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Kenai guild creates new market for local arts and crafts

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Kenai guild creates new market for local arts and crafts

Nestled in a plaza with a hair salon and pull tabs store in the heart of Kenai, there’s a new home for artists and crafters from across the Kenai Peninsula.

Karen Trulove opened the Alaskan Artisans and Crafters Guild in May. Trulove is an artist who said she has a penchant for entrepreneurship. She’s also a seventh-generation Seldovian and a traditional healer with the Kenaitze Indian Tribe.

Trulove opened the guild to address what she saw as a lack of opportunities for local and Alaska Native artists to market their work on the peninsula. She said it was easy to find artists who wanted to sell work at her store.

“I actually advertised one time on Facebook, and I had about 63 people reach out within 24 hours, so I was like well, this might be a needed thing in our community,” she said.

The store currently carries work from about 80 artists, most of them local to the Kenai Peninsula. There’s furs, beadwork, photography, watercolor, dishware, ornaments, endless jewelry and pieces that defy categorization.

Displays at the Alaskan Artisans and Crafters Guild in Kenai.

Riley Board

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KDLL

Displays at the Alaskan Artisans and Crafters Guild in Kenai.

In the shop, Trulove pointed out soaps made of goat milk from Nikiski, wrapped in pastoral alpaca fur casings that make them their own washcloth. She said that’s one item that’s often sold out. Nearby were glass ornaments made of sand from the Homer Spit and kuspuks, both regular-size and doll-sized, designed to fit on American Girl dolls. There was also locally carved ivory, drums made by kids from the Salamatof Native Association and beaded earrings galore.

Trulove said the purpose of the store is to create a reliable year-round venue for local artists.

“In the wintertime, it’s tough because we don’t have a lot of craft fairs. We have a few, but it’s not like the Wednesday Market or Saturday Farmers Market,” she said. “Sometimes people are busy in the summertime. They’re out trying to get their fish in, family’s visiting, and they don’t have time to sell their items. So it’s really nice to be able to bring them into a local store, drop their stuff off, and we handle everything from there, and get them a check at the end of each month.”

She said there’s also a new community of artists in the area, who realized they had a talent for crafting during the pandemic and are newly selling their wares.

“Since COVID, when everyone was in their homes, not able to get out, I think a lot of people figured out that they actually have a talent. And they’re starting to make a lot of new items,” Trulove said. “And it’s good, because our community needs that. And a lot of our local businesses closed during COVID, so it’s nice that we have the support from the community to help a little bit of everyone.”

The bigfoot statue outside the Alaskan Artisans and Crafters Guild.

Riley Board

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KDLL

The bigfoot statue outside the Alaskan Artisans and Crafters Guild.

Trulove said she’s planning on having auction-style events in the future to support local youth organizations.

The guild has also brought a new face to downtown Kenai: a 14-foot-bigfoot statue that sits right off the Kenai Spur Highway. Trulove made the cutout bigfoot herself with her husband, and they may start selling them if there’s an interest.

She said the reception to the store has been good so far, from both locals and tourists.

“Sometimes we get busloads, literally,” she said. “We’ve had like 35 people in here, where a bus just pulls up and people come in.”

The guild is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week, except when employees are participating in craft fairs or markets. Trulove said there’s a trick: if the bigfoot is out, the store is open. That means every day, she drags the bigfoot back into the shop, where it covers the entire floor and sleeps among the crafts.

Work of Julius ‘Land Elk’ Twohy highlighted in Cascadia’s Native American Modern exhibit

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Work of Julius ‘Land Elk’ Twohy highlighted in Cascadia’s Native American Modern exhibit
Cascadia Art Museum curator David Martin had spent more than 25 years studying the life and work of Julius “Land Elk” Twohy. He stands by one of Twohy’s paintings, Line Dance.

Cascadia Art Museum just opened “Native American Modern,” an exhibit that revolves around the life and work of Seattle artist Julius “Land Elk” Twohy (1902–1986), who had contributed much to Seattle’s art scene during the Great Depression.

Museum curator David Martin has been studying Twohy’s life and work for more than 25 years and collected many of his surviving works.

Not only did Twohy paint and sketch using the traditional, geometric and abstract styles of most Indigenous art, he also blended the modernist style to portray his Ute culture and heritage in Utah and Northwest tribes.

Forerunners at Rest by Julius “Land Elk” Twohy.

“He was a modernist trying to express himself in figurative as well as abstract, spiritual shapes,” Martin said. “I believe some of his imagery came from studying with modern artists at the [University of Washington], several of whom studied and exhibited in Paris, like Ambrose Patterson, Walter Isaacs and others. I also see influences of non-objective artists like [Wassily] Kandinsky in his work.”

Martin said that Twohy’s first recorded exhibition was at the 1932 Northwest Annual at the Art Institute of Seattle, which later became Seattle Art Museum (SAM). His entry, listed under his Indigenous name “Two-vy-nah-auche”—which means “land elk”—was an oil painting titled “Conception of Ute Chief.” In the next year’s event, he had a solo exhibition of his paintings that showed tribal dances at Seattle’s Cobb Building.

In 1935, Twohy had two exhibitions: one at SAM with his oil painting “Flag Maker” and the other at the 11th annual Pacific Coast Painters and Sculptors League at the Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup, where his two entries “Modern Wrestlers” and “Forerunners at Rest” were exhibited.

Artists of the Work Projects Administration (WPA) in 1939. Julius Twohy is on the far left, second row.

Twohy was also a member of the Work Projects Administration (WPA) where he worked as a printmaker, painter and muralist. During the mid- and late 1930s, he worked with local artists in creating murals, including “Men Who Work the Ships” with artist Kenneth Callahan for the Seattle Marine Hospital under the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP).

“The Flight of the Thunderbird” was one of the few documented artworks, and was featured in a magazine called “Indians at Work” by the United States Office of Indian Affairs in 1939. In 1936, the WPA Federal Art Project commissioned Twohy to paint a 72-foot-wide mural in the dining room of Tacoma’s Cushman Hospital in Puyallup.

Julius “Land Elk” Twohy works on the “Flight of the Thunderbird” mural at the dining room of the Tacoma Cushman Hospital in 1939. The mural was 72 feet long.

“The assignment was given by Twohy’s friend and fellow artist R. Bruce Inverarity, who was then State Director of the WPA,” Martin said. “We don’t know how long it took to complete but likely around six months.”

However, the mural was eventually painted over some time before it was destroyed in 2003 when the hospital was razed to make way for the Emerald Queen Casino and a hotel complex.

“He went to ceremonies, Spirit Dances, etc., and he did participate in the ceremonies of other Northwest tribes. His own art uses abstracted symbols derived from his own heritage and other Northwest tribes,” Martin said. “He was very successful in Seattle as a portrait painter and as a fine artist. His original desire to be an illustrator is interesting but no illustrations by him have survived.”

In fact, much of his artwork was destroyed in his apartment during a series of arson fires in 1939. “Flag Maker” is one of the few that survived the fire, and visitors can still see the heat blisters on the paint.

Modern Wrestler by Julius ‘Land Elk’ Twohy

Twohy continued to exhibit his artwork at various events in Western Washington, Spokane and even in Vancouver, B.C., in the 1940s. In 1947, he went back to the University of Washington to continue his art studies, including private sessions with Mark Tobey.

In 1952, Twohy moved back to Whiterock, Utah, where he focused more on Indigenous American activism than art. But during the 1960s and 1970s, he continued to exhibit his artwork and promote his culture around the country, including a traveling exhibition “America Discovers Indian Art” at the Smithsonian Institution in 1967.

A visitor examines the artwork of Julius “Land Elk” Twohy at the Cascadia Art Museum July 27.

Martin said that he had wanted to do this exhibition for a long time because Twohy’s work was unique and talented, a cross-cultural art that people don’t often see in the U.S. Only a few historical Northwest artists were commemorated in the past 50 years.

“We are rediscovering artists to present to the public to show how broad and unique our regional art is. I feel that Julius Twohy was an important artist in our regional cultural heritage,” Martin said. “He is unique within the entire country for his use of indigenous imagery as filtered through European Modernism. He is also an example of how a once-great artist can become completely unknown because he had no one to champion his life and art. He never married or had children, and his only relatives were in Utah and California. Cascadia Art Museum is the voice for these artists.”

The “Native American Modern” exhibit runs at the Cascadia Art Museum from July 27 to Oct. 29, 2023. It is displayed with local contemporaries, including Delbert J. McBride, R. Bruce Inverarity and Worth D. Griffin. Check here for hours and admission information.

— Story and photos by Nick Ng

Marie Connole: Art inspired by the seaweed of her native county

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Marie Connole: Art inspired by the seaweed of her native county

Growing up on a small farm in Co Clare, Marie Connole was exposed to both the natural world and stories of the supernatural. Both have provided inspiration for Dúlamán na Farraige, her new exhibition of paintings at Clare Museum in Ennis. As its title suggests – Dúlamán na Farraige is the name of a variety of seaweed – her paintings feature images of the shore, but these are peopled by figures that seem more otherworldly than human.

“I’m from Liscannor, near the Cliffs of Moher,” says Connole. “All through my childhood, I was immersed in folklore. Everything in the environment – all the rocks and fields and trees – had a name or a story behind it, and that really colours your perspective of the landscape. 

“One local legend described how a village called Kilstipheen was drowned in Liscannor Bay. It was said to rise and become visible for one day every seven years, and the story around it was that anyone who saw it would die. I was always intrigued by what it might it look like, so I made that the basis of the paintings in my last exhibition, Voyage to Kilstipheen.”

Connole says the paintings in Dúlamán na Farraige follow on from that. “There’s a mythological element to them as well. I live in Ennis now, but I go back to Liscannor all the time. I love walking on the shore, and I’m always photographing or filming the seaweed. I sketch it as well; when I’m drawing from life, it allows me to see and observe things that I might otherwise miss. The figures in my paintings are drawn from my imagination, but I like to think that when I paint the seaweed, it acts as an expression of human emotions.” 

 Painting seaweed is also a reflection of Connole’s interest in environmental issues. “Seaweed offers coastal protection,” she says. “It enhances marine biodiversity, and captures carbon, and it’s now being researched as a possible solution to climate change.” 

Marie Connole's seaweed art

Marie Connole’s seaweed art

 Connole has invited the storyteller Eddie Lenihan to perform at her exhibition on 12th August, as part of National Heritage Week. “I only knew Eddie professionally before I rang him,” she says. “I’d been to see him perform as a seanchaí, and I’d read his books. I’ve always been impressed by the breadth of his knowledge, and his passion for Irish culture and folklore. I love how he brings it alive, and how he shares it with so many different audiences. He needs to be celebrated, because he’s such a beacon of Irish culture. When people hear his stories about people harvesting the seaweed as a fertiliser in the past, I think it’ll bring another layer of understanding to their experience of my paintings.” 

 Connole will unveil an educational poster on the same date. “This was commissioned by Creative Ireland. It shows different kinds of seaweed, based on direct sketches of the seaweed I gathered around the coast of Co Clare.” 

 The twenty-five paintings Connole has produced for Dúlamán na Farraige are all in watercolours, a medium she discovered in her teens. “When I was at secondary school, the Irish Museum of Modern Art toured an exhibition of contemporary art around the country, and one of the places it came to was Ennistymon. Some of Kathy Prendergast’s watercolours were hung in our school. There were women’s bodies, along with maps of the landscape. To me, aged seventeen, it was a revelation to see watercolours being used in that way, to convey really strong ideas around womanhood and the landscape.”

 After school, Connole moved to Dublin to study at the National College of Art and Design. She graduated with a joint BA in History of Art and Fine Art. “And after that I lived in Galway for a while, but I knew I wanted to return to Co Clare. An opportunity came up through the Clare Arts Office, a bursary that allowed me to study for a two-year Masters Degree at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, in 2005/06.

Marie Connole: “Seaweed offers coastal protection, enhances marine biodiversity and captures carbon.”

At NCAD, Connole had been doing very large abstract expressionist work, but when she came back to the Burren College of Art,  she again moved into watercolours. “In Ballyvaughan, there was the sea on one side and the limestone mountains of the Burren on the other. I found myself being drawn to the idea of the tiny sea creatures that created the limestone. My work became physically smaller, and the details became more precise.

“I had a meeting with the artist Mick O’Dea, when he came to visit the college, and I remember him saying, embrace the detail in your work. That kind of opened up to me the path I could take as an artist.” 

 Connole’s Dúlamán na Farraige exhibition will tour to Cultúrlann Sweeney in Kilkee in November. From August 15, she will also be showing a series of paintings – commissioned under the Decade of Centenaries Arts Awards – at Scarriff Public Library.

 “These are paintings inspired by the War of Independence and Civil War that I’ve created over the last three years. It’s the first time I’ve brought them all together for one exhibition.”

 Connole lived in New Zealand for a time, after finishing her Masters, but she has never regretted returning to settle in Co Clare. “When you’re exposed to other cultures, as I was in New Zealand, you start seeing the similarities with your own,” she says. “I think that was when I really started connecting with Irish history and culture, which has become the big focus in my practice over the past fifteen years or so, and using it to connect more with my community.

“I think, with the advent of the internet, more and more artists are choosing to live in rural Ireland. The internet has definitely opened things up; I can have meetings online, and share my art through social media. It’s the best of both worlds, really.” 

  •  Marie Connole’s exhibition Dúlamán na Farraige runs at Clare Museum, Ennis, Co Clare from August 1 –  September 1. Eddie Lenihan’s storytelling event at 12pm on 12th August is ticketed, with limited seating. Further information: claremuseum.ie marieconnole.com Insta: marieconnole.art

BOMB Magazine | Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Interviewed

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BOMB Magazine | Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Interviewed
A painting of a buffalo across two panels with various image and text elements collaged around it.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Genesis, 1993, oil, paper, newspaper, fabric, and charcoal on canvas, two panels, 60 × 100 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York. © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.

I recently had a wide-ranging conversation with the New Mexico–based painter, sculptor, activist, educator, and curator Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who is a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. In tandem with her current retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, she reflected on her early art education, how she’s lived her life, the research she’s pursued on her own, how her artwork is received, and what else she’d like to accomplish. About the belated attention coming her way now, she shared that the Whitney’s director Adam Weinberg asked why she isn’t angry this didn’t happen sooner. Prompted by this question, she thought about how throughout her career curators would ask Indigenous artists to show their work at the last moment when another artist had backed out of an exhibition. She told Weinberg, “No, I’m not angry. I’m honored for this opportunity, and you don’t get me by myself. You get me with a community.” To that end, Smith is pleased to see the Whitney and other museums starting to collect more work by Indigenous artists.

—Marcus Civin

Marcus Civin To start off, can you talk about how you situate your work in relation to other artists?

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Years ago in school, I had teachers who were insistent on us doing mark-making, and if you tried to put an image in there, you got bawled out, and you had to get rid of that work and return to mark-making. That’s what I had to deal with. There were two things that I was looking for: one, content, because we weren’t allowed to have that; two, surface and construct, organization. Every time I went to New York City, I was looking for people like Luis Cruz Azaceta because of his politics. Loved that! Loved his paint. I would walk into a gallery and smell the oil paint drying there and swoon. I can’t tell you anything—not the smell of a mate, not the smell of my dogs, not the smell of a rose blooming—that can do that to me the way drying oil paint can. It’s the elixir of my life, just to sniff it! Luis Cruz would have thick oil paint drying. Of course, so would Joan Mitchell, Susan Rothenberg, Martha Diamond, Jennifer Bartlett, Frances Barth, Elizabeth Murray, Joyce Kozloff, George Condo, Terry Winters, Katherine Porter, and Joan Snyder. Oh, my god, that just makes my heart beat right now when I’m talking about those people! My dreams are made out of that.

My content has a relationship to every single Native artist, their work, and their humor: James Luna, Cara Romero, Diego Romero, Jeffrey Gibson, Jim Denomie. All of them. They’re the ones that make my world go round because the content in their work is feeding me. I say that, and then when I went to New York, I was looking at the painting, teaching myself to paint by looking at all these other people. So, whenever you read an article about me, you have a list of names in each article that’s different because I was so hungry to see art coming from my sandbox. I would go to New York and overload, come back with an art attack from looking at art and taking it all in.

The past two years I’ve been working on curating a show for the National Gallery of Art that’s going to open in the fall. I wanted it to be on land and landscape, but not the Hudson River view with the horizon line and some running water and a cloudy sky or something. I wanted it to be from a Native point of view. It is related to my research on languages. Here’s what I discovered that just gives me shivers: The languages that my father spoke—Kootenai, as well as Salish, and maybe Métis-Cree—were describing our world around us. There was no refrigerator. There was no radio. There was no TV in that language. There was no industrialization in that language. It was about our world. It was about the two parts to our world: the interior part and the exterior part, the world of realism and the world of mystery. Those worlds together composed our language.

I’m eighty-three. Younger Native American artists were raised on TV, radio, cars, all that. When I was a little kid, I lived in a cabin with two other families. We rolled up with our blankets against the walls. We didn’t have furniture. There was a pump outside that everybody used. There were outhouses. My sister and I dug through garbage piles at the backs of the cabins for food every day. We were hungry all the time. Remember, this was the Second World War. We were at the bottom. We ate dried salmon. That’s what we lived on. All I remember is being sick the whole time. I still have physical problems from that childhood, but I get up every day and feel grateful that I’m standing on my feet to work today to do some of the things that I think should get done and that I envision.

But I’m not doing as much as I would like. I would like to speed up the language immersion at home. I would like study about what do we do with our languages because now they’re almost like ancient languages. I’m concerned about putting out a book on contemporary Native art. That’s a long time coming. I want to do another large exhibition that includes two hundred Native American artists. I want to show people that we are alive, we’re here, and we’re not dead; we’re not vanishing. For fifty years I’ve been traveling and lecturing to audiences, and people raise their hand and go, “I’ve never met an Indian.” I’ll ask an audience, “Do you know how many tribes there are in the United States?” and they’ll raise their hands and say, “Two? Six?” We have 574 that are federally recognized; and then we have several hundred waiting for that recognition; and then state-recognized there are a couple hundred. We don’t know that because it’s not taught in school. So, I really want to ramp up education in public schools. To do that, I’ve started a small, private foundation. I’m hoping it will turn into a 501(c)(3). I want to publish books on Native children’s stories, and I want to start that this coming year.

MC Is there anything people don’t bring up in relation to your work that you wish they would?

JQtSS A lot of times, they look point-blank at something I’m using. I’m using their symbols and culture to communicate. Like, “forty days and forty nights” in the title of my painting Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights (2015) is right out of the Old Testament. I often think that they will ask me, “Why are you using the Bible?” or some question like that, but they always perceive that I’m doing something mysterious. I’m doing something off the beaten path. I am. I have a worldview, and it’s Native, it’s Indigenous. But they don’t see the humor. There’s a wall right there. They assume I’m only speaking to the Native community and not to them. That wall goes up. They want me to interpret for them. They want to know what all the symbols are. Even if it’s a symbol that they would know, they can’t read that because they’re stopped.

MC They can’t see. I’m thinking about Indian Madonna Enthroned from 1974, your early figurative sculpture with an American flag on her lap. There must be a story there.

JQtSS I was an undergrad going for my teaching degree because an instructor I had at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington, had said to me that I could draw better than the men, but I couldn’t be an artist because women can’t be artists. I went to Framingham State in Massachusetts to get an art ed degree. The teacher I had, Lia Lipton, spent the whole semester on the Renaissance, and the Madonnas, and putti; so just for catharsis, to cleanse myself, I came home and I started working on this Madonna. I took a kitchen chair from the table and took it apart and painted it with the sky, took some burlap, took a pillow apart and stuffed her, made an ink drawing for her face, put the baby on her back. The baby is animistic because it’s got a sheepskin for the body. The Madonna has bird feet for her hands; she’s got a heart that has an ear of corn, necklaces made out of shells. There’s one symbol after another all over her.

MC Wonderful! I’m curious if you’d like to share how you have sustained your various drives with equal passion. It seems to me that some people need to make divisions between activities in their lives that could compete for their time. For you, everything might be more interrelated.

JQtSS I’m doing it the Indian way. This is how we lived our lives traditionally. Everything was connected. Everything you did had a reason to do the next thing. And that thing led to the other thing. That is how we lived our lives. That is how I grew up with my dad. It’s exactly what I do. I’m doing it the old, traditional way. I look like a modern woman, and I am. I look like a contemporary woman, and I am. I’m interested in what things are going on in the news, and politics, and all that. But my whole life, everything that I’m doing, one thing is connected to the other.

Wheelwright exhibit ‘Always in Relation’ showcases a couple’s lifetime love of Indigenous art

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Wheelwright exhibit ‘Always in Relation’ showcases a couple’s lifetime love of Indigenous art

When Ruth Schultz moved to Albuquerque from Louisiana with her husband Sidney, it was with considerable trepidation.

“She said she was a reluctant transplant, and she didn’t unpack for a year,” said Henrietta Lidchi, executive director of Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. Then she discovered Native American art.

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Black Belt Eagle Scout’s latest record inspired by return home to Swinomish tribe’s ancestral lands

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Black Belt Eagle Scout’s latest record inspired by return home to Swinomish tribe’s ancestral lands

The beginning of the pandemic was devasting for the leader of the indie rock band Black Belt Eagle Scout, Katherine Paul. All her tours, including one headlining across North America, were canceled and she feared her ascending music career might be over.

She got a day job at a nonprofit and returned to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s homelands in Western Washington. But as Paul, or KP to her friends, spent time in the cedar forests and walked along the Skagit River, she turned to her guitar to deal with the isolation and stress. Those snippets, recorded on her phone, provided the foundation for what would become songs on her powerful, grunge-soaked new record “The Land, The Water, The Sky.”

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“I feel like if the pandemic hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have made this record,” said KP, who writes the songs, sings and plays guitar in the band that was the only Native American artist at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago this month.

FILE - Black Belt Eagle Scout performs during the Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park in Chicago, Saturday, July 22, 2023.

FILE – Black Belt Eagle Scout performs during the Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park in Chicago, Saturday, July 22, 2023.

Michael Casey / AP

“I spent a lot of time outside. I spent a lot more time than normal going on hikes, being part of the land,” she continued. “It’s not like I never do that stuff but it brought me back to a place where this is who I am.”

The new record, which came out in February, helped launch what has probably been the most successful year so far for Black Belt Eagle Scout. The band toured Europe and will go to Australia later this year. Two of her songs, “Soft Stud” from an earlier record and “Salmon Stinta” from her latest, appear this season on the television series “Reservation Dogs.”

Reservation Dogs Music Supervisor Tiffany Anders said she was introduced to the band’s music by the show’s creator, Sterlin Harjo, when they started working on the second season.

“It’s always been important for us on this show to include Native American artists, but beyond representation, Black Belt Eagle Scout’s music is beautiful and emotional, and fits these characters, their world and landscape — and the vibe of the show,’” she said in a statement.

Then there was Pitchfork, a three-day festival that is a significant milestone for indie musicians. The festival is held every year in Chicago’s Union Park and this year’s headliners included Bon Iver, Big Thief and The Smile, which has members of Radiohead.

She admitted stepping on that stage last weekend was nerve-wracking given her high hopes for the show, a feeling compounded by concerns that storms could scuttle their performance. But as she launched into the blistering set of mostly new songs in front of thousands of eager fans, KP found solace in her guitar. She launched several long jams that were punctuated by her twirling her jet-black hair around to the point it obscured her face.

“It was totally a moment,” she said with a laugh.

“I kind of cried after we played because it felt so meaningful,” she added. “Like, I’ve always wanted to play this music festival. I remember trying to play one of the years before the pandemic when I was touring and it didn’t happen. This year, I was just so stoked to play.”

Reaching Pitchfork has been a long journey for the 34-year-old artist, who is a member of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and left her home on the reservation in LaConner, Washington, when she was 17 to attend Lewis & Clark College in Oregon and play rock music.

Growing up on the reservation off the Washington coast on islands in the Salish Sea, she drummed and sang cultural songs. As a teenager, she discovered local Pacific Northwest bands like Mount Eerie and the sounds of the Riot Grrrl movement and played one of her first gigs at a small bar called Department of Safety. She moved to Portland, Oregon, due to its outsized role in the indie scene that featured bands like Sleater-Kinney and quickly immersed herself in the music scene playing drums and guitar.

Black Belt Eagle Scout, second right, performs during the Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park in Chicago on Saturday, July 22, 2023.

Black Belt Eagle Scout, second right, performs during the Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park in Chicago on Saturday, July 22, 2023.

Michael Casey / AP

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She joined an all-female outfit whom she met at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls in Portland. She went on to play a lot of small, basement shows with bands like Genders — whose wolf tattoo she still has on her left arm.

But she wanted to write her own songs and formed Black Belt Eagle Scout in 2013. Her early music was defined by her ethereal singing about love, friendship and healing — often only accompanied by minimal guitar strumming. But she did rock out on songs like “Soft Stud,” which featured searing solos.

“She is a really an authentic musician and she carries a lot of power on stage with her presence and sound,” Claire Glass, who plays guitar in the band and first saw KP seven years ago.

KP has said her Native American identify has always been present on her records. But her latest music paints a more vivid picture of life on the Swinomish reservation. There are references to chinook salmon, which are traditionally fished, and a powwow dance.

“I started thinking of feeling grateful for the life that I have been given; this place that I’m from; how much the land, the water, the sky means to me — being surrounded by it,” KP said of writing the song ”Don’t Give Up.” “It has so much more meaning because the land, that’s where my people are from.”

Her songs aren’t meant to directly confront issues like the crisis of missing and murdered Native American women or tribes’ forced relocation. It’s not the way she writes songs. Instead, she envisions them connecting with people, drawing more Native Americans to indie rock shows in places like Minneapolis, which has a vibrant Native American community, and inspiring young Native Americans to connect with her after shows.

“Isn’t me like being here existing with my music good enough? Can’t I just be who I am?” she asked, adding she doesn’t need to speak out from stage about these issues because being Native often means she is already wrestling with them. A judge, for example, ruled in March that BNSF Railway intentionally violated the terms of an easement agreement with the tribe by running 100-car trains carrying crude oil over the reservation.

“As a Native person, you know someone who is missing. Your tribe is trying to get your land back. Those are topics that are part of your every day life,” she said. ”I care about those things deeply but there are certain ways in which my music is, maybe not as direct, but it can be healing.”

KP also doesn’t want to be seen just as a rock musician or as a Native artist. “I am a musician who happens to be Native, but I am also a Native musician … I think I am always both,” she said.

Her latest record aims to show that.

“I kind of had in the back of mind, just kept thinking what would Built to Spill do,” KP said of the guitar-heavy, indie-rock band from the Pacific Northwest. “I’ve gone on tour with them and seen their three guitars at one point playing together and how they overlap and all these other things.”

It’s also a more collaborative effort with more musicians playing on the record— a departure for KP, who is accustomed to doing everything herself. A cellist who played with Nirvana, Lori Goldston, is featured on several songs, as are two violinists, as well as a saxophone and mellotron player.

Takiaya Reed, a first-time producer who is also in a doom metal band, described the experience of working on the record as “beautiful and amazing” and said the two bonded over their love of punk. Reid also brought her classical training and love of “heavier sounds” to the studio.

“We approached it fearlessly. It was wonderful to be expansive in terms of sonic possibilities,” she said.

KP also wanted to find a place for her parents, whom she had grown especially close to during the pandemic, to play on the record. She chose the song “Spaces,” which she described as having a “healing vibe.” Her dad, who is one of the main singers at the tribe’s cultural events, embraced the idea of lending his powerful powwow chant to the song. Her mom sang harmonies.

KP said: “It meant the world to me to have my parents sing because it felt like it was full circle in who I am.”

THANKS TO OUR SPONSOR:

New Britain Museum of American Art gives close-up view of ‘I Spy’ artist and CT native Walter Wick

By in Native

New Britain Museum of American Art gives close-up view of ‘I Spy’ artist and CT native Walter Wick

Walter Wick may not be the household name he deserves to be, but you certainly know him as the “I Spy” guy. His books of dense, intricate, colorful photographs of household items — first published in 1992, and, by 2010, sold tens of millions of copies — have made him one of the most celebrated children’s book creators of the past few decades.

“Hidden Wonders!,” a suitably overwhelming, detailed and sprawling exhibit of Wick’s work opened at the New Britain Museum of American Art in March and is on view through Sept. 3. The first of the many rooms of the exhibit contains a handy timeline of Wick’s life and accomplishments. Born in Hartford in 1953, Wick attended East Granby High School and Paier College of Art before establishing himself in New York in the late 1970s as a commercial photographer before shifting to photo illustrations. Wick, who renovated a Hartford Fire Department building into a new studio for himself around 20 years ago, has since moved to Florida.

The museum’s interest in Wick extends back to at least 2006, when its exhibition, “Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic,” toured at 15 other museums. In 2015, the artist and his wife, Linda Cheverton Wick, gave 84 of his photographs to the New Britain Museum of American Art. The museum bills “Hidden Wonders!” as “the largest survey of Wick’s work to date,” covering half a century. Hundreds of pieces occupy the gallery rooms on the museum’s second floor. Many are incredibly detailed, carefully lit photos from Wick’s “Can You See What I See?” series of picture puzzle books.

Christopher Arnott/Hartford Courant

The colorful entrance to “Walter Wick: Hidden Secrets!” at the New Britain Museum of American Art through Sept. 3.

There are nine pieces from the 2020 “Can You See What I See?” book “Curiosity Shop” alone. As extraordinary as the photos can be, especially in crisp prints at a size much larger than the books, the highlight of “Hidden Wonders!” is the scale models of castles and cottages specially built for Wick to photograph. One is the size of a HO gauge model railroad, and the others are much larger. There are also plenty of framed images that can be appreciated on their own terms as studies in color, light and perspective. Some of these were taken in the 1970s and play with natural optical illusions. Some spotlight items are leaves and rocks that Wick found in his Connecticut backyard, which may be the cleanest and tidiest ones you’ve ever seen in a photograph.

The New Britain Museum of American Art has created a “Hidden Wonders Summer Camp” program around the exhibit. A printed guide to the exhibit contains a “scavenger hunt” section where visitors are directed to certain works and asked to look with specific small objects within them. “Three mice and an ice cream soda,” for instance, or “a fish and a flying saucer,” just as with the “I Spy” books. But “Hidden Wonders!” is not just “I Spy” writ large. It is greater than the sum of its shiny little parts. It adds dimension, history and perspective to a multi-faceted artist whose work has stood up to intense scrutiny from young and old spying eyes for generations.

“Walter Wick: Hidden Wonders!” is on display through Sept. 3 at the New Britain Museum of American Art, 56 Lexington St., New Britain. The museum is open Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and Thursdays from 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is $17, $12 seniors, $10 college students, $10 for ages 13-17 and free for ages 12 and under. nbmaa.org/exhibitions/walter-wick-hidden-wonders.

‘A Work of Art’ benefit to fund music scholarships

By in Native

‘A Work of Art’ benefit to fund music scholarships

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Elsewhere in entertainment, events and the arts:

MUSIC

‘Work of Art‘

Grammy Award-winning smooth jazz guitarist Norman Brown headlines the final night of Art Porter Music Education’s 13th “A Work of Art,” this week at venues throughout Little Rock.

Brown performs for the Scholarship Program with the APME All-Stars, 8 p.m. Saturday in the William Grant Still Ballroom in Robinson Center, 426 W. Markham St. at Broadway, Little Rock. Joi Porter, a graduating senior from Maumelle High School, will receive a $3,000 renewable scholarship from APME at the concert. Tickets are $65.

The rest of the week’s lineup:

◼️ Monday – Kickoff, Little Rock City Hall, noon

◼️ Tuesday – Jazz on the Plaza featuring Minors in Music students and jazz violinist Lexington Porter, nephew of the late Art Porter Jr., River Market Plaza, noon (near the Farmers Market). Free

◼️ Wednesday – Arkansas native Ronnie McBride & Friends, Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Ave., 7 p.m. $45

◼️ Thursday – Violinist and singer Chelsey Green, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, 601 Main St., 7 p.m. $45

◼️ Friday – Porter Players Jam Session, AC Hotel by Marriott, 201 W. Capitol Ave., 7 p.m. Free.

Call (501) 492-9120 or visit artporter.org.

Chamber music

Faculty participating in the the Chamber Music Society of Little Rock’s summer Faulkner Chamber Music Festival open a series of three concerts at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Center for Humanities and Arts Theater at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, 3000 W. Scenic Drive, North Little Rock. The program includes “Entr’acte” by Caroline Shaw and the String Octet in C major, op.7, by Georges Enescu. Admission is free. Visit chambermusicLR.com/tickets.

The musicians will repeat the program at 8 p.m. Wednesday at White Water Tavern, 2500 W. Seventh St. at Thayer Street, Little Rock. Tickets are $15. Visit whitewatertavern.com.

A concert at 7 p.m. Friday at the CHARTS Theater will feature “Ainsi la nuit” (“Thus the Night”) by Henri Dutilleux, “Eclogue for Piano and Strings” by Gerald Finzi and the Piano Quintet in f minor by Cesar Franck. Admission is free.

Carnival concerts

Trout Fishing in America will help Mount Sequoyah, 150 N. Skyline Drive, Fayetteville, celebrate its 100th year of programming with a pair of concerts, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday – a kid-friendly afternoon show in Clapp Auditorium and a more adult-oriented evening show at Vesper Point near the Cross Overlook.

The concerts are in conjunction with a 100th anniversary carnival, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. that will feature games, activities, face painting, food-truck fare and snow cones.

Concert tickets are $25, $15 for children and include access to the carnival. Carnival-only tickets are $5. A family package to the carnival and the 2 p.m. concert is $70. Visit tinyurl.com/5n7kver4 or fb.me/e/2HQS2i9zS.

Walton Arts series

Grammy-winning saxophonist Tim Armacost leads the Tim Armacost Quintet (with Joe Locke, vibraphone; Jim Ridl, piano; Kenny Davis, bass; and Rudy Royston, percussion) to kick off the 2023-24 Starrlight Jazz Club season, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 30 in the Starr Theater at Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center, 495 W. Dickson St.

The rest of the lineup (all performances, 7:30 p.m. in Starr Theater):

◼️ Oct. 13: Jeff Lorber Fusion Trio

◼️ Dec. 2: Singer Tierney Sutton, with pianist Mitch Foreman and guitarist Serge Merlaud

◼️ Jan. 13: Loston Harris Trio

◼️ Feb. 2: Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band

◼️ April 27: Aubrey Logan Band.

Season subscriptions are $196-$328.

Acoustic and electric guitarist Monte Montgomery will open the arts center’s West Street Live series at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 22, also in the Starr Theater.

The rest of that lineup (all performances at 7:30 p.m. in the Starr Theater):

◼️ Oct. 19: Danielle Nicole Band

◼️ Nov. 30: John Fullbright Band

◼️ Feb. 1: Damn Tall Buildings

◼️ March 2: Lee Rocker

◼️ April 5: Jackie Venson.

Subscriptions are $191 for tiered seating, $1,292 for a four-person cabaret table.

Call (479) 443-5600 or visit waltonartscenter.org.

Delta Symphony season

The Delta Symphony Orchestra will kick off its 50th concert season with its annual fundraising gala, 6 p.m. Aug. 19 at the Gardens at Harmony, 4517 E. Parker Road, Jonesboro. The theme is “Stars of the World Stage”; it will feature a jazz ensemble, soprano (and Jonesboro native) Genevieve Fulks, live and silent auctions and catering by Bistro on the Ridge. Master of ceremonies will be Mitch Mahan. Tickets are $125. Call (870) 761-8254 or visit deltasymphonyorchestra.org/tickets.

The rest of the orchestra’s 2023-24 concert season (except as noted, all concerts at 7:30 p.m. in Riceland Hall, Arkansas State University’s Fowler Center, 201 Olympic Drive, Jonesboro):

◼️ Oct. 14: Classical concert with cellist Jeremy Crosmer

◼️ Dec. 10: Holiday concert with singers Perry Harper, Maddie Bowden Smith and Nancy Owens, 2 p.m.

◼️ Feb. 4: Young Artist Concert, featuring the grand prize winners of the orchestra’s national competition and a multi-school junior high chorus, 2 p.m.

◼️ April 6: “Out of This World” concert, marking the pending total solar eclipse, including Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”

◼️ May 4: “May the 4th Be With You” concert, featuring John Williams’ music for the “Star Wars” films.

Season tickets are $100-$140.

ART

‘Surface Impressions’

“Surface Impressions,” prints by Melissa Gill, Acadia Kandora, Jay Fox, David Warren, Dominique Simmons, Kristin DeGeorge, Perrion Hurd, Jonathan Wright, Win Bruhl, Miranda “Randi” Young, Matthew Castellano, Warren Criswell, Ivan Thorpe and Aj Smith, will be on display Monday-Aug. 27 in the Brad Cushman Gallery in the Windgate Center of Art and Design at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 S. University Ave., Little Rock. Admission is free. Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, 2-5 p.m. Sunday. Call (501) 916-5104 or email nglarson@ualr.edu.

‘Artist’s Journey’

“M. Speer: An Artist’s Journey,” a retrospective exhibition of six decades of works by Fort Smith native Margaret Speer Carter, goes on display with a 5-7 p.m. reception Friday at the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, 1601 Rogers Ave., Fort Smith. The exhibition will be up in the museum’s main gallery until Nov. 5. Summer hours are 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. Call (479) 784-2787 or visit fsram.org.

ETC.

Dinosaur discussion

Paleontologist Steve Brusatte covers “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs,” 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Great Hall at the Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock. Brusatte will examine where dinosaurs came from, how they rose to dominance, how most of them became extinct as the result of a collision with a giant asteroid and how some of them lived on as today’s birds. He will also discuss the way he and his students dig up dinosaurs and show how scientists use modern technologies to study fossils. He will sign copies of his book of the same title after the talk. Admission is free. Register to attend live or online at tinyurl.com/mr25mahe.

  photo  Jazz musicians Norman Brown, Ronnie McBride and Chelsey Green perform this week as part of Art Porter Music Educations 13th “A Work of Art.” (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
  
  photo  Jazz musicians Norman Brown, Ronnie McBride and Chelsey Green perform this week as part of Art Porter Music Educations 13th “A Work of Art.” (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
  
  photo  Jazz musicians Norman Brown, Ronnie McBride and Chelsey Green perform this week as part of Art Porter Music Educations 13th “A Work of Art.” (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
  
  photo  “Greek Island with Blue Rocks,” “Mother and Son” and “Galactic Energies” by Margaret Speer Carter are part of a retrospective exhibition of the Fort Smith natives work that goes on display Friday at the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
  
  photo  “Greek Island with Blue Rocks,” “Mother and Son” and “Galactic Energies” by Margaret Speer Carter are part of a retrospective exhibition of the Fort Smith natives work that goes on display Friday at the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
  
  photo  “Greek Island with Blue Rocks,” “Mother and Son” and “Galactic Energies” by Margaret Speer Carter are part of a retrospective exhibition of the Fort Smith natives work that goes on display Friday at the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
  
  photo  Paleontologist Steve Brusatte covers “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs,” also the title of his recent book, Tuesday in the Great Hall at Little Rock’s Clinton Presidential Center. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)
  
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