Native

American Indian Heritage Days is underway at the University of Montana

Sep 19, 2023 By Admin in Native

MISSOULA — A special week is underway at the University of Montana.

American Indian Heritage Days started Monday and runs through Friday, September 22nd, 2023.

It’s a celebration of Indigenous culture on campus that includes everything from supporting your favorite Native artist to hiking to the M in honor of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Inside the Payne Family Native American Center at the University of Montana is the office of American Indian Student Services (AISS). It’s a place where community thrives which is why they’re putting on Heritage Days.

Tiara Walks, a student who is Crow, told MTN, “I probably come over every day to the office and it just feels nice to be like around other Natives.” O’Shay Birdinground is also Crow and spends a lot of time with other Indigenous students at AISS. He shared, “There’s been a couple of students who have just come in to learn about their culture that they’ve been separated from.”

O'Shay Birdinground — O’Shay Birdinground enjoys when people come into the Payne Family Native American Center with a desire to learn about their culture.

Heritage Days is a week long celebration of Indigenous culture on campus that includes everything from supporting your favorite Native artist to hiking to the M in honor of missing and murdered Indigenous people. Aurora Liberty-Dupuis is Bitterroot Salish and grew up on the Flathead Reservation. She enjoys seeing all the unique Indigenous-made pieces people have been wearing. “People wear their stuff to classes and we have events out on the oval and where other people can see it, then people can recognize it’s honoring who we are,” said Liberty-Dupuis.

Aurora Liberty-Dupuis works part time at American Indian Student Services and with the federal Gear Up program which helps 7th-12th graders with college preparation and freshman with college retention.

Since Montana is a primarily white state, it is very important to the Indigenous students and staff that their culture is visible. Birdinground explained, “We make up 7.1 percent of the overall population here at the University of Montana. We do our best to showcase who we are as a people and demonstrate the different tribal affiliations and the uniqueness to our culture.”

Director of American Indian Student Services Michelle Guzman calls this week a recognition of Indigenous people in their place. She detailed, “Especially at the university level we get a lot of students who are from out of state. Especially students from back east, they don’t even know Native Americans still exist today. So ,they always think of us in a historical context.”

Zachariah Rides At The Door, who is Blackfeet as well as Aztec, highlighted that Indigenous people and communities are alive and well. “We are a people with a past not a people lost in the past,” he stated.

The week of events boosts the visibility of Native people on campus. Liberty Dupuis shared, “It feels really good to me that we actually get to be seen.”

The students find it important to themselves to share their languages, stories, clothing, songs, and dances. “It’s healing for me.”

Rides At The Door and Birdinground will get to raise flags and sing on Friday morning as part of the Kyiyo Singers.

The Kyiyo Singers is a recently resurrected Indigenous song and dance group at the University of Montana. Rides At The Door explained that an old drum was found which then ignited the desire for students to bring the Singers back.

Zachariah Rides At The Door is eager to sing at the Sunrise Ceremony on Friday.

“It’s healing for me,” shared Rides At The Door, who has been singing since second grade. He continued, “It grounds me… my mentality is a key part of that, to be in a good heart and good space. What I’ve been told growing up, what I give to it is what is being brought out to everyone else.”

For Dillon Pretty On Top, who is Salish and Crow, dancing and singing is “an honor.” He’s taking what he’s learned growing up around his uncle’s drum group and using that to fuel his performances with Kyiyo.

Dylan Pretty On Top grew up near his uncle’s drum circle. Getting to dance and sing at the University of Montana perpetuates that family tie to music and dance.

Michael King III, who is Nakota and Northern Cheyanne, is the President of Kyiyo. He grew up singing and dancing. Getting to singing again is filling in a missing piece in King III’s cultural life.

Other Friday activities include craft vendors, a proclamation, ethnobotany tours, planetarium shows, and a round dance.

AIHD flyer — Schedule of events for American Indian Heritage Days.

Members Pop-Up Talk: Black Artists Of Oregon

Sep 18, 2023 By Admin in Native

In celebration of our newest exhibition, Black Artists of Oregon, (now on view!) Members are invited to visit the Museum after-hours for a private member viewing. Drop in to meet exhibition curators Intisar Abioto and Grace Kook-Anderson, as well as some of the artists whose works are featured in this important exhibition.

Members only. No advance reservations required.

A biennial in Oregon explores the role of art in political and social critique

Sep 18, 2023 By Admin in Native

The 2023 edition of the Converge 45 biennial in Portland, Oregon, Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship, is its most comprehensive iteration to date. The show (which was launched as a triennial by founder and gallerist Elizabeth Leach in 2016 before expanding to its current form) is spearheaded by artistic director Derek Franklin and guest curator Christian Viveros-Fauné, who extracted this year’s theme from his book Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art (2018). The exhibition aims to boost Portland’s art landscape, as well as that of the greater Pacific Northwest, featuring around 50 presentations across 15 venues that explore the role of art in political and social critique from the 1960s to today.

The biennial has an overarching focus on Indigenous histories, specifically as these relate to land and water rights and the ecological impact of imperialism and colonisation. Marie Watt’s installation Chords to Other Chords (Relative) (2023) at the Center for Native Arts and Cultures (NACF) (until 13 October) comprises a large-scale sculpture with the words “Turtle Island And” spelled out in neon, with the letters mounted on a plywood structure that has been pasted with photographs and documents related to Indigenous communities, from treaties to theatrical imaginings and images of Indigenous people. “Turtle Island” is the Haudenosaunee name for North America, which comes from the Haudenosaunee creation story. The neon “and” denotes the existence of an abundance of other Indigenous place names and origin stories.

Watt’s work aims to spark and deepen conversations around Indigenous people’s reclamation of the land, and the venue where it is presented tells an interesting story about Portland’s progressive, grassroots efforts to advance the Land Back movement through the donation of infrastructure and funds to support Indigenous-led organisations. The NACF site previously housed Yale Union, a contemporary-art space that transferred the building to the NACF in 2020 to recognise “the value of Native ownership”, Lulani Arquette, president and chief executive of the NACF, said at the time. As Converge 45 opened, other successful Land Back transfers were made in the city, such as the ten acres that house the Native American Youth and Family Center.

Installation view of Richard Mosse’s *Broken Spectre* (2018-22) Photo: Mario Gallucci

Elsewhere at the biennial, the consequences of resource extraction are explored in two presentations by the Irish artist Richard Mosse. In the multi-channel film Broken Spectre (2018-22) at the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis & Clark College (until 15 December), Mosse documents the state of the Brazilian Amazon under former president Jair Bolsanaro’s administration, which promoted ending the demarcation of Indigenous territories and overwhelmingly failed to respond to deforestation alerts. The second Mosse project, a photographic series titled Occidental at Blue Sky Gallery (until 22 October), explores other environmental catastrophes in Amazon, from oil spills to mining.

Powerful works at Converge 45 included the 26 August performance of the Chilean artist Seba Calfuqueo’s Flowing Like Waterfalls (2022-23) at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, where Calfuqueo evoked the flow of rivers through a choreographed presentation in conjunction with their video Alka domo (2017) (until 24 September)—reflecting on the sociopolitical and cultural status of the Mapuche people in present-day Chile. Meanwhile, the Portland-based artist Sam Tam Ham (Sam Hamilton) presents a visceral five-channel video opera, Te Moana Meridian (2022), at Oregon Contemporary (until 7 October), poetically considering the history of the British Empire and what it would mean to relocate the prime meridian, the “centre of the world”, from Greenwich to Polynesia.

Sam Tam Ham (Sam Hamilton), still from *Te Moana Meridian* (2022) Photo: Mario Gallucci

Several Converge 45 exhibitions are funded by Jordan D. Schnitzer, a philanthropist, real-estate magnate and collector whose name is ubiquitously emblazoned across cultural institutions in Oregon. His collection spans over 20,000 pieces, loaned to institutions worldwide or otherwise stored in his warehouse in Portland (where, last month, one of the latest pieces to come out of David Hockney’s studio was being prepared to be boxed for a forthcoming show).

Schnitzer makes a concerted effort to acquire complete series or career-spanning collections of particular artists’ work, and he has an eclectic range of post-war and contemporary art that is especially rich in prints. His collection includes a vast trove of works by the late Chinese American artist Hung Liu, some of which are displayed in the exhibition A Question of Hu: The Narrative Art of Hung Liu at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University (until 2 December).

The exhibition comes after Liu’s 2021 retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Washington, DC—the first solo exhibition by an Asian American woman in the NPG’s history. Overlooked until recent years, Liu was a prolific painter, weaver and printmaker who spent her formative years living under the Maoist regime, where she developed a signature twist on the Social Realist traditions in which she was trained before emigrating to the US in the 1980s. Her work melds Chinese and Western artistic traditions to foreground stories related to immigration, exile, imprisonment and war.

Hung Liu, *S-wan Quan Lake, Red Detachment of Women* (1995) Courtesy Converge 45

Elsewhere in Portland, the Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center at Portland Japanese Garden screened the fittingly meditative film Baku (2012) by the Mexican artist Bosco Sodi (closed 11 September). The film shows a Japanese temple gardener erasing and remaking a gravel garden, a metaphor for resilience and growth. And at the nonprofit Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, the exhibition We Are the Revolution (until 1 December), organised in collaboration with Viveros-Fauné, features works by more than 100 artists and is loosely themed around social critique. A maquette of Hank Willis Thomas’s The Embrace (2023)—an homage to Martin Luther King Jr. that was famously met with mixed reviews—serves as one of its centrepieces.

Another notable work from Schnitzer’s collection at We Are the Revolution is Robert Colescott’s satirical masterwork Homage to Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People (1976). It was acquired by Schnitzer’s mother, the art dealer Arlene Schnitzer, who founded Portland’s Fountain Gallery in 1961, when no comparable spaces existed in the region. She was one of the first to see the enormous talent of Colescott, who was then an unknown artist, as well as to believe in Portland’s potential as an arts hub—a vision that is just now gaining momentum with projects like Converge 45.

Converge 45, various closing dates, multiple venues in Portland, Oregon

Raven Chacon: 2023–24 Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor – e-flux Education

Sep 18, 2023 By Admin in Native

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) welcomes Raven Chacon as the 2023–24 Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, and a member of Postcommodity from 2009 to 2018, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; San Francisco Electronic Music Festival; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Vancouver Art Gallery; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Borealis Festival, Seattle; SITE Santa Fe; Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; Ende Tymes Festival, New York; The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC; Whitney Biennial, New York; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; Carnegie International, and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on more than 80 releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from The LA Times, the New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named the 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.

Since 2004, he has mentored more than 300 Native high school composers in writing new string quartets for the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital Award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022), and the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022).

As SAIC’s 2023–24 Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor, Chacon will present a free public lecture through SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program on October 17 at 6pm CT in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago. Details may be found by visiting here. In the spring, Chacon will be engaged with a graduate seminar in Sound, taught by Whitney Johnson, Assistant Professor, Adjunct.

Established in 2006 by a generous gift from Bill and Stephanie Sick of Winnetka, Illinois, the Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC. Previous Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professors include Bruce Mau, Jaume Plensa, Bill Fontana, Catherine Opie, Andrea Zittel, Theaster Gates, Chris Ware, Ann Hamilton, Laura Owens, Amanda Williams, Nayland Blake, Ebony G. Patterson, Shirin Neshat, and most recently, Walter Hood.

About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For more than 150 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program consistently ranking among the top programs in the nation by US News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alums and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, Jeff Koons, and LeRoy Neiman. For more information, please visit saic.edu.

Vancouver Art Gallery launches construction of new $295m building with ceremony, donation and new acquisitions

Sep 18, 2023 By Admin in Native

A “ground awakening ceremony” for the Vancouver Art Gallery’s (VAG) long-awaited new building on Friday (15 September) began auspiciously, with the announcement of a C$5m ($3.7m) donation from the Djavad Mowafaghian Foundation. The capital campaign for the new gallery, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and scheduled for completion in 2028, is now only C$55m ($40.7m) short of its C$400m ($295.7m) fundraising goal.

Although the initiative for the new gallery began in 2004 under the leadership of then-director Kathleen Bartels, current director Anthony Kiendl tells The Art Newspaper that the 19-year journey is not unusual for an institution that works on a “collaborative model” with local communities. “Look at [the Los Angeles County Museum of Art] or M+ in Hong Kong,” he says, “they’ve both taken over 15 years.”

There was a sense of both relief and celebration at the ceremony, where civic, provincial and federal politicians rubbed shoulders with First Nations dancers and art world cognoscenti, marking a significant milestone on what has been a long and winding road.

After the VAG’s 2004 master planning process determined that the gallery needed more exhibition and storage space for its collection—which includes one of the world’s most significant collections of works by Emily Carr—the museum sought the approval of Vancouver’s city council to build a new gallery. The chosen site at Larwill Park—currently a parking lot—is seven blocks east of the neo-classical Edwardian-era former courthouse designed by Francis Rattenbury in 1913 and renovated by Arthur Erickson in 1983 (as part of his three-block Robson Square project) when the VAG moved in after relocating from an earlier location. In 2008, the city council—which will continue to lease land to the VAG as per current arrangements—changed the site to the Plaza of Nations before reversing its decision in 2013.

In 2014, the VAG selected Herzog & de Meuron as the project’s architecture firm (with Vancouver’s Perkins and Will as the executive architects) and the Swiss firm’s design has changed considerably since then. Its current incarnation features a woven copper facade in homage to traditional Musqueam (the First Nation of the area) weaving techniques—conceived in consultation with Native artists—as well as expanded outdoor space.

Originally destined for completion in 2020, there was speculation that the project would never see the light of day due to lack of funding and other challenges. But the fundraising campaign was reinvigorated in 2019 by a gift of C$40m ($29.6m) from the philanthropic Chan family; as a result, the new building will be named the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts. At the time, it was the largest private donation to arts and culture in British Columbia, but was surpassed by a donation of C$100m ($73.9m) from the Audain Foundation in 2021—the largest cash donation to a Canadian public art museum to date.

With site remediation and construction on the new building to begin this autumn, the VAG has launched a final fundraising effort dubbed “The Build Up”. Focusing on big moves like dedicated space for the Institute of Asian Art, a multi-purpose Indigenous Community House, a state-of-the-art theatre, public outdoor spaces, dedicated artist

studios and a doubling of exhibition space to 80,000 sq. ft, the campaign hopes to raise the remaining $55m from a combination of private, corporate and government funding.

Adding to the sense of momentum are the VAG’s new hires: Eva Respini, who will lead the curatorial vision for the new gallery, and Sirish Rao, the new director of public engagement and learning.

At Friday’s ceremony, champions of the new VAG building promised C$88.2m ($65.2m) in new tourism revenue and a “modern cultural hub” in the heart of Vancouver, next to the Vancouver Public Library and the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, bordering Vancouver’s historic Chinatown and Gastown neighbourhoods.

True to the area’s original Musqueam function as a meeting site, Kiendl says, the new building also promises to be a cultural crossroads for diverse artists and an example of “reconciliation in action”. A moving ceremony by the family of the late Beau Dick, the Kwakwaka’wakw Northwest Coast artist and Chief, marked the VAG’s acquisition of 17 masks from his Undersea Kingdom series. The masks were prepared for Documenta shortly before Dick’s untimely death in 2017 and the acquisition by the VAG—which began building a significant collection of traditional and contemporary First Nations art in the 1980s—bodes well for the new building.

The future building’s weaving-inspired façade, Kiendl adds, “embodies a Coast Salish worldview, creating a blanket or veil that will protect the building and its inhabitants and collections”.

The Future is Now at Newly Opened Center for Native Futures in Chicago

Sep 18, 2023 By Admin in Native

Art by talented Native American artists on display now at the Center for Native American Futures in Chicago. (Photo/Levi Rickert)

Details

By Levi Rickert

September 16, 2023

CHICAGO — Comtemporary Native American fine art graces the walls of the Center for Native Futures (CfNF), in the heart of Chicago’s Loop, which held the grand opening of its art gallery on Saturday afternoon. Eager art fans arrived early and by the scheduled time for the event arrived, the galley was packed with members of the Chicago Native American community and members of the public who were excited to see the fine art.

Founded in 2020, the Center for Native Futures, a non-profit fine arts organization operates the gallery with the same name. CfNF grew out a vision to have an art galley so that Native American artists in Chicago could have a place to exhibit their contemporary Native art. Native Americans founded the non-profit, run the organization, and the art gallery. The two leading co-founders were Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo), CfNF’s director of exhibition & programs and Monica Rickcrt-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) the organization’s director of operations,

It is the first Native Amercan art gallery in Chicago. Its prime location is in the heart of Chicago’s Loop, directly across the street from alder’s Flamingo sculpture at Federal Square, at 56 West Adams.

“We’ve never really had a space like this in the city of Chicago. We’re here representing. We’re in charge. We’re the ones representing ourselves here. So, this really means alot to us,” Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo), CfNF’s co-founder and director of exhibition & programs.

*Debra Yepa-Pappan (Photo/Levi Rickert)*

Because of a family emergency, Monica Rickcrt-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation), CfNF’s co-founder and director of operations, was unable to be present on Saturday afternoon, but sent a statement that was read by Yepa-Pappan.

“Far too often Native narratives have been filled with heartache and are restricted to a place in history. We have a future that no longer needs to be shaped by outside limitations.” Rickert-Bolter said in her statement.

The Native futures theme is rooted in “Indigenous Futurism” that if often used in science fiction. “Indigenous Futurism isn’t only limited to science fiction; through art, we’re turning visions into reality,” Yepa-Pappan explains.

“Indigenous Futurism(s) are artistic means for expanding possibilities and realities by imagining our realities without colonial limitations. The definition of this term is ever-changing and dynamic,” reads the CfNF’s webstie.

Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe), another co-founder said that visitors may be surprised that the art made by contemporary Native artists may not be consistent with what they have come to expect as being Native American art.

“They’re going to be people that show up to this space that may think I don’t see this as authentic Native art. To me, it’s like: ‘It’s challenging you and those expectations that you bring to us and you’re saddling us with those expectations or stereotypes.’ We’re allowed to change. We’re not monolithic. We’re doing different things with different materials that we have access to now and when we’re saying different things. So I think that’s this space is going to support all that,” Carlson told Native News Online. “We can imagine our futures. We can put on the walls what we want to see–and who betten than us?”

*Members of the Native American community. (Photo/Levi Rickert)*

‘Transcendence’ at Covey Nest highlights eclectic emerging artists

Sep 18, 2023 By Admin in Native

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THOMASVILLE- Pines & Palms Art Association hosted its opening night of a week-long art exhibition, “Transcendence – The Power of Contemporary Expression,” on Friday evening at the Covey Nest. The event was well attended, with more than 100 visitors.

The exhibition highlights the work of emerging Georgia and Florida contemporary artists, who express themselves with unique styles and unusual themes.

Visitors to The Covey Nest enjoyed appetizers and wine, while taking in the surprisingly broad range of art. Ceramic pieces, masks, collage, fabric art and paintings made for an eclectic display of artistry.

Artist Kristine Jones spoke about the event, stating that, “It was an honor to curate this show. The artworks seem to have a unique synergy, as if each artist contributed to a larger, cohesive narrative. Remarkably, many of the participating artists had never met, or seen each other’s work, prior to this show.”

“Observing the artists’ enthusiasm as they prepared to showcase their creations, and hearing their personal stories—what drove them, their sources of inspiration, the emotions that guided their brushstrokes, their joys and their pains—has been a privilege,” Jones continued. “It’s not just about providing support; it’s about walking alongside these talented individuals on their artistic journeys.”

Jones not only curated the exhibition, but also displayed five of her own works. Several of her paintings, powerful artistic statements of human rights, stood out.

Mixed-media artist Margo Ruffin was awarded first place for her western themed “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” A collage of 19th Century cowboys and cowgirls, embellished with rusted metal pieces, was created as an homage to a part of America’s history that is rapidly disappearing.

Featured artist and Tallahassee native Earl Washington showed three ceramic pieces, winning second place for a raku vase with two spouts. A mixed media artist, Washington also works in macramé, wood, photography and collage.

Third place winner was fabric artist Emily McKenna for a delicate, translucent quilted piece titled “Waking up 3AM.” She explained the piece, stating, “It’s the moment I wake up with intrusive thoughts that slowly bring me out of sleep completely. The first portion is sleep, like a fragile blanket, which is why it’s transparent. It’s meant to be very delicate. I quilted and patchworked the blankets and the quilt squares like quick dreams. The sheer ribbons are thoughts. They start hazy, and then become more substantial and chaotic.”

Artist and Pines & Palms founder Sandi Shaw received honorable mention for her contemporary representation of trees, titled “At the Beach.”

Fabric artist Sarah Simmons displayed a quilted and colorful wall hanging called “Freak Flag.” The piece was purchased by Thomasville Mayor Jay Flowers, who planned to hang it in his office. Numerous other works of art were sold during the lively evening event.

Shaw spoke enthusiastically about the evening.

“We appreciate the space here at The Covey Nest. It’s the perfect venue for an installation like this,” she said. “Having access to a gallery of this caliber to display modern art is a welcome addition to Thomasville’s downtown. It offers the public a chance to see fresh, unique art in a progressive environment.”

Jones promised that “This is just the beginning. We hope to do more of these exhibitions in the coming year.”

The gallery, at 210 W. Jackson St. in Thomasville, will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Friday, Sept. 22, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday the 23rd.

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CA Legislative Session Recap | Gorman Museum of Native American Art | Stockton Symphony’s New Chapter

Sep 18, 2023 By Admin in Native

The Calif. state assembly chamber is in session Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023.

Andrew Nixon / CapRadio

As the California legislative session ends, which bills have a pathway to be signed into law? The Gorman Museum of Native American Art major expansion. Stockton Symphony kicks off the upcoming season with new leadership.

California Legislative Session Recap

Roughly 2,600 bills were introduced at the State Capitol this year. Over the months, they have filtered their way through amendments and committees, in pursuit of being passed and heading to the governor’s desk to be signed into law. The finish line has come and passed. CapRadio Politics Reporter Nicole Nixon joins us with a recap of the legislative session, which ended on Thursday, sharing some of the most notable bills passed by the legislature and their likelihood of being signed by Gov. Newsom.

Gorman Museum of Native American Art

UC Davis’ Gorman Museum of Native American Art is expanding, big time. This week, the museum opens in its new location on campus, with new exhibits and features. The new gallery is four times the size of the former site and is still one of only a small handful of museums focused on contemporary Native American art. Museum director and professor in the Department of Native American Studies, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, and curator Veronica Passalacqua for a virtual tour of the new and improved museum and we’ll learn more about some of the artwork inside and outside the new venue.

Stockton Symphony’s New Chapter

The Stockton Symphony is entering its 97th season, the third-oldest continuously operating professional orchestra in California. And the 2023-2024 season is starting a new chapter. Earlier this year, the symphony’s CEO Philip West unexpectedly passed away. In the months since, West’s contribution was honored in performances. And this season begins with new leadership. Music Director and Conductor Peter Jaffe joins Insight to introduce the new CEO Scott Watkins, as well as provide a preview of their season opener which kicks off Saturday Sept. 23.

Hop between 30 sites in Art Leap 2023

Sep 17, 2023 By Admin in Native

Art lovers can meet nearly 100 artists and explore 30 sites during the 2023 Art Leap driving tour.

Visit studios and other cultural sites in this free event sponsored by Heartland Arts, an umbrella organization for 16 arts and cultural organizations in the greater Park Rapids area.

Several loops lead visitors through fall’s scenic beauty in any direction.

This year’s open studio tour is from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 23 and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 24.

The public is invited to learn about the creative process at sites in Hubbard, Wadena and Becker counties.

2023 Art Leap introduces artists skilled in a variety of expressions: sculptures, paintings, mixed media, pottery, photography, mosaics, wood and metal work, fiber and paper arts, jewelry, beading and other Native American work.

New this year

“The Upper MIssissippians” will kick off Art Leap with a concert at the Armory Arts & Events Center (AAEC) at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 22. Unlike other Art Leap sites, AAEC is charging a fee at the door. The full band will perform an evening of swing from the 1920 to 1950s.

New this year, the AAEC hosts a pop-up exhibition organized by the Animikii Print Club, a collective of indigenous artists based in Mahnomen. Exhibiting artists are Joseph J. Allen, photography, Courtney Bunker, prints and jewelry, Kent Estey, paintings and prints, Nedahness Greene, photography, and Emily Klarer, screen-printing.

The gallery at the Armory will also be open for the weekend, displaying artworks in a variety of media, including sculptures, photography, oils and watercolors.

DACStudio091623.N.PRE.jpg — Hubbard County Developmental Achievement Center (DAC) develop a fine arts program to support their artists. They’ll showcase their work during Art Leap.

Grants helped the Hubbard County Developmental Achievement Center (DAC) develop a fine arts program to support artists with disabilities and pervasive mental illness. Their work will be shown at the Hubbard County DAC Fine Art Studio, Park Rapids’ first makerspace. It’s located at 1008 Park Ave. The Tin Ceiling Gallery, found on Main Street, also showcases artwork by DAC artists.

Also new this year is Bam’idizowigamig Creator’s Place. Indigenous artists of the Pine Point area create traditional Ojibwe art here year round.

Village of Pine Point murals, designed by Terri LaDuke and Annie Humphrey and painted by volunteers and Pine Point youth, can be seen on a short drive in the neighborhood north of PowWow Highway.

DoreenSchikOrangeGlass091623.N.PRE.jpg — Doreen Schik will demonstrate the fused glass process at Spirit Lake Gift Shop in Menahga during Art Leap.

Doreen Schik will demonstrate the fused glass process at Spirit Lake Gift Shop in Menahga. Visitors will also find laser-engraved woodworking, fiber arts and vessels.

Tanner Talbot of Monticello will bring his handmade pottery to Wine Not?.

Event guides are available at the Park Rapids Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center, Park Rapids Area Library and other locations. The guide is also available to view and for download at www.heartlandarts.org.

Heartland Arts sponsors Art Leap with funding provided, in part, by Itasca-Mantrap’s Operation Round Up, Park Rapids Downtown Business Association and West Acres Cares. This activity is also funded by a Region 2 Arts Council Grant through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund passed by Minnesota voters on Nov. 4, 2008.

By
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By rebuilding background of Charlie Russell painting, Utica native isn’t letting the ghost town die

Sep 17, 2023 By Admin in Native

Jake Iverson

Richard Hugo, the poet and patron saint of Montana’s ghost towns and abandoned places, said it best: “You might come here Sunday on a whim.”

A sign explaining the history of Utica and Charlie Russell’s tie to the area welcomes visitors to Don Waite’s reconstructed main street.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

That line comes from “Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg,” Hugo’s ode to the tiny town in the mountains near Anaconda. But he could be talking about hundreds of communities that dot Montana’s massive plains. There are places here that you don’t go to unless you’re planning on it. And you never really get a reason to visit. It’s hard to just pass through.

One of them is Utica. It’s in Judith Basin County in the foothills of the Little Belts, where Waite Creek (remember that name) and Courtneys Creek flow together to form the Judith River. Utica’s main drag is called Pigeye Road.

When Hugo wrote “Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg” in 1973, Phillipsburg and Utica had a lot of similarities. It was silver that brought people to Phillipsburg, but in Utica it was two things. First there was the cattle, driven up the prairies from Texas to gorge themselves on the sweet grass of the Judith Basin, which stays green long into the year, well past the time most of the Great Plains have turned yellow. But what really put Utica on the map was Yogo sapphires, the brilliantly blue gemstones that can only be found in Yogo Gulch, a small fold in the Little Belt Mountains. Utica was the closest thing that passed for a town near Yogo Gulch.

Rain clouds threaten Utica’s main drag.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

There’s an old story that Yogo sapphires are part of the Crown Jewels of England. It’s probably not true, but the myth’s prolificacy is a testament to the gem’s power in Montana’s imagination. The sapphires are our great claim to legitimacy, the priceless jewel you can’t find anywhere else. Miners flocked to the area to try and find the “blue pebbles.”

Don Waite explains the significance of Charlie Russell’s “Western Scene,” one of the first paintings he did in Utica.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

It didn’t last. In September 1959 organized mining in Yogo Gulch came to an end. It’s become a place of hobbyists, and despite some rare success stories, widespread mining of Yogo sapphires has never really picked back up.

Phillipsburg’s mines dried up sooner, ending most economic activity in the town by the First World War. When Hugo visited in the 1970s he saw a town in disrepair, a ghost town just barely holding off its death rattle.

He wrote of the “two stacks high above the town / two dead kilns … that won’t fall finally down.”

Then a funny thing happened. Phillipsburg came back. The town rebranded itself as a tourist hub. Nowadays Phillipsburg is best known for being home to one of the state’s best and most prosperous breweries. There’s a candy store folks drive from miles away to peruse, as well as art galleries and upscale eateries. It’s a trendy wedding destination for movie stars, a sort of pretend Old West. For a few bucks, visitors can try their hand at mining for sapphires, the former life and death struggle turned into an Instagramable vacation moment.

Utica is still stuck in its degrees of gray. In fact, it’s worse off than Hugo’s Phillipsburg ever was. The poet bemoaned that, “One good / restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.” But Utica’s only got one, a bar and grill called the Oxen Yoke Inn where you can get a cold beer and a hamburger roughly the size of a hubcap.

Replica buildings.jpg — When driving into Utica, you can’t miss this sign beckoning people to visit Don Waite’s replica Charles M Russell buildings.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

Utica’s streets are dusty — the pavement turns to dirt after a couple hundred feet. And the residents’ mailing address is Hobson, whose population of 179 (enough to make it a city) have absorbed Utica’s 23 (still stuck as an unincorporated community). There are a few signs that mark historic buildings, but many are old and sunbaked, the metal clamshells protecting the words are falling apart. There’s a museum, but the hours posted in the window are from summer 2018.

But one man has dedicated himself to telling Utica’s story. His name is Don Waite. He’s now 83-years-old, but in his time Waite worked a series of federal jobs that brought him to Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Currently, he lives in Spokane. But he keeps coming back to Utica.

Buildings 2.jpg — Don Waite’s big creative liberty is that he included the Judith Hotel, which was once owned by his grandfather.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

For almost 20 years, Waite has been building in his hometown. His work is now the most prominent thing in Utica, and if you drive by, you can’t miss it. He’s constructed a series of buildings that now line Utica’s main street. It’s difficult to say exactly how many there are because they all blend together, like something off of a western film set. There’s a hotel and a café, a pair of saloons, and a prominent general store with a big false front.

Those buildings might look familiar. That’s because Waite based them on the most famous depiction of Utica ever made. Waite based them on the structures you can see in the background in Charlie Russell’s painting “A Quiet Day in Utica,” which the painter, whose western works are so iconic they’ve become the images most people see when they imagine what the old west looked like, finished in 1907.

Charlie Russell’s painting “A Quiet Day in Utica” was reportedly done on commission for the owner of the General Merchandise store in the background, Charles Lehman. The painting includes Lehman and Russell as onlookers.

Courtesy Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Quiet Day.jpg — One of the exhibits Don Waite has put together includes this breakdown of Charlie Russell’s “A Quiet Day in Utica.”

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

Waite has filled the buildings with paintings and pictures, telling the story of Russell and his connections to the Utica area. He’s built a great museum to this specific place, way out in the middle of nowhere, not on any major highways and at least 75 miles from the nearest interstate. Waite is so invested in the story of Utica because it’s also the story of himself.

Waite was born in 1939, and he grew up in Utica. He was raised in a small cottage that’s the first building on your left when you drive into town, across the street from his reconstructed buildings.

“We had fun,” Waite remembered of his childhood. “We’d go down to the Judith River and hunt magpies. They’d give you a penny for a magpie egg, and five cents for two magpie feet. It was the darndest thing. We’d be gone all day and our mother never worried about us.”

Waite Photo Gallery.jpg — The Waite Photo Gallery is an open air museum of Utica history.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

“A Quiet Day in Utica” captures a gang of cowboys “tin-canning” a dog, which was a pastime where bored people would tie tin cans around a dog’s tail and watch the animal run around, clattering about. It feels too old timey to be true, but Waite remembers seeing it happen on the streets of Utica when he was a kid, years after Russell made his memories here.

The Waite family goes in deep in Utica. His first cousin twice removed, Jack Waite, came out here first. Shortly after, in 1882, Don’s grandfather Walter Waite followed Jack, who was his cousin. Utica was a rough and tumble cow town back then, full of cowboys who would drive stock out from Bozeman to feast on Utica’s grasslands. Walter took a look at the little town and saw a need.

“He decided to build them a big, fancy hotel,” Don Waite said.

So Grandpa Waite, along with a business partner, did just that, finishing the Silver Dollar Saloon in 1888. It was a grand place, with a bar in the front and an upstairs for dancing. There was a barbershop, and the saloon eventually expanded into a large livery stable. They even sold coffins out of the back.

Back then, Utica was on the main stage road through central Montana. Freighters needed a cool spot to store their perishables overnight, and Walter Waite obliged by building a pair of cellars.

The business was so profitable that they expanded into a full hotel, called the Judith.

“This was a first class operation,” Don Waite described. “They had 15 rooms, and a dance hall. You could eat, go to your room, go dancing, go to the bar.”

Waite can rattle all of this off the top of his head. He’s a student of Utica, full of endless stories. Sometimes one tangent will interrupt another. Waite knows so much about this place it’s hard to keep it all strait.

Russell, like Waite, knew Utica. It’s him, not sapphires, not cows, not even hamburgers, that gives Utica its great claim to fame. Russell was born in Missouri, but at age 16 he grew tired of the east and moved to Montana. He spent some time on a sheep ranch but quit, eventually winding up as a night herder on a ranch near Utica.

Being a “nighthawk,” as the cowboys call it, was a lonely job. Russell had plenty of time to think. Pretty soon he started to put the images in his head onto paper. His first major sketch, ”Waiting on a Chinook,” is of a skeletal cow freezing to death in the legendarily tough winter of 1886-87, which Russell spent on the O-H Ranch near Utica. The sketch became something of a phenomena in pre-statehood Montana, and pretty soon the night herder started taking painting seriously.

Waiting for a Chinook Charles Russell — “Waiting for a Chinook, The Last of 5,000” is a work by Montana artist C.M. Russell.

Courtesy photo

This sign explains the history behind “Waiting on a Chinook,” Charlie Russell’s first major artwork, which he painted in Utica.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

His first makeshift studio was in the Shelton Saloon, which is one of the buildings Waite has dutifully rebuilt.

Shelton Saloon.jpg — Don Waite reconstructed this version of the Shelton Saloon, which was Charlie Russell’s first studio.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

He started the project in earnest in 2006. The buildings are made with reclaimed lumber that he found in broken and decrepit shacks along the Judith Basin plains. Those logs had been split decades, maybe a century ago, and used well. But with nobody left to live in them, Waite turned them into something else.

Don Waite points out details in “Breaking Camp,” an early Charlie Russell painting from Utica.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

He also went into the mountains to cut down lodge pole pines, and got some shingles from an old church in Lewistown.

Waite does copious research to reconstruct these buildings. He’s got a packet of writing he’s done about the area. And he’s not alone. His older brother Walt wrote two books about Utica history. And his father Charles left a note in an early biography of Russell that misidentified the Shelton Saloon, confusing it for another building in town.

“Wrong!” Charles Waite wrote underneath the photo. He signed the correction and dated it 1948.

Wrong!.jpg — Don Waite’s father Charles left this note in a book about Charlie Russell which misidentifies the painter’s early studio.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

Russell churned out art from the saloon. His early paintings bear little resemblance to the majestic work he’d do later in his career. They’re sparse and flat, clearly done by a greenhorn who has yet to fully learn about life on the plains.

Cowboy Camp.jpg — Don Waite has annotated Charlie Russell’s 1887 painting “Cowboy Camp During Roundup,” which includes many early Utica residents.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

But they’re full of character. Waite has many of them printed out and on display in his replica buildings. One, an 1887 work called “Cowboy Camp During Roundup,” captures Utica at its early cow-town peak. The painting includes portraits of many of his friends on the range. Waite has taken the time to annotate the painting, labeling each figure. They’ve got great cowboy names like Kid Antelope and “Slack” Jackson.

Waite is done with his buildings now. Truthfully, he only spends a few weeks a year now in Utica. The buildings are locked when he’s away, but you can admire them plenty from outside, and he’s installed an open air gallery full of pictures and writing about Utica’s history, which included icons like Calamity Jane in addition to Russell. And his phone number is on the sign that welcomes people to the buildings. He’s always willing to talk Utica.

Calamity Jane.jpg — Calamity Jane was an early resident of Utica, getting into a spat with Don Waite’s grandfather Walter.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

Trails end.jpg — Don Waite stands with a depiction of “James Earle Fraser’s “The End of the Trail” painted by his wife Nancy Little.

JAKE IVERSON, Billings Gazette

Why does he do this? Why has Waite, the world traveler, dedicated this much time to the tiny town he grew up in?

“I’m crazy,” he admitted, before doubling over in laughter. “Well, at least some of the ranchers around here think I’m crazy. But people are really enjoying it. And I did it for the community.”

“Charles Russell is huge for Utica,” he continued. “He’s huge worldwide. He got his start right here.”

But it’s deeper than that. If you compare Waite’s buildings to the ones in Russell’s painting, you’ll see a couple discrepancies. The structures he’s built in Utica are just a little bit different from Russell’s painting. That’s because he’s included the Hotel Judith and the Silver Dollar Saloon, which were on the opposite side of the street from Russell’s point of view. These buildings are about Russell, of course, but they’re about the generations of Waites who have roots here, too, including Don’s two daughters, Karla and Kim.

“I did this for my granddad and my pioneering family that came here and weathered all of this,” he said. “I did this to share it with people. In 50 years, people can come by and learn that all of this happened here in Utica, Montana.”

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