The concept of a discrete category called American Indian Art is a western concept which was refined during the twentieth century. Traditionally American Indians had improved the aesthetics of the things they made, but they did not conceptualize art as something separate from function. During the twentieth century, art museum curators, art historians, art critics, and others began to recognize American Indian Art as a distinctive art form and established the criteria for it. These people were, however, non-Indians with little first-hand experience with Native cultures. American Indian Art was, therefore, defined by European art standards and stereotypes of Indian culture.

In an article in American Indian Art, Jo Ortel writes:

“What constitutes authentic Indian experiences in the mid-twentieth, or indeed, in any century? By what criteria do we judge Indianness or non-Indianness? The binary construction of race and ethnicity is inadequate to contain the complexity of lived experience.”

Among the American Indian artists who challenged this foreign framework for defining American Indian Art was Yankton Sioux artist Oscar Howe (1915-1983).

Like many American Indian men, Oscar Howe (1915-1983) was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. Following his World War II service in Europe, Howe returned to art and his painting Dakota Duck Hunt won the Grand Prize in the 1947 Indian Art Annual sponsored by the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Having earned a B.A. and M.F.A., he became an assistant professor of art at the University of South Dakota in 1957/

In his biographical sketch of Oscar Howe in Notable Native Americans, Christopher Tower writes:

“One of the most influential Native American artists of the twentieth century, Oscar Howe was among the first Indian artists to combine traditional and modern forms in paintings, and is therefore credited with pioneering a new phase of artistic expression in American Indian art.”

In 1958, Oscar Howe submitted a painting entitled Umine Wacipi — War and Peace Dance to the Philbrook Art Center’s Indian Art Annual. The painting, done in an abstract style, was rejected for award consideration because the jury found the work “not Indian.” Howe wrote to the curator:

“Who ever said that my paintings are not in the traditional Indian style has poor knowledge of Indian Art indeed. There is much more to Indian Art than pretty, stylized paintings.”

He went on to ask:

“Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting, with no right to individualism, dictated to as the Indian always has been, put on reservations and treated like a child, and on the White Man knows what is best for him.”

According to an exhibit in the Portland Art Museum:

“His protest put into words the concerns brewing in the Native artist community and served as a catalyst for institutional change; for decades to come, Howe’s letter was used by Native artists as a battle cry for the rights to freely express themselves.”

Christopher Tower writes:

“Like many other Native American artists of the time, he was frustrated by critics, curators, and art dealers who were only willing to accept Native work that ‘looked’ Indian, meaning that it contained recognizable Native subjects and avoided the use of shading, foreground and background, and proper perspective.”

In his biography of Oscar Howe in the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, David Miller (writes:

“Howe demythologized a romantic aboriginal past and created artwork with a continuity and connection from past to present. He wanted his art to be seen and perceived as an informed whole that expressed his aesthetic and reflected his Yanktonai Sioux culture.”

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Portland Art Museum (PAM) present a special exhibit, Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe, highlighting his work. Shown below are some of his later works.

According to PAM:

“Overt depictions of Christianity were rare in Howe’s work. This painting of the crucifixion, created as a design for the apse of the church he attended in Vermillion, South Dakota, is a remarkable exception. The Christ figure is illustrated at the moment of death and transfiguration, his body losing its earthly connection and floating away from the cross, reminiscent of Howe’s Sun Dance paintings as the dancers enter a state of ecstasy.”  

More American Indian Art

Indians 101: The art of Oscar Howe, 1945-1956 (museum exhibition)

Indians 101: American Indian modern art by Oscar Howe (museum tour)

Indians 101: Some 1930s works by Sioux artist Oscar Howe (museum tour)

Indians 101: Sioux ceremonies by artist Oscar Howe (museum tour)

Indians 101: Sunflower by Walla Walla artist James Lavadour (museum tour)

Indians 101: Caddo artist Raven Halfmoon (museum tour)

Indians 101: Glass art by Marcus Amerman (museum tour)

Indians 101: Exploring Glass Art by Native Artists (Art Diary)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The clock is ticking until the end of the week when public comments will end about proposed rule changes to the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.

Leaders with the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the Department of Interior argue the proposed changes will strengthen the act. However, many Alaska Natives and American Indians are worried the rule changes will diminish their culture and local Native business protections.

“This is a painting that I did of a Deg Hit’an fish bag,” Melissa Shaginoff, Ahtna and Paiute artist and independent curator said, at her studio in Anchorage. “I do a lot of work in museum collections and a lot of research looking at our cultural belongings. I like to paint them and draw them to try to give some life back to them because we believe all the things that we make, that we put spirits into them … even the animals that gave their life so we can have the materials to make this fish bag, that their spirit is still within the bag. The work that I do within museums is to try to honor the lives that are in collections and their spirits.”

She sees the protections established within the Indian Arts and Crafts Act as the point — to protect sacred art and traditions like she maintains and produces.

“To protect us from forgery and falsification of making things and opening the door by allowing this loophole, is basically going to subvert the whole thing,” Shaginoff said.

The proposed changes to the act by the Department of the Interior create a loophole for bad actors, Shaginoff said.

“It’s going to have devastating effects on our future as artists and as makers,” she said.

The interior department released a document in April outlining the proposed changes which include, “The draft revisions seek to modernize the Indian Arts and Crafts Act’s regulations, which are implemented by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board (Board). The draft revisions bring a co-equal focus to promotional activities, expand the definition of Indian Product, allow for non-Indian labor to work on Indian Products in certain situations, and use a new certification trademark to certify that an item is an Indian Product.”

The Alaska Natives and American Indians asked about these changes fear it would create a situation where items would be able to be mass-produced by non-Native people.

“Creating a market in which you’re competing with non-Native makers for the thing that is specifically related to you and part of your culture, not only does it subvert the authenticity and the true story of what you’re representing, it is creating so much distance between that thing, that product, that art piece that you’re admiring and the animals, the land, the culture in which it comes from,” Shaginoff said.

The proposed changes would require ownership of a business producing Native items to be at least 50 percent indigenous-owned.

“I see this as something that could really even change how we even define Indigenous art. Indigenous art needs to be protected,” Shaginoff said.

Heather Dawn Thompson, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior, said the changes will strengthen protection for artists.

“These changes are incredibly important,” Thompson said.

Thompson said the changes will also add more protections for what she calls one of the Native culture’s most important economies.

“Arts and crafts are one of the most important economies in Indian Country and we have large swaths of Native artisans and craftsmen that are left behind, that are completely not covered by these protections,” Thompson said. “And so, this has not been updated in decades. We want to make sure that this is strengthened and that more artisans are covered.”

That means one of the main changes will be what’s certified ‘authentic’ in the application process, Thompson said.

“Our hope is by strengthening it, by making it a bigger deal, by having more artisans that have it and strengthening that up, then, the consumer is going to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, if this isn’t Native made, if this doesn’t have this label, I’m not going to buy it because I know now, that it’s supposed to say ‘Native made.’”

Back where some of those purchases are made, Shaginoff said if changes happen at all, she wants more specific protections.

“(Ahtna phrase spoken) which means, you put your thoughts into what you’re making in it and I think a big part of the Indian Act itself, the Arts and Crafts Act itself, is to protect that right,” Shaginoff said. “To protect the parts of our culture where we’re able to make art.”

The interior department said modernizing rules will more easily allow non-Natives to work on film and television projects under the direction of Alaska Native and Native American direction.

Every Alaskan asked about this said they don’t know anyone working in those industries who’s had issues because of the current rules.

Public comment ends Sept. 1. People who want to give their feedback can email consultation@bia.gov

Copyright 2023 KTUU. All rights reserved.

In early 2022, Jim Denomie, the internationally acclaimed painter, was in the thick of planning a mid-career exhibition with the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Then, cancer struck. Denomie died two weeks after his diagnosis. He was 66.

That exhibition, “The Lyrical Artwork of Jim Denomie,” opened this summer, transformed into a posthumous survey of the latter half of the famous colorist’s career — a career that skewered mainstream histories and purveyors of injustice, from Fort Snelling to Standing Rock, while championing the joy and resilience of Native communities.

“It’s a very bittersweet exhibition,” says Nicole Soukup, an assistant curator of contemporary art at Mia. Soukup had been planning the show closely with Denomie since 2019, up until the Ojibwe artist’s death in 2022.

“He was so beloved, not only in Minneapolis and St. Paul and Minnesota, but across the country and across the world. Words fail when you talk about somebody with such kindness and generosity and such a clear vision as an artist, and my words have failed me quite a bit in creating this exhibition,” she adds.

Truth-teller

Soukup and Denomie’s community say that the exhibition is just the beginning of building a legacy. As is the Jim Denomie Memorial Scholarship, created to help rising Native artists who embody what Denomie valued: truth and community.

“I hope that he continues to inspire artists to do work that also speaks to what’s going on in the world — artists as truth-tellers,” says author Diane Wilson, Denomie’s wife of several decades. “That’s a lot of what Jim was doing — speaking truth, both historically and in the present, about what has happened to and within Native communities, and that I hope will continue. I hope that’s his legacy”

At the entry of the exhibition, a 2016 video interview with Denomie loops.

“My art reflects my identity and experience as a contemporary Native American male in the 21st century,” he says. 

Soukup says it was important to include Denomie’s voice first. To allow Denomie to define himself, his art, in his own terms.

“And also it reflects some of the government campaigns that affected Native culture in Minnesota and around the country to how it ultimately affected me through the assimilation campaign and the Relocation Act,” Denomie continues in the video. “And all of these issues defined or shaped my identity, and it’s my identity that shapes my art.” 

Todd Bockley, of the Minneapolis gallery that represents Denomie, says the artist brought to light difficult histories that many would prefer to keep hidden.

“He was both humble and courageous to create and make public his interpretations of significant historical events of the past and present while also depicting his innermost thoughts and fantasies,” Bockley said.

Denomie’s art

Soukup walks the galleries, surrounded by Denomie’s paintings and totem-like sculptures. There are dreamy paintings of him and Wilson relaxing on a couch; of sensual landscapes with anthropomorphized animals on horseback; of spirituality and sexuality; as well as sculptures made from found objects — shells and plastic thingamabobs, feathers, buttons and bones.

In his most iconoclastic paintings, Denomie, like the 15th-century artist Hieronymus Bosch, packs characters into every inch, collapsing time by pulling them from history, pop culture and current events.

Several make repeat appearances: blue bunnies, a recurring motif that Denomie called “protectors,” the Dakota 38+2, American Indian Movement activists, “Wizard of Oz” characters, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, the Mona Lisa and figures representing Minneapolis police officers infamous for abusing two Native men with “rough rides” in the early 90s.

All of his paintings swirl with his signature palette: violet, indigo, fuschia, turquoise, lime green, mustard yellow. The vibrant colors disarm, inviting in tough stories like a rainbow Trojan horse. These are Denomie’s correctives to the historical record. Soukup and others have said Denomie paints the “ancestral present.”

“These are paintings that you laugh at, and you also want to cry, you don’t know which way you should react to it, but you’re probably going to react both ways,” Soukup said.

Take “Eminent Domain,” a 10-foot-wide canvas with a sort of pictographic map of the U.S.

“Flying high above the scene in the sky, we have an eagle carrying away a dachshund and right next to them, you see Evel Knievel jumping his bike across the church,” Soukup says. “But directly below that you see depictions of sexual abuse by boarding schools and the Catholic Church; you see a depiction of the Ghost Dance from Wounded Knee and the reality of Wounded Knee, both in the 19th century and in the 1970s.”

Across from it hangs “A Beautiful Hero, Woody Keeble.” Denomie has depicted, on horseback in a mountain range, the World War II and Korean War veteran Woodrow Wilson Keeble of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. Taking fire at him are anthropomorphized birds and dogs with machine guns, while blue rabbits dot the snow-covered slopes.

“The works in this room are centered around the theme of a beautiful hero and who determines a hero?” Soukup explains. “The question is who gets to write about history, who gets to learn about history, and what can we learn from questioning our sources about history? That is something that Jim did from the moment he started painting.”

A righteous anger

Denomie was an enrolled member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band. Born in Hayward, Wis., he grew up in south Minneapolis. In many interviews and talks, he recalls how he knew he wanted to be an artist since he was a little kid, but he dropped out of high school when a counselor discouraged him from pursuing art.

For decades, he did drywall and fell into a life of what he called “partying and addiction.” He returned to art in the 1990s, as well as American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota.

“I went back to drywall, but it became a vehicle that allowed me to paint what I wanted to paint and not necessarily what I needed to sell,” Denomie says in the video. “And so I was able to develop more challenging, more witty, political, social commentary, which is probably what I’m most known for today.”

He went on to paint with what Wilson calls a righteous anger, rooted in the government’s treatment of Native people. This included his own family — his grandparents were taken and placed in Native boarding schools.

When Jim was sick with cancer the first time, Wilson, their son, and some friends went to the pipeline protests at Standing Rock in South Dakota. Their son, she says, stayed for months, sending home stories to Denomie about the violent treatment of nonviolent activists. Denomie turned these stories into a series of paintings on Standing Rock, depicting ferocious dogs and fire hoses used on protesters in the dead of winter.

In his paintings, that righteous anger mixed with wit and whimsy to create what Denomie called a “metaphorical realism.”  Put another way, his friend, the poet Heid E. Erdrich, wrote in the exhibition catalog that Denomie employed a “postmodern Anishinaabe mapping of events.”

But Denomie’s legacy isn’t only in his art, says Soukup.

“His legacy is going to be a lot of things, and things that we won’t even know about, because we’re only 16 months after his passing,” Soukup says. “But hand in hand with all of it is mentorship and care for community, friends, family. The amount of people who have stories, the amount of people who Jim gave undivided attention to, is profound.”

Another longtime friend, mentee and fellow Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson, agrees. She calls him her “art dad.” They first met when Carlson was an MFA student in the early 2000s and he visited her studio.

“I didn’t know what I was doing, but he was like, ‘Keep doing it,’” says Carlson, who is now based in Grand Marais, Minn. “I feel like I need to do that for other artists now, kind of take the Jim Denomie mandate, and apply it to other artists that are just starting out, because I needed that.”

The two would go on to exhibit together at Mia in the 2007 “New Skins” show. And a few of Carlson’s paintings are currently on display at Mia, just around the corner from Denomie’s show.

Leaving a void

Denomie’s work held a particular place for Indigenous viewers.

“Jim was always saving the last laugh for Native people,” Carlson says. “We have these very hard histories, but he wasn’t going to just replay the hard histories, he was going to reserve healing and joy for Native people in his work.”

Like Carlson, textile artist Maggie Thompson recalls always seeing Denomie show up at exhibition openings, whether the artist was just starting out or established.

“I think because of his position in the art world, it was just like really cool to see him show up regardless of who or where,” Thompson says.

Thompson is Ojibwe from the Fond du Lac Band and is based in Minneapolis. She was recently awarded the 2023 Jim Denomie Memorial Scholarship, an award that was created soon after his passing by the Denomie and Wilson Family, and the Minneapolis-based All My Relations Arts, the Native American Community Development Institute, and Bockley Gallery.

Thompson is the second to receive the $10,000 award, after the 2022 inaugural recipient, Duluth artist Jonathan Thunder. She says the award has given her a boost at a moment when she was struggling, both emotionally and financially.

“I was feeling a little lost and a little defeated,” Thompson said. “So I felt like receiving the award kind of gave me the motivation and gave me a reminder of why I do what I do.”

Like Denomie, Thompson has demonstrated great commitment to the community. She mentors and employs young artists, both Native and non-Native, and even toured the Denomie exhibition with them. Thompson also often offers her northeast Minneapolis studio for community events.

“I think art can be an important vehicle to keep that momentum and that engagement and give people another place to feel at home and welcome,” she says.

What’s left behind

Diane Wilson says his community was shocked at Denomie’s quick passing, which sparked the scholarship.

“There was just this outpouring of ‘What can we do? How can we help?’” Wilson says. “That’s why we set up that scholarship, because people needed to do something, so they poured their grief into donations.”

In the wooded hills of Shafer, Minn., Wilson walks the grounds of the home and studios she long shared with Denomie.

She points to a line of old carousel horses lying in tall grass.

“He had this idea that eventually he was going to do an installation because he had flying horses in a lot of his paintings,” Wilson says.

Behind them is a cut tree stump on a sawhorse.

“That was going to be a next sculpture,” Wilson says. “He got sick so suddenly, that it’s like he just left in the middle of a lot of projects.”

Denomie’s studio above their garage has remained much the same since his death, save for some paintings and drawings that were removed for the exhibition and archiving.

Every surface is covered with materials and inspirations, from photos of friends and globs of paint to figurines of the California Raisins and the masks he collected from around the world.

Wilson recalls coming up here from her writing studio next door. Music would be blasting — he always had his 60-CD player going while he worked, she says — and they would dance and joke around.

“I wish he was here, But now that some time has passed I’m thinking about, well, how can we continue his legacy?” Wilson says. “I’ve been thinking about his space. It’d be nice to have creative energy in here again.”

Wilson sits in their living room, beneath one of his paintings hanging over the fireplace. She says there will also be more exhibitions to follow — a group show at the University of Minnesota Nash Gallery in early 2024, and Wilson and others are planning another for his recent painting series of the Dakota 38+2 — some of his “best work,” she says.

In the meantime, Wilson wants to return to the Mia exhibition, which she finds “poignant” because “he got to choose what people would see.”

“What lingers really of his spirit in this plane is in his artwork. So when you see Jim’s paintings, that’s still where he resides,” Wilson says.

“The Lyrical Art of Jim Denomie” is on view through March 2024. 

In Cincinnati, everybody called him Joe, mostly. Or Indian Joe if they needed to distinguish him from all the other Joes wandering around the Queen City. He wasn’t young when he arrived in town, at least 70 years old, though he stood straight and tall. He was muscular enough to wrestle a bear onstage at the Kohl & Middleton Dime Museum on Vine Street.

That’s where Henry Farny found him. Farny was a famous artist, renowned for his paintings depicting life among the Native American tribes of the Old West. He sold canvases as fast as he could turn them out and might have been wealthy if he hadn’t been so focused on giving away his money. A memorial after Farny’s death [Enquirer 31 December 1916] summed up the artist’s well-known generosity:

“Anybody down and out had a friend in Farny. It was always the under dog, the one whose strength and fortune were less happy than others, that Farny’s broad mind and heart would give assistance to.”

Farny had made several trips out west, capturing the last fading echoes of the life surrendered by Native Americans under the onslaught of European expansion. His friends claimed Farny was fluent in the Sioux language, but he was at least proficient enough to understand simple conversations. One evening, Farny and fellow artist Martin Rettig attended a show at a local theater. On stage, a family of Sioux performed traditional dances and demonstrated their skill at various crafts. When the father of the family stood to give a speech, Farny leaped out of his seat in outrage. Farny gathered that the Sioux family had a complaint against the government and the unscrupulous manager assured them he would see that they got an audience with the U.S. President. In preparation for the presidential visit, the manager told the family they needed to attend several “receptions” at a series of vaudeville theaters along the way. Farny heard the Father say he was tired of these receptions and would he ever see the President? On Farny’s insistence, the family was given passage home and their “manager” split town.

When Farny saw Indian Joe wrestling that bear for another shady impresario, he got Joe out of that contract and into a job as janitor at the Cincinnati Art Club on Fourth Street. In those days, a janitor was not only a custodian and cleaner, but also what we would call a building superintendent today. The Art Club offered generous flextime and Joe could take off for weeks at a time if a decent vaudeville gig came around.

Farny also learned Joe’s real name, or at least the English translation of it. He was Chief Ogallala Fire, and there hangs a tale. Ogallala Fire was born sometime around 1826 and spent most of his life fighting white settlers encroaching on Sioux lands. According to the Chicago Tribune [3 January 1916]:

“In the days of Indian warfare, Chief Ogallala Fire was known as one of the bravest warriors of the Sioux. History relates that he led his warriors in many raids on white settlements in Wyoming and once defied a detachment of United States soldiers who trapped him in the mountains for two months [until he] finally escaped.”

Ogallala Fire was almost 50 when General George Armstrong Custer led an army against the Sioux in 1876. The expedition ended with Custer and his entire battalion slaughtered at Little Big Horn. Ogallala Fire spent the rest of his life not only claiming participation in that battle, but that he himself had killed Custer in hand-to-hand combat. He certainly had battle scars consistent with a life as a warrior. According to the Chicago Tribune:

“In ‘Custer’s Last Fight’ Chief Ogallala Fire received two bullets, was slashed across the head with a saber in the hands of an officer, and was pinned to the ground from a bayonet thrust through his shoulder by a soldier.”

After that battle, Chief Ogallala Fire resigned himself to life on a reservation and might have stayed there the rest of his life had not show business come calling. Charles A. Eastman, an American Indian physician known as Ohiyesa among the Dakota Sioux, recalled meeting Ogallala Fire:

“In 1892, I scarcely believed that he would ever leave the reservation, but in his latter days he was caught by the white man’s vices, the love of money and the desire for ‘fire-water,’ coupled with the old habit of wandering. He traveled in this country and abroad with Buffalo Bill.”

After a triumphal engagement at the Chicago World’s Fair, Ogallala Fire hit the road with Buffalo Bill and other Wild West shows, eventually settling into the bear-wrestling act that brought him to Cincinnati. Whether his thirst for liquor was any stronger than the average Cincinnatian is a matter of dispute, but Ogallala Fire was occasionally arrested for public drunkenness here. He was also arrested frequently just because the police were looking for someone who looked like an Indian and he fit the bill. This harassment repeated so often that Farny, weary of getting his innocent friend released, fired off a testy note to the mayor.

One day, when Ogallala Fire had been on the road with one of the Wild West shows, Farny hosted several friends in his studio. They heard some strange chanting rising from the nearby stairwell. According to the Enquirer [31 December 1916]:

“Farny, after listening for a few seconds, with sparkling eyes, grabbed a tom-tom, and, beckoning his friends to follow him, began to dance in true Sioux fashion around the large studio, all the time beating the tom-tom. The music outside grew stronger and stronger until the door was swung wide open and an Indian appeared beautifully garbed. He leaped into the room and dancing like mad with occasional shrieks of joy thus expressed his delight over his reception. It was Joe, as the tribe called him, ‘Ogallala Fire,’ the old favorite Sioux model of Farny’s whom he had not seen then for a long time. Farny was indeed glad to have him again, a fact accentuated by the gold piece he bestowed upon him immediately.”

Farny painted multiple portraits of Ogallala Fire and incorporated his likeness into dozens of other paintings. Other Cincinnati artists including John Hauser also employed him as a model. As the Wild West shows faded in popularity, Ogallala Fire found work in the nascent motion picture industry, appearing in several early silent films.

It was the Chicago Feature Film Company, shooting an “oater’ with b-list actress Lily Branscomb that brought Ogallala Fire to Chicago around 1914. He ended up staying there at the home of a granddaughter. One day, after a long illness, he asked for a razor and sliced his throat. Despite medical intervention Ogallala Fire died, aged 90, a week later. The old chief once told Charles A. Eastman/Ohiyesa:

“Friend, I have engaged in more than 100 battles, but never have I been bewildered except when I entered a city of the white man. There my spirit is lonesome, as it never was on the uninhabited prairie. The people seem to me more like bears and wolves.”

Sand City artist’s human-sized nests on display at West End Celebration

Updated: 5:18 AM PDT Aug 28, 2023

ACTION NEWS 8 REPORTER CHRISTIAN BALDERAS INTRODUCES US TO ONE VERY UNIQUE ARTIST. THIS IS WHAT OMAHA NATIVE, AND SAND CITY TRANSPLANT, ARTIST JAYSON FANN CALLS A SPIRIT NEST…THIS ONE MADE BY DILIGENTLY SHAPING EUCALYPTUS WOOD. UPON ITS DEBUT AT SAND CITY’S ANNUAL WEST END CELEBRATION, IT’S ABOUT 18 FEET TALL. BUT WHEN COMPLETED WILL BE TWO STORIES, STANDING AT 26 FEET. <IT'S CALLED SPIRIT NEST BECAUSE ALL MY NESTS ARE BASED ON NATURE AND THE SPIRIT OF NATURE, THE PATTERNS IN NATURE, AND AT THE CENTER OF THIS WOVEN PIECE OF ART IS A DRUM….FITTING FOR FAN WHO'S ALSO A PROFESSIONAL PERCUSSIONIST. HIS LOVE OF MUSIC, AND HIS WONDER FOR THE NATURAL WORLD, SHOWS UP IN ALL HIS WORK — FROM THE NESTS….TO THE DRUMS HE CRAFTS AND PLAYS. THIS DRUM IS ONE THOUSAND POUNDS, MADE FROM A TWO THOUSAND YEAR OLD REDWOOD FOUND ON THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY IN BIG SUR. FANN HAS BUILT AROUND 50 NESTS ALL AROUND THE US, SOME EVEN ON DISPLAY IN OTHER COUNTRIES…BUT NOW FANN SAYS A LOT OF WHAT HE DOES IS WORKING WITH KIDS, TEACHING AND COLLABORATING WITH THEM ON OTHER SPIRIT NESTS TO HELP THEM REALIZE THEIR OWN CREATIVITY AND WONDER OF THE WORLD <WE NEED TO BROADEN OUR SCOPE AS IT PERTAINS TO THE EDUCATION SYSTEM AND STA

Advertisement

Sand City artist’s human-sized nests on display at West End Celebration

Updated: 5:18 AM PDT Aug 28, 2023

Anchor/Reporter

Sand City’s 22nd annual West End Celebration was held over the weekend. The event showcases local artists and musicians. One artist on display, Jayson Fann, spoke with KSBW Action News Eight reporter Christian Balderas about his unique creations he calls “spirit nests”.

SAND CITY, Calif. —

Sand City’s 22nd annual West End Celebration was held over the weekend. The event showcases local artists and musicians. One artist on display, Jayson Fann, spoke with KSBW Action News Eight reporter Christian Balderas about his unique creations he calls “spirit nests”.

Advertisement

Kids are running all over a temporary playground in the middle of the National Mall. It’s part of Beyond Granite: Pulling Together, the Mall’s first-ever official outdoor show. The idea is to commemorate American stories missing from the Mall and question how history has been enshrined in stone.

These new monuments look very different from the familiar imposing white monoliths or bronze presidents in thoughtful repose. Six acclaimed artists representing a cross-section of Americans – Black, Latino, Asian and Native – from all over the country were chosen by the Philadelphia-based group Monument Lab to participate.

Artist Derrick Adams, who grew up in Baltimore, designed a working playground divided by a billboard-sized archival photograph from 1954. It shows a previously all-white park a few days after it was desegregated by court order. Joyful Black and white children are seen sliding, swinging and climbing together. Visitors are invited to use the space as it was intended.

“What does it mean to have a monument on the Mall that you can play on?” asks Salamishah Tillet. “For children to feel like it’s their space, their Mall, a site of joy and happiness, is a pretty radical intervention.”

Tillett co-curated this exhibition; she’s also a professor at Rutgers University, where she directs the New Arts Justice initiative. This monument, she says, commemorates the fight for American children to have equal access to the right to play.

“I appreciate the fact that it’s acknowledging both the difficulties of the past, the celebration of civil rights and ushering us into another present as well,” she says.

Beyond Granite: Pulling Together was inspired by Marian Anderson’s legendary public performance in 1939 after white supremacists banned her from singing at Constitution Hall. The Black opera star’s rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial became a cultural touchstone.

Sculptor Paul Ramírez Jonas‘ bronze bell tower plays “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” But the bells stop tolling right before the end. Visitors must pull a lever to play the final note.

“The piece is simply saying, America is not America without you as an active citizen,” Ramírez Jonas says. “It needs you in some way.”

National identity is partly defined by what we publicly mourn, observes Monument Lab Director Paul Farber. “I think about how in this country, we’re bursting at the seams with grief, with loss,” he says. “We don’t always have a place to put it.”

Putting memorials on the National Mall makes them matter, he says. Think of the AIDS quilt. Or a memorial in the show called Homegoing.

Ashon T. Crawley‘s maze of bright blue platforms lies in the shadow of the Washington Monument. It mourns queer musicians who directed Black church choirs, sang in their services, and died, closeted, of AIDS-related complications. Crawley, who grew up Pentecostal, honors the loss of these elders with original music playing softly from speakers. “We are your family,” a choir sings. “We love and we care and sing for you.”

Some visitors to the Mall may not think of these deaths as a defining national tragedy that pulls us together as Americans. This monument asks: Why not? Crowley, a professor of religion, illuminates how Black gospel music and the blues can be traced to the Muslim prayers of ancestors taken from Africa. “If you did not have that sonic practice of prayer, you wouldn’t have the blues,” he says. “And you wouldn’t have gospel music.”

From above, the monument spells out the Arabic word “amin,” which means ‘let this prayer be accepted,'” Crawley says. When visitors enter the maze, they join the word and the prayer by following the path.

Finding meaning, belonging and a balance between trauma and triumph is the heart of this project, says Monument Lab’s Paul Farber. Artists, as artists do, are finding solutions amidst all the recent handwringing about the relevance of monuments. “We’re actually looking for history to come to life,” Farber says.

“You know, I think a lot of monuments commemorate dead people,” notes artist Tiffany Chung. Her monument, For The Living, lies near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. “I think it’s difficult to live, and when you think about war and conflict, the consequences also fall on the shoulders of the living.”

Chung was a refugee when she came from Vietnam with her family to the U.S. as a child. Her monument is a map, low on the ground, made out of thick black landscaping rubber. It shows the flight paths of migrants from Southeast Asia around the world.

“For me, instead of erecting something to really hit the sky, I want to spread it out on the earth,” she continues. “Because this is us. This is where we will go back to after we leave the world. And this is beautiful. The grass will grow. The sun will wash the things away, maybe including the material that created this map. But that’s the brevity of life!”

The monuments of Beyond Granite: Pulling Together aspire to heal legacies of harm. But they are not permanent. Due to various regulations, they can only be displayed until the middle of September.