Winter 2012

Ryan Rice, a Mohawk of Kahnawake, Quebec, is co-founder of both Nation to Nation, a First Nations art collective, and the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective. Though originally from Canada, he has curated exhibits in a variety of venues throughout North America and has been the Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe since 2009. An artist himself, he sees his curatorial work as politically important because, as he says, “Indigenous art and artists are still subjected to the peripheries of the mainstream.”   

Elizabeth Neal: You have said that your expectations for the First Nations art collective Nation to Nation was “as a catalyst for Indigenous creative expression.” How does creating spaces for art and community inspire artistic output?

Ryan Rice: Community is key to cultural continuity. By including or thinking of aspects of community in arts-related projects, whether they are curatorial or hands-on/participatory, the means of expression can become validated and integral to strengthen links between historical memory and tradition with contemporary constructions and understandings of the beaux-arts and its profound effect of maintaining and expanding knowledge systems.

EN: Beyond educating the public about the effects of the St. Lawrence Seaway on Kahnawake environment and culture, what consequences did you desire or anticipate from your project with Sondra Cross and Skawennati Tricia Fragnito, At the Water’s Edge/Project: Seaway?  Any specific action from non-Native people?

RR: Nation To Nation was a “local/urban” collective based in Montreal that functioned without and/or beyond boundaries, therefore determined to reach out to native and non-native communities (urban and reserve) to socialize/interact within a creative art-focused milieu. The concept, which was reliant on presenting art within an “event” inclusive of a diverse community, shifted the dominant/hierarchal structures built within an institutional space such as a museum or gallery. The social element of engaging with the creative process – art, performance, music and food – provided a welcoming atmosphere and gave way to a greater emphasis on the interaction with the artwork presented.

Building an audience or community for art and those who appreciate or can learn to appreciate art in all its complexities is just as important to developing the venue or finding that space. Occupying or claiming space in the artistic landscape is critical for native artists, curators, writers etc. to build in order for them to get their work recognized on many levels. Nation To Nation was creating that “space” as a catalyst for Indigenous arts/artists to be present and productive. Nation to Nation invited artists to respond, imagine, and consider themes, concerns etc., that were relevant to their communities, society and themsleves.  The formation of native art collectives continue to contribute widely to a native art history and are necessary because many art spaces have institutional limitations and prejudices.       

The project Atsa’kta: By The Water’s Edge, was a means to locate, recognize and reclaim the proper place for the Mohawk community named Kahnawake, a Mohawk word which translates to ‘by the river.’ The project considered public space as an interactive environment and a critical juncture to rekindle nostalgia, political action/inaction and Kahnawake’s identity in the face of what was considered a pioneering marvel – the St. Lawrence Seaway.

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Interview by Sharita Towne

Winter 2012

Daina Warren is a curator based in Winnipeg, Canada. She is currently Co- Director at Urban Shaman Gallery. One of the things that most struck me about Daina, and inspired me to reach out to her was the range of artists and shows she has put together, and her keen sense of description and introspection when delving into these works. Furthermore, she has accomplished all of this at a relatively young age! I figured there was a thing or two I could learn from Ms. Warren, and was honored she agreed to this interview.

Sharita Towne: Thank you for taking the time to do an interview with us. I want to start off by getting to know a bit about where you’re from, your family, and community. Has anyone in your family been an inspiration in your pursuing art?

Daina Warren: I am from the Montana Cree Nation located in Hobbema, Alberta. Many people in my family state that they are not artists per se (and I have the amazing situation of two families, my birth Native family and my adopted white family). But it’s because of them that I always felt their support and energy to take on a career in the arts. In my white family, my mother and father are really remarkable at designing and renovating houses; one of my brothers is a musician, and there are contemporary dancers and other musicians in the extended family. In my Native family, my birth mother and grandmother are both exceptional traditional beaders. They have made almost all of the regalia for the immediate family of my brothers, sisters, and cousins on the rez.

ST: You studied Studio Arts, and now it seems much of your creativity is channeled into your curatorial practices. When did you first get into curating?

DW: My first curatorial project was actually at Emily Carr University of Art & Design (back then it was known as Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design) while I was pursuing a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree for my own Visual Arts practice. I curated our student exhibition titled, Deconstructing the FirstNationsAboriginalNativeIndian in 2000. However, it was soon after I finished at ECUAD that I started working with grunt gallery, in that they hired me as a curatorial resident through Canada Council’s program, Grants to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts, and I worked with them from 2000 – 2001. I was then hired on permanently as curator and administrator. My curatorial experience developed because of the projects and people I met through grunt.

Kevin McKenzie, 426 Hemi, from “Don’t Stop Me Now,” curated by Daina Warren

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Interviewed by Prudence Hayes

Winter 2012

Social justice activist with anarcho-punk twist, artist and professor, Dylan Miner knows what he’s doing when it comes to making art with a message.  All aspects of his work, from conceptual design to carefully selected sustainable printing materials, reinforce his anti-colonial and anti-capitalist messages. Miners’ artistic mediums range from sculptural to his iconic relief prints and zine style work, all with stylized radical Métis and Latino influence. With multiple solo exhibits, involvement in artist collectives, alternative galleries and bookstores, and over 40 published literary works, Miners’ connection to the messages behind his art is apparent, as it expands far beyond the individual art pieces, and into the community itself.

Prudence Hayes: You have a relatively diverse family history, and your art strongly conveys stylized Chicano/Latino influence. Did your childhood’s rural upbringing and varied family roots have a significant impact on the development of your personal style, or was this something you developed at an older age as you began to explore your own interests?

Dylan AT Miner: I was raised in the woods in rural Michigan, an area called the Thumb due to Michigan’s geography being shaped like a mitten. The small parcel of land my parents owned backed up onto an 8,000 acre parcel of state recreation land. This land was meant for hunting, hiking, and other such activities. This intimate relationship with the woods gave me a profound relationship with the local geography, thoroughly getting to know the land, its season, and its spirit.

As a Métis person, that is someone of mixed Aboriginal and European descent with roots in the North American fur trade, we do not have Indigenous status in the US. Even though there are historic Métis communities in the US (particularly Michigan, Minnesota, Montana), we do not have the same sovereignty rights as our relations across the US-Canada Border. My family has historic connections to Aboriginal communities in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Michigan.  Following the War of 1812, there was a group of Métis and Anishinaabeg who left what is today Michigan and moved north to the Georgian Bay, not wanting to be living in the United States. The shifting border became an impetus for my family’s migration. Subsequently, my grandfather’s family moved to Detroit in the early twentieth-century, a process of urbanization not unlike the experience of many Native peoples. As an older child my grandfather would share Métis family stories, a strong connection that I had with my grandfather. 

The village in which I was raised was primarily white, but did have a significant number of Chicano and Mexican farmworker families who settled in the area over the course of the past two decades. As a Métis person, I saw similarities between the colonial legacy of mestizaje (miscegenation) in the Chicano community and métissage in Canada and the Great Lakes. For instance, my wife’s family is descended from detribalized Indigenous communities in New Mexico and Texas, known as genízaros. These were Spanish-speaking communities of Comanches, Apaches, Tewa, Tiwa, Tano, and sometimes Diné. So even if I didn’t verbalize it as such when I was a teenager, I saw that my indigeneity as a Métis person was shared by my Chicano peers.

At a young age, I began speaking Spanish, building lowrider bikes, and many other things associated with chicanismo. I never saw it as anything other than a part of who I was. In this way, I became active in radical Native and Chicano politics, married into a Chicano family, and artistically have been greatly influenced by Chicano and Mexican printmaking traditions. While the aesthetic influence remains, one can think specifically about my ongoing Native lowrider project (Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag), much of my more recent work has begun integrating less obvious aesthetic influences and is engaged more heavily in conceptual ideas that play with Indigenous languages and knowledge epistemologies.

Dylan AT Miner, Prints

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Interview by Sharita Towne

Winter 2012

Portrait by Alex Subrizzi

Skawennati is an artist, independent curator, and Co-director at AbTeC (Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace). It is her unique approach to storytelling, imagining the future, change, cultural richness, and growth that drew me to her work. Artistically speaking we can call Skawennati a “New Media Artist,” yet there is much more to her body of work than simple software and graphics. I am glad, in a word, to have been introduced to her work but I am grateful that she took the time to answer my questions so thoughtfully.

Sharita Towne: Thank you for agreeing to do this interview with the Contemporary North American Indigenous Artists blog. We are especially honored to have you, as an artist who knows firsthand the importance of forging digital spaces for Native artists, communities, and young people in Cyberspace. Can you tell us about the community you grew up in, and how it influenced you to become an artist, and particularly, a New Media Artist?

Skawennati: I think that I was pretty much born an artist, into a family of artists —not my parents or my siblings, but many of my Mohawk family members are very creative individuals, expressing themselves through sewing, beadwork, embroidery, pottery, woodworking and painting. My great aunt taught me to sew when I was three. I have very fond memories of looking through bags and bags of fabric in her closet; of her teaching me to put beads on a needle; of making my first stuffed animal (a giraffe!). Her daughter, Kathleen, who is like an older sister to me, encouraged my artistic tendencies in every way, from teaching me skills herself, like quilting and how to make a clay pot, to taking courses with me at the Visual Arts Centre. “Painting with Pastels” was one, and there was one where we learned to use hydrastone. She is still an incredible support to me.

When I went to university, my intention was to become a designer, probably a graphic designer. I didn’t yet know any artists or how one went about becoming one. It still wasn’t a real job to me at that time. It was the early 90s and the desktop computer was just starting to appear. My department, Design Art at Concordia University, was pretty cutting-edge because we had an Apple 2e lab! And an Amiga lab! It was love at first sight for me, though (perhaps unfortunately) I never became a geek. I was never that interested in what was under the hood; it was what you could do with them that excited me. While at University, I joined the First Nations student group; It was a small group, but most of its members were artists, and I started to realize that I was one of them.           

After graduating, Ryan Rice, Eric Robertson, and myself founded Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective, to help us to stay motivated to produce artwork, and to offer ourselves and other artists moral support and venues to show their work. Around that time, I began to work at an artist-run centre called Oboro Gallery. The director Daniel Dion, was also very excited about computers and this new “internet” thing (this was around 1996). We kinda bonded over that and he encouraged me to figure out how to use e-mail, and all the new stuff that was developing at super speed.

Images from CyberPowWow.net

Without their support CyberPowWow would not have happened. So all these things together make me the artist that I am today. But, as for becoming an artist, I think I was born that way. I had to fight to convince my father to accept my decision to major in Fine Arts. He wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer or something like that. He’s proud of me now, though.

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Joi Arcand at Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon Territory

Interview by Eliza Gregory

Winter 2012

Joi Arcand has made some really exciting and incredible work recently about the disappearance of First Nations languages, and it was this project—Here On Future Earth—that first drew me to interviewing her. In the photographs that comprise the project, she has been able to layer subtle humor, vernacular imagery, imagination, and lamentation to pose questions about the evolution—and loss—of culture. When I look at photo-based work these days, I am looking for artists who have something important to say with their pictures, and who use pictures as a starting point for engagement with people and ideas, rather than as an end point. Joi Arcand is certainly doing that, and it was a pleasure to speak with her about her trajectory as an artist, the ideas she is passionate about, and her relationship to the people around her.

Amber Motors, from the series Here on Future Earth, 2009, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

http://www.joitarcand.com/blog/here-on-future-earth-2/?pid=55

Eliza Gregory: I’m so excited about you’re Here on Future Earth project.  It is so awesome! I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that project here.

First off, has it had the general impact that you wanted it to? How have you been able to gauge that? 

Joi Arcand: Here On Future Earth was inspired by my time spent working at the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre, which represents the 8 First Nations languages that are spoken in the province: Plains Cree, Woodland Cree, Swampy Cree, Dene, Nakawe, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota. I had the privilege of being surrounded by First Nations language specialists and language learning materials every day. Being around people who are speaking their languages everyday and are advocates for their languages inspired me to address this topic in this series. For this project, I worked primarily with Darryl Chamakese who translated all of the words for me. Working on this project led me towards many other people who are working on language revitalization. I’ve received a lot of feedback from people who didn’t know anything about the state of indigenous languages, people who don’t know about the syllabics writing system so I think that the educational impact has been an incredible thing. 

Ice Cream Legislature, from the series Here on Future Earth, 2009, Regina, Saskatchewan

http://www.joitarcand.com/blog/here-on-future-earth-2/?pid=59

EG: It seems to me—as someone whose language is not threatened—that the urgency and the pain of losing a language (or having it be threatened) is something that a lot of people have never considered and may have a hard time understanding. Language has such a profound relationship to culture. I think what’s so powerful about this project is that you illustrate both that relationship, and then what it means to experience this loss of language (and by extension, culture). How does that resonate with the different audiences who are seeing your work? 

JA: Language is culture. There are far too many indigenous languages that are either extinct or endangered. Cree has been named one of the three languages that remain ‘viable’ by Statistics Canada; the number of speakers varies from 12,000-75,000. However, I realized that my own inability to speak the language means that in my family, the language is extinct. This realization triggered urgency in me that the time is now to start revitalizing our indigenous languages. So, this journey is a very personal one for me, and if Here On Future Earth educates or informs people about the state of indigenous languages, then I see that as a good thing.

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Interview By Elayne Janiak

Winter 2012

Dr. Dartt-Newton began her tenure as Curator of Native American Art with the Portland (Oregon) Art Museum on January 2, 2012.  She received her bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of Oregon.  She previously served as Curator of Native American Ethnology at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.  She was also an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University. She and her husband have one daughter.

Elayne Janiak: I understand that your doctoral dissertation examined the “take home” messages left with museum visitors regarding Native Americans and how these messages differed from the lived experiences and alternative histories told by Native people themselves. What are some of those “take home” messages?  How are they imparted by museums? How can those messages be corrected?

Deana Dartt-Newton: Some of the most prevalent messages are that Native people are gone—at least the “real” or “pure” ones. The historic materials reflect the uncontaminated Native culture that was “replaced” by the dominant, mainstream American one. Many venues portray this in a chronological trajectory where the Indians are only at the beginning of the story—literally placed at the entry of the exhibit spaces, but left behind in every way. One way to disrupt this narrative is through multimedia presentations— of living Native peoples. Some look “Native,” others don’t. Some do “traditional” cultural practices, some don’t. I say, show it all. Talk about the actual history of place in text panels. Show maps of displacement of local people and discuss what this meant for identity and cultural knowledge for the people.

A new narrative doesn’t HAVE to be imparted in new exhibits. In fact, I argue that older museums can use outdated exhibits to discuss outdated narratives and how these narratives shaped the current perceptions of Native people.

Integrate contemporary, political, edgy, thought-provoking art by Native artists.

Ultimately, what my dissertation argues is that for museums to adequately tell Native histories they must be engaged with local Native communities.

EJ: The Oregon Historical Society, across the street from the Portland Art Museum (PAM), holds many Native American artifacts and currently has a travelling exhibit entitled “Oregon Is Indian Country” which is described as follows: ”Oregon’s Indian traditions will be illuminated by many art forms including native voices, historical artifacts, photographs and more, producing a powerful exhibition.” Should the interpretation of traditional Native American artifacts in an art museum, such as PAM, differ from the interpretation of such artifacts in an historical or ethnological museum? If so, how ?

DD-N: Coming from the perspective of Native woman and anthropologist, I think that Art museums should provide a little more context than they do—through various media. It pains me to see historic materials without contemporary works, photos, video, etc. that demonstrate the rest of the story—the continuation, innovation, preservation of cultural lifeways. The focus is different in an art museum, as it should be—on the art. But what many museum visitors do not realize is that for Native artists (many, not all), art is rooted in culture, community and place. Ideas that add dimension to a work of art (from the perspective of the artist or the artist’s culture) are important to include. Should the art museum replicate what the history museum does? No. But with an emphasis on the art form, tell a more complete story of materials, motifs, uses and continuation of the practice (even if that includes WHY some practices were discontinued or changed to adapt to an art market, etc.).  

I also think that Native art collecting is a highly political act and relates to social issues that beg transparency. How did these materials come to be in the Art museum?? What influences have Native people had on collections, collecting, and the art market itself.

So—with a focus more clearly on the form rather than the function of historic materials and a discussion of continuity and change, that provides the visitor with a clear picture of “living” traditions which are often innovative and changing—Art museums have a different story to tell, but one that is equally contextualized.

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Interview by Catherine Cooper

Winter 2011

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