It will be quite the sight this weekend in Helena, and we’re not just blowing hot air. There’ll be 30,000 balloons on display for the Montana Balloon Sculpture Festival.
Helena will be bursting with color this weekend
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Alaska Native Artist Spotlight: Bailey McCallson (Yup’ik)
About the Author: Mary Goddard is Tlingit, Kaagwaantaan, Eagle/Brown Bear of Klukwan and grew up in Yakutat. She resides in Sitka with her husband and son, creating Tlingit formline designs for her original carved jewelry, public art installations, and more. She runs a film company and an Indigenous cooking blog. Mary has served as Southeast Alaska’s Regional Catalyst for Regenerative Tourism as well continuing to serve on the board of the American Indian and Alaska Native Tourism Association.
“Buying jewelry and sculptures made from Walrus ivory is sustainable. Your purchase supports our communities and ensures the continuation of our culture.” Bailey McCallson, a Yup’ik ivory artist, shares this with absolute certainty.
Bailey is from Bethel, a Southwestern village on the Kuskokwim River, roughly 400 miles west of Anchorage. The majority of Bethel’s nearly 6,000 residents are Alaska Native. It is home to the Kuskokwim 300 Dog Sled Race and the Camai Yup’ik Dance Festival.
As an ivory artist, Bailey understands that oftentimes visitors are confused by ivory items for sale when they are visiting Alaska. This is due to the bans on elephant ivory. Walrus Ivory is protected through the Marine Mammal Protection Act. It is legal only for Alaska Natives to hunt walrus and to utilize their tusks. Once the ivory is crafted into artwork such as sculptures or jewelry can it be purchased by non-Alaska Natives.
Bailey’s Yup’ik culture relies heavily on the sustenance of walrus. “We use everything. Nothing goes to waste, down to the whiskers and even the lining of the walrus stomach.” Unfortunately ivory got a bad rap because of elephant poaching and the bans on ivory. However, for Yup’iks, walrus hunting is not trophy hunting.
Although Bailey is a hunter, he purchases ivory from other Alaska Native hunters. “I like supporting them. No one asks for much for the ivory, just enough to fill their gas tank so they can hunt again.” For Bailey, carving ivory, like his ancestors did, connects him to his culture. He finds himself researching his culture, listening intently to shared Yup’ik stories and songs from elders, hungry to learn more about his Yup’ik heritage. “It’s exciting! I can learn these stories and carve them into ivory sculptures. This is my way of carrying on our traditions. It’s a way for me to connect to my identity.”
Bailey is an enthusiastic artist. His eyes light up when he talks about ivory. He laughs a lot, and tells me it hasn’t always been that way for him. Growing up in a rural, flat and often cold village in Western Alaska had its struggles.
While we are talking, Bailey’s dad walks in. He is a gregarious man, big voice and tall. He clearly is proud of his son. “When Bailey was 8 years old he was out camping in the Tundra. By himself!” he laughs in amazement. “It was below zero and that didn’t bother Bailey at all. He told me, ‘Dad, I will be fine. I have my sleeping bag and everything I need.’ And he went camping, all by himself.” He shakes his head, and then as quickly as he entered the workshop, Bailey’s father is off.
Bailey smiles and lets me know, nothing has changed. He still loves the outdoors. He has no problem camping, hiking, boating, and hunting; no matter the weather. Bethel’s subarctic climate means long winters and short summers. Temperatures in Bethel stay in the single digits in winter and rarely get warmer than 60 degrees in the summer months.
“If you don’t stay busy and occupied, you can easily get depressed. I have made up my mind to be positive. To chase after my dreams.” Bailey could easily be a motivational speaker. Young, but with years of wisdom. He is someone you want to keep listening to. He is real and genuine and full of curiosity for life. He seems to be the type of person with no end to energy, which is funny to me because he shares with us a Yup’ik word; Tuaingunrituq, which means there is no end. (I immediately connect this word to Bailey, wondering how his energy never ends!) He connects this to the ivory. Bailey shares that when you respect an animal by not wasting any of it, this is keeping the story alive for the animal, so that it too can have no end. The story goes on. Tuaingunrituq.
Bailey switches to talk about flying and his goals of becoming a commercial pilot. His eyes light up again. I can tell, carving ivory and flying airplanes, they are equal loves, the source of Bailey’s energy. He circles back around to the challenges of living in Bethel, explaining that flying has allowed him a new perspective. Having a bird’s eye view, he can witness how big and vast Alaska actually is. His eyes are open to opportunities and the beauty of this place. He shares that both flying and being connected to his culture keep him grounded. He sees the value of passing on the art of ivory carving to Yup’ik youth. “I want to teach this to others. I want our youth to succeed.”
Bailey teaches me, teaches us, step by step how he takes a walrus tusk and cuts it into workable chunks. He shows how he sketches on the ivory, how he glues, sands and files the ivory until it is recognizable as a piece of jewelry. The process takes a couple of hours. Self-taught and taking inspiration by carvings done by other artists, Bailey has been creating jewelry in his shop for four years.
We turn off the camera and lights and begin packing up, our time with Bailey is about to come to an end. Bailey gives the ivory earrings a slight polish and hands them to me. As a gift. They are beautiful, smooth to the touch, a creamy white and are in the shape of the infinite symbol. I can’t help but smile.
Tuaingunrituqv. (There is no end)
I know Bailey’s story will not end, it is and will be carried on through his jewelry, his ivory art.
Want to learn more about Bailey? Watch the artist spotlight video of Bailey below. Shop for jewelry made by Bailey at Alaska gift shops or from his Instagram store, @tuskworthy_premiums.
These 86 images were voted the best microscopic photographs of 2023
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A miniature crystal castle of golden rutile quartz. The dark phosphorescent armor of a blue-black weevil. Slime molds growing spores that look like rich caramel apples. An otherworldly alien pineapple, nested as the stamen and stigma of an Hibiscus flower bud.
These eerily beautiful images — and over 80 more — were honored this year as part of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.
The Japanese camera-maker and imaging technology firm has held the competition, which spotlights the photographic achievements of those taking images through a microscope, for nearly half a century since 1974.
For this year’s competition, an estimated 1,900 photos were submitted to an open call by photographers and scientists from 72 countries. The pictures were then judged by a five-person panel that included a Princeton cell biologist and the photo editor for the BBC’s Science Focus magazine.
The top award for this year went to neuroscientist Hassanain Qambari, a researcher at the Lions Eye Institute’s Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science in Perth, Australia. Qambari’s picture, a microscopic, compound photo of a rodent’s optic nerve-head taken via confocal microscopy, also had a practical purpose: aiding patients with diabetes.
Qambari’s work at the Lions Eye Institute has focused on the issue of diabetic retinopathy, a complication from diabetes that can lead to blurry vision or blindness due to damages in the blood vessels near the back of the eye.
‘Current diagnostic criteria and treatment regimens for diabetic retinopathy are limited to the late-stage appearance of the disease,’ Qambari said in a news release, ‘with irreversible damage to retinal microvasculature and function.’
He hopes his retinal imaging work will aid in the early detection and reversal of the disease, which impacts approximately 1 in 5 people with diabetes.
A literally blistering close-up of the tip of a match as it ignites along a matchbox took the second-place prize, a submission from German digital artist Ole Bielfeldt.
Third place went to a healthcare consultant based in Warsaw, Poland, Malgorzata Lisowska, for her image of a serendipitous valentine growing within a cluster of breast cancer cells.
But all of the top 86 images from Nikon’s competition this year are marvels to behold. Below are twelve that the DailyMail.com can’t stop thinking about.
Blackfeet artists prepare for “Within” installation at Paris Gibson Square
GREAT FALLS — A new installation at the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art is drawn from the artists’ belief that the strength and success of Native American identity and culture is internally inherited and created inside of their communities.
John Isaiah Pepion and Louis Still Smoking are hard at work, collaborating on the installation. From ledger art to buffalo hides to oils and 3D artwork, “Within” tells a story of trauma and triumph.
“The show will tackle where we’re at as Blackfeet people now as a Blackfeet artists in 2023,” said Pepion. “It covers a lot of issues, kind of like just digging deep within ourselves and our community and where we’re from.”
Pepion has gained recognition for his ledger art. He also did the poster art for the recently released PBS documentary, “The American Buffalo.” Now, he’s teamed up with fellow Blackfeet artist Louis Still Smoking. Their installation titled “Within” opens Friday at Paris Gibson Square Muesum of Art.
Among Still Smoking’s specialties are portraitures mixed with cultural symbolism and historical references. For him, art is about engaging and connecting with a viewer.
“It’s bridging that gap from not knowing something to actually experiencing a culture that you normally wouldn’t be experienced to,” said Still Smoking.
He’ll have a work in progress on display. The yet to be titled painting is a commentary on a difficult time for the Blackfeet people, the boarding school era. But Still Smoking wants to focus on the positive.
“It’s a bad part of history, but I’m trying to paint it in a way that’s a positive message,” said Still Smoking. “Basically, I’m just saying I’m thankful to be here to paint something like that. I want to honor my ancestors.”
Pepion is paying tribute to the buffalo by painting a hide.
“So the yellow on this buffalo hide represents the sun,” said Pepion. “The sun is very important to Blackfeet people. We call the Sun Naato’si. Then cross the king symbol is Morning Star, a very important symbol. We believe that the sun married the moon and Morning Star is their son.”
Pepion says art can highlight the struggles of the past, but also act as a healer, both for his people and himself.
“As an artist, I feel like I’m playing my part,” said Pepion. “I feel like art is therapy and can heal, too. It’s healing myself from a journey through diabetes and just my personal life. So art is therapy.”
This isn’t the first time they’ve worked together. Last year they collaborated on an Arts Fest Montana Mural. And Still Smoking Completed a mural for the program this summer.
The installation is curated by Paris Gibson Square Curator of Exhibitions and Collections Nicole Maria Evans and will be accompanied by a series of free and open events.
The installation opens Friday and will feature a reception and discussion on Thursday, October 26 at 5:30 p.m.
On Friday, November 17 at 5:30 p.m., a program by Jennifer Woodcock-Medicine title “hiding in Plain Sight: Expanding the Canvas” will be held.
On Friday, December 8 at 5:30 p.m., Sean Chandler, President of Aaniiih Nakoda College on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, will present a program title “indigenous Education for No One.”
You can learn more about the museum and the installation and companion events here.
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Seattle company’s blanket featured alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ cover story
Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone were draped in the Seattle company’s blanket on the front page of British Vogue’s magazine.
SEATTLE — Colleen Echohawk remembers the day well. She woke up at 6:30 a.m., her phone pinging with alerts and texts after British Vogue featured “Killers of the Flower Moon” stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, draped in the Seattle-based company’s blanket on its front page of the magazine.
Echohawk, the CEO of Eighth Generation, knew the international magazine was going to feature a product in its magazine months in advance, but she didn’t know it would adorn the front page alongside the two stars of director Martin Scorcese’s sweeping adaptation of David Grann’s novel, which was published in 2017.
“Oh my God,” Echohawk said. “It was emotional. I was in bed at 6:30 a.m. and started getting pings. We knew it was on there, but we didn’t know (the blanket would be on the cover). A good quarter of the magazine was that blanket. I was just – chills. It brought tears to my eyes. To think about the importance of seeing American art and design displayed in such a beautiful and international publication. Stunning. How did this happen?”
On the magazine’s cover, Gladstone, playing Mollie Burkhart in the film releasing on Friday, has Eighth Generation’s Coast Salish Pattern Wool Blanket draped along her body.
Gladstone, a rising Hollywood star, was a graduate of Mountlake Terrace High School.
“That Coast Salish pattern is one of the most iconic American designs you can actually buy in a retail store or online,” Echohawk said. “It is an absolutely classic blanket. It’s black and grey and wool. It has this wonderful feel to it, but it’s also iconic in that American art and design is shaped by Native art and design. Real American art and design is Native American art and design so we think this blanket is so popular with so many people is that it gives off that vibe of authenticity of a Native product that people can put into their home.”
The blanket’s design was created by Louie Gong (Nooksack) after he researched traditional Coast Salish weaving techniques. He referred to the pattern as a “collaboration with the ancestors.”
Gong created and founded Eighth Generation in 2008, before paving the way for Echohawk to take over as CEO in 2022.
Echohawk said the geometric shapes in the blanket’s pattern and its flow give off a feeling of elegance. She said Eighth Generation uses the same pattern in the blanket on tote bags, hip bags and used to offer the design on tumblers.
“As someone who lives in Seattle, it’s important for me to have a Coast Salish design as part of my life and part of the way I’m going to decorate my home,” Echohawk said. “There’s just not a lot of Coast Salish designs that are so readily available. And it’s just so beautiful. It’s a beautiful pattern. It’s one of the design patterns that works on everything.”
British Vogue also featured Eighth Generation’s Butterfly Dreams Throw Blanket, designed by John Isaiah Pepion, in its cover story for the upcoming film. The issue was released in Europe on Sept. 26 and in the United States in October.
“It felt like this full circle moment of this incredible Seattle story being featured and a Coast Salish story,” Echohawk said. “And a Native story being featured in such an incredible international publication. I think it’s time for that. The Native community has gone through so many hard things. I feel very lucky that my ancestors survived so I could be here. Now we are seeing this incredible recognition of how beautiful Native art and design is. I was emotional when it all happened.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is set in the 1920s when the members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma were murdered after oil was found on their land.
The Native tribe members immediately became among the richest people in the world because of the amount of oil deposits found on their land. When young and healthy people started dying under suspicious circumstances, the American government created an agency called the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also known as the FBI, to investigate the mounting deaths in the area.
“(The film) is really elevating some of the historical harm that has happened to Native people because of the way people thought about Native folks,” Echohawk said. “We were thought of less than and dispensable. They were killing people. We were talked about as savages, as animals and not human. I think having these stories out there where we are saying to the larger community, ‘No this terrible atrocity happened.’ Now we are on the other side of it. We are leading the community. We are business leaders. We are showing the rest of the community how to respond to the climate crisis. We’re acting next to Leonard DiCaprio. That’s where we are heading as a Native American community.”
Echohawk, who is from the Pawnee tribe in Oklahoma, said her dad and other relatives were involved as extras in the blockbuster film, which is widely regarded as one of the leading contenders in the 2024 Oscars.
“I’m hoping to see my dad and other relatives as extras,” Echohawk said. “It’s really exciting.”
Before collaborating with British Vogue, Eighth Generation made blankets for the 2022 Marvel film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The film, which grossed over $850 million worldwide, won the Oscar for Best Costume Design in March.
“It has been a huge win for us to be on the cover of British Vogue and to be able to make the blankets and to really merge our business in the mainstream,” Echohawk said. “We want to de-colonize these spaces, work with these big businesses while we help them understand how to (de-colonize) in a better way.”
Over a decade after its founding, Echohawk said Eighth Generation is the first Native-owned company to ever produce wool blankets. The company has a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in Georgetown and a flagship store at Pike Place Market, as it looks to broaden from its Pacific Northwest roots and across the globe.
But it’s Eighth Generation’s ethos that inspired Echohawk, who spent decades as an advocate for the Native community, to take a leadership role in the company.
Echohawk said the company’s mission is to reclaim Native art after it was “co-opted” for decades by companies profiting off their work. That’s why Eighth Generation vets its prospective artists to ensure they are members of a tribe before collaborating.
“We want people to know that these are products made and designed by Native people and they are for everyone,” Echohawk said. “We believe that every home in America should have Native art and design in it because we live in a Native country. We invite everyone to think about it, hear the stories we are telling and be a part of this really exciting moment in history where Native art is being profiled and people are excited about it. We believe real American art and design is Native art and design.”
In photos: The queer ‘renegades’ who built community in 1990s San Francisco
Photographer Chloe Sherman had rarely used social media, until a chance discovery by her daughter prompted her to revisit her work documenting the queer community in 1990s San Francisco.
Sherman’s daughter, home from college in the spring of 2021, had noticed her mother’s photograph “Kindred Spirits, 1994” posted on Instagram — but without a tag or credit. “It was this moment, and her subsequent actions, that really opened the floodgates of renewed interest (in that part of my career),” Sherman told CNN in an interview.
Looking back on the image inspired Sherman to re-engage more broadly with her archives. Although she had previously exhibited some photographs from her time in San Francisco, the majority of her work, which she shot on 35-millimeter film, only existed as negatives. So, after Sherman’s daughter and a friend helped create an Instagram account for her, she began digitizing and uploading her photos onto the platform.
“I started scanning and posting, and the response was enormous… it just became this huge network of ‘90s connections and old friends,” she said. “It is a labor of love to sort through a decade of film.”
The resurrected archive has since been exhibited at San Francisco’s Schlomer Haus Gallery and F³ (Freiraum für Fotografie) in Berlin, Germany, and is now the subject of a new photography book, “Renegades: San Francisco, The 1990s.” Providing an intimate glimpse into the lives of the queer community in San Francisco’s Mission District, Sherman’s work captures what she calls a “special and unique” point in cultural history. The images in “Renegades” depict youth, joy and the era’s rebellious aesthetic, whether in raucous nights out, intense and intimate moments between couples or seemingly-spontaneous glances at the camera. “My goal was to show the beauty, even the beauty of the underbelly,” said Sherman.
The 1990s are seen as a pivotal decade for the LGBTQ community in the US, a period marked by both pain and progress. While gay rights activism gained greater attention and support, the hate crime murders of Brandon Teena, a young transgender man, in 1993 and Matthew Shepard in 1998 shook the country. In this context, San Francisco was widely seen as a safe haven, with a long history of welcoming LGBTQ people. The city was also home to the famed Castro neighborhood, which elected one of America’s first openly gay politicians, Harvey Milk, in 1977, and the annual Folsom Street Fair, born out of activism amid the AIDS crisis.
For Sherman, who had grown up making photographs and later studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, it felt important to document the moment. “We were basically playing with feminism as we knew it. We were embracing this gender-bending butch/femme culture and turning that into the forefront of our experience,” she remembered. “People were showing up and being welcomed for who they were and pushing the boundaries of anything we had known.”
Sherman herself moved to California from Portland, Oregon, in 1991, inspired by a zine cartoon she’d seen about the adventures of a San Francisco bike messenger. “I loved everything about the city,” she said. “It’s a beautiful landscape with this gorgeous backdrop. And at the same time, you get this gritty urban place that has historically welcomed the underdog.”
Sherman, who identifies as queer, instantly felt welcomed in the Mission District, a traditionally Latinx neighborhood with a well established LGBTQ community. She remembers its support for women-owned businesses including cafes, bookstores, bars, clubs and galleries, such as The Bearded Lady Cafe, a venue that features in images in “Renegades.”
“It was a very DIY time — very ‘make it work no matter what,’” she said, explaining how she and her friends would weld pothole covers together to make tables for cafes. “Most of us were in our 20s; most of us weren’t working professionals. The beauty of youth allowed for this incredible spontaneity. Community was everything and adventure was everything.”
Sherman recalls her friendships with many of the subjects of her photographs fondly. The image “Anna Joy Post Surgery at Home, 1997” depicts one such close friend lounging across her bed in a crimson dress while smoking a cigarette. “There’s an accumulation of items in that photo that are both spectacular and ironic, like the enormous ashtray filled with cigarette butts on her bed. I love that photo,” reflected Sherman.
The fact that Instagram has fueled a resurgence of interest in work created in a time before social media existed isn’t lost on Sherman. “Today we are flooded with imagery, whether that’s a good or bad thing, whether we want to see it or not, whether they’re good images or not, whether they’re real images or not,” she said. “We consume information and images at a rate we can barely process.”
Still, the response to the photos — whether from people connected to that time and community, or those completely removed from it — has been “moving and amazing,” said Sherman. As such, she sees the work as both documentary photography and an historical and political project; the community’s very existence, and Sherman’s documentation of it is inherently political, she said.
As the ’90s drew to a close, and with the advent of the dotcom boom and soaring rents, many members of her community left San Francisco — an exodus aptly referenced in the book’s final image, “Farewell Photograph, 1999,” which also features Anna Joy. Sherman herself moved away when her daughter started school, but emphasized that her relocation was more by choice than necessity. She still lives nearby, though, and maintains a deep connection with the city. “The truth is, my social life and my physical comfort zone is still — and I feel like will always be — San Francisco.”
While Sherman had stayed in touch with many friends from the Mission District, the rediscovery of her work has provided an opportunity to reconnect with others — including some of her photographs’ subjects. “Time passes and you often don’t realize how much has changed,” she said. “I remember how rich, how vast and how creative and communal of a life we had, and the life we were able to share with each other.”
And having sparked this revival of interest in her mother’s early career, Sherman’s daughter, now 22, yearns to learn more about that era. The photographer says she is more than happy to oblige. “Even for us, having lived it, it’s fun to talk about,” she said.
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The Art of Influencer Marketing: A Series on Brand-fluence and Impact
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With an estimated worth of $250 billion in 2023, the creator economy continues to grow. It’s no longer enough to simply pay an influencer to #sponsor your product or service. Users know they will be sold to on social media, oftentimes with the help of influencers, but they expect creativity and a genuine connection from your brand in the process. So how does a business remain authentic and credible while leveraging influencers in an increasingly skeptical online culture?
Grow your social media and influencer marketing expertise by joining us for one hour a day on Nov. 14 – Nov. 16. Get ready to gain insights and expertise from Lia Haberman, first-hand influencer knowledge from Ashleigh D’Mello, Anna Russett and Violeta Venegas, and join a workshop led by influencer Andrea Casanova! Together, we’ll unpack the creator economy, hear from influencers themselves, and learn how to build out an influencer strategy from scratch.
- Making Dollars and Sense out of the Creator Economy with Lia Haberman (Nov. 14 at 1 pm CT): Lia Haberman, Insider’s “Top Creator Economy Expert,” will delve into the dynamic world of influencer marketing and its evolving digital terrain. You’ll walk away from this event with a powerful understanding of the influencer landscape, where it’s headed and questions your brand should consider as it begins or scales its influencer strategy.
- Influencers Unfiltered: Secrets to Successful Brand Partnerships (Nov. 15 at 1 pm CT): In this panel discussion influencers, Ashleigh D’Mello, Anna Russett, and Violeta Venegas will share their advice and experiences in partnering with high-profile brands. Hear directly from the pros on how to most effectively approach influencers and build collaborations that set up both parties for success.
- Workshop: Begin, Budget & Build Your Influencer Strategy with Andrea Casanova (Nov. 16 at 1 pm CT): Master the essential steps to kickstart your influencer marketing strategy with Creator and Content Strategist, Andrea Casanova. Learn ways to find the influencers that align with your brand’s values and goals, uncover the strategies of budget allocation and decode the metrics that matter to your brand. This webinar is your roadmap to influencer marketing success, equipping you with the knowledge and tools needed to make impactful, data-driven decisions for your brand.
Presenters
Andrea Casanova
Andrea is a digital marketing and branding expert born in Venezuela and based in Los Angeles. Her multicultural and youthful approach breathes new life into global brands and successfully targets Millennial and Gen Z audiences. She has become the go-to source on storytelling and thoughtfulness in her community, sharing tips and tricks to help her followers and beyond level-up in all areas of their lives.
Anna Russett
Anna Russett has developed a following on social media over the past decade, which is the foundation of her unique perspective when consulting on influencer marketing and social strategy. She previously worked as a Creative Director at ad agency Havas, and is currently at YouTube as Product Go-To-Market Lead for Creator Community features where she advocates for the user voice and guides product roadmaps to launch.
Ashleigh D’Mello
Ashleigh is an Australian-born, Boston-based fashion content creator. Known for her love of all black outfits and her minimal but edgy style mantra, Ashleigh creates both still and video content to showcase her outfits of the day, highlight fashion trends, and give styling tips – inspiring the outfits of a worldwide audience.
Lia Haberman
Lia Haberman is a marketing consultant for brands including AT&T, Riot Games and Viral Nation and an instructor of Influencer Marketing and Social Media Marketing at UCLA Extension. She writes a weekly Creator Economy newsletter called ICYMI to help 15K industry pros stay up to date on platform news, social trends and brand campaigns and was ranked a Top Creator Economy Voice by Business Insider.
Sarah Corley is the Demand Generation Strategist at Sprout Social. When she isn’t rocking the marketing world you’ll find her A) cooking/baking up a storm, B) with her nose in a book, C) wine tasting, D) playing piano or E) all of the above. Sarah’s claim to fame is setting a Guinness World Record when she worked for Nestle Toll House.
Violeta Venegas
Violeta is a lifestyle Latinx creator, Selena Quintanilla tribute artist, an official #TikTokPartner and a long-time content creator with over 1.88 million followers. She’s passionate about helping brands understand the right way to work with influencers and content creators. Violeta has worked with brands like Netflix, Clinique, Universal Music Group, Grubhub, Now This and many more.
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Even Amid a Softer Market, Miriam Cahn’s Auction Prices Are Spiking. How High Will They Go?
While the art market may have been sluggish since the beginning of this year, with the slowdown only intensifying in recent weeks, it’s not all grim. In fact, it’s been a good year to some, especially the followers of painter Miriam Cahn.
A quick survey of the Artnet Price Database data shows that both auction prices and the number of searches for the Swiss artist’s works went up dramatically in the first six months of 2023, compared to the same period in 2022 and earlier. The total sales value of Cahn’s work in the first half of 2023 was more than $3.2 million, 5.6 times the total sales value in 2022 and 15 times the sum in 2021.
Indeed, almost all of Cahn’s top 10 prices at auction were set in the first half of 2023, including the artist’s record, for Das Genaue Hinschauen (The Close Look) (2018), which sold for £584,200 ($703,093 including fees) at Sotheby’s The Now evening sale in London in March, fetching nearly 20 times the presale estimate. For comparison, three out of the artist’s top 20 sales at auction were set in 2022, and one in 2021. All of the works appeared at auction for the first time.
The second-highest price for her work at auction was just notched on October 6, when o.t. (2017) sold for HK$2.29 million ($291.894) at Phillips Hong Kong. That eclipsed the previous second-highest price set only the day before at the Long Museum collection sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, when the canvas work Im weg liegen (2013) sold for HK$2 million ($259,516) including fees. The hammer price of HK$1.6 million was 2.7 times the presale low estimate.
A reporter stands in front of ich als mensch (i as human) by Miriam Cahn during a media preview of “Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World” at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo on April 21, 2021. (Photo by Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images)
The market’s recognition of Cahn is long overdue, noted London-based art advisor Olga Ovenden, whose clients have been buying the artist’s works since 2018.
“For too long, her works have been priced on a lower point than they should be,” Ovenden said, adding that the pieces are worth collecting because of the importance of their subject matter and their striking, albeit disturbing. visuals. “She speaks of issues that are still rarely openly discussed in our society. There are issues of violence, real or imagined, especially violence against women, xenophobia, war, and migration. She creates a mirror in which the worst of our society is reflected.”
With more material on offer in the autumn auction season, prices of her work are expected to continue to go up, Ovenden said.
Dreamy Violence
Cahn was born in 1949 in Basel, Switzerland, to Jewish parents who fled the Nazi regime. She was trained at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel and held her first show in Stampa in 1977, and her museum solo debut at Kunsthalle Basel in 1983. She started with a drawing practice and did not come to painting until the mid-1990s, according to Sandrine Djerouet, director and partner of Galerie Jocelyn Wolff in Paris, which represents the artist. By now, Cahn has been featured in numerous major exhibitions around the world, including Documenta 14 in 2017, the 21st Sydney Biennale in 2018, and Venice Biennale’s “The Milk of Dreams” in 2022.
As a student, Cahn was actively involved in feminist and political activism, particularly during the 1960s and 70s, espousing causes ranging from women’s suffrage in Switzerland to the campaigns against the construction of nuclear plants. Her response to contemporary issues including violence, war, and refugee crises forms an integral part of her semi-abstract work. Her poignant paintings, using a dreamy color palette, address these difficult subject matters head on and are often explicit.
A person looks at Miriam Cahn’s, The Beautiful Blue, during a photo call for London’s Tate Modern’s new Capturing the Moment exhibition, which includes works by Andy Warhol, Picasso and Francis Bacon. Picture date: Monday June 12, 2023. (Photo by Belinda Jiao/PA Images via Getty Images)
“Elements such as the lowest instincts of human nature, our worst fears and fantasies, can be found on her canvases and drawings,” Ovenden said. “People in her works are those who have been forsaken by governments, societies and communities.”
She also praised Cahn’s painting techniques, as she “masterfully seduces her viewer by juxtaposing beauty and violence on one canvas.” That juxtaposition can be jarring, but “that adds to the horror of the viewer—we feel attracted, almost charmed by the color palette, beautiful bodies and erotic compositions, while realizing that by doing so we are taking the side of the aggressor,” the advisor said. “And I think this is the main moral dilemma of our time. She captures it and unwaveringly makes us face it whether we want to or not.”
Claudia Schurch, Christie’s senior specialist and head of Evening Sale, Post War and Contemporary Art, noted that Cahn is a very politically committed artist and an artist who has been very true to her practice. But those admirable attributes could have contributed to the delay in market recognition. “Her paintings are direct and sometimes even tough to look at, and I think it’s exactly because of that—that it takes time for an artist who shows the rawest element of human condition to enter the mainstream market,” Schurch said.
Total sales value of works by Miriam Cahn. Source: Artnet Price Database.
Going Viral
Cahn is a late bloomer as far as the art market is concerned. Monthly searches of Cahn’s works on the Artnet Price Database ran as low as just three in August 2022 (although the summer timing surely didn’t help). But the number of monthly searches spiked this spring, to 151 queries in March, three times the 50 queries logged in February, and has been at a similar level through the rest of the first half of 2023.
The timing followed February’s opening of “Ma Pensée Sérielle” (“My Serial Thought”) at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the first large-scale survey of Cahn’s oeuvre in a French institution.More than 200 works from 1980 through to the present day were presented.
One of the paintings on show, titled fuck abstraction!, which depicts a scene of forced fellatio, was accused of being pedophilic when it was in fact the artist’s denunciation of sexual war crimes. The painting went viral because of the controversy, and France’s political far-right factions brought a case to court in a bid to censor the work. The initial legal petition was rejected and then the appeal was shot down by France’s State Council, which ruled that the work did not violate safety for children or human dignity, as suggested by those opposing the work.
Miriam Cahn, fuck abstraction! (2007-2022). 3009 CAH/P 3029. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff and Meyer Riegger Berlin/Karlsruhe. Photo by François Doury.
The would-be censors’ attack backfired, coincidentally. New auction records of Cahn’s paintings have been set since the outbreak of the controversy, with hammer prices doubling or even tripling the presale expectations. Besides the artist record set in March, Christie’s sold two paintings at its June London sales, including herumstehen, 9. + 29.1. + 13.4.17 (standing around, , 9. + 29.1. + 13.4.17), which went under hammer at £160,000 ($194,815), nearly three times the lower end of presale expectations. The work sold for £201,600 ($254,706) including fees, the fourth most expensive work by Cahn sold at auction. Meanwhile, Bonhams sold the small canvas work sportler, 28.7.96 (1996) for £108,350 ($136,684) including fees in the spring season. The work had a hammer price that was almost three times the low presale estimate.
“The current strong prices and interest in Miriam Cahn is a culmination of the heightened exposure Cahn had in the last years,” said Leonie Grainger, Bonhams’ head of post-War and contemporary.
Is the best yet to come?
Market experts believe that this is just the beginning, expecting Cahn’s prices will continue to grow. “As there is so much demand naturally some collectors will be tempted to sell works, so we expect for more works to appear in the secondary market,” Grainger said. “The artist has created many stunning works and I don’t believe the strongest works have yet come to the secondary market.”
Installation view, “Miriam Cahn: Ma pensée sérielle” at the Palais de Tokyo. Photo by Aurélien Mole.
Those who are in the queue for new works in the primary market will have to be patient. Djerouet of Galerie Jocelyn Wolff said that the gallery has been receiving a steady flow of requests for nearly two years.
But Cahn also distances herself from the art market.
“She works along with no assistant in the studio, which creates a different rhythm for production and thus for exhibitions,” Djerouet said, adding that the primary prices for Cahn’s work haven’t gone up this year but the gallery has decided to be less flexible on discounts. “There are two sole exhibitions planned for next year, which means that some of the works produced in 2022, 2023 and 2024 will be accessible, but not all.”
Cahn’s work appeals to a wide range of global collectors, particularly seasoned collectors who are interested in works by women artists, experts said.
The growing market for the Swiss artist also sends a very encouraging signal to women artists overall.
“In general women artists have been undervalued,” Grainger said. “But this market segment and the prices have risen exponentially in the last ten years, cemented further by the highly acclaimed Venice Biennale ‘Milk of Dreams’ exhibition, which had a long overdue focus on female artists. Cahn’s success is just one example of many.”
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The Bird Photographer
Photo: Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis
Jonathan Eisen, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at UC Davis, went out almost daily during the pandemic lockdown to photograph birds at wildlife spots around Davis. The son of biologists, he has always been acutely aware of the natural world, and as a professor teaching biology today, he said he found a new passion for taking pictures of birds.
Eisen works in the Genome Center, and his main area of study is microbes, important living organisms that are in close proximity but paid little attention. Through his photography, Eisen aims to shed light on biodiversity and the “hidden world of wonders” thriving right in front of us. He said he wants to reveal the organisms in Yolo County, and how accessible this diversity can be. “I like showing that there is spectacular beauty right there for anyone to witness,” Eisen said.
For his 50th birthday four years ago, Eisen gifted himself a $2,000 camera specializing in capturing action — for birds in flight — but didn’t know how to use it. “My pictures sucked,” he said. After some online tutorials, he quickly improved.
Eisen regularly walks in the Putah Creek Riparian Reserve and the Yolo Bypass. Unlike avid bird watchers, Eisen said he prefers to “keep walking” rather than wait around for a specific bird to show up. He shares his photos on Twitter and has posted more pictures than anyone in California for the past four years on INaturalist, a platform where people can upload observations and locations of different organisms.
This new hobby, Eisen said, has revitalized his professional life, too. He used to dread the long talks at conferences, but now is excited to explore new areas. “Now, I’m reimagining going to a lot of places because I have something that I can look forward to, which isn’t sitting in an office and talking about work,” Eisen said.
