A new atrium exhibit at the Academy Art Museum debuts Friday, Sept. 15, and runs through August 2024.
New AAM exhibit from Native American artist critiques America’s ‘consumption culture’
Native
Community Driven Art: TheHug.xyz : Social Media Examiner
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‘Indigenizing the ZACC’ opens doors for Native art, MMIR benefit
For “Indigenizing the ZACC,” a benefit for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives, the arts nonprofit is turning its galleries and performances over to Native artists and performers.
Andrea “Dre” Castillo, a multicultural Navajo artist and activist, stands next to a canvas with the letters “Protect Her” painted across the frame along with red and white hand prints, symbolizing the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement. The art will be showcased at the Zootown Arts Community Center gallery, “How We Celebrate Our Families.” The gallery is part of “Indigenizing the ZACC,” a benefit for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives, opening on Friday, Sept. 8.
On Friday, Sept. 8, the Zootown Arts Community Center will open up its spaces for “How We Celebrate Our Families,” curated by the local Indigenous community in collaboration with the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center. It will include a Native art market, three gallery shows, a series of murals made by students from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, a performance by “Montana’s Troubadour,” Jack Gladstone, and more.
The central idea is simple: “bringing our Indigenous people together,” said curator Andrea “Dre” Castillo, a multicultural Navajo artist and activist. The goal is to raise serious issues and potentially make people uncomfortable.
Photo prints document how students from Fort Peck painted a series of murals for the ZACC gallery, “How We Celebrate Our Families.” For “Indigenizing the ZACC,” the nonprofit turned its galleries and performances over to Native artists and performers.
“We still think of our loved ones that have passed,” said Castillo, who uses they/them pronouns. “We still celebrate them.”
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There are emerging artists like Matt Bell, an educator who’s recently begun selling his paintings; works by established graphic artist Barbara Schelling, to Monica Gilles-BringsYellow, a mixed-media artist who works with historical photographs and has branched into traffic signal boxes and other public-facing projects; and established Montana legends like Corwin “Corky” Clairmont.
The center began having art markets two years ago as a way of building bridges and community, with Castillo taking the lead.
Artist Andrea “Dre” Castillo flips through photo prints of community members who collaborated on painting the piece “Protect Her” at this year’s powwow in Arlee. “Protect Her” is on display at the ZACC’s gallery, “How We Celebrate Our Families.”
“My real role is to try to make more events for our Indigenous community, but also educate a white organization as to how to extend a hand to our Indigenous people and give space back to them,” said Castillo.
“It’s kind of saying, like, ‘Hey, how are you? We see you, we want to get to know you,’” they said.
In their model, the center provides space for the artists free of charge and also supplies gas cards.
Castillo is a member of the center’s Indigenous art and education committee and its coordinating council. Castillo curated the ZACC event, along with Leslie Burgess and Claire Charlo, fellow committee/council members, and the Rankin Center’s executive director, Nicole Mitchell.
All of the proceeds from the Main Gallery go back to the artists. Works in the silent auction in the Blackfoot Communications Gallery go to the Snowbird Fund and related causes to support searches and family and communities, according to a news release. These programs have been grant-supported through the All Nations Health Center and First Interstate Bank.
Kalianna Blount, a senior at Frazer School, is seen with one of the murals she and her classmates produced. The murals are traveling from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation to the Zootown Arts Community Center.
Message murals by the Fort Peck students
In the Youth Gallery, murals by students from the Frazer School, located in the town on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, will be on view.
The three collaborative pieces were made by high school students led by art teacher Teresa Heil, each relating to different contemporary issues.
“We researched the cultural significance of it and tried to put that in visual images,” Heil said.
Students from across the Fort Peck Reservation painted a series of murals for the “How We Celebrate Our Families” gallery showcased at the ZACC.
The first relates to missing and murdered Indigenous women; the second to the history of boarding schools and residential schools where Native children were forcibly enrolled after the government separated them from their families and culture and they suffered abuse.
One student, senior Kalianna Blount, contributed to the murals. A senior who’s thinking about pursuing art education herself and teaching on the reservation, Blount works on portraits in her free time, including portraits of family.
For the mural, Blount painted a portrait of a girl who was forced to go to a boarding school.
She’s “having her whole identity stolen real quick, and becomes a different type of person,” she said.
Visually, Blount chose to depict her having “lost her hair, which is your strength.” It symbolizes the trauma that children went through, “because they had to adapt to a whole different lifestyle.”
She hopes the images get across the effects of the schools and “how people still suffer from that today.”
Compared with a normal school art project, knowing that it would be visible, the art “felt like it had more meaning to it.”
After those two emotional projects, Heil said the group shifted to a “more celebratory theme” that could be more strength-based: President Joe Biden’s proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Selections of work from artist and activist Andrea “Dre” Castillo are on display at the “How We Celebrate Our Families” gallery showcased at the ZACC.
The finished pieces measure 5 by 8 feet each, made one per year starting in 2021. The year before, Heil was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Foundation Global Learning Fellowship, where they learned about how to incorporate global perspectives into learning.
So when students returned to school in 2021, the timing felt right for a project to help everyone get back to normal — “a big project that was really important and meaningful.”
The first was successful enough that they decided to make it into a series, with a new topic.
“When we’re doing things so relevant to their lives it makes it engaging,” Heil said.
Everyone had input and they heard everyone’s ideas in steps and stages.
The murals were picked for the Great Falls Urban Art Project, which presents rotating art projects in the windows on the parking garage downtown.
“Now, they’re all together as a group so they’re much more impactful and powerful,” Heil said.
For the Indigenous Peoples’ Day mural, she worked on various parts of the project, which included handprints, portraits and text. In 2021, President Joe Biden issued a declaration of the day on Oct. 11 (also Columbus Day), making him the first U.S. president to do so, the Associated Press reported.
She chose text from the declaration that was meaningful for her.
After high school, she’d like to pursue art and become an arts educator — it’s helped her as far back as third grade and she wants to come back to teach in her community.
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Passion for Native communities, filmmaking keeps artists behind Reel Indian Pictures going
Artist Patrick McMahon Talks Dedicating Time to His Creative Practice
The painter talks about his upcoming projects and the piece of D.C. maybe only he will miss.
We spoke with 15 innovative creators around D.C. to learn more about their work. Check out the full roundup here.
Artist Patrick McMahon, a native Washingtonian, has been painting for years, but decided this year to dedicate more time to his creative practice. We caught up with him about prioritizing art, where he goes for inspiration and how he explains the art world in D.C.
District Fray: What made you focus on prioritizing your work this year?
McMahon: What really changed for me this year was signing a lease on a studio. I’ve always made work in the margins of my life — weird hours, working out of an improvised space in my apartment or my parents’ carport — that kind of thing. A studio puts the pressure on me in a positive way; it challenges me to really make a go at this stuff, to justify taking up space. Also, it’s great to make messes in a place that is not your home. Highly recommend.
What project are you really excited about right now?
I’m in the talking stage with a client who wants me to paint his chimney (not an innuendo). I love a creative challenge, a unique or difficult space, something that makes me adapt — and this is that.
Where do you go in D.C. when you need inspiration?
The West wing of the National Gallery of Art is a special place for me; seeing Barnett Newman’s “Stations of the Cross” in the tower was one of the experiences that made me want to focus on art, and that showed me what painting was capable of. I’m also drawn to the great architecture we have here, especially — I’m sorry in advance — all the Brutalism. A late afternoon walk in the concrete and the shadows? That’s all I need. I am probably the only person in this city who will miss the Hoover Building when it’s razed.
Favorite art gallery that helped your work?
The place that launched me was live/workspace Hole in the Sky. It’s not an exaggeration to say that everything I know about being a working artist I learned there — before I first showed there in 2015, I’d never introduced myself to anyone as an artist, talked about my work in a serious way or sold anything. That all changed there. They were forced to close their doors last summer for good, and I miss them.
How would you explain the art scene in D.C. right now?
This can be a tough city to be an artist. Rent is high, studio space is hard to come by; I feel like most of my artist friends have loose or firm plans to leave at some point. That said, I also believe deeply that you owe it to yourself to try to create the scene you want to see and I’m not giving up yet. DM me your event or your open call.
Keep up with McMahon’s work by following him on Instagram @patrickmcmahon.art.
Looking for local artists and creators to follow? Join the District Fray community for exclusive access to content made and curated by some of the city’s most talented residents. Become a member and support local journalism today.
The Armory Show, in a Back-to-School Edition
Art fairs come early, tailoring their calendars to compete with the city’s big fall gallery and museum exhibitions. A critic’s 11 favorite booths.
It’s back to school in the art world. The fall season, historically characterized by a deluge of new exhibitions, now includes art fairs that have tailored their schedules to coincide with the first wave of gallery and museum openings. The Armory Show, the mega-fair making its third fall appearance at the Javits Center, offers 225 galleries from 35 countries, a far cry from its humble beginnings in 1994 with art works propped on the beds at the Gramercy Hotel. (But even mega-fairs can be absorbed by larger entities: In July, London-based Frieze acquired the Armory Show and Expo Chicago.)
The current Armory Show also boasts a curriculum of live talks, offsite installations and even a curatorial leadership summit that gives the impression of an academic conference. The purpose of the fairs remains commerce and bolstering market values, though. So there is a lot of painting, that perennially sellable commodity. Surrealism and Cubism are touchstones here and figurative painting dominates. Amid the sea of purchasable wares, however, are some extraordinary stories, histories and insights. While last year’s fair skewed toward Latin America, this year Indigenous artists are everywhere, and the overview is global. Here are a handful among the many booths that deserve mention, even if you’re only window shopping.
Jean Shin (Platform, 11)
Platform is a lozenge-shaped area in the middle of the fair given over to projects organized by the curator Eva Respini under the theme “Rewriting Histories.” A standout here, presented by Boston’s Praise Shadows Art Gallery, is Jean Shin’s “Huddled Masses” (2020), which features three outcroppings inspired by scholar’s rocks in Zen gardens. Look closer though and the rock-forms are encrusted with mobile phones from the last 20 years, surrounded by a mangle of computer cables. Where traditional scholar’s rocks and Zen gardens promoted mental and spiritual clarity, here your mind wanders to e-waste (which is what Shin’s materials actually are) and what it means to meditate in an age of endless distraction.
Artists Space (Booth N10)
Over at the nonprofit Artists Space, Drake Carr will be drawing friends and family in a booth outfitted to resemble a cozy capsule-size New York apartment. Carr’s work customarily involves what he calls “Housecalls”: drawing and painting his subjects in their habitats. Here, his invited portrait sitters will bring personal items to include in the drawings. Since Carr is inspired by fashion illustration and many of his subjects are in the fashion industry, a common thread running through his work concerns what people wear and how that shapes identity and community.
56 Henry (Booth P36)
Nearby is another local artist and gallery, LaKela Brown at 56 Henry, with sculptures and wall reliefs that use sly humor to celebrate and memorialize African American history and hip-hop culture. Stark white plaster and resin are used to cast corn, okra, collard greens and jewelry like rope chains and chunky “door knocker” earrings. When Brown titles them “African/American Still Life,” the allusion to art history is solidified but the unpainted white plaster sculptures also have a deadpan delivery, as if the life were sucked out of the vegetables.
Patel Brown (Booth F12)
It’s hard to miss the giant earth-colored figure crawling out of the Canadian gallery Patel Brown’s booth. Made of polymer clay, synthetic hair and other materials, the humanoid creature wears a mask — or perhaps its face is a mask. Made by Marigold Santos and Rajni Perera, the sculpture suggests deities and mythological figures from the artists’ cultures (Santos is from the Philippines and Perera from Sri Lanka), as well as life-changing experiences like motherhood. In their hands, art also becomes a place to create hybrids or new “Indigenous” sprites and spirits, drawing from imagined, imperiled or lost ones.
Zielinsky (Booth F28)
Among the solid historical presentations this fall are the performance photographs of a Brazilian artist, Vera Chaves Barcellos, at the Barcelona gallery Zielinsky, in the Focus section of the fair curated by Candice Hopkins. Barcellos’s “On ice” (1978) series captures the artists Flávio Pons and Cláudio Goulart whirling around on a frozen lake in Amsterdam, while “Keep Smiling” (1977) is a grid of photographs featuring the artist and her friends with identity tags hung around their necks. Residing somewhere between portraits and mug shots, the project commented on how to survive under the military dictatorship in Brazil.
Nature Morte (Booth 218)
Nature Morte is the well-regarded New Delhi gallery started by the American artist Peter Nagy over two decades ago. The booth has a healthy roundup of his stable of artists — often a boring fair format — but which offers a window into new art in India. Of particular note is a gorgeous wall hanging by Sagarika Sundaram, “Iris” (2023), made of wool, silk and bamboo silk. Fiber arts have been in the spotlight in recent years — along with ceramics and other media historically considered “craft” — and Sundaram’s lush composition, mimicking the folds of a flower, is an excellent example of why sewn, woven, knotted and knitted objects hold such interest, particularly in an age when “software” generally means something cold and digital.
Fridman Gallery (Booth F15)
I will profess to being a Milford Graves fanatic. The late jazz percussionist, artist and Bennington professor — a native of Queens, New York — was a visionary who invented his own martial art called Yara, based on praying mantis movements, African dance and the Lindy Hop. His assemblage at Fridman Gallery, “Bikongo-Ifá: Spirit of the Being” (2020) includes tabla drums, an acupuncture model, an African Nkondi figure, computer monitors showing heart readings — and a whole lot of other curious stuff. Graves is paired with Remy Jungerman, whose collage-paintings mix patterns drawn from Surinamese Maroon culture with 20th-century modernist planes and grids.
Ingleby Gallery (Booth 419)
And then there was more painting. How to choose between the hundreds, maybe even thousands of canvases here? Lorna Robertson’s paintings at Ingleby Gallery of Edinburgh stand out because they are bright, playful, colorful — and commandingly large. But they are also smart, taking a century and a half of revolutionary art — including Impressionist pastels and expressionist gestures and drips, Symbolist dreaminess and oddball feminist stridency (think Florine Stettheimer or Jutta Koether) — and sticking them into a blender. What comes out is bold but approachable. It draws you in, then whips you around a little bit.
Maruani Mercier (Booth 401)
The Black model in figurative painting has been one of the reigning modes of the last decade. (The Obama portraits were the tip of the iceberg.) A good example in this context is Kwesi Botchway at the Belgian gallery Maruani Mercier. Botchway’s dramatic “Flower Boy” (2023) series of paintings contrast dark skin with deep red backgrounds, lips and eyes. The young man in the paintings, holding a fragile spray of flowers, looks at turns peaceful and demonically possessed — an apt depiction of paradoxical youth perhaps, but also a potential comment on the politics of race and representation.
Charlie James Gallery (Booth S8)
Farmworkers are the primary subjects of the Oaxaca-born, California-based Narsiso Martinez’s paintings on cardboard boxes at the Los Angeles gallery Charlie James. Their humanity, individuality and warmth are particularly highlighted. Martinez plays around with art-historical references too: saints’ halos in religious paintings are echoed in golden bar codes framing the heads; a still life is served up as a fruitful offering by a smiling figure. Painted on shipping boxes for bananas, there’s also a sense of the absurd embedded within his poignant activism.
Martin Art Projects (Booth P27)
Then there is the Sudan-born, Cairo-based artist Salah Elmur, whose back story is almost as captivating as his haunting Cubo-Surrealist paintings on view at the Cape Town gallery Martin Art Projects. Elmur’s father had a photography business in Khartoum and his family possesses an archive of approximately 20,000 photographs from which he draws his subjects — often the “degraded” photos with double exposures and other flaws. Next to one painting, “Red and White Rose” (2023), is a corresponding photograph of two women. The canvas itself is an oasis of calm and gentle connection, a reminder that painting can serve this purpose in places of tumult, whether war-torn countries or commercial art fairs.
The Armory Show
Opens to the public Friday through Sunday, Javits Center, 429 11th Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 645-6440; thearmoryshow.com.
Good Medicine exhibit at Anchorage Museum features indigenous healers and medicine people
The knowledge work and art of indigenous healers and medicine people in Alaska is being featured at the Anchorage Museum. Good Medicine is a multidisciplinary exhibit and includes paintings, illustrations, a medicine wheel, a women’s house, and a men’s house–which are traditionally used for healing, teaching, and meetings.
Meda DeWitt, whose Lingít names are Khaat kłaat and Tśa Tsée Naakw, is a Lingít healer and curator of the exhibit. She said the show is both about healing and is healing in itself, holding space for traditional healers to be seen and to speak. That’s in contrast to colonization’s attempts to erase Alaska Native culture and traditional healing practices. DeWitt said healers were targeted during colonization because of the ways they protected people.
“You have to remove the medicine people, the spiritual leaders and the traditional healers,” said DeWitt. “And so, many folks were sent to insane asylums, or penitentiaries, or they were just taken out into the woods and just went missing, never came back, or out into the ocean.”
She said for decades Alaska Native people were forbidden from practicing traditional healing so people are now choosing ways to adapt the practice to contemporary life.
“We have to first fully articulate who we were pre contact and understand that to then be able to understand how to adapt it so that we are 21st century indigenous people on our own terms,” said DeWitt.
Ultimately, DeWitt said that acknowledging the trauma and pain of colonization is part of a cultural healing process that will help create a better future.
“Let’s not whitewash history,” said DeWitt. “Let’s just bring it out, talk about it, and work as a community together to seek healing and repair of those relationships and historic events. So that way, our future generations don’t have to carry on that burden any longer.”
Good Medicine will be up through spring of next year. Parts of the exhibit are fixed and there’s a rotating component that will feature new healers and artists every month or two. In March 2024, there will be a fire ceremony. People can write down their intentions for something they either want to let go or bring into their life. Those papers can be placed in a box in the exhibit to be burned in the ceremony.
RELATED: Kake resident finds healing by crafting traditional Lingít cedar roses
Eastern Iowa native Hailey Whitters nominated for CMA Award
(KCRG) – An eastern Iowa native has a chance to take home some hardware at the upcoming CMA Awards.
Shueyville native Hailey Whitters has been nominated for New Artist of the Year.
She’s up against four other artists for the award.
Whitters is currently based in Nashville and released her debut album in 2020.
She has since toured with artists like Luke Combs, and got her first Grammy nomination for song of the year for “A Beautiful Noise.”
You can watch the CMA awards on Nov. 8 here on TV-9.
Copyright 2023 KCRG. All rights reserved.
Rocky Mountain National Park to Host a Weekend of Native Songs and Dances
NEWS RELEASE
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK
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Rocky Mountain National Park’s 2023 Indigenous Connections programming continues this Friday, September 8 through Sunday, September 10, 2023 with Native songs and dances performed by the award-winning singer-songwriter, Shelley Morningsong, and professional Native dancer and storyteller, Fabian Fantenelle.
Morningsong and Fantenelle will perform a set of traditional and modern Native song, dance, and storytelling in hand-crafted regalia. Join us in front of the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Beginning at 1 p.m., Morningsong will also read from her children’s book, “She Talks to the Animals.” During breaks, Morningsong and Fontenelle will be available to answer questions about their artwork and traditional cultures.
Shelley Morningsong (N. Cheyenne) is an acclaimed Native singer and songwriter of 17 years who has been the recipient of many Native American Music Awards including 2019’s “Artist of the Year.” Fabian Fontenelle (Zuni/Omaha) is an original member of the American Indian Dance Theatre and has worked as a consultant and performer for Steven Spielberg’s miniseries, Into the West, PBS’ “Great Performances”, and the History Channel. For more information about these artists, please visit https://shelleymorningsongonline.com.
These programs are made possible by a generous grant from the National Park Foundation under the Inclusive Storytelling grant project. In addition, support is provided by the park’s philanthropic partner, the Rocky Mountain Conservancy.
The Indigenous Connections program amplifies and celebrates the presence of Indigenous peoples who have ancestral ties to what is now called Rocky Mountain National Park, including those from ten sovereign Tribal Nations including those of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Lakota, Kiowa, Shoshone, and Ute.
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Bring on the art: September brings fresh exhibits to the Valley as colleges reopen
Bring on the art: September brings fresh exhibits to the Valley as colleges reopen
