Utah State University’s Communitas lecture series returns for the Fall 2023 semester with another batch of artists, designers and scholars whose work promotes diversity, equity and togetherness.

Art History Professor Laura Gelfand, series coordinator, says this semester’s lectures will start off strong with the “phenomenal” work of Sasha Su-Ling Welland, the Chair of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.

“She’s doing this work on toxic waste grounds and artistic responses to that — which for me as someone who’s a native Utahn is really exciting, because I count as a down-winder, as do lots of people who are my age, from all of the testing in the West Desert,” Gelfand says.

Communitas is presented by the Department of Art + Design in the Caine College of the Arts. Lectures are free and open to the public but also offered to USU students for credit.

“Communitas has been one of the most unique and enriching courses that I have taken,” USU art history major Radeyah Kaplan said. “The speakers are always engaging, and the stories they tell still manage to be applicable to the lives of the modern art student. We’ve heard from a variety of perspectives, including a photographer who spoke of her battle with M.S., and an Irani artist who shared her struggles assimilating to America. I have left every seminar with a page or two full of invaluable advice.”

Each lecture will be from 5-6 p.m. in the Russell-Wanlass Performance Hall on USU’s Logan campus.

Sept. 21: Sasha Su-Ling Welland

Sasha Su-Ling Welland will present her current research, which focuses on the themes of embodied ecologies, nuclear colonialism, racial capitalism and “the Anthropocene production of everyday carcinogenic relationships” in her hometown of St. Louis.

Oct. 12: Ann Cunningham

Sculptor Ann Cunningham creates low-relief slate pictures dedicated to making information about the world more accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.

Oct. 19: Arlene Goldbard

Arlene Goldbard is a visual artist and the author of In the Camp of Angels Freedom and The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & The Future. She focuses on the intersection of culture, politics and spirituality.

Oct. 26: Ala Hason

Ala Hason, office director of HKS Dubai, works with clients to discover ways that architecture can help them achieve their goals. He defines a successful project as one that is influenced by local context and heritage, and he brings a global perspective and expertise in urban design to his work.

Nov. 16: Brooks Oliver

Ceramic artist Brooks Oliver aims to reimagine and reinterpret the familiar functional vessel.

“My work inherently blurs the boundaries between craft, design, industry, and technology as I am inspired by the charged grey areas between these binaries,” Oliver says.

For more information on Communitas, visit the Caine College of the Arts website.

MINNEAPOLIS — Celebrating history, and culture, has a way of igniting both pride and curiosity.

A moving mural has been sharing the history of a people whose voices were silenced for generations.

WCCO first introduced you to Spirit Lake Dakota artist Marlena Myles and the pastel-colored Metro Transit “We Are on Dakota Land” bus her design adorned last month. 

“We never really saw anything that showed that this was Dakota homelands when I was a child,” Myles said.

It stirred both emotions and interest.

“I want to learn more about the origins of Minnesota history, and in a real up-close and very personal way,” said Minneapolis resident Kathryn Ringham.

RELATED: The story behind the Metro Transit bus that honors Indigenous culture, and its first driver

As stories like this often do, its winding route led to a pleasant, and welcome increase in attention. 

“We’re achieving the foundation of our culture. Today people are acting it out by becoming good relatives,” Myles said.

Metro Transit driver Kevin Montry is Lakota and Anishinaabe. He was one of the first to drive the bus.

“Living and sharing. That’s what we do as an Indian person,” Montry said.

“It was this art and it was Native and I, it just, it made me smile and touched me,” Montry said. “I just felt like, of course, it’s me.”

Following their chance meeting, Montry and Myles have developed a bond.  

The two partnered with others in the Native community to bring the public on this bus tour of Dakota art, history, culture, and sacred sites in the Twin Cities.

Stops included Indian Mounds Regional Park in St. Paul, the overlook of the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, where many women and children were force-marched after the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War, and Pow Wow Grounds Coffee in Minneapolis. 

“I have been to some of these sites, but now I have a better explanation and understanding of what happened there and what it means,” said Rosemount resident Charlene Kaletka Delaney.

RELATED: Marlena Myles’ new augmented reality exhibit Dakota Sacred Hoop Walk opens

“Every Native person, we have a different way of telling our story, and all of those stories are important to tell,” Myles said.

As this tour ends, and passengers disembark, a high school teacher who had just finished her day was waiting for Myles.

“Marlena came to our attention through your original story. And our students, we showed them the story on the first day of class and they said that is something they wanted to learn more about,” said Dawn Johnson, a Wayzata High School English teacher.

Myles didn’t learn that “We are on Dakota Land” as a child, but because of her, future generations will.

“I’m just really appreciative that people are listening. I don’t think my grandmother’s era, I don’t think anybody would have listened to her. Like a thing like this wouldn’t have happened during her time,” Myles said.

The “We Are on Dakota Land” Bus Tour sold out in less than two hours. Myles hopes additional tours will be offered. She also hopes in the future, local Native artists can provide bus designs for Ojibwe, Somali, Hmong, Latino and Scandinavian communities.

As artists surged into the crypto space in 2021, one piece of advice echoed above all: “Start building a community.” Many now-dead Discord channels were born. Combined with so many companies and builders in Web3 being guilty of community-washing (a business growth strategy when the idea of the community and the word itself are used purely for marketing purposes), crypto has now become somewhat of a graveyard for abandoned group chats.

While the amount of communities in crypto is overwhelming, the pleasure of joining a unique and thriving squad with a healthy discourse skyrockets when the participants are highly intentional about the reasons for coming together. So how do you choose where to invest your time and energy?

Here are eight crypto-native artists and the unique communities they have fostered and keep tending to. From fine art visionaries to the up-and-coming NYC collective, the inspiration from these communities is unlimited:

Casey Reas

Reas is an American artist, UCLA professor, and MIT Media Lab alum who uses various software types as his primary artistic tools. Reas is the co-creator of the Processing, the visual art open-source programming language. His work is held in public collections at Victoria & Albert Museum, LACMA and Centre George Pompidou. In 2021, Reas co-founded Feral File, an online NFT gallery that showcases work by artists such as Refik Anadol, Petra Cotright, Rafaël Rozendaal, and Tyler Hobbs, among others. Feral File has amassed a unique community of artists, curators and collectors who have achieved recognition in the fine art world. At the same time, these creators haven’t been afraid to push forward the on-chain experimentation in their work. Feral File’s Discord (which consists of about 3,000 members) serves as a vibrant hub for discussions about art and ongoing exhibitions.

Claire Silver

A pseudonymous artist (Claire Silver is a fictional name), Silver is a pioneer of AI-generated visual art used in creating moving images. Claire’s work has been auctioned at Christie’s New York and Sotheby’s London, as well as exhibited in the permanent collection of LACMA. Claire is the co-founder of Accelerate Art, a nonprofit organization for artists in crypto. Per the company’s website, Accelerate Art is focused on arts education, grant opportunities, and exhibit possibilities for artists working in Web3. Members include such names as Diana Sinclair, Ix Shells and Matthew Stone.

LATASHÁ

A musician and producer, she gained recognition in the Web3 space back in spring 2021 with a series of successful music video NFT sales. LATASHÁ is the founder of Zoratopia, an educational program with both digital and offline events to onboard artists into Web3. Zoratopia has created a whole generation of crypto-native artists with diverse mediums. One of the most beginner-friendly communities in Web3, it is known for its buzzing events in Miami, NYC, Oakland and Austin. Zoratopia’s digital events are currently free to attend and open to the public.

Nadya Tolokonnikova

An activist-turned-artist, Nadya is known for being one of the founding members of Pussy Riot, a feminist art performance group whose members, (including Nadya), were imprisoned by the Russian government in 2012. Nadya was an early crypto adopter who launched several collections and put out individual NFT releases. In 2022, she co-organized UnicornDAO, a group of curators, collectors, and artists who are aiming to redistribute wealth and visibility. UnicornDAO aims to create equality for women-identified and LGBTQ+ people, specifically in Web3 space. The group has an invitation-only Discord channel, and membership costs 50 ether currently (around $80,000 at the moment of writing this article). Whilst membership is mostly targeting art patrons, UnicornDAO does a great deal of artist curation, and it’s worth watching it.

Iman Europe

A crypto-native musician and a lyricist, Europe recently founded TheHomiesDAO, a wellness community that aims to support artists of Web3. The DAO, which stands for decentralized autonomous organization, operates on a Nouns model: an NFT, which grants a membership, is minted once per day and is auctioned with the starting price of 0.05 ether (around $80 at the moment of writing this article). The money from all mints go into the DAO treasury, which the collective votes on. TheHomiesDAO has already started using funds to sponsor IRL wellness events to help artists avoid creative burnout.

The Park

The Park is a collective of award-winning musicians based in Los Angeles. With at least three Grammy awards in its cache, the collective consists of musicians who are working with artists like Solange, Halsey, and Rhye. The Park hosts intimate jam sessions called “Fridays at The Park,” which allow the public to participate in musical improvisation as well as dip their toes into crypto in a very artist-friendly atmosphere. The mission of the collective is to bring musicians together, create a safe and inspiring space for jams, and onboard them into Web3. The Park is experimenting with on-chain governance (it has its own decentralized autonomous organization, also known as a community DAO), and it is also minting a video NFT to commemorate every Friday session.

Malcolm Levy

He is a Toronto-born multidisciplinary artist and curator, who has previously worked with New Forms Festival and Cultural Olympiad. In 2020, Levy founded Refraction Festival which later became a DAO. Part music festival, part DAO and part incubation studio, Refraction is a one-of-a-kind artistic collective that is run by artists themselves. Initially, new members and artists had to apply through a membership form and undergo an approval process. Last year, the DAO introduced RefractPass, a collection of 1,000 NFTs that serve as the primary access point to RefractionDAO. The collection’s description states: “It is an evolving NFT that will offer long-term, expanded utilities for our members.” Currently, the pass is sold out and is available only on the secondary market, with a floor price of 0.25 ether at the time of writing this article.

Felt Zine

A New York-based artistic collective that describes itself as Web3’s underground net art collective, Felt Zine has established its reputation as a countercultural digital artistic collective. Since early 2021, it has facilitated a number of on-chain projects. Felt Zine’s community is primarily gathering offline, with its majority based in NYC (and an expansion in Tokyo). Felt Zine’s parties, unlike other crypto events, are indistinguishable from most hip events in downtown NYC. Felt Zine is taking over a sweet spot of the Web3 Gen Z community that equally values both being chronically online and spending a night over an espresso martini at Jupiter Disco in Bushwick.

The role of community is shifting. As our lives have transitioned to a predominant digital presence post-pandemic, our offline ties have faded more than ever before. While we may not recall the last time we gathered for dinner, helped a neighbor or attended a block party, we’ve definitely immersed ourselves in online communities. If this shift is inevitable, then choose your communities wisely and invest your attention where you wish to see growth.

Disclosure: I may own NFTs from the artists and projects I write about, all of which were purchased with my own funds.

As artists surged into the crypto space in 2021, one piece of advice echoed above all: “Start building a community.” Many now-dead Discord channels were born. Combined with so many companies and builders in Web3 being guilty of community-washing (a business growth strategy when the idea of the community and the word itself are used purely for marketing purposes), crypto has now become somewhat of a graveyard for abandoned group chats.

While the amount of communities in crypto is overwhelming, the pleasure of joining a unique and thriving squad with a healthy discourse skyrockets when the participants are highly intentional about the reasons for coming together. So how do you choose where to invest your time and energy?

Here are eight crypto-native artists and the unique communities they have fostered and keep tending to. From fine art visionaries to the up-and-coming NYC collective, the inspiration from these communities is unlimited:

Casey Reas

Reas is an American artist, UCLA professor, and MIT Media Lab alum who uses various software types as his primary artistic tools. Reas is the co-creator of the Processing, the visual art open-source programming language. His work is held in public collections at Victoria & Albert Museum, LACMA and Centre George Pompidou. In 2021, Reas co-founded Feral File, an online NFT gallery that showcases work by artists such as Refik Anadol, Petra Cotright, Rafaël Rozendaal, and Tyler Hobbs, among others. Feral File has amassed a unique community of artists, curators and collectors who have achieved recognition in the fine art world. At the same time, these creators haven’t been afraid to push forward the on-chain experimentation in their work. Feral File’s Discord (which consists of about 3,000 members) serves as a vibrant hub for discussions about art and ongoing exhibitions.

Claire Silver

A pseudonymous artist (Claire Silver is a fictional name), Silver is a pioneer of AI-generated visual art used in creating moving images. Claire’s work has been auctioned at Christie’s New York and Sotheby’s London, as well as exhibited in the permanent collection of LACMA. Claire is the co-founder of Accelerate Art, a nonprofit organization for artists in crypto. Per the company’s website, Accelerate Art is focused on arts education, grant opportunities, and exhibit possibilities for artists working in Web3. Members include such names as Diana Sinclair, Ix Shells and Matthew Stone.

LATASHÁ

A musician and producer, she gained recognition in the Web3 space back in spring 2021 with a series of successful music video NFT sales. LATASHÁ is the founder of Zoratopia, an educational program with both digital and offline events to onboard artists into Web3. Zoratopia has created a whole generation of crypto-native artists with diverse mediums. One of the most beginner-friendly communities in Web3, it is known for its buzzing events in Miami, NYC, Oakland and Austin. Zoratopia’s digital events are currently free to attend and open to the public.

Nadya Tolokonnikova

An activist-turned-artist, Nadya is known for being one of the founding members of Pussy Riot, a feminist art performance group whose members, (including Nadya), were imprisoned by the Russian government in 2012. Nadya was an early crypto adopter who launched several collections and put out individual NFT releases. In 2022, she co-organized UnicornDAO, a group of curators, collectors, and artists who are aiming to redistribute wealth and visibility. UnicornDAO aims to create equality for women-identified and LGBTQ+ people, specifically in Web3 space. The group has an invitation-only Discord channel, and membership costs 50 ether currently (around $80,000 at the moment of writing this article). Whilst membership is mostly targeting art patrons, UnicornDAO does a great deal of artist curation, and it’s worth watching it.

Iman Europe

A crypto-native musician and a lyricist, Europe recently founded TheHomiesDAO, a wellness community that aims to support artists of Web3. The DAO, which stands for decentralized autonomous organization, operates on a Nouns model: an NFT, which grants a membership, is minted once per day and is auctioned with the starting price of 0.05 ether (around $80 at the moment of writing this article). The money from all mints go into the DAO treasury, which the collective votes on. TheHomiesDAO has already started using funds to sponsor IRL wellness events to help artists avoid creative burnout.

The Park

The Park is a collective of award-winning musicians based in Los Angeles. With at least three Grammy awards in its cache, the collective consists of musicians who are working with artists like Solange, Halsey, and Rhye. The Park hosts intimate jam sessions called “Fridays at The Park,” which allow the public to participate in musical improvisation as well as dip their toes into crypto in a very artist-friendly atmosphere. The mission of the collective is to bring musicians together, create a safe and inspiring space for jams, and onboard them into Web3. The Park is experimenting with on-chain governance (it has its own decentralized autonomous organization, also known as a community DAO), and it is also minting a video NFT to commemorate every Friday session.

Malcolm Levy

He is a Toronto-born multidisciplinary artist and curator, who has previously worked with New Forms Festival and Cultural Olympiad. In 2020, Levy founded Refraction Festival which later became a DAO. Part music festival, part DAO and part incubation studio, Refraction is a one-of-a-kind artistic collective that is run by artists themselves. Initially, new members and artists had to apply through a membership form and undergo an approval process. Last year, the DAO introduced RefractPass, a collection of 1,000 NFTs that serve as the primary access point to RefractionDAO. The collection’s description states: “It is an evolving NFT that will offer long-term, expanded utilities for our members.” Currently, the pass is sold out and is available only on the secondary market, with a floor price of 0.25 ether at the time of writing this article.

Felt Zine

A New York-based artistic collective that describes itself as Web3’s underground net art collective, Felt Zine has established its reputation as a countercultural digital artistic collective. Since early 2021, it has facilitated a number of on-chain projects. Felt Zine’s community is primarily gathering offline, with its majority based in NYC (and an expansion in Tokyo). Felt Zine’s parties, unlike other crypto events, are indistinguishable from most hip events in downtown NYC. Felt Zine is taking over a sweet spot of the Web3 Gen Z community that equally values both being chronically online and spending a night over an espresso martini at Jupiter Disco in Bushwick.

The role of community is shifting. As our lives have transitioned to a predominant digital presence post-pandemic, our offline ties have faded more than ever before. While we may not recall the last time we gathered for dinner, helped a neighbor or attended a block party, we’ve definitely immersed ourselves in online communities. If this shift is inevitable, then choose your communities wisely and invest your attention where you wish to see growth.

Disclosure: I may own NFTs from the artists and projects I write about, all of which were purchased with my own funds.

Aspen Snowmass announced the selection of world-renowned artist Claudia Comte as the 2023-24 lift ticket artist. Comte is a contemporary artist based in her native Switzerland. She is best known for her larger-than-life, site-specific installations featuring wooden and marble sculptural forms and graphic abstract wall paintings.  

“Through the ski passes, I weave art’s tapestry into the very fabric of mountain adventure, where nature’s serenity dances with the exhilaration of skiing. In the playful embrace of cacti amid snow-kissed slopes, I beckon you to explore the unexpected. Here, I spark reflection on our evolving world and the fragile ecosystems we tread upon,” Comte said in a statement from Aspen Skiing Co..  

According to a release from Skico, Comte’s recent works have explored the relationships between various natural forms of life and how the materials she works with contain both memory and knowledge of the environment which they belong to. Her work carries an underlying, thought-provoking message on a greater scale with an emphasis on climate change.

“Challenging your perception, urging you to confront the vast implications of climate change, rendering this collaboration not just visually captivating but also a profound meditation on the soul of our planet,” adds Comte.  

The 2023-24 lift ticket artwork for Aspen Snowmass will consist of a collection of five of Comte’s recent works, focusing on how the environment can be viewed and the way the conditions of our planet modify the materials in every pattern and object.  

“Having Claudia Comte’s influential artwork as the lift ticket artist for Aspen Snowmass’ Art in Unexpected Places program is a reflection of the caliber of our program,” Paula Crown, representing the ownership team at Aspen Snowmass, said in a prepared statement. “Her art is both methodical, playful and also focuses on important underlying environmental factors.”  

Now in its 19th consecutive year, Art in Unexpected Places brings revered artists to Aspen to design limited-edition lift tickets, as well as to connect with local and global communities through workshops, lectures, and on-mountain experiences.

In previous years, Aspen Snowmass has featured commissioned works by internationally recognized artists such as FriendsWithYou, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Hank Willis Thomas, Paula Crown, Yutaka Sone, Peter Doig, Karen Kilimnik, Jim Hodges, Carla Klein, Mamma Andersson, Mark Grotjahn, David Shrigley, Mark Bradford, Anne Collier, Takashi Murakami, Laura Owens, Paola Pivi and Rashid Johnson. The lift ticket art program started as a partnership between the Aspen Art Museum and Aspen Snowmass in 2005.  

About Claudia Comte 

Born in Grancy Switzerland in 1983, Comte is currently based in the countryside outside of Basel, Switzerland. After studying at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne(ECAL) she earned her Master of Art in Science of Education at Haute Ecole Pédagogique, Visual Arts. Comte’s diverse range of influences include Swiss artists such as Constantin Brancusi and Jean Arp, to popular cartoons like the Simpsons. Comte will often mix natural elements with artificial ones, reimagining the distinction of what can be considered intellectual and unsophisticated. Text is often incorporated in her paintings in a similar fashion to a comic strip. Comte’s artwork takes on a different lens than what is often associated with minimalism. Claudia Comte is an award-winning artist and has shown her work in many solo and group exhibitions around the world. 

For more about this year’s partnership: http://www.aspensnowmass.com/discover/experiences/stories/claudia-comte-art-conversations-surrounding-the-climate-crisis

For more information about Aspen Snowmass’ Lift Ticket Art Program: http://www.aspensnowmass.com/discover/arts-and-culture/art-in-unexpected-places/lift-ticket-artwork

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Tiffany Anders began picking songs for movies at age 15, when she advised her mom, filmmaker Allison Anders, to use a track by indie rockers Dinosaur Jr. on her 1992 breakout feature, “Gas Food Lodging.” Young Anders then pursued a career as a singer-songwriter, and after releasing an album produced by British provocateur PJ Harvey, she officially segued into music supervision for TV and film. More recently, she has emerged as a go-to song picker for edgy TV comedies, including “PEN15,” “You’re the Worst” and “Beef.” But until a couple years ago, Anders had never curated needle drops for a Native American story.

Then came “Reservation Dogs.”

The critically acclaimed FX on Hulu dramedy follows four teenage misfits in rural Oklahoma as they struggle, often hilariously, to reckon with the untimely death of their friend, their heritage and navigate uncertain futures. Co-creator and showrunner Sterlin Harjo enlisted Anders shortly after seeing her post about the Native American documentary “Rumble” on Instagram. “He messaged me, and we started talking,” she recalls. “Sterlin said, ‘I’ve got this show coming up, and I’d love you to be a part of it.’ So that’s where it started.”

The first season of “Reservation Dogs” kicked off in 2021 with a teen heist underscored by the Stooges’ raucous punk anthem “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” followed in later episodes with numbers by hip-hop grand masters Wu-Tang Clan, country singer Sturgill Simpson and everything in between. The common thread? “Sterlin’s first point of direction to me was, ‘Everything has got to sound DIY,’” says Anders. “I immediately knew what he meant: The music had to have heart and soul, it had to be honest, it had to be full of integrity. It can be huge, it can be old, it can be new, as long as it carried that kind of feel.”

For the third and final season of “Reservation Dogs” (it concludes Sept. 27), Anders licensed music from gifted but often obscure artists whose songs sound as if they were purpose-built for the scene at hand. Speaking from her Altadena home, Anders de-constructed Season 3’s music cues, reflecting her fondness for “loner folk dudes,” Native American surf rock and hippie-era psychedelia. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This show’s packed with songs that most people probably haven’t heard before. In Episode 2 [of Season 3], for example, Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) wanders the barren Oklahoma plains, where he meets a reclusive old man named Maximus. At the end of his journey, Bear’s all alone, staring into space as this melancholy ballad plays. What’s the tune?

That’s “Early Blue” by F.J. McMahon. In my 20s, I lived in New York and got kind of obsessed with confessional, introspective records made by what I call loner folk dudes. This used record store loaned me a bootleg copy of his album “Spirit of the Lonely Juice,” which had “Early Blue” on it. I just thought the song fit the DIY vibe, for one. And two, it has this isolated, self-reflective quality that fits Bear’s moment of being on his own. He’s the lost loner guy there.

Deer Lady (Kaniehtiio Horn) in a scene from Episode 3 of the third season of “Reservation Dogs.”

(Shane Brown / FX)

Episode 3 centers on Deer Lady [Kaniehtiio Horn], and it flashes back to her days at the type of nightmarish boarding school that most Native American kids were forced to attend. You feature three pieces of moody music by Mali Obomsawin to express Deer Lady’s inner world. How did you learn about this artist?

Sterlin told me about Mali before they started shooting this season, and I was blown away. Her music is experimental, and it’s got these jazzy elements but it’s also heartfelt. Not to sound all witchy lady, but I feel like Mali’s music and [composer] Mato’s [Wayuhi] score were made to be together, but it just happened by chance.

Mali’s a Native American, right?

Yes. Sterlin went into this season very keen on using a lot of current Native American musicians.

Which brings us to a soulful track in Episode 4 by the late Native American musician Jesse Ed Davis. He was known for his guitar playing with artists like Bob Dylan and John Lennon, but here he’s singing, “I was born on the banks of the Washita River.”

One of the bonding moments for me and Sterlin is that we both love Jesse Ed Davis. We had to use him, and “Washita Love Child” was perfect for this scene. Our editor Varun Viswanath kept asking for old rock songs to kind of emulate these four characters being “the reservoir dogs,” and I was like, “Jesse Davis is our dog.” The song’s sweet, it has a groove and I really like that Jesse’s telling a story about his culture.

The “Dazed and Confused” homage in Episode 6 happens back in 1976 when the rez dog elders were just teenagers acting wild on the last day of school. It’s packed with rock tracks from that period, which must have been fun to organize.

For me, the sweet spot for rock is the ’70s, and when you dig into obscure stuff, it gets even funner and cooler. I’m one of those who can go down the [rabbit] hole forever.

From that rabbit hole, you pulled a trippy song by the short-lived Texas hippie band 13th Floor Elevators called “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” which plays while the teenagers feel LSD kicking in.

I mentioned “You’re Gonna Miss Me” for opening Season 2. We went with [Native American band] Black Belt Eagle Scout instead but we kept the song in our back pocket. Texas is close enough to Oklahoma [laughing], and the track has this Southern psychedelic rock thing — it just made sense.

Young Maximus later encounters a UFO to the tune of a spooky instrumental [“Yeti Talk to Yogi”] by 70s-era avant-garde German band Amon Düül. Why that group?

That moment had to feel other-worldly. When I first went through the script and saw the scene where he sees the UFO, I thought this would be the perfect place to get in some spacey Krautrock, so I immediately went to Amon Düül.

In Episode 6, resident nerd Cheese [Lane Factor] goes fishing in the woods with his uncles. When things get emotional, we hear this oddly uplifting song by a guy named Larry Norman. How did you find “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”?

That track came from Sterlin’s daughter, Portlyn. While we were spotting the episode, going through each scene and talking about what music we wanted, Sterlin showed us a video from a Christian movie of these women singing that song. He’s like, “My daughter turned me onto this weird Christian rock guy from the ’70s,” and I went, “Oh, my God. Let’s fit this into the Cheese episode.” It was perfect because in a way the song sounds very “after-school special.”

Big (Zahn McClarnon, left) and Cheese (Lane Factor) in a scene from Episode 6 of “Reservation Dogs,” when the uncles take Cheese fishing.

(Shane Brown / FX)

In music supervising “Reservation Dogs,” you evaluate each song’s emotional impact, but at the same time, you’re getting editor feedback, you might have licensing issues, you need to make sure the cue supports the scene. It’s a lot.

It is a lot. You’re constantly balancing the budget without wanting to lose the integrity of what the show’s trying to do. [You ask yourself,] “Will this song work instead? It’s cheaper.” If we could use a gazillion Johnny Cash songs or whatever, we’d do that, but I don’t think it would be as interesting.

They say constraints inspire creativity.

Exactly, and I think it’s wonderful because then you can expose viewers to new things and spotlight all these Native American artists too, so that people go, “What is that song?”

Looking back over the first two seasons of “Rez Dogs,” what musical moments stand out for you?

One of my favorites happened in Season 1, where we use a Lee Hazlewood song [1971’s “If It’s Monday Morning”] when Cheese makes the connection with “Grandma,” who’s not really his grandma. They’re sitting out there, and she can’t see, and, you know, she continues to be his grandma through the seasons. I loved that. And I also think of “Come and Get Your Love” at the end of Season 1, with the footage of Redbone playing over the credits.

What can you tell us about music for the show’s final episodes?

For [Episode] 309, we used a Native artist, Ken Pomeroy, who’s a Sterlin find. In 308, we have an amazing experimental Native American artist, Raven Chacon. He made this kind of surf record and sent a song to me. We put it at the end of Episode 8, and then I called Raven and said, “Do you have any more of that surf stuff, because it’s working really well in this episode.”

You’ve also included the Rolling Stones new single “Angry,” which is a huge get, in Episode 8. How did that happen?

Dasmarie Alvino at Universal Music Group mentioned that they had a new Rolling Stones album coming out. I thanked her and said I was very excited to hear the album as I am a lifelong fan. She then sent me a link. I listened to it day in and out when I was in London over the summer. I let Dasmarie know how into the album I was. She got back to me a few days later and said that the Rolling Stones would love to be considered for “Reservation Dogs,” citing the cultural impact and relevance the show has, which blew my mind and Sterlin’s as well! I remember texting him, and I believe his text response was “WHAAAAAA?”

Unlike most of the artists featured in this series, the Rolling Stones are pretty well known, to put it mildly.

The Stones, while massive, still fit the salt of the earth sound of the show, and this album reflects a lot of that mid- to late ’70s gritty rock sound they created. We luckily had this one episode left to complete where we knew the song would work. And it did. We both are still sort of in disbelief that we got a Stones song in the show.

“Reservation Dogs” has attracted a lot of fans for the way it portrays Native American life today. Any final thoughts as the series winds down?

I’m extremely heartbroken that the show’s gonna be over. I’ve learned so many things about modern-day Native American culture and music and everything else. I mean, I would have loved to keep going, because it’s been a dream job.

Highlighting the fish that make the Sunshine State special is the focus of the Florida State Fish Art Contest, which is part of a related national competition.

Students from kindergarten through high school can create and enter an original piece of artwork for free in the Florida Native Fish Award contest to win state and national honors and prizes.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is teaming with the Wildlife Forever’s national Fish Art Contest, in which participating students will qualify by submitting a Florida native species from the specified list below. The goal of the Florida Native Fish Award is to celebrate fish species native to Florida’s inland and marine waters.

“The Florida Native Fish Award is an amazing opportunity to introduce students to some of Florida’s most iconic native fish species in a fun and creative way,” said Sonya Rood, FWC’s commissioner. “This award helps connect Florida’s students to the fish species that help make Florida the ‘Fishing Capital of the World,’ which is critical in inspiring the next generation of fisheries resource stewards.”

A first-place winner and one runner-up will be selected for each of four grade brackets, including kindergarten through third grade, fourth through sixth grade, seventh through ninth grade, and tenth through 12th grade.

Prizes include those for illustrating the best freshwater fish species from the following: largemouth bass, striped bass, black crappie, bluegill, redear sunfish, spotted sunfish, channel catfish, Florida gar, chain pickerel, and bowfin.

The saltwater fish categories include snook, redfish, spotted seatrout, flounder, tarpon, mahi-mahi, Spanish mackerel, hogfish, queen snapper, and black grouper.

Also necessary is less than one page of a creative essay on the species displayed in the artwork, as well as the entry form.

Florida students should submit their entry consisting of the above, here.

Digital artwork will not be accepted; pieces must be created with traditional media.

The deadline to enter is Feb. 28, 2024.

State first-place winners will have a combination of awards and honors depending on their age bracket including T-shirts with their winning image on them, their art published in the FWC’s freshwater or saltwater regulations guide, and the works will be on display at the FWC headquarters in Tallahassee.

All first-place winners will advance to 2024’s national competition to be judged for top prizes, including best in show.

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