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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (June 12, 2019)
Wednesday, June 12, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon 5 The traditional and contemporary in native art By Chris Morin Correspondent The <modern= appearance of many Native American artists9 paintings can cause viewers to construe incorrect perceptions about its <Native- ness.= Paintings that are oil on canvas, for instance, give the impression of a European genre. Yet, paintings have a distinct artistic lineage for North American tribes. The First Peoples of North America painted on rock walls for millenniums, leav- ing behind tens of thousands of still-existing pictographs. At some point, early Native Americans also began paint- ing on animal skin, sometimes using these as an annual <win- ter count= to mark the pass- ing of years. After Westerners conquered these lands, killed off the buffalo, and sent the People onto reservations or the warriors to prisons, the materials necessary for the skin paintings disappeared. Reservation Indian agents of the Great Plains or the officials at prisons began giv- ing these former painters and indigenous historians used pages from their ledger books, along with fountain pens, crayons, or watercolor paints. The works produced during this period are known as <led- ger art,= and it continued into the 1910s. In the 1920s a group of Southern Plains Indians in Oklahoma, The Kiowa Five, began an art movement with contemporary art supplies. They initially based their style of work on the ledger art genre, and it came to be known as The Plains Style. Further, the Studio School opened within the Santa Fe Indian School in 1932 and also developed its take on the led- ger art approach; this branch is now referred to as the Santa Fe Style of Native American painting. The genre of Native American painting continued down other paths to include commonly using oils on can- vas by the 1960s. Today, a number of modernist tech- niques are utilized, including pop art. Thus, while oil on canvas works per se are not a traditional American Indian art form, paintings most cer- tainly are. The two-dimensional works of artists Terrance Guardipee, <Blackfeet=; Jason Parrish, <Navajo=; and Roger Perkins, <Mohawk=; span our concepts of what traditional and contemporary Native American art looks like. Their works can also begin the chal- lenging dilemma of articulat- ing why a work should be considered with either of these two authoritative terms. Typically, <traditional= is thought of as works based upon time-honored, older perspectives along with cur- rent works that respect the heritage and legacy, which guided earlier artists. In that case, Parrish9s and many of Guardipee9s works must be seen as traditional. Jason paints in the Santa Fe School tradition. A cer- tain <less is more= conceptual approach may describe Jason9s desert scenes of the Navajo in elegant poses or in motion on horseback. J a s o n 9s r e c e n t s e c - ond showing at the juried International Watercolor Exhibition, held in the Grand Palais on the Champs Elysees of Paris, demonstrates grow- ing international recogni- tion for his works. His piece, <Antelope Hunt,= just received a national award that will be announced by the presenting organization on June 15. Terrance works in the led- ger art genre. He not only paints upon antique ledger pages, he was the artist most instrumental in reviving this narrative art form in the 1990s. His works can be found in numerous museums through- out the United States, includ- ing the Smithsonian. <Contemporary= is thought of as works that allow an artist to explore new possibilities, to offer what might be, thus possibly adding to a culture. In that case, Roger and many of Terrance9s works must be regarded as contemporary. Roger Perkins9 favored medium is pop art. His pieces make bold statements about the Native American world. In one work, the iconic black and white photo of Sitting Bull looking straight at you with pride, defiance, and a wither- ing gaze has the great chief9s head encircled by a pink halo. Roger also depicts him wearing dark sunglasses, per- haps disallowing a direct look into the eyes of the warrior- holy man-chieftain. Roger gives the follow- ing reason for working in the pop art style: <For years, we9ve had these iconic mono- chrome photos staring out at us, reminding us of what we were and won9t ever be again. That can get depressing. We have a now! We have a future! It needs to be colorful, ener- getic, humorous, and positive. That9s what I9m showing in my works.= Terrance gathers antique paper items 4 a ledger page, bank note, map, photo 4 to create collages of past times. This ephemera provides a complex backdrop to the powerful Blackfeet imagery See NATIVE ART on page 29 Camp Sherman Open 7 days a week, 12-9 p.m. 541-595-6420