Delve into the heart of the Texas Hill Country with “Hill Country Canvas,” a podcast that paints the vibrant tapestry of art rooted in this iconic region. From the sun-drenched limestone cliffs to the serene Guadalupe River, the Hill Country has been a muse for countless artists, providing a unique backdrop for creativity to flourish. In each episode, we uncover the stories behind the area’s most captivating artworks, converse with local artists about their inspirations, and explore the fusion of Texan traditions with contemporary See more +

Nearly three decades ago, Truman Lowe’s sculpture “Effigy: Bird Form” made its debut for a yearlong exhibition at the White House. 

The artwork created by Lowe, a University of Wisconsin-Madison alum and former art professor, has now found its permanent home on campus. Located just north of Van Hise Hall and atop Observatory Hill — once home to Native American effigy mounds — the aluminum sculpture reflects Lowe’s Ho-Chunk roots and the loss of Indigenous burial mounds throughout the Midwest. 

UW-Madison will hold a dedication ceremony outside of Van Hise on Friday at 10 a.m. to honor the piece and the renowned artist, who died in March 2019. 

“Truman loved the mounds on campus. He spent a lot of time there,” said Jo Ortel, a former Beloit College art history professor who wrote a book about Lowe’s work. “He would be so happy to see the sculpture there.” 

“Effigy: Bird Form” is 20 feet wide and 12 feet long, and weighs over 900 pounds. Lowe created the artwork with the help of Hooper Custom Metals, a DeForest company, which welded together solid aluminum rods to form the sculpture’s woven lattice design. It resembles a bird about to take flight, hovering just above the ground. 

“He wanted to convey the number of mounds that have been destroyed over time and create a memorial for those that were lost,” Ortel said. “At the same time, the sculpture is an indication that Indigenous people who lived here were really in touch with the land and environment, creating shapes out of the earth.” 

UW-Madison is located on Teejop land, part of the ancestral homeland of the Ho-Chunk people, where the tribe also constructed effigy mounds. Burial mounds are piles of earth typically built in the shape of spiritual symbols or animals. There were at least five mounds located on Observatory Hill, though only two — one shaped as a bird and another as a two-tailed water spirit — are still visible on the hill today. 

Lowe often employed a minimalist or modernist aesthetic in his work that was stripped down to the essentials, Ortel said. He stayed true to the materials he worked with, infusing his Ho-Chunk background by adding nods to the traditional arts and crafts his parents practiced, including ribbonwork, beadwork and basketry. That style gained him notoriety throughout his career. From 2000 to 2008, he served as curator of contemporary art for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. 

In 2022, UW-La Crosse honored the artist with the Truman T. Lowe Center for the Arts. Lowe earned his bachelor’s degree in art education from UW-La Crosse in 1969 and his master of fine arts from UW-Madison in 1973. From 1975 to 1988, he also coordinated the university’s Native American Studies Program.

“Truman was a beloved and inspiring teacher and mentor whose work was deeply rooted in his Ho-Chunk heritage,” said Carla Vigue, UW-Madison’s director of tribal relations, in a statement. “It’s a special occasion to welcome Truman’s artwork back home to UW-Madison.” 

“Effigy: Bird Form” is an example of Lowe’s modern style, using aluminum to symbolize the vitality of the Ho-Chunk people, Ortel said.

“By using that modern material, he was suggesting that this is not just in the past — Native Americans are still here in this region and thriving,” she said. “It’s a memorial to the past, but also recognizes being in the present and looking forward.” 

Hooper Custom Metals contributed around 200 hours to “Effigy,” said Larry Sailing, a Hoopers foreman who helped fabricate the aluminum for Lowe in the late 1990s. Sailing also restored the sculpture for installation at UW-Madison, buffing away minor damage to the metal after years of wear and tear. Prior to its move, “Effigy” had been on display at Western Michigan University for over 20 years. 

“I brought it back to the way he wanted it,” Sailing said. “I was fortunate enough to have some old photos that showed some of the details. He was specific in that he wanted it to be natural and to shine, so it was nice to bring it back to life.” 

Sailing also recalled Lowe directing everyone from the Hooper team to sign their names on the feet that hold the bird up. 

“Most artists don’t have the people that work on their art sign it,” he said. “That tells you what kind of person Truman was. He was proud of what we created, and we were part of that. It’s quite an honor.” 

Ortel additionally recommends visitors get a view of “Effigy” from above. When Lowe created the piece for the White House exhibit, he knew the presidential helicopter pad was nearby. 

“He wanted President Clinton to see it and be reminded of the ‘flyover country,’ the Midwest and Native American environments, every time that he flew off of the White House grounds,” Ortel said. “I encourage people to go up in the Van Hise building and take a look at the sculpture once the leaves fall from the trees to get a sense of how he was thinking about space and how your perception of the sculpture changes as you move.” 

BYU ARTS Partnership brings authentic Native American art to Utah elementary school curriculum

An international multidisciplinary collective of artists called “Take Me to The River” will offer a wide variety of Stevens Point events beginning the week of Sept. 20, through a partnership between the city and the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

The guest artist residency is designed to engage students from kindergarten through 12^th grade, university students, faculty and the community in the celebration of water and its profound impact on the region. Sponsors include the College of Fine Arts and Communication (COFAC) Fund for Excellence, the Division of Academic Affairs and the Native American Center at UW-Stevens Point and the City of Stevens Point.

Events themed “Healing Waters” are planned for five days, September 20-24, and include painting and drawing workshops as well as classes in music composition and dance composition. Community art exhibits, lectures, concerts and performances will be held at Bukolt Lodge and Riverfront Art Gallery, both on the Wisconsin River. 

The public is invited to a gallery opening reception and concert starting at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23, on campus at the Noel Fine Arts Center, 1800 Portage Street, Stevens Point. The artwork at Carlsten Gallery will feature original “Healing Waters” works from visiting artists, followed by a 7:30 p.m. concert at Michelsen Hall.

More public events take place Sunday, Sept. 24, at Bukolt Lodge, including a pop-up art gallery, a Native American celebration of water with a drumming circle, a lecture on “A River and A Place Remembered” and a concert.

UW-Stevens Point art alumna Judy Jashinsky, ’70, is a founding member of “Take Me to the River.” The group engages communities and creates exhibitions around exploring one’s connection to water and importance of preserving it. Jashinsky proposed the theme “Healing Waters” inspired by Wallace Nichols, marine biologist and author of the book, “Blue Mind,” which focuses on the “benefits of being in, on, under, or simply near water.” Nichols plans to attend events held on Sept. 23.

“We are thrilled to be hosting this talented group of artists,” said College of Fine Arts and Communication Dean Valerie Cisler. “To tie fine arts together with the preservation of water resources is a perfect fit for UWSP and the city of Stevens Point, both of which share these values.”

A complete list of activities and information on all events, including related community events, can be found at www.uwsp.edu/cofac/healing-waters/.

Details

By Native News Online Staff

September 14, 2023

Here is Native News Online’s weekly round-up of arts, culture and entertainment offerings around Indian Country.

Opening of Many Voices, Many Stories, One Place
St. Paul, MN
September 16, 2023

Thousands of years of complex history will be told through the perspectives of dozens of individuals whose lives intersected with the site now known as Historic Fort Snelling. The new exhibit will share those stories. It will be located in the Plank Museum and Visitor Center, which is open year-round. 

Native Nations Festival
Painted Post, NY
September 16-17, 2023

A celebration of Native American Culture returns. All are welcome to attend the Annual Native Nations Festival at Watson Woods. Throughout each day there will be demonstrations that will help everyone learn more about Indigenous culture. Learning and educational opportunities will be available for everyone, and over 20 craft and food vendors available. 

Native American Festival
Vienna, MD
September 16, 2023

Come join “under the water tower” at the ballfield in Vienna for the 31st Annual Native American Festival. This year will be a one-day event, but there will be drums, dancing, singing, and storytelling; as well as several exhibitors, demonstrators, and vendors. 

GNAA’s 46th Annual Powwow
Greensboro, NC
September 15-17, 2023

Come join the GNAA’s Annual Pow Wow as hundreds of Native American dancers from varying tribes across the country gather at the Greensboro County Park to celebrate the rich history and culture of Indigenous people’s. 

St. Joseph’s Indian School American Indian Day and Powwow
Chamberlain, SD
September 15, 2023

A traditional Lakota (Sioux) powwow helps Native American children, like those at St. Joseph’s Indian School, shares their culture, heritage, and traditions with friends from around the nation. Visitors are welcome and encouraged to attend all of the powwow activities. 

31st Annual Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration
Macon, GA
September 16-17, 2023

The Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration is more than an event, it is a unique opportunity to foster understanding, appreciation, and connections across cultures. This is a chance to engage with Southeastern Indigenous artists, historians, and experts who will be sharing their knowledge through educational demonstrations, music, dance, and interactive exhibits. The celebration is held at the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park. 

2023 San Manuel Powwow
San Bernardino, CA
September 15-17, 2023

San Manuel Pow Wow is a three-day celebration free to the public and features Southern California traditional bird singers and dancers, as well as North American and Canadian dancers and drummers. In addition there will also be vending from artisans representing tribal nations from across the country. 

Virginia Native American Festival
Great Falls, VA
September 16, 2023

Riverbend Park comes alive with the sights and sounds of the Native American Festival. Bringing together tribal members from around Virgina, discover the history and long-standing tradition with the Rappahannock Native American dancers and drum group. Shop for traditional crafts, and learn about present events. Hands-on demonstrations, including bow and arrow use will be available. 

38th Annual Great Mohican Powwow
Loudonville, OH
September 15-17, 2023

Powwow time is the Native American people’s way of meeting together, to join in dancing, singing, visiting, renewing old friendships, and making new ones. This is a time to renew thought of the old ways and to preserve a rich heritage. 

Prescott Indian Art Market
Prescott, AZ
September 16-18, 2023

Come experience the 25th Annual Prescott Indian Art Market at the Sharlot Hall Museum. The two-day celebration of Native American culture will feature jewelry, weavings, pottery, sculpture, paintings, cultural performances, frybread, music, and dance. 

Muddy Run Pow Wow 2023
Windsor, PA
September 16-17, 2023

Come join for a fantastic family experience at the Muddy Run Powwow. There will be Native American drumming, singing, and dancing; along with crafts, authentic food, and Native american flute circles. The event is located at the Steam O Rama Grounds. 

From the Earth and the Sea: Founders’ Lobster Clambake
Washington Depot, CT
September 16-17, 2023

From 6pm to 8pm, savor local Indigenous foods of lobster, clams, corn, and potatoes while enjoying drumming and dancing as performed by members of the Redhawk Indigenous Arts Council. 

11th Annual Neerchokikoo Pow Wow
Portland, OR
September 16, 2023

The Annual powwow returns to Neerchokikoo, and will celebrate Native American history, culture, and arts. Traditional drumming and dancing for men and women of all ages will be performed throughout the day, as well as exhibitions from tiny tots, youth and multi-generational groups. 

Dancer ft Grand Rapids Ballet & Woodland Sky Native American Dance Company
Houghton, MI
September 15-16, 2023

Grand Rapids Ballet and Woodland Sky Native American Dance Company come together for an unforgettable weekend of dance, celebrating an art form rooted in tradition and flourishing into the future. Dance styles in this event include traditional ballet, contemporary ballet, and Native American dance. Free pouch-making and beadwork masterclass and powwow fitness class will be available. 

Youth Gathering of Native Americans Workshop at South Mountain Community College
Phoenix, AZ
September 16, 2023

Indigenous youth ages 16 to 25 years old are invited to learn about personal discovery and build group connections using conversations, arts and crafts, and group activities. This workshop will explore the four cultural components of embracing community and healing through concepts of belonging, mastery, interdependence, and generosity. 

Albuquerque Celebrates Recovery Pow Wow 2023
Albuquerque, NM
September 15, 2023

Come join a fun day of celebration of American Indian culture in which people from diverse indigenous nations gather for the purpose of dancing, singing, and honoring the traditions of their ancestors. The event will be at the University of New Mexico and is free and open to the public. 

More Stories Like This

Indigenous Artists Shine in Two NYC Art Exhibits
The Center for Native Futures Art Gallery Grand Opening Set for This Weekend in Chicago
Grand Valley Lodge Celebrates 62nd Powwow
Here’s What’s Going On in Indian Country, September 7 —September 14

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Not only has Wylie Caudill created the official artwork for the Derby, but he will also create original murals around Churchill Downs leading up to the race.

Pound for pound, Santa Fe, NM is the world champion of visual art. With some 300 galleries highlighting everything from Zuni fetishes to photography and a dozen world class museums devoted to Georgia O’Keeffe, contemporary Native American art, folk art, Hispanic art for starters, Santa Fe packs a wallop.

Not to mention its world’s best art fair, its wonderful art-filled hotels, the remarkably influential and prolific Institute of American Indian Arts which calls it home, a state capital building boasting a museum-quality art collection, and the School for Advanced Research’s Pottery Vault, the most spiritual art space anywhere.

Then there’s all the artists living and working in Santa Fe and the area’s artisan tradition of Pueblo potters and weavers dating back centuries.

New York and London may have more galleries and bigger museums, but they also have metro populations of 20 million people. Santa Fe punches like a superheavyweight at a population of roughly 90,000.

Its next haymaker will be delivered on September 23, 2023, when the New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary opens in the city’s Railyard District. Vladem Contemporary breaks away from the New Mexico Museum of Art’s 1917 building in the Santa Fe Plaza while remaining under its management, focusing on work made post-1980.

“This is really just an extension of our original mission; we have always been a contemporary institution, so for us, this is a way of reaffirming and continuing to show contemporary art, but also it’s important that Santa Fe continue to make strides in its interest and enthusiasm for contemporary art,” Mark White, executive director of New Mexico Museum of Art, told Forbes.com. “Having Vladem Contemporary in addition to Site Santa Fe, the Thoma Art Vault, all of the galleries, it does, once again, affirm that Santa Fe can be a destination for those interested in contemporary art.”

Site Santa Fe is co-commissioning the U.S. Pavilion’s presentation of Jeffrey Gibson’s (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and Cherokee) work at the 2024 Venice Biennale, the Olympics of contemporary art, another significant feather in the hat for Santa Fe’s art scene.

A new old building

“The Plaza building, when it was built for contemporary art in 1917, that meant something very different than what it means today,” White said. “What we have needed to do for some time is to expand and really make space for contemporary art of our age, which is obviously very different than it was early in the 20th century.”

The New Mexico Museum of Art not only needed more space for its ever-expanding collection, it needed larger spaces–higher ceilings, longer walls–and basic technical upgrades like more electrical outlets and data cables for digital art.

“We’ve been collecting for over a century and as contemporary art has grown in size, as it has gotten more complicated in terms of its media, it’s been increasingly difficult to continue to collect some of the more experimental work, and with an expansion of our storage space, that really makes this possible,” White said.

Not as sexy as new exhibition space, but every bit as essential, Vladem Contemporary allows the New Mexico Museum of Art to nearly double its storage space for art.

The $20.2 million museum wasn’t built new, it’s a retrofit of an existing brick building which presented architectural challenges, primary among them creating an envelope to properly seal the structure, acclimatizing the building to protect artwork by increasing the interior humidity beyond Santa Fe’s dry, desert climate.

A place of pilgrimage

The New Mexico Museum of Art’s collecting strengths are contemporary art of the Southwest, particularly artists who have settled or spent time in New Mexico. That covers a surprisingly broad cross section including many of the most important American artists over the past century.

“There was a moment where if you were a modern artist working in the United States worth your salt, you came here, and that has continued,” White said.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Maynard Dixon, the Taos Society of Artists, the Cinco Pinteros, the Transcendental Painting Group. All were drawn to northern New Mexico for a time, or forever.

They set a mold others would follow.

“There was this interesting moment in the 1970s that did continue into the 80s and 90s, in which you saw many of those early modernists–either towards the end of their career, or they would pass away–but a younger generation was coming in, not to replace them, but because they were lured by the dynamic in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Taos, you see this huge influx–especially from Southern California–of artists that would become international names: Bruce Nauman and Susan Rothenburg, Judy Chicago, Larry Bell, Ron Cooper, Jenny Price, Allen and Gloria Graham, Fritz Scholder (Luiseño), T.C. Cannon (Kiowa, Caddo).”

Santa Fe and the surrounding area continues to be home for a staggering number of top contemporary artists, Native Americans foremost among them. Either born and raised in New Mexico’s Pueblo nations or drawn there by studies at the Institute for American Indian Art, “locals” Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Rose Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo), Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara Tewa), Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo), Dan Namingha (Hop-Tewa), Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo), Nocona Burgess (Comanche) and dozens of colleagues have work in top museum collections around the nation.

“Shadow and Light”

Drawing all those artists to New Mexico is the area’s light. It has a quality which must be seen to be properly appreciated.

“It’s partly the desert atmosphere, which is somewhat thin, and our higher altitude, but there is a clarity and intensity here that has drawn artists,” White said. “You do have those that can’t quite contend with it–Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, they had a hard time with the New Mexico light and didn’t produce a lot of work here because they did struggle with it–but there were so many other artists that did really appreciate it.”

Vladem Contemporary’s inaugural exhibition, “Shadow and Light,” plays upon the famed New Mexico light, “not only as a physical medium, but as a metaphor, as a symbolic construct often for ideas of spirituality, transcendence,” White explains.

“Shadow and Light” demonstrates one of the original notions behind the founding of NMMOA, the belief that the impact of the arts is greater than simple replication and illustration. The impact is the understanding and enjoyment of art as well as the exploration of human experience, new ideas, and diverse cultures.

While New Mexico’s light is commonly associated with representational landscape paintings, the West has also nurtured and attracted artists who expressed more than mere naturalistic representation in their artwork. These artists use experimental styles and techniques, often maximizing the atmospheric quality and vast stretches of sky and horizon, not to mention making references and connections to honor ancient Indigenous civilizations who have called this land home for hundreds of years.

“I’m probably most excited to show that inaugural exhibition because it shows how versatile this building will be and how aesthetically pleasing this building is,” White said of Vladem Contemporary’s opening. “It will give people an idea as to what is possible for the future, which is to say a lot; we’re not going to have a whole lot of restrictions when it comes to a building like this.”

“Shadow and Light” will be on view through May 28, 2024.