Cascadia Art Museum just opened “Native American Modern,” an exhibit that revolves around the life and work of Seattle artist Julius “Land Elk” Twohy (1902–1986), who had contributed much to Seattle’s art scene during the Great Depression.

Museum curator David Martin has been studying Twohy’s life and work for more than 25 years and collected many of his surviving works.

Not only did Twohy paint and sketch using the traditional, geometric and abstract styles of most Indigenous art, he also blended the modernist style to portray his Ute culture and heritage in Utah and Northwest tribes.

“He was a modernist trying to express himself in figurative as well as abstract, spiritual shapes,” Martin said. “I believe some of his imagery came from studying with modern artists at the [University of Washington], several of whom studied and exhibited in Paris, like Ambrose Patterson, Walter Isaacs and others. I also see influences of non-objective artists like [Wassily] Kandinsky in his work.”

Martin said that Twohy’s first recorded exhibition was at the 1932 Northwest Annual at the Art Institute of Seattle, which later became Seattle Art Museum (SAM). His entry, listed under his Indigenous name “Two-vy-nah-auche”—which means “land elk”—was an oil painting titled “Conception of Ute Chief.” In the next year’s event, he had a solo exhibition of his paintings that showed tribal dances at Seattle’s Cobb Building.

In 1935, Twohy had two exhibitions: one at SAM with his oil painting “Flag Maker” and the other at the 11th annual Pacific Coast Painters and Sculptors League at the Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup, where his two entries “Modern Wrestlers” and “Forerunners at Rest” were exhibited.

Twohy was also a member of the Work Projects Administration (WPA) where he worked as a printmaker, painter and muralist. During the mid- and late 1930s, he worked with local artists in creating murals, including “Men Who Work the Ships” with artist Kenneth Callahan for the Seattle Marine Hospital under the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP).

“The Flight of the Thunderbird” was one of the few documented artworks, and was featured in a magazine called “Indians at Work” by the United States Office of Indian Affairs in 1939. In 1936, the WPA Federal Art Project commissioned Twohy to paint a 72-foot-wide mural in the dining room of Tacoma’s Cushman Hospital in Puyallup.

“The assignment was given by Twohy’s friend and fellow artist R. Bruce Inverarity, who was then State Director of the WPA,” Martin said. “We don’t know how long it took to complete but likely around six months.”

However, the mural was eventually painted over some time before it was destroyed in 2003 when the hospital was razed to make way for the Emerald Queen Casino and a hotel complex.

“He went to ceremonies, Spirit Dances, etc., and he did participate in the ceremonies of other Northwest tribes. His own art uses abstracted symbols derived from his own heritage and other Northwest tribes,” Martin said. “He was very successful in Seattle as a portrait painter and as a fine artist. His original desire to be an illustrator is interesting but no illustrations by him have survived.”

In fact, much of his artwork was destroyed in his apartment during a series of arson fires in 1939. “Flag Maker” is one of the few that survived the fire, and visitors can still see the heat blisters on the paint.

Twohy continued to exhibit his artwork at various events in Western Washington, Spokane and even in Vancouver, B.C., in the 1940s. In 1947, he went back to the University of Washington to continue his art studies, including private sessions with Mark Tobey.

In 1952, Twohy moved back to Whiterock, Utah, where he focused more on Indigenous American activism than art. But during the 1960s and 1970s, he continued to exhibit his artwork and promote his culture around the country, including a traveling exhibition “America Discovers Indian Art” at the Smithsonian Institution in 1967.

Martin said that he had wanted to do this exhibition for a long time because Twohy’s work was unique and talented, a cross-cultural art that people don’t often see in the U.S. Only a few historical Northwest artists were commemorated in the past 50 years.

“We are rediscovering artists to present to the public to show how broad and unique our regional art is. I feel that Julius Twohy was an important artist in our regional cultural heritage,” Martin said. “He is unique within the entire country for his use of indigenous imagery as filtered through European Modernism. He is also an example of how a once-great artist can become completely unknown because he had no one to champion his life and art. He never married or had children, and his only relatives were in Utah and California. Cascadia Art Museum is the voice for these artists.”

The “Native American Modern” exhibit runs at the Cascadia Art Museum from July 27 to Oct. 29, 2023. It is displayed with local contemporaries, including Delbert J. McBride, R. Bruce Inverarity and Worth D. Griffin. Check here for hours and admission information.

— Story and photos by Nick Ng

“One local legend described how a village called Kilstipheen was drowned in Liscannor Bay. It was said to rise and become visible for one day every seven years, and the story around it was that anyone who saw it would die. I was always intrigued by what it might it look like, so I made that the basis of the paintings in my last exhibition, Voyage to Kilstipheen.”

Connole says the paintings in Dúlamán na Farraige follow on from that. “There’s a mythological element to them as well. I live in Ennis now, but I go back to Liscannor all the time. I love walking on the shore, and I’m always photographing or filming the seaweed. I sketch it as well; when I’m drawing from life, it allows me to see and observe things that I might otherwise miss. The figures in my paintings are drawn from my imagination, but I like to think that when I paint the seaweed, it acts as an expression of human emotions.” 

 Painting seaweed is also a reflection of Connole’s interest in environmental issues. “Seaweed offers coastal protection,” she says. “It enhances marine biodiversity, and captures carbon, and it’s now being researched as a possible solution to climate change.” 

 Connole has invited the storyteller Eddie Lenihan to perform at her exhibition on 12th August, as part of National Heritage Week. “I only knew Eddie professionally before I rang him,” she says. “I’d been to see him perform as a seanchaí, and I’d read his books. I’ve always been impressed by the breadth of his knowledge, and his passion for Irish culture and folklore. I love how he brings it alive, and how he shares it with so many different audiences. He needs to be celebrated, because he’s such a beacon of Irish culture. When people hear his stories about people harvesting the seaweed as a fertiliser in the past, I think it’ll bring another layer of understanding to their experience of my paintings.” 

 Connole will unveil an educational poster on the same date. “This was commissioned by Creative Ireland. It shows different kinds of seaweed, based on direct sketches of the seaweed I gathered around the coast of Co Clare.” 

 The twenty-five paintings Connole has produced for Dúlamán na Farraige are all in watercolours, a medium she discovered in her teens. “When I was at secondary school, the Irish Museum of Modern Art toured an exhibition of contemporary art around the country, and one of the places it came to was Ennistymon. Some of Kathy Prendergast’s watercolours were hung in our school. There were women’s bodies, along with maps of the landscape. To me, aged seventeen, it was a revelation to see watercolours being used in that way, to convey really strong ideas around womanhood and the landscape.”

 After school, Connole moved to Dublin to study at the National College of Art and Design. She graduated with a joint BA in History of Art and Fine Art. “And after that I lived in Galway for a while, but I knew I wanted to return to Co Clare. An opportunity came up through the Clare Arts Office, a bursary that allowed me to study for a two-year Masters Degree at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, in 2005/06.

At NCAD, Connole had been doing very large abstract expressionist work, but when she came back to the Burren College of Art,  she again moved into watercolours. “In Ballyvaughan, there was the sea on one side and the limestone mountains of the Burren on the other. I found myself being drawn to the idea of the tiny sea creatures that created the limestone. My work became physically smaller, and the details became more precise.

“I had a meeting with the artist Mick O’Dea, when he came to visit the college, and I remember him saying, embrace the detail in your work. That kind of opened up to me the path I could take as an artist.” 

 Connole’s Dúlamán na Farraige exhibition will tour to Cultúrlann Sweeney in Kilkee in November. From August 15, she will also be showing a series of paintings – commissioned under the Decade of Centenaries Arts Awards – at Scarriff Public Library.

 “These are paintings inspired by the War of Independence and Civil War that I’ve created over the last three years. It’s the first time I’ve brought them all together for one exhibition.”

 Connole lived in New Zealand for a time, after finishing her Masters, but she has never regretted returning to settle in Co Clare. “When you’re exposed to other cultures, as I was in New Zealand, you start seeing the similarities with your own,” she says. “I think that was when I really started connecting with Irish history and culture, which has become the big focus in my practice over the past fifteen years or so, and using it to connect more with my community.

“I think, with the advent of the internet, more and more artists are choosing to live in rural Ireland. The internet has definitely opened things up; I can have meetings online, and share my art through social media. It’s the best of both worlds, really.” 

•  Marie Connole’s exhibition Dúlamán na Farraige runs at Clare Museum, Ennis, Co Clare from August 1 –  September 1. Eddie Lenihan’s storytelling event at 12pm on 12th August is ticketed, with limited seating. Further information: claremuseum.ie marieconnole.com Insta: marieconnole.art

I recently had a wide-ranging conversation with the New Mexico–based painter, sculptor, activist, educator, and curator Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who is a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. In tandem with her current retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, she reflected on her early art education, how she’s lived her life, the research she’s pursued on her own, how her artwork is received, and what else she’d like to accomplish. About the belated attention coming her way now, she shared that the Whitney’s director Adam Weinberg asked why she isn’t angry this didn’t happen sooner. Prompted by this question, she thought about how throughout her career curators would ask Indigenous artists to show their work at the last moment when another artist had backed out of an exhibition. She told Weinberg, “No, I’m not angry. I’m honored for this opportunity, and you don’t get me by myself. You get me with a community.” To that end, Smith is pleased to see the Whitney and other museums starting to collect more work by Indigenous artists.

—Marcus Civin

Marcus Civin To start off, can you talk about how you situate your work in relation to other artists?

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Years ago in school, I had teachers who were insistent on us doing mark-making, and if you tried to put an image in there, you got bawled out, and you had to get rid of that work and return to mark-making. That’s what I had to deal with. There were two things that I was looking for: one, content, because we weren’t allowed to have that; two, surface and construct, organization. Every time I went to New York City, I was looking for people like Luis Cruz Azaceta because of his politics. Loved that! Loved his paint. I would walk into a gallery and smell the oil paint drying there and swoon. I can’t tell you anything—not the smell of a mate, not the smell of my dogs, not the smell of a rose blooming—that can do that to me the way drying oil paint can. It’s the elixir of my life, just to sniff it! Luis Cruz would have thick oil paint drying. Of course, so would Joan Mitchell, Susan Rothenberg, Martha Diamond, Jennifer Bartlett, Frances Barth, Elizabeth Murray, Joyce Kozloff, George Condo, Terry Winters, Katherine Porter, and Joan Snyder. Oh, my god, that just makes my heart beat right now when I’m talking about those people! My dreams are made out of that.

My content has a relationship to every single Native artist, their work, and their humor: James Luna, Cara Romero, Diego Romero, Jeffrey Gibson, Jim Denomie. All of them. They’re the ones that make my world go round because the content in their work is feeding me. I say that, and then when I went to New York, I was looking at the painting, teaching myself to paint by looking at all these other people. So, whenever you read an article about me, you have a list of names in each article that’s different because I was so hungry to see art coming from my sandbox. I would go to New York and overload, come back with an art attack from looking at art and taking it all in.

The past two years I’ve been working on curating a show for the National Gallery of Art that’s going to open in the fall. I wanted it to be on land and landscape, but not the Hudson River view with the horizon line and some running water and a cloudy sky or something. I wanted it to be from a Native point of view. It is related to my research on languages. Here’s what I discovered that just gives me shivers: The languages that my father spoke—Kootenai, as well as Salish, and maybe Métis-Cree—were describing our world around us. There was no refrigerator. There was no radio. There was no TV in that language. There was no industrialization in that language. It was about our world. It was about the two parts to our world: the interior part and the exterior part, the world of realism and the world of mystery. Those worlds together composed our language.

I’m eighty-three. Younger Native American artists were raised on TV, radio, cars, all that. When I was a little kid, I lived in a cabin with two other families. We rolled up with our blankets against the walls. We didn’t have furniture. There was a pump outside that everybody used. There were outhouses. My sister and I dug through garbage piles at the backs of the cabins for food every day. We were hungry all the time. Remember, this was the Second World War. We were at the bottom. We ate dried salmon. That’s what we lived on. All I remember is being sick the whole time. I still have physical problems from that childhood, but I get up every day and feel grateful that I’m standing on my feet to work today to do some of the things that I think should get done and that I envision.

But I’m not doing as much as I would like. I would like to speed up the language immersion at home. I would like study about what do we do with our languages because now they’re almost like ancient languages. I’m concerned about putting out a book on contemporary Native art. That’s a long time coming. I want to do another large exhibition that includes two hundred Native American artists. I want to show people that we are alive, we’re here, and we’re not dead; we’re not vanishing. For fifty years I’ve been traveling and lecturing to audiences, and people raise their hand and go, “I’ve never met an Indian.” I’ll ask an audience, “Do you know how many tribes there are in the United States?” and they’ll raise their hands and say, “Two? Six?” We have 574 that are federally recognized; and then we have several hundred waiting for that recognition; and then state-recognized there are a couple hundred. We don’t know that because it’s not taught in school. So, I really want to ramp up education in public schools. To do that, I’ve started a small, private foundation. I’m hoping it will turn into a 501(c)(3). I want to publish books on Native children’s stories, and I want to start that this coming year.

MC Is there anything people don’t bring up in relation to your work that you wish they would?

JQtSS A lot of times, they look point-blank at something I’m using. I’m using their symbols and culture to communicate. Like, “forty days and forty nights” in the title of my painting Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights (2015) is right out of the Old Testament. I often think that they will ask me, “Why are you using the Bible?” or some question like that, but they always perceive that I’m doing something mysterious. I’m doing something off the beaten path. I am. I have a worldview, and it’s Native, it’s Indigenous. But they don’t see the humor. There’s a wall right there. They assume I’m only speaking to the Native community and not to them. That wall goes up. They want me to interpret for them. They want to know what all the symbols are. Even if it’s a symbol that they would know, they can’t read that because they’re stopped.

MC They can’t see. I’m thinking about Indian Madonna Enthroned from 1974, your early figurative sculpture with an American flag on her lap. There must be a story there.

JQtSS I was an undergrad going for my teaching degree because an instructor I had at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington, had said to me that I could draw better than the men, but I couldn’t be an artist because women can’t be artists. I went to Framingham State in Massachusetts to get an art ed degree. The teacher I had, Lia Lipton, spent the whole semester on the Renaissance, and the Madonnas, and putti; so just for catharsis, to cleanse myself, I came home and I started working on this Madonna. I took a kitchen chair from the table and took it apart and painted it with the sky, took some burlap, took a pillow apart and stuffed her, made an ink drawing for her face, put the baby on her back. The baby is animistic because it’s got a sheepskin for the body. The Madonna has bird feet for her hands; she’s got a heart that has an ear of corn, necklaces made out of shells. There’s one symbol after another all over her.

MC Wonderful! I’m curious if you’d like to share how you have sustained your various drives with equal passion. It seems to me that some people need to make divisions between activities in their lives that could compete for their time. For you, everything might be more interrelated.

JQtSS I’m doing it the Indian way. This is how we lived our lives traditionally. Everything was connected. Everything you did had a reason to do the next thing. And that thing led to the other thing. That is how we lived our lives. That is how I grew up with my dad. It’s exactly what I do. I’m doing it the old, traditional way. I look like a modern woman, and I am. I look like a contemporary woman, and I am. I’m interested in what things are going on in the news, and politics, and all that. But my whole life, everything that I’m doing, one thing is connected to the other.