I’ve been busy with a variety of things, but ran across this image I’d taken on my phone while at Suyama Space last year viewing Dan Corson’s Grotesque Arabesque. A classmate and I went and saw it on the last day it was up, which also happened to be right at the end of the fall semester. Turned out to be good timing, it was a really great experience, so soft and peaceful. We wanted to spend all afternoon sitting there!
One of the reasons I wanted to post this was that my BFA project has gone in a new direction that I hadn’t anticipated. I thought I was going to do something more along the lines of designing an exhibit or display space, but now I’m wanting to create my own experiential installation that responds to all of the research I’ve done into Native art and artifacts, museums, galleries, and other such topics. I was getting too stuck on curating something when in reality, I needed to make something. It certainly won’t be on the scale of Dan Corson’s installation, but again, you can create a lot of mood in a space with a few simple materials as he has shown.
Last night I took the other three Interior Design seniors in my class to the Seattle Art Museum for a presentation given by Jim Olson of Olson Kundig Architects (formerly Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen). It was about Jim, and many of the houses he has designed, especially for art collectors. I had the chance to visit one of these houses that also has an amazing 20th Century modern art collection and it was truly a gem. Being able to hear him speak about what drives him as an architect (ultimately, nature) and his perspective on interiors, which he also pays a lot of attention to, was invaluable. It was also reinvigorating in terms of feeling a little worn down as I’m approaching the final curve of my BFA program. We’ve heard a lot about commercial design and looked at a lot of pictures of supercool skyscrapers in our classes, but I haven’t had an experience like this from any of my instructors yet where we really just looked at homes. They have such a different, more intimate feel, even these large homes built to house fabulous collections. Mr. Olson, at least, believes that these intimate moments are important, and his houses reflect that. There is a balance between larger spaces and smaller points of gathering.
The event was sponsored by Adobe and of course there were copies of his new book on sale (see image below) in conjunction with the University Bookstore. There was also a reception afterward and I really enjoyed hearing what my fellow students thought of the presentation as we drank wine and munched on hors d’oeuvres. They also seemed to be inspired by what they saw and I think we’re heading in to class this morning a little more excited than we would have been.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the future as I’m getting ready to graduate and while I don’t necessarily believe, at this point, I would want to embark on any sort of “traditional” interior design career, I’m still really glad that I’ve gone through the program. The last four-five years of my life have been transitional for a number of reasons and school has been a big part of that. I’m very thankful to have been able to have this time to grow into myself and whatever the future holds for me, I’m ready to participate fully.
Just wanted to share a couple views of a study model I was making while thinking about my thesis project. I figured that instead of creating a design for an exhibition space that I might as well design an actual installation for my BFA exhibit. Makes sense, right? I’ve got some ideas on what it might end up being and so I was trying to explore the relationship between an organic object and a very geometric surrounding in my model, as well as get a sense of transparency/permeability in the object itself.
Some family issues have kept me from blogging for a while and I figured it was time I started refocusing on getting back to my BFA project. Last week I had to give my 5th week review to a panel that included four of my previous instructors. It actually ended up going really well, so I was very happy about that! Even if I don’t have the content of what I’m doing as hashed out as I’d like, I’ve done a lot of research and have lots of information to work with. At this point, it is likely just a matter of continuing to refine my idea and starting to determine what tasks I need to begin doing in order to be where I need to when the show opens in ten weeks.
In putting together my presentation last week, I did come across a few images of things to think about. One of them was a shot of an area in the Seattle Art Museum’s Native Galleries from back in 1992 when the museum first opened up downtown. Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen was involved in the exhibition design and I feel like this image makes the objects look a lot more accessible than they do in the current SAM Native Galleries. Not that it was perfect or anything, but it doesn’t come across as sterile as the current galleries do.
I’ve been meaning to add this to the website, but haven’t gotten to it yet. In the meantime, I’ll put a few pictures up here instead. As I referenced a few posts ago, I finally got to work on my NMAI Emerging Artist Program piece and ended up combining two frames from an unfinished project in 2007 with photography that I took while in Washington, D.C. as part of the program. There are two pieces, the frames are made from alder and are strung with artificial sinew. The photographs were printed as transparencies and then cut up and attached to the sinew grid with wire. Enjoy!
Had a busy week dealing with family things, but I did run across a facebook post by artist Sonny Assu about a window display in Vancouver that native people were finding offensive. It was at the ‘F As In Frank’ vintage clothing store and had been put up in relation to the upcoming Winter Olympics. Mr. Assu said that the management had agreed to take the display down, so it likely isn’t up anymore. Below is a photo of the window posted on facebook and you can see that they were using stereotypical Western ideas of Native Americans such as the plains feather headdresses. I don’t think the window was as bad as it could have been, but I do like that the local community got involved and that the store agreed to remove the display. It might not be anything huge, but these subtle stereotypical messages do influence how people view and think of indigenous people.
I ran across an Associated Press article in the Washington Post today about how President Obama is “making the Oval Office his own.” It is interesting to think about how such small and subtle things as the types of artwork a President chooses to display sends such a broad message. What initially caught my eye was that some of the china plates in the Oval Office were being replaced with contemporary Native pottery. A message from Inez Russel on a facebook link from NMAI listed the artists as: Lucy M. Lewis (Acoma Pueblo), Steve S. (Iroquois), Jeri Redcorn (Caddo), and Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo). I tried to find some images of the pottery in question, but didn’t have any luck in a quick online search. I did, however, find an interesting article that briefly summarized some of the 47 works of art on loan that the Obama’s have selected for the White House. And Vanity Fair had a blurb from December 2008 on what some interior designers would do to update the Oval Office for Obama.
Image is of Obama entering the Oval Office on his first day as President.
(From the White House Museum website.)
I just found out this morning that I received another scholarship through UCLA’s Tribal Learning Community & Educational Exchange Program. Over the winter quarter I’ll be taking a course called, “Economic Development and Nation Building in Native America.” I really enjoyed the “Federal Indian Law & Policy” course I took last quarter, so hopefully this one will be just as much fun. I’m sure it will also help inform my BFA Thesis project too.
The other thing I’ve got going on is my art project for the NMAI Emerging Artist Program. I recently posted a picture of a piece using money and dentalium that I was working on, but since then, I’ve moved off in a new direction. I have these two alder frames I built in a class back in fall of 2007 for an art project. I had intended the project to speak to my dual white and native ancestry, but hadn’t completed it because I wasn’t feeling certain about what the final form should be. When I was going back through some of my photographs from my NMAI trip, I had a new strike of inspiration. I’ve pulled the frames back out and am currently working on them again. Hopefully I’ll have them completed by the end of the week… To offer a preview, the image below is a close-up shot of one of the frames from back in 2007.
Working on my “Dentalium Dollar Bill” art project recently got me going back through a lot of my photographs I took of Karuk objects while I was at NMAI, which was one of the highlights of my past year. One of the pictures I ran across was of a basket in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History that had struck me, because it had the same design as I had used on some monotype prints I made at a Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts Monothon fundraiser in 2008 (images below).
It isn’t a particularly uncommon design, but I still thought it was kind of cool that I had randomly come up with this pattern and then run into again on a basket. Additionally, I already have something art related in 2010 to look forward to—aside from the fact that I’ll be graduating. I wasn’t able to go to the Monothon Fundraiser at Crow’s Shadow this year, but I will be taking a two-day Monotype Workshop in March with Master Printer, Frank Janzen.
Happy New Year!
Lately, I’ve been reading a book called Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums by Michael M. Ames. It has been a really good read and there are a few passages so far that have really caught my eye. For instance in the chapter titled “ Definition of Native Art” there is a paragraph on page 73 that states:
Native or tribal arts are still seen to be somehow inextricably and harmoniously bound up with ceremonial systems, all part of an exotic tribal complex, that is actually impossible, conceptually illogical, and ethically improper to disentangle. It is further assumed that when particular Native social conditions cease to exist, the art associated must die as well since it is not imagined to have any legitimate autonomy of its own. More than one museum and gallery official has suggested that the only good Northwest Coast Indian art is dead Indian art: that which was produced in the misty past when, so the myth of the Romantic Native goes, they lived in a stable, integrated, and happy tribal society. The coming of the Europeans brought about the decline and fall of the untouched primitive, and everything produced thereafter lacks a true essence, a cultural meaning (the traditional social system is no more, after all). Recent works are written off as deviations from scholastically defined traditional standards and not considered suitable for important art galleries. Contemporary Native artists who try new media or new forms are criticized for abandoning their traditions or for catering to the money market. If Native art is to retain its purity, its acceptability in wider society, it seemingly must remain parochial, unchanging, and exotic, that is, ‘primitive.’ Evolution of form and style, like freedom from cultural embeddedness, is a privilege reserved for white art.
When I’d met a couple months ago with Barbara Brotherton, the Native Arts Curator at Seattle Art Museum, she alluded to this issue and mentioned that, in the Pacific Northwest, there was a strong public preference for traditional Native art forms. It is apparent in the Seattle Art Museum’s galleries, where any works apparently by Native artists are cordoned off in the Native galleries, and all of those works reference traditional Native art forms in some way or another. Although this might not seem like such a big deal, it raises the question of why this segregation is not carried out consistently throughout the museum. For instance, I have often seen works by Paul Horiuchi included in the contemporary galleries, but as he is a Japanese artist (and was born in Japan), shouldn’t his work—according to the same standards—be displayed exclusively in the Seattle Asian Art Museum up in Volunteer Park?
One of the contemporary Native pieces on display is a large scale glass screen by Tlingit artist Preston Singletary. It is based off of traditional house screen forms and displayed on a wall opposite an actual traditional house screen. In this case, the juxtaposition of the two objects makes a lot of sense and I think it is wholly appropriate to display this contemporary piece with items that give it more context. Another example is Sonny Assu’s Breakfast Series, which was displayed in 2007 when the Seattle Art Museum reopened downtown. (The picture of the artwork below was taken by Alan Berner and published originally in The Seattle Times.) I remember being struck by the piece when I first saw it and searching online to find out more about the artist later on. Although I can’t find it today, I recall reading an interview with Mr. Assu where he stated that he was excited to have the work the museum’s collection, but he was disappointed that it wasn’t shown in the contemporary galleries. Personally, I thought he had an excellent point.
Jen Graves from The Stranger wrote an entry on Slog (The Stranger’s blog) titled, “The Marooned Art of Sonny Assu” that said:
But then there’s the young Canadian artist Sonny Assu, whose work is marooned in a hallway off the Native American galleries. His cereal boxes are bitingly revamped to reflect the relationship between natives and the governments that screwed them: “Treaty Flakes,” “Lucky Beads,” “Salmon Crisp,” “Salmon Loops,” “Bannock Pops.” In case you noticed his work dangling out there alone in the hall and wondered in what context it really belonged, Assu will talk about his art and influences Saturday (June 9) at 6 pm at SAM’s auditorium.* *(We might have Suggested this, or at least run it in the listings, but Seattle Art Museum sent the release about the event after the paper went to press this week.)
But then there’s the young Canadian artist Sonny Assu, whose work is marooned in a hallway off the Native American galleries. His cereal boxes are bitingly revamped to reflect the relationship between natives and the governments that screwed them: “Treaty Flakes,” “Lucky Beads,” “Salmon Crisp,” “Salmon Loops,” “Bannock Pops.” In case you noticed his work dangling out there alone in the hall and wondered in what context it really belonged, Assu will talk about his art and influences Saturday (June 9) at 6 pm at SAM’s auditorium.*
*(We might have Suggested this, or at least run it in the listings, but Seattle Art Museum sent the release about the event after the paper went to press this week.)
The work isn’t on display any longer—according to a SAM press release, it is a designated gift to the Native American arts collection from Alexander and Rebecca Stewart—but, I think it is interesting that I wasn’t the only one who wondered what it was doing in a display case all alone in the hallway. It seemed almost like an afterthought, really. And even though the 2007 show at SAM (celebrating the museum’s 75th anniversary) was put on fifteen years after the publication of Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes, it seems apparent that a freedom from cultural embeddedness is definitely a privilege that, if not reserved exclusively for white artists, is certainly something that is still denied to many contemporary Native artists.
Since the semester ended I’ve been trying not to do much of anything where I have to think! It has been really great, but today I was actually motivated to start working on my art project related to my participation this past fall in the Emerging Artist Program for the National Museum of the American Indian. I’ve had ideas running through my head related to dentalium shells—which were used by many tribes as currency—and paper money, but until today they had remained mere ideas. I found a note and sketch I’d done back in October where I was thinking about materials and putting dentalium shells onto a hundred-dollar bill:
And then for my Directed Studies class presentation I made a conceptual model of my idea using Photoshop:
But when I was ready to get started on things today, I was realizing that it might be smarter to start smaller. I wanted to use gold-filled wire to attach the shells onto the paper bill, but wasn’t sure how well it would work. Instead of starting out with a hundred-dollar bill, I took a one-dollar bill and experimented with it.
I’m still thinking of other ways to experiment with this project and see where it will go. Ultimately, I envision it as a series of various “dentalium bills.” We’ll see what happens!
Photo by Joe Mabel, 2007 (from Wikipedia Commons)
I had a sudden burst of inspiration on Friday for my BFA Thesis! A few weeks ago I had received a mass email forwarded through United Indians of All Tribes looking for folks to help out and adopt a native youth for the holiday season (adopt = buy gifts) as the sponsors from the previous years were unable to participate this year. I ended up adopting two people and when I dropped the gifts off at Daybreak Star Cultural Center on Friday, I took the opportunity to check out the small art gallery upstairs.
I’d previously thought that a part of my thesis project could involve curating a small contemporary art exhibit in a community space like Daybreak Star, but actually visiting the space really helped me to think of what shape it could take. Perhaps, instead of coming up with two separate shows, I could curate a single show that combined historic artifacts with contemporary pieces? And what if I was able to involve local native community members along with higher profile artists? I’ll need to spend some time over my break working with this idea. Right now I’m thinking that it would be interesting to have artists create self-portraits and show those along with a historical object from the artist’s tribe. What sort of dialogue might happen between the two? I’m also really excited about the possibility of bringing established artists into the project alongside native youth. Yet another great opportunity for dialogue!
If I go in this direction, it could end up being a fairly ambitious project, but also one that I believe could actually be realized. Just off the top of my head I’m thinking that I could likely bring Daybreak Star, Seattle Art Museum, and the Burke Museum into this. I could also possibly apply for a grant from the National Museum of the American Indian’s Contemporary Arts Program if it is still going in 2011. I’d shoot for 2010, but applications are due by January 15th and I don’t know that I could gather everything together that quickly? Plus, I’d have to show that I have at least $7,500 in matching funds available!
There’s only one week left in the semester and I’ve only got two more final projects to complete for next week along with a couple things to archive and turn in from stuff I presented this week. Our group presented the “i am not a stereotype” project to our Studio class this morning and it seemed like it went really well overall. Pretty much all of the response we’ve gotten to the installations around school have been really positive and I found out today that we managed to draw at least one theater student up to the fifth floor to see our exhibit there too. Apparently he really liked the stuff on the first and second floors and wanted to learn more about the project. One of our instructors also thinks we should pursue implementing the campaign further, which our group is interested in doing. Oh, and there was a student in the same class who volunteered to help us with any web design we needed. Things are good!
It was also really great today because since we presented this morning and went second, I was able to then relax and actually enjoy the other presentations I saw. (I’m not fond of public speaking when I’m the one speaking.) Same went for my evening Directed Studies class since I presented there on Tuesday. The last person (Jessie) talked about her involvement with “Orion Out Loud” which was a collaboration between Cornish theater students and homeless youth at the Orion Center in Seattle last spring. She intends on working on the project again this spring and one of the things she did was share a quick exercise with the class so we could see what types of things they did. She told us to make a list of things we didn’t like about ourselves or our life, and then we picked one thing and had to write a letter to it, evicting it from our life, and then finish by writing a response from that thing back to us. It was a really great way to end the day and the school week (no class tomorrow). Here’s what I wrote:
Dear School Loans, I regret to inform you that I will be graduating this spring and your services will no longer be required. Additionally, since the economy has all but collapsed, I will not be paying you back. It would be great if you could disappear and never contact me again. Thanks so much. Sincerely, Anthony Callaway Dear Anthony, Nice try, but we own you. Sincerely, Your School Loans
Dear School Loans,
I regret to inform you that I will be graduating this spring and your services will no longer be required. Additionally, since the economy has all but collapsed, I will not be paying you back. It would be great if you could disappear and never contact me again. Thanks so much.
Sincerely,
Anthony Callaway
Dear Anthony,
Nice try, but we own you.
Your School Loans
From my last post, we DID get everything else installed last night for our project! Below is an image of our fourth installed statement and of our wall exhibit.
i am black, i am mixed, we are in love
i am not a stereotype
I haven’t written as often as I’d like due to a variety of factors, the main one being time. The semester ends in two weeks so there are a lot of projects wrapping up all at once! For my Design for Complex Systems class (aka Senior Studio) we’ve been working on a project/campaign called “i am not a stereotype” that looks at race and color. I’ve written about it on here before I think, but yesterday and today we’ve been putting up several installations here at school to demonstrate one way that our campaign can be implemented. They look deceptively simple, but we’ve actually put a lot more time and effort into the concept than most people might think. Three of our statements are now up on the wall (see below) and I’ll be at school late tonight with my group installing the fourth statement and our wall exhibit. If all goes well, I’ll post a couple more pictures tomorrow!
i am brown, some people think i am red
i am white, sometimes i wish i was red, black, or yellow
i am black, i don’t rap
A friend sent me a link today to an article in the Huffington Post about (yet another) error in Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue. The gist of the article dealt with a quote in the book that was misattributed to the wrong person and also used out of context.
As the epigram to Chapter Three, "Drill, Baby, Drill," Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach [Bill Wooden]: “Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their lives.”
As the epigram to Chapter Three, "Drill, Baby, Drill," Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach [Bill Wooden]:
“Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their lives.”
But the full quote was actually by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs and appeared in an essay titled “Back on the War Ponies.”
“Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn.”
There is a world of difference between how Palin’s book used the quote and what the quote actually is. Grandfathers on both sides may well have paid for their land with their lives, but the white grandfathers couldn’t claim their people had lived on the land since time immemorial.
Although it wasn’t my idea initially, Bryn and I went to Seahurst Beach in Burien today with the camera and I actually ended up having fun zooming in on the various washed up logs that litter the beach. What I love about taking these close-up views of things on the ground is how, when the image is zoomed in and cropped, it becomes harder to tell what the sense of scale is. Also the textures! It was really good to just get out and take some photos today. I haven’t adjusted them in Photoshop, so some of them are a little dark. Here are some of my favorites:
Haven’t posted in longer than I would have liked as I’ve had a lot of personal stuff to deal with. Today I was working on the last weekly discussion question for my “Federal Indian Law and Policy” course which dealt with a fascinating subject: Decolonization. After I had finished my question I was thinking a little more and wanted to address a quote from one of our readings (by Wub-e-ke-niew from the conclusion of We Have the Right to Exist). Below is a copy of the quote along with my response to it that I posted along with my answer to the weekly discussion question:
"The answer is not paternalism--helping us to "adapt" to a changing world; but to look at why, and in what directions, the world is changing, and whose choices are generating those changes."
In some ways I feel that adaptation is one of the strengths of Indigenous populations and is what has allowed Indian nations to survive previous U.S. policies of genocide and assimilation, so when I read this sentence after writing my answer, I wasn't sure if I agreed with him or not. I had to think about whether my idea about encouraging some "Westernized" tribal members to return to their native communities was a form of forced adaptation. I came to the conclusion that if it was implemented as something that could be enforced, it would indeed be paternalistic; but it didn't mean that it was a bad idea. However, I have come to realize that he isn't arguing against adaptation in general, he is just reinforcing the concept of Decolonization by saying that indigenous people should be the ones to determine how they adapt to a changing world.
The full original question and my answer are below:
How would you define Decolonization? If you work for an Indian nation, or are a member from one, how could and should that Indian nation Decolonize?
To begin with, below are some of the quotes from the four readings that jumped out at me:
There is so much talk about the effects of colonization that I don't think I've run into the concept of Decolonization before. I like it! It seems to be an idea that has moved past the trauma and victimization stages and is now looking to take action for the future. The lecture identifies Decolonization as something which removes negative Western influences and restores traditional Indigenous values, and I think this is a really positive way to look at it. It is important to remove the negative Western influences, but to try and remove all Western influence would be an impossible task. (Yet it seems to be held up quite often, especially by Westerners, as the definition of Indian authenticity.) The exciting part about concepts of Decolonization and self-determination, is that individuals, communities, and tribal nations are now in a position to make their own decisions about who they are and what that means. Looking only to the past in an attempt to return to a time before European contact is wishful thinking, however taking information from the past, present, and future, is what I believe will allow indigenous peoples to assert themselves as participants in the here and now, and not continue to be relegated to a category of "vanished races."
Although I am an enrolled member of the Karuk Tribe, I was adopted and grew up in a middle-class white family far away from my tribal homelands. It has only been as an adult that I have been able to forge connections and begin to actually work on, well... "Decolonizing" my Karuk self, so I want to specifically state that the following comments are based on observations from afar. (Although I am a tribal member, I would go as far as to consider myself a cultural insider!) The Karuk tribe has taken steps toward increasing tribal cultural awareness through beginning to restore our language, which I see as a very positive step towards Decolonization. A focus has emerged recently on teaching language to the children especially, and I believe this is probably the most critical thing to do because language has such a significant effect on how we interact with the people and places around us. If you are fluent in a language, then you can think in that language. There are also some really strong health and housing programs available to tribal members who still live in our ancestral territory, and I think that this type of community awareness and involvement helps to keep people connected. I still don't entirely understand how a reservation differs from land held in trust for the tribe by the federal government, but I do believe that control of aboriginal territory is very important. Additionally, I think that many Indian nations, my own included, might benefit from reaching out to tribal members who no longer live within their reservations or territories. I think that this type of outreach would have a positive benefit in two directions: it could allow motivated individuals to reconnect with their background and possibly encourage people to move back to their homelands, and it might offer isolated tribes more potential resources in tribal members who are already familiar with how things work in mainstream American society. This idea really relates to the quote from the fourth reading that I started out with above, in that it acknowledges a need to look past our differences and instead focus on working together.
I ran across the following John Wayne quote in a book called The Ultimate Book of Useless Information:
“I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them if that's what you're asking. Our so called stealing of this country was just a question of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”
My dad gave me a used copy of the book and I had to look online to find out where it came from. Turns out, it was from a 1971 Playboy interview where he also made some other controversial racially-based statements. Not that I was ever a John Wayne fan, but this sure made me even less of one than before!
Although I really wanted to post something tonight, I’m also feeling really drained from having so much going on right now with school and my personal life (there have been two deaths recently of grandmother figures who I was extremely close to as a child). But I’ll at least offer some images from an artist that was brought to my attention thanks to one of my group members in the racial stereotype project I’m working on. Our idea actually is closely related in many ways to her work in that we are working with text as well, plus I think that it relates well to the Tanning Project image I shared by Erica Lord.
I know nothing about these specific works (well, actually I do know that the ones that look like they are on skin are actually written on skin) as I found them through a quick Google image search, but they were the ones that struck me the most, so here they are:
I think the first image is interesting to compare to Erica Lord’s work because both are written directly on someone’s body. The second seems to be common knowledge to many indigenous communities, but rather new as an idea to the Western world. And the last image? I can speak from personal experience that it has been true for me, at least!