Raven Skyriver’s “Adrift,” on display at Cincinnati Art Museum’s Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass exhibit.  
Photo: Provided by Cincinnati Art Museum” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”> click to enlarge

Photo: Provided by Cincinnati Art Museum

Raven Skyriver’s “Adrift,” on display at Cincinnati Art Museum’s Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass exhibit.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Jan. 10 print edition.

A new exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum is celebrating the culture and achievements of Native American and Indigenous Pacific-Rim artists through a non-traditional medium. 

Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass is a striking display of more than 100 glass works from 33 artists that exemplify Indigenous traditions and knowledge through the medium of glass. Interpretations of Indigenous basket, textile and pottery practices are expertly crafted through various glass-working techniques and styles.

The pieces range from grand sculptures and complex installments to intricate vases and glass mosaics, creating a scope of art and artists that represent 26 Native nations from the United States and Canada. 

Clearly Indigenous is curated by Dr. Letitia Chambers. It originated at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was influenced by the Native Glass Art Movement of the 1970s. The movement was sparked by Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee) – founder of the Institute of American Indian Arts – when he initiated a collaboration with the Rhode Island School of Design to create an art program that included glass-blowing courses. The program sparked interest in generations of Indigenous artists to work with glass, which inspired Dr. Chambers to write a book and curate an exhibition on the subject.

“Glass is not a traditional medium for American Indian artists,” Dr. Chambers tells CityBeat. “Each new generation of Native artists moves the art of previous generations forward as artists honor past traditions while finding their own creative voices and adopt new methods and materials as they become available. Native artists who have chosen to work in glass have created an incredible body of work which combines the intellectual content associated with the expression of their cultures with the beauty and technical expertise of studio glass artists.”

The traveling exhibit follows a book by Dr. Chambers, which details how glass art was introduced to Native artists and the beginnings of the contemporary Native American art movement at the Institute of American Indian Arts. The book shares a title with the exhibit and was published by the Museum of New Mexico Press in 2021.

“The book is organized around the artists and their methods and techniques, as well as their histories,” Dr. Chambers says. “In choosing images of the artists’ works to be included in the book, I was struck by the strong intellectual content of the work, and so I chose to build the exhibit around that content, rather than organizing it by artist.”

As a result, Clearly Indigenous is a powerful collection of work that elevates traditional art, emphasizing its messages and beauty through various glass-working methods. Although fragile in nature, Clearly Indigenous glass works transcend their anatomy, yielding breathtaking, meaningful compositions that have been blown, cast, slumped, sand-blasted, melted or kiln-fired, among other methods. The glass constructions can also be ground, etched, engraved, polished or fused. 

Works range from grand installations to delicate statements. Sculptures that embody the sacred animals of the “land, air and sea,” are prominent throughout the gallery along with baskets, vessels, bowls, statues, vases and astonishing pieces that mock fabric and woven natural elements. 

The gallery’s lighting in Clearly Indigenous is also used to display the striking nature of the art. Not only can glass be transparent or translucent, it can also be solid or layered yet still reflect and absorb light in ways that inflate the works’ already impactful presence. 

“Lighting of glass art is so important to its visual effect,” Dr. Chambers says. “Focusing the light so that it is the objects and their shadows that are highlighted, rather than the case or the room, is a key to the display of glass art.”

Preston Singletary of the Indigenous Tlingit tribe of Alaska created one of the most eye-catching, graceful pieces of the collection. Lighting creates movement and repetition surrounding “Killer Whale Hat,” Singletary’s piece which consists of blown and sand-carved glass that resembles an upside-down, wide-brimmed hat. The work’s golden hue deepens at the rim, while the shallow bowl bears an elegant pattern, which sails onto the brim and is repeated in soft shadows where the light peaks through the design. 

A handful of Singletary pieces appear in Clearly Indigenous, but “Killer Whale Hat” is part of a larger Singletary collection of glass works inspired by traditional Tlingit hats. Another outstanding Singletary inclusion is “Raven Steals the Sun,” which is another impressive display of blown and sand-carved glass that appears to be anything but the delicate medium. The raven’s head is black with deep red reliefs that outline its features. At a glance, it appears to be a wood carving and prompts wonder at how an artist can accomplish such a creation out of glass. 

According to a placard in the exhibit, artists depict creatures as decoration on practical objects to display respect for birds and other animals. In origin stories of some northwest coast nations, the raven is said to have brought light to the world. 

“The artistry and beauty of the objects in the exhibit contribute to the first impression of the viewer. The aesthetics of the exhibit certainly create a wow factor. But the ultimate message conveyed relates to values inherent in indigenous cultures,” Dr. Chambers said. “This can be seen in the importance of caring for living things and the world we live in as depicted by the sections focusing on the creatures of the land, sea and sky. Honoring the ancestors is an important value in Native cultures and there is a section devoted to this more spiritual content. A number of the objects reflect the bridging of two worlds, that of tribal tradition while living in today’s contemporary society.”

Many of the works inspect contemporary issues that are connected to Native identities such as social and environmental justice. In partnership with the Urban Native Collective, the Conversations Gallery on the first floor of the museum is dedicated to generating dialogue and a deeper understanding of Indigenous People’s contemporary experiences. One might re-interpret “Raven Steals the Sun,” for more than its superficial beauty after considering the information available in the Conversations Gallery. 

This extension of Clearly Indigenous will be on display throughout the run of the exhibit. The REDress Project, a part of which is on view in the Conversations Gallery, calls attention to thousands of missing or murdered Aboriginal women across Canada. Placards in the gallery highlight resources and ways to take action against these injustices. 

Programming surrounding Clearly Indigenous is scheduled throughout February and March. On Feb. 1, Dan Friday – a member of the Lummi Nation and a Seattle-based artist who has numerous works and collaborations included in the exhibit – will visit the Cincinnati Art Museum.

“Dan Friday has a compelling personal story, as well as being a leading glass artist,” Dr. Chambers says. “His totems in glass carry on his own family’s tradition as his grandfather’s carved totems of wood.”

Friday’s lecture, Future Artifacts: Artist Talk with Dan Friday, will explore how he combines Native traditions and contemporary glasswork.

“I hope viewers go beyond the stunning visual effect of this body of artworks to appreciate the values of the cultures that created them,” Dr. Chambers says. “For viewers who are not familiar with Native cultures, it may be an introduction to American Indians’ contemporary cultures, rather than seeing them as artifacts of the past.”

Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass is on view in the Thomas R. Schiff Gallery at the Cincinnati Art Museum through April 7. Info: cincinnatiartmuseum.org. 

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The Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka is looking for applicants for its 2024 Alaska Native Artist Residency Program. During the residency, artists will be expected to create art in an open-studio format and engage with the community through talks, cultural consultations, and educational programming. 

The Friends of Sheldon Jackson Museum is an organization that supports the historic museum through advocacy, acquisition, and educational programming. The group is leading the call for Native Artists to apply to the program. 

Residencies can range from 20 to 22 days in length. Residency dates are already set, and will happen June 10 to July 2, July 29 to Aug. 18, Aug. 19 to Sept. 8, Sept. 12 to Oct. 2, and Oct. 3 to Oct. 24. Artists can request time off to attend the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention in the fall.  

Each residency position will include a $2,000 artist stipend, $840 food stipend, and travel to and from Sitka. Positions will be filled as grant funding allows. 

Artists may make traditional or contemporary Native art from any medium including carving, beading, sewing, dancing, weaving, and drum making. At the end of the program, artists will present what work they completed during their residency. 

The Friends of Sheldon Jackson Museum said that artists will benefit from exposure to and time with collections at the museum, and from meeting people from all over the state and world while working in the museum gallery. The cultural consultations will be paid time where the Native artists can provide information and insight into the museum’s artifacts, and help further document those artifacts. The group said this time to study the museum’s collection can be inspiring to the artists.  

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Application packets can be found online at https://museums.alaska.gov/artist_opportunities.html and www.friendsofsjm.com, or can be requested by calling 907-747-8981. 

Questions about the program or application can be directed to Jacqueline.Fernandez-Hamberg@alaska.gov or by calling 907-747-8904. 

The due date for the application is Jan. 15. 

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Last year, we set out to highlight the voices and sounds of Indigenous and Native artists from across the North American continent. Now we’re revisiting our growing list to introduce you to some of our new favorites: budding singers/songwriters and indie-pop crooners, as well as those reshaping rock and hip-hop.

From words of pain and healing — which echo the shared experiences of people of color in a post-colonial world — to urgent calls for environmental justice, music remains one of the many ways they’ve fiercely preserved a connection to their culture and language despite centuries of oppressive assimilation. Let this serve as your reminder that celebrating and supporting Indigenous and Native communities starts with listening to them.

Words by Steven Ward

Produced by Sandra Burciaga Olinger

Those of you who read last year’s feature should already be familiar with Inuk singer/songwriter Elisapie. Her first two albums — There Will Be Stars and Travelling Love — overflow with propulsively vibrant rollickers of indie-pop design sung in both English and Inuktitut. Whether you find yourself hopelessly enamored by the breezy rhythms that oscillate on “Turning My Back” or scintillating riffs that jump from “Life Is What You Make It” (a song that calls to mind the beguiling punchiness of Rilo Kiley), you won’t find anything but jams buried in her catalog.

Steeped in pensive alt-folk soundscapes, The Ballad of the Runaway Girl saw Elisapie confronting with agonizing honesty the individual and collective trauma that led her to leave her home behind. More recently, she released a truly ethereal covers album in the form of Inuktitut — an at times haunting and searingly triumphant reappropriation of songs by Blondie, Queen, Cyndi Lauper, and others that illuminates the memories these classic hits came to define in her youth living in Salluit, Nunavik, Quebec.

Stream and follow Elispaie.

The project of Los Angeles-based Kianah LongChase, an enrolled member of the Native Village of Eklutna located in Alaska, TwoLips discography is one replete with songs that crisscross R&B/soul and hip-hop. Her debut EP, Yellow Gold, gilded her lambent vocals in funkily spiraling rhythms and silky smooth textures. Subsequent releases like Psychowave and FRIEND ANTHEM signaled an evolution in her sound, ornamenting her self-explicating and hypnotic bars with heady beats and suave instrumentals.

She also possesses a prolific collaboration streak — teaming up with Def Sound and Tolliver on her SixDollarSage Mixtape. The release of her most recent single, “Nations,“ finds her sinking her teeth into a rallying anthem made all the more rousing by its rush of shuddering drums. A sight to see live, if you ever come across TwoLips on a lineup, be sure to get yourself a ticket to the show.

Stream and follow TwoLips.

It’s hard to pinpoint which is the more affecting quality of singer/songwriter Ruby Waters’ 2019 debut album Almost Naked. Maybe it’s her stirring lyricism and the ease with which she arouses existential weariness and hope alongside heartbreak and unabashed desire. Or perhaps it’s how she gives life to the poetic nature of her words, enveloping them in soaring rock choruses as on “Sweet Sublime,” or riff-sizzling confessionals like “Last Cigarette.” Whichever the case, the whole album is rife with hits.

Waters, who is originally from Ontario and is of Métis and Slovak heritage, returned a year later with her sophomore effort If It Comes Down To It. All seven songs arrived aglow and burning with a melodic resonance that lent greater urgency to her driving folk-rock. “Fox” and “Difficult” are just two instant favorites you’ll find tucked away within.

Stream and follow Ruby Waters.

From the moment Xiuhtezcatl released his self-titled debut in 2018, he established himself as a notorious collaborator, eventually co-founding the hip-hop trio Voice Runners with Tru and producer Jaiia Cerff, and a fearless lightning-rod of political and environmental activism. Just this year he’s provided his code-switching flow to tracks like the sublime “La Cura” — featuring Tonina and Sam Pine — teamed up with BARDO for the revelatory feel-good groove anthem “We’re All Just Stars,” and enlisted Oglala Lakota artist Mato Wayuhi on new single “Veils.”

With Aztec roots, Xiuhtezcatl was raised in the tradition of the Mexica (one of the native peoples of México). His family has passed down the traditional knowledge of seeing an individual as part of a greater whole and emphasizing the connection between all aspects of the natural world. Xiuhtezcatl has spoken about the impact of fossil fuels on indigenous and other marginalized communities. He has delivered speeches at the United Nations and gained notoriety after delivering a multilingual speech in English, Spanish, and his native language, Nahuatl, during the 2015 United Nations General Assembly.

Stream and follow Xiuhtezcatl.

CHLOE STAR might only have a handful of singles out, but every single one of them is a banger. First came the bombastic alt-pop “Element,” a bass-bumping and swaggering track that showcased the Los Angeles-based artist’s intoxicating bravado. They’ve since edged closer toward driving pop-punk with the release of “Fool” and “Found My Peace” — her recollections of toxic love finding ecstatic fulfillment in their blistering sincerity. Her latest single “Happy Place” stays true to the pop-rock sound she has so vibrantly cultivated.

Growing up, Chloe Star spent much of her adolescent years between Los Angeles and her family’s reservation in San Bernardino. Despite a chaotic childhood that was often unstable, she found peace in journaling and writing poetry. After teaching herself piano and guitar, she soon started transforming those personal words into lyrics.

Stream and follow Chloe Star.

Mohawk singer/songwriter Shawnee Kish started out singing Shania Twain songs, her dulcet vocals undoubtedly tapping into previously unplumbed depths of the country singer’s hits. Unsurprisingly, her self-titled debut EP is a cascade of invigoratingly soulful pop (“Light Me Up,” “Got It Bad”) and rapt ballads resounding within colossal soundscapes (“I Left, but I Never Lied”). This year brought with it her follow-up Revolution — a jubilant, gutting, but altogether ravishing display of heartwarming wonder. Its closing track, “For Me,“ encompasses the staggering beauty that’s now synonymous with Kish’s music.

Stream and follow Shawnee Kish.

Cassidy Mann unveiled her debut EP, If It’s Not Forever, just last year. Its six tracks are awash in her melancholic but effervescent style of indie pop. Whether she’s singing about ex-lovers or lost friends — as on her latest single, “Everblue” — the Winnipeg singer/songwriter views her music as a means of preservation. A sentiment that stems from her family’s roots in the Sagkeeng First Nation and the importance of storytelling in conserving everything from memories to culture. Cocooned by gleaming folk acoustics and her translucent vocals, songs like “Along for the Ride” revel in the gentle splendor evoked by her intimate lyrics.

Stream and follow Cassidy Mann.

He helped found a punk-rock band when he was 14. That led to a long career as an advocate for Native American and environmental causes.

Phillips, the esteemed auction house, is ushering in a groundbreaking exhibition, ‘New Terrains’, a landmark showcase of contemporary Native American art in New York. The exhibition, running through January 23, is a grand spectacle of over 120 works spanning painting, sculpture, photography, video, jewelry, pottery, and weaving. More than 60 Indigenous artists from mid-20th century to the present day have their works on display, reflecting the creative diversity and artistic prowess of the Native American tribes.

Curatorial Brilliance behind ‘New Terrains’

Bruce Hartman, former executive director of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, curated this exhibition alongside Tony Abeyta and James Trotta-Bono. Together, they have assembled a diverse collection that mirrors the multifaceted creative responses of Indigenous artists to modernism, post-war, and pop art movements. Their artistry is interwoven with their social and political experiences, lending the exhibition a uniquely resonant depth.

Artists and Artworks in Spotlight

The exhibition features revered artists like Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Fritz Scholder, while also spotlighting emerging artists such as Navajo weaver Calvin Toney. Scholder’s ‘Sitting Indian, 1972’ and Monkman’s ‘Death of Adonis, 2010’ are among the notable works. These masterpieces reflect the rich tapestry of Native American art and offer a profound commentary on their societal context.

Recognition for Contemporary Native American Art

‘New Terrains’ seeks to be inclusive of various tribes from the U.S. and Canada and crosses boundaries of gender and tribal affiliations. This broad representation has already piqued the interest of museums and private foundations, marking a significant moment for the recognition and market appreciation of contemporary Native American and Canadian First Nations art. Artwork prices at the exhibition range from approximately $8,000 to nearly $1 million, suggesting a promising future for Indigenous art in the global art market.

Phillips is bringing an expansive selling exhibition of contemporary Native American art to New York beginning on Friday that will showcase a diversity of expression from more than 60 artists practicing since the middle of the 20th century. 

The show of more than 120 works of painting, sculpture, photography, video, jewelry, pottery, and weaving at Phillip’s Park Avenue gallery arrives at a time when the market for art by Native Americans and Canadian First Nations people “is so fast moving,” says Bruce Hartman, a curator of the exhibition, who retired as executive director of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kan., in 2021. 

Hartman, whose parents were collectors of Native American art, had shepherded the acquisition of about 350 major contemporary works by Indigenous artists when he was at the museum, recognizing an opportunity to create a diverse collection when the institution was conceived in 2003 on the campus of Johnson County Community College. It was a visit to the collection a few years ago by Scott Nussbaum, Phillips deputy chairman, Americas, that sparked the idea of bringing this art, many by artists unknown to the wider market, to Phillips. 

The exhibition, “New Terrains”—which runs through Jan. 23—offers a wide-ranging creative response by Indigenous artists to the modernism, post-war, and pop artistic movements of their eras as seen through their own social and political experience. Hartman brought on two more curators, the Dine artist Tony Abeyta and James Trotta-Bono, a gallerist in Los Angeles whose parents were longtime Native American art dealers, to assist.

“We all started contacting sources, and I have to say it’s kind of miraculous that we were able to pull together such extraordinary pieces for this show with the majority of them being available,” Hartman says. 

The aim of the exhibition was to include tribes from across the U.S. and into Canada, and to be as inclusive as possible. “We looked at gender, we looked at tribal affiliations, we looked at modes of expression,” he says. 

The artists range from well-known practitioners who have been the subject of museum shows, such as Jaune Quick-to-See Smith—a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation—and Fritz Scholder of the Luiseño, in addition to lesser-known artists.

Calvin Toney, is a Navajo artist born in 1987 in Fort Defiance, Ariz., who was trained in weaving by his mother and grandmother on the Navajo reservation, but whose works reflect artistic influences from the Italian Renaissance to Jean-Michel Basquiat. Two “extraordinary textiles” by Toney are included in the exhibition, Hartman says.

“We wanted to say, if weaving is a primary means of artistic expression for the Navajo, then we must include weaving. We must include silversmithing. You’ll see some gorgeous pieces of jewelry; it’ll be a treat for people coming through that are so used to the kind of the usual contemporary expressions to suddenly walk into a space and, ‘oh, my God here are these extraordinary bracelets!’ he says. 

Scholder, who died in 2005, long ago broke the boundaries of what was perceived as Native American art with a series of paintings created from 1970-80 that he referred to as “Monster Indians,” Hartman says. 

These huge, extraordinary paintings revealed a more honest, painful picture of the Indigenous experience than the “movie stereotypes and romanticized versions” prevalent in the middle of the 20th century. “He was fearless,” Hartman says. “A lot of the depictions are verging on the grotesque.” 

The exhibition includes the artist’s 7-foot-tall, soulful, Sitting Indian, 1972, from this period. 

Also included is a color-field abstraction, Summer Spectrum II, 1958, by the late George Morrison, an Ojibwe who was a contemporary and friend of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock, among other artists, whose work was shown regularly at the time but was largely ignored after he returned to Minneapolis, Minn., to work, Hartman says. 

One reason for beginning the exhibition with works from 1950 was “because we wanted to show that there were these early practitioners … groundbreaking Native American artists who were working within these genres and these styles that we only know of Anglo artists working within,” Hartman says. 

Smith is an artist whose works—which regularly appear at auction—directly respond to Western contemporary art movements and individual artists, such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. They reflect her stated belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology,” according to the Whitney Museum of American Art, which held a retrospective of Smith’s work from April 19 to Aug. 13 last year. 

Smith’s My Heart Belongs to Daddy, 1968, is included in the show. 

Another significant work is Death of Adonis, 2010, by Kent Monkman, a Canadian Cree—a monumental painting that shows his gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, cradling a white cowboy who is dying amid what appears to be a battle in a dramatic Western landscape. The 6 by 10 foot painting evokes Albert Bierstadt’s The Last of the Buffalo in a painting of the same size that “sexualizes, decolonizes, and Indigenizes Bierstadt’s iconic depiction,” Phillips said in a news release. 

Museums and private foundations across the country have already expressed interest in acquiring many of the works, which range in price from about US$8,000 to close to US$1 million, Nussbaum says. 

“It’s apparent that some of these great works are going to end up on public view and that’s truly exciting,” Hartman says. “And it extends across the United States—it’s not as if it’s just a localized type of interest. … Tony, James, and I take a lot of pride in the fact that we were able to bring extraordinary pieces out of the woodwork, so to speak, and look at what the response is already.”

A comprehensive retrospective showcases the work of the groundbreaking Indigenous artist.

It was game-changing when the West came east in the exhibition Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map, which opened at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 2023, establishing Smith (Confederated Salish, Kootenai) as the first Native American artist with a retrospective that the prestigious institution has itself organized. Show curator Laura Phipps believes Smith just might be the most important Native artist alive, having had almost 100 solo shows and major museum acquisitions.

Genesis, 1993. Oil, paper, newspaper, fabric, and charcoal on canvas, two panels, 60” Å~ 100”.

“She’s both the most prolific and the most influential artist of her generation, and that has meant that there are subsequent generations of artists that have platforms that allow them to also be prolific and influential,” Phipps says. A curator herself and an activist, Smith recently put together The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans, a show of nearly 50 intergenerational Indigenous artists, for the National Gallery of Art, on view in Washington, D.C., through January 15.

Smith, now 83 and still working at her studio in Corrales, New Mexico, is known for her abstract expressionist and modernist mixed-media paintings that emphasize Indigenous presence. She places newspaper clippings, found images, and fabric within the same frame as larger painted icons to express the pro-Indigenous, eco-aware mindset that she’s referred to as her “rap.” For Smith, the political is personal. “Her politics are really based on understanding the importance of land and also this nonhierarchical relationship between humans, plants, and animals,” Phipps says.

Survival Map, 2021. Acrylic, ink, charcoal, fabric, and paper on canvas, 60” Å~ 40”.

No doubt considering Robert Rauschenberg’s newspaper collages, Jasper Johns’ abstracted map paintings, and Andy Warhol’s advertising iconography, Smith builds on art history by fusing it with her ironic messaging. Take her repurposing of the U.S. map, sometimes adding to it with clippings, sometimes flipping it sideways, inevitably diminishing its dominion. These pieces convey a message of stolen land, she told CBS News’ Sunday Morning. “I used clippings to show that Indian people do live here,” she explains in the segment. “We’re still here, right? We are here.”

Born in 1940 on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, Smith and her sister were raised by their horse-trader father after their mother left. When a teacher told Smith she drew better than men but couldn’t become an artist because she was a woman and needed to know her place in life, Smith got an art-education degree instead, married, and had two sons. It took until her 30s for her to pursue an advanced art degree at the University of New Mexico. She applied three times before gaining admission.

[1] Survival Suite: Tribe/Community, 1996. Lithograph with chine coll., 36 1/16” Å~ 24 7/8”. [2] The Vanishing American, 1994. Acrylic, newspaper, paper, cotton, printing ink, chalk, and graphite pencil on canvas, 60 1/8” Å~ 50 1/8”. [3] Survival Suite: Humor, 1996. Lithograph with chine coll., 36 1/8” Å~ 24 13/16”.

Among the artworks in the 130-piece Memory Map show are two collaborations with her son Neal Ambrose-Smith, one of which is a poignant installation of a canoe filled with plastic water bottles, single-use plastics, wooden crosses, and hypodermic needles. “It’s piled high with all these things that are the product of colonization: the inequities of trade, the disruption of traditional foodways like the bison being replaced with government rations like Spam,” Phipps says. “The loss of land and displacement that disrupts your ability to gather plants to practice traditional medicine. The introduction of Christianity, which had mixed but many negative effects within many tribes. So piling the canoe with the refuse and product of all this colonization, they’re attempting to trade it back.”

War Horse in Babylon, 2005. Oil and acrylic on canvas, two panels, 60” Å~ 100”.

Canoes appear as frequent imagery in Smith’s work, having been significant to American Indian trade routes. “She sees her work as an artist as a continuation of that tradition of trade,” Phipps says. “As an artist, she trades in ideas. So the canoe is important for her to use. Canoes move things, and she’s moving ideas throughout the world using this icon.” Horses appear in Smith’s art as a personal reference and emblem of mobility. Bison signify a source of food, shelter, and clothing that was targeted by the U.S. government to displace the Indigenous population.

Over the four years that Phipps worked with Smith on the Memory Map exhibition, she has learned that Smith — who looks the artist, often clad in jeans, boots, and a black brimmed hat — drinks strong coffee, has a good energy level, and is dedicated to advocating for other Indigenous artists. But the most potent conveyance of her presence might just be in her work and what Phipps has observed when people stand in front of one of her works. “You see people putting together in their minds what it is that an artist can do with their work, and what they can learn from these beautiful and complex paintings.”

This article appears in our January 2024 issue.

The exhibition Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Fort Worth, Texas, through January 21, 1924. It travels to the Seattle Art Museum February 29, 2024–May 12, 2024.

Images: Courtesy of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Photograph courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.