“Looking Forward to a New Day” by Della Wells.

“Sophie Flowers” by LaShun Beal.

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SOUTHFIELD — Umoja is the Swahili word for “unity,” a meaning that Umoja Fine Arts’ owner and curator Ian Grant said he is committed to upholding. The Grant family opened Umoja in 1996 with the ambition of “displaying American life in a positive form, and preserving and recording the historical accounts in graphic form.”

For the third year in a row, Umoja, in partnership with Fashion International and Tanji Grant, is presenting the “Blooming in Color” exhibit, featuring internationally acclaimed artists Della Wells and LaShun Beal, as well as local emerging artists Alga Washington and Lamarr Sanders.

The “Blooming in Color” exhibit will be open to the public from April 28 to June 30. An opening reception will be held 5-9 p.m. Friday, April 28, and 1-6 p.m. Saturday, April 29. People can register for the opening reception for an opportunity to meet the artists in the showcase. At Saturday’s reception, LaShun Beal will deliver a speech on his process of creating art and his experience as an artist, followed by a Q&A session.

Detroit native and Houston-based LaShun Beal is making his return back to the Motor City after being gone for over 25 years. Beal has traveled throughout Europe, South America and Southeast Asia in the name of art.

“Throughout my travels, I found many cultures hold women in reverence, and I try to depict that adoration for femininity in my pieces,” he said. Using various mediums, Beal experiments with color and tone to depict his “Universal Woman,” a racially ambiguous woman inspired by the beauty Beal has seen in women all around the world.

Beal knew he was an artist from very early on. “I started producing (art) in elementary school and then started selling in fifth grade. I haven’t looked back since then. I had a lot of support from teachers, staff and parents. Those were my first clients.”

Beal recognizes that the world of art is always changing, and as an artist, he said he is in tune with the wants and needs of the consumer without sacrificing his authenticity as an artist.

“My work has evolved leaps and bounds over time. And the thing about being in this industry and doing it for commercial purposes is that you’re constantly trying to figure out the pulse of what people may want. So, you have to be able to experiment with different things and see what clicks.” Beal explains that though his main medium is acrylic paint on canvas, he also sculpts, works with wood, builds furniture and does “anything that pertains to art.”

For Beal, there’s no external motivation, per se. He said that the mere act of creating helps to inspire him from within. Now that he’s in his 60s, he said that he views things differently than he did when he was a younger artist, and he is now reaching his “third or fourth generation of consumers,” which impacts the type of art he produces. As a mentor to young artists, Beal emphasizes the importance of finding your voice as an artist and learning how to articulate that voice, while at the same time understanding the business aspect of producing art. Beal advises up-and-coming young artists to seek advice and mentorship from seasoned artists.

“As a young artist, the best thing you can do is find an established artist to mentor you,” he said. “When you’re first starting out, you’re naïve, and finding someone who has been doing this for a long time can tell you some of the things you can avoid. There are directions you may want to consider going into that you may not have thought about yet. They can advance your career by leaps and bounds just by learning from their experiences.” Beal encourages any aspiring artists wanting to learn more about this field to contact him.

The Milwaukee-based Della Wells started out later in life as an artist. Wells explained that her interest in art was always in other people’s work, and she didn’t start seriously making art until she was 42 and had gone back to school to be a psychologist after getting injured on her job.

“I always knew how to draw, but to be honest with you, if you told me when I was younger that I would be an artist, I would’ve laughed at you,” Wells stated.

She explained that for her, being an artist was something that had never occurred to her. She always believed that to be an artist, you had to have something to say. While she was back in the classroom taking a required humanities course in art survey, she found herself wanting to write her academic papers on local Milwaukee African American artists, so she contacted Evelyn Patricia Terry. Wells had actually met Terry a few times throughout the years at a gallery, so when the two reunited, Terry recalled Wells’ drawings of Picasso-like women and babies and told her that she was an artist. Wells laughed, “I was thinking she was out of her mind.” Terry tried to convince Wells for two years to make art. It wasn’t until Terry invited Wells to a show at a gallery that she heard a voice telling her it was time to make art.

“A voice told me to go make art, and so I told her (Terry) I was ready,” Wells said. “I thought it was the spirits of the ancestors telling me to go make art, so I did. Two weeks later, I went to her studio, and on the first day, I made three pieces: two pastels and a monoprint. It was really relaxing for me because, at the time, I was in a lot of pain physically and emotionally from being injured on the job.” Terry told Wells that she’d give her a show if she completed 50 pieces of art. Wells actually did two shows on her own before reaching 50 pieces.

Little did Wells know that she would become a critically acclaimed artist whose work would be exhibited internationally. In 2012, a play depicting Wells’ life was written for a performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and in 2016, she was awarded the city of Milwaukee’s Artist of the Year award. Wells’ artwork is currently on backorder, so when she was asked to be in Umoja’s show, she created some pieces for the exhibit. One of the pieces featured in the exhibit, “Looking Forward to a New Day,” is inspired by Wells’ 7-year-old twin granddaughters looking toward the future.

Around 1995, Wells began to do collage work, and she continues to work with things that most people would discard.

“I reference old material culture because we’re such a throwaway culture today. I must say it really started with my generation, because, in my mother’s time, they saved everything when they were growing up. We are such a disposable culture now. When I look at stuff, I look at the possibilities, and I feel like that’s just like human beings too. We kind of throw away human beings. I know my mother felt thrown away. Other people have felt thrown away. I’ve felt thrown away. But if you look at the pieces, it’s how you put the pieces of your life together is what’s important.”

During the creation process, Wells draws back to characters she created in her childhood to escape from the struggles she faced growing up with a mother who battled mental illness and a father with anger issues. Her collage art features beautiful Black women called “mambos” who are “high priestesses of themselves who aren’t going to let anyone tell them they aren’t beautiful. They don’t give up their power, because they are always going to be powerful, and their mission is to empower other people.”

Grant explained that the art industry is experiencing an uptick in African American artists, and the demand isn’t exclusive to the African American consumer.

“My favorite thing in the last five years is that African American art is the fastest-growing segment in the entire art world because we’ve been undervalued and underappreciated,” Grant stated. “It’s our turn.

“This is one of our strongest shows, and it’s very exciting, because it’s filled with positive images with flowing, beautiful colors. It’s a free event open to the public and families. It’s all about them seeing the beauty of the art, educating them about art, our legacy that we are preserving through the arts.”

To register for Umoja’s “Blooming in Color” opening reception, visit https://umoja finearts.com/.

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Senate Committee on Indian Affairs

Wednesday, April 26 2023 – 02:30 PM

Location: Dirksen

Room Number: 628

Note: Video feed from Senate Committee on Indian Affairs will go live shortly before 2:30pm Eastern on April 26, 2023.

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs will hold a virtual listening session, “The ARTIST Act: Updating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act,” on the discussion draft of the Amendments to Respect Traditional Indigenous Skill and Talent (ARTIST) Act of 2023. A one-page summary of the discussion draft is available.

According to the committee, the ARTIST Act would update the Indian Arts and Crafts Act to support creative economies and strengthen enforcement of current law and protections against counterfeit competition for Native artists and their works. Comments will inform the legislative process and serve as a resource for future discussions on updating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.

To provide comments during the session, sign up using the pre-registration link on the committee’s media advisory. Comments will be time-limited.

“Because we’ve had an overwhelming response to this listening session and we want to hear from as many people as possible – we’re asking that you tailor your comments to 3 minutes,” the registration form states.

Senate Committee Notice

A Listening Session on “The ARTIST Act: Updating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.” (April 26, 2023)

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Kathy Tilly and Sue Stanton are the Port Townsend Gallery’s featured artists for May.

Tilly lives and paints on the Toandos Peninsula.

She’s a Washington native, born in Aberdeen, and spent her childhood in small fishing communities in Alaska and on the Washington coast. Tilly studied art in a two-year program at Grays Harbor College with artist Eric Sandgren, and photography programs at Clover Park Technical College, and Everett Community College. She continues to attend artist workshops online and throughout the Pacific Northwest.

She came to art full-time after a career in social work, and considers her education and work experience a factor in her art. A central theme in her art is the desire to tell a story using the human figure, where the inner life of her subjects is left open to interpretation.

An impressionist painter, Tilly looks to several well-known painters for inspiration and technique. According to the gallery, her use of a variety of supports and painting tools provides a dimension to the finished painting that is appealing and impelling to one’s imagination.

Stanton moved from Colorado to Port Townsend in 2012 after a career in primary education. Her introspective 3D artwork is inspired by her love of children and their whimsical perspectives.  She also creates art pieces in watercolor, and pen and ink.   

Her first medium was working with watercolors, and her love of drawing soon brought pen and ink into her paintings.

She also incorporates acrylic painting, wood burning, wirework, and added “findings” to engage viewers.

Tilly and Stanton will be at the gallery for the next art walk, scheduled for 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, May 6. Light refreshments will be served.

The Port Townsend Gallery is located at 715 Water St. and is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and also by appointment.

For more gallery information, call 360-379-8110 or go to
porttownsendgallery.com.

 The Alaska Native Heritage Center and Ch’k’iqadi Gallery are highlighting 12 cultures over 12 months  We’re looking for Sugpiaq and Unangax̂ artists to showcase their work in the Ch’k’iqadi Gallery display windows. Any interested Alaska Native artists may contact us for submissions, as we will be featuring new cultures every two months.

Artwork submissions by Sugpiaq and Unangax̂ artists will be accepted from April 24-28. The art will be sold through consignment at the Ch’k’iqadi Gallery during May and June. ️

For more information or to submit artwork, please contact Angie Demma at ademma@alaskanative.net.

Don’t miss this opportunity to share your art and culture with our community! 
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#alaskanativeheritagecenter #alaskanative #americasculturaltreasures #anchorage #alaska #callforartists 

  Alaska, art, artists, natives

Of course it’s ridiculous. Even Matika Wilbur acknowledges that.

Now, anyways.

Attempting to photograph people from every federally recognized Native American Tribal Nation. An official from the Seattle Art Museum, where she was living on the ancestral homeland of her Swinomish and Tulalip ancestors, laughed at the idea. Literally.

It’s the sort of pursuit that could only be seriously considered under the influence of youth with all its energy and naïveté. Wilber was in her mid-twenties when embarking on this odyssey. That was 2012. She’s 38 now.

After 10 years, 600,000 miles, the loss of loved ones, heartbreak, a pandemic and the birth of a daughter, “Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America” hits bookstores April 25, 2023.

In it, Wilbur achieved the impossible: photographing someone from each of the federally recognized tribes in America, all 562 at the time of the project’s inception. The book, a love letter to Indigenous Americans, contains hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives making clear Native people are diverse and contemporary, counteracting one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media.

That’s where the idea came from.

A One Woman Google

Wilbur was teaching at a tribal school on her reservation when the principal, an elder now, asked for her help in developing a curriculum to teach a class in photography and digital literacy. The school wanted its children to learn about themselves, to have a deeper understanding of their identity.

“I started looking and pulling stuff off the internet and at the time, when you Googled ‘Native person, Native American,’ what you found was a leather and feathered person,” Wilbur told Forbes.com of the antiquated images then promoted by the search engine.

She would eventually speak at Google, showing employees there the stereotypical depictions being served to users seeking information on Native people by the search engine. Google subsequently assigned a task force to remedy the problem.

Google was certainly not alone in time-capsuling Indigenous people as relics of the past. A study found 87% of state level history standards as of 2015 failed to cover Native people’s history in a post-1900 context, playing “into a damaging extinction narrative” in Wilbur’s words.

These outdated portrayals feed the ignorance of non-Native people. The negative impacts extend as well to Native people who are presented an unending stream of imagery and information subconsciously telling them they have no future.

Enter “Project 562.”

“I want our children to have the opportunity to celebrate their own identity and to have access to the truth and to have access to these stories,” Wilbur said.

She recognizes, however, her limited ability to change centuries of misinformation.

“It’s just one book, we need so much more Indigenous scholarship; hopefully it inspires more authors, more storytellers, more photographers, more editors to publish Native stories, more producers to produce Native films, more professors to teach American Indian law,” Wilbur said. “The goal is for it to ignite a fire in our collective consciousness that says, ‘I do realize that I don’t know enough about Native people and about whose indigenous land I’m living on. I don’t know what I should be doing to be a good ally to Native America.’ Hopefully it begins opening that door for people and inviting them to be a part of that conversation.”

Becoming a Better Relative

Over the course of producing “Project 562,” Wilbur traveled through all 50 states, from Seminole country now known as the Everglades in South Florida, to Inuit territory now known as the Bering Sea in Alaska. By her estimation, she photographed some 1200 people, personally visiting about 400 different tribes.

At the outset, she intended to finish the book in three years, visiting two or three tribes a week and also attending large intertribal gatherings. She ditched that notion about five years in.

“I learned in the process how to let go of these Western standards of production and learn how to be on Indian time,” she said.

She also went from youth to middle age, undergoing a significant transformation herself.

“When I started the work, I hadn’t critically evaluated myself; how to be a good relative as a journalist, as a storyteller, as a photographer, as a filmmaker; I think my Western training in photography really impacted my approach,” Wilbur said. “My approach to storytelling really changed throughout this process on how to be a better a better relative.”

What does Wilbur mean by being a better relative?

“The work of colonization, the impact on Indigenous people of colonization, the result of Indian boarding schools and assimilation policies instituted by the U.S. government is believing and upholding individualism,” she explains.

Critique of the individual may cause a knee jerk negative reaction by many, so deeply ingrained in the American subconscious is the value of individualism. The do-it-yourself spirit. Romance surrounding the loner, the cowboy, one man against the world. “I did it my way.”

“Very early we encourage our children to be individuals, we test our children individually instead of testing the collective conscious, we grade our children individually instead of grading the entire group. We separate ourselves into insular single-family homes instead of having relationships with the elders in our family and the next generation and our kin and living in relationships where the responsibility of life is balanced between several families,” Wilbur explains. “Instead, we feel isolated and alone. We isolate our bank accounts. We become individuals. That’s what colonization did to us. Prior to colonization, we lived in kinship societies. We lived in longhouses, we lived in societies where there was a constant redistribution of wealth and services for the community, for the betterment of the community as a whole.”

Individualism, as practiced by America, centers upon selfishness, antisocial behavior, exclusion, every man for themselves, dog eat dog, the requirement of many losers to support the few winners.

Personal property. Gun rights. Health care. Deregulation of the financial sector, of corporate responsibility to the environment. Union busting. The widening wealth gap.

Each preferences the individual to the detriment of society.

“The antithesis of being an individual and believing in individualism is living for the seven generations, living in a way that contributes to the greater good for our community, for our society, living in relationship with the generations that came before us, carrying on the work of our ancestors, and doing the work that is going to benefit the next generation which means a complete overhaul in the way that we’re approaching life,” Wilbur said. “Not approaching life for capitalism or for greed or for improving my personal stature or posturing my class or my value over another person, but rather thinking of how I can give back to that community. It’s a service-oriented way of life.”

You Have My Word

Wilbur sold everything in her apartment and launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund “Project 562.” She tried playing it straight by applying for grants, but was repeatedly denied. She couldn’t find an institution willing to support her, either directly, or even to help with her grant requests.

Less than 2% of all philanthropic dollars in America go to Native American causes and only a tiny percentage of that to help Native artists.

“It’s not surprising that I had a hard time finding foundations to support the work and so I had to find alternative funding for the project; turning to Kickstarter was one of my only options,” Wilbur said. “Honestly, I thought if I don’t raise the money, I just won’t do the project.”

But she did raise the money. $35,000 in 2012 and then $250,000 more in a later round.

“Indian Country came through for me,” she said. “The average donation was like $20, so this was really a grassroots effort supported by many, many, many people.”

Naturally, she had her doubts along the way. Numerous times she thought to herself, this is crazy, it’s too big. She wanted to quit.

Stubbornness and her word brought her back from the brink.

“I firmly believe that you should do what you say you’re going to do,” Wilbur said. “I get a lot of nasty emails from Kickstarter contributors from 10 years ago who are like, ‘I want my free book!’ Those things definitely impacted me; there are a lot of people counting on me to do this work. I firmly believe inside of me that I should do what I say I’m going to do. That’s what made me keep doing the work even when I felt like it was an impossible feat.”

Wilbur, who in addition to her writing and photography co-hosts the “All My Relations” podcast highlighting people and topics important across Indian Country, will be undertaking a national tour in support of the “Project 562” book which can be ordered through this link.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — A Kentucky native will sing the National Anthem at Kentucky Derby 149. 

In a release, Churchill Downs said on Tuesday that Kentucky native Carly Pearce will perform the anthem before the “Run for the Roses” on Saturday, May 6. 

Pearce is a singer-songwriter from Taylor Mill, Kentucky. The country music artist is the reigning ACM Female Artist of the year. She won her first Grammy in February for “Never Wanted To Be That Girl” with Ashley McBryde, becoming the first female pairing to win the award. She will perform the “The Star-Spangled Banner” live just after 5 p.m. on Derby Day to an estimated worldwide television audience of 16 million.

Pearce joins a list of major artists to perform the National Anthem at the Kentucky Derby. Past artists who have performed include Brittney Spencer (2022), Tori Kelly (2021), Jennifer Nettles (2019), Pentatonix (2018), Harry Connick Jr. (2017), Lady A (2016), Josh Groban (2015), Jo Dee Messina (2014), Martina McBride (2013), Mary J. Blige (2012), Jordin Sparks (2011), Rascal Flatts (2010) and LeAnn Rimes (2009).

Churchill Downs is breaking new ground with a live performance by Rachel Platten of her “Fight Song” during the Kentucky Oaks’ 15th Survivor’s Parade at 3 p.m. on Friday, May 5.

The song has become an anthem for those battling cancer. The parade this year includes 149 breast and ovarian survivors and fighters who have been selected to participate. Platten will also perform the National Anthem at 5 p.m. before the Oaks race. 

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