Justice Sutherland wants her children to know where they come from.

“Just bringing back tradition to our family has been amazing,” she said.

The local artist has been reconnecting to her Indigenous roots in Moose Factory since becoming a mother. She’s learning from a great source — her mother, Amanda Sutherland.

Amanda’s father, who was a Fort Albany First Nation member, died when she was young, and she lost a lot of her cultural connections.

“Bringing in the culture to us is very important since we weren’t raised in it. I didn’t raise my kids in it,” said Amanda. “It wasn’t until I started working at Northern College and learning from community members, elders in the community.”

Amanda is an Indigenous services administration assistant at Northern College.

“Everybody has been so good at teaching me, at teaching Justice,” she said.

Justice agrees and adds that the community has been incredibly helpful in their journey.

She’s using art to explore her cultural ties and has painted murals at Northern College and Sparks Pizza. It’s a way to connect to her own community and family, and anyone else who wants to enjoy her work.

“The one thing I always could connect to is art and it’s something that translates in every culture, in every language. It connects to everyone in a different way,” she said.

RELATED: Local artist adds a little colour to downtown pizza joint

Having spent time in western Canada, those traditions shaped some of their views.

Becoming a mother has motivated justice to explore her local roots and bring more tradition and culture into her home. 

“It wasn’t until I had my own kids and she started doing her teachings and stuff like that and getting connected to the culture here in Timmins that I was able to realize that I wanted to bring that down to my kids as soon as I had them,” said Justice. 

Her time in Kelowna has influenced her art and she learning more about the local styles.

“It’s weird because I’m always talking about Indigenous culture and I realize I have to bring this side in instead of always bringing what I was raised around,” said Justice. “Because that’s the whole point. I’m trying to reconnect to the Native lines here and bring more of an arts and culture representation from our area.”

Language has been a challenge in reconnecting with family.

“Justice was four years old, and I had not connected to my dad’s side of the family yet, and I went up north to meet my kokum (grandmother) for the first time, and it was very emotional,” said Amanda.

“I couldn’t talk to her though because I didn’t know how to speak Cree, and she only knew how to speak Cree, which is sad because it’s a language that’s being lost, and I wish I had that language so that I could teach it to my kids.”

Amanda said passing on what she’s learned is a healing experience.

“Whatever I am taught, I then go, and I teach students, I teach staff, I teach whoever wants to learn what I know,” she said.

The shift in how Indigeneity and culture are perceived in Canada has impacted Amanda’s growth and education.

“When I was being raised, being Indigenous was something you hid,” she said. “I was glad to hide it at the time, but as I got older, I realized that I was missing out on so much, and learning all of that and bringing it in has helped me grow not just as a person but as a parent, a grandmother, a friend, a colleague, it gets into everything that I do now.”

Justice’s goal in her art and her family is to amplify the feeling of home.

“It’s nice to continue to bring down our teachings and traditions down through our family,” she said. 

SIOUX CITY (KTIV) – An exhibit that showcases art from various Native American tribes opened this past November and will be displayed until March 3, 2024.

The artwork titled, “Indian Art of the Northern Plains” is from the 19th and 20th centuries.

November marks National Native American Heritage Month.

Copyright 2023 KTIV. All rights reserved.

NEWPORT, Ky. — The cities of Newport and Cincinnati are celebrating a local artist’s latest project, beautifying where Kentucky and Ohio meet.

The mural on the ‘Purple People Bridge’ is a part of a beautification project along the Ohio river. 

Artist Matt Grote, native of Cincinnati, said he has always loved the view from the ‘Purple People Bridge’.   

“You can see Covington and Newport and downtown Cincinnati, obviously,” he said. “And it’s actually quite peaceful.”

The 39-year-old said he’s been painting since childhood and it has provided him a way to connect with people and self express.

“I’ve always just wanted to live a life creating things,” Grote said.

Baseball, music, art and food are a few of the topics shown in the mural to emphasize important things in each state.

“What you’ll see is, is a number of sort of icons and images that represent nature, culture, food achievement, those types of things, you know, artistic expression and everything on the Ohio side has a has a counterpart on the Kentucky side,” said Grote. 

Grote’s mural is titled, “Where We Connect.” The artist was commissioned by MeetNKY and Visit Cincy as part of a beautification project.

Grote shared some of his favorite designs of the mural.

“We’ve got Kentucky bourbon here, which is something that Kentucky has become known for worldwide,” he said. “It’s you have the best bourbons. You’ve got to get them in Bourbon County, right?”

Like Grote, MeetNKY and Visit Cincy strive to beautify the two cities and highlight their unique connections.

“This is all part of a beautification project that we’re doing here as part of the Cincy region and meeting Kay,” said MeetNKY, Director destination Marketing & Communications, Amanda Johanneman.

While Senior Communciations Manager of Visit Cincy, Eileen Osborne said there is a connection.

“We’re really connecting all the way through with the river and everything and with, you know, just kind of some of the things that overlap each other over that state line,” she said.

Grote said he hopes the mural encourages people to take in the scenery.

“I wanted to give them something to remember and to feel joy about as they’re crossing it and they’re spending time in this place. Maybe they can stop and take a couple extra seconds to look around.”

A new era for one of the world’s most storied college campuses began on December 1, 2023, when the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art opened at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. Located within the nine-acre Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park, the 70,000-square-foot building occupies a prominent intersection where the school meets the greater community, anchoring and functioning as a gateway to an expanding on-campus arts district.

Twenty-three state-of-the-art historically thematic galleries share highlights from Notre Dame’s nearly 31,000 item collection, one of the oldest and most highly regarded at an academic institution in the United States, as well rotating exhibitions.

“There are approximately 1,000 works on display from our collections at any one time,” Joseph Antenucci Becherer, Director of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, Curator of Sculpture, and UND Professor of Art History, told Forbes.com. “The flow of the galleries allows us to pursue the history of art both chronologically and thematically and instigate conversations across time and place. We have been able to present art of the Indigenous Americas more fully, art of the Spanish Americas has its own designated gallery, international modern and contemporary art has gained significant space and connects with both the sculpture park and commissions throughout the building.”

Upgraded display cases provide greater opportunity for presentation of the University’s prized collection of works on paper, and, for the first time ever, textiles.

“We have taken an integrated approach, frequently displaying paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, works on paper (and) textiles for a more complete understanding of ideas,” Becherer explained of the new museum’s curation. “We have taken measures to integrate European and American, looked at the long arc of time in many cultures like Africa and Native North America, and tried to present the international scope of Modern and Contemporary art as a reflection of the beautiful complexities of the world in which we live.”

While the permanent collection dates back to 1875, it is art from “the world in which we live” at this very moment where the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art makes its strongest statement. A series of prominent commissions from heavyweight living artists stands as a testament to the institution’s forward focus.

New Commissions Distinguish New Museum

Newly commissioned works by globally renowned artists are integrated into the fabric of the building design, beginning with Endless, a 36-foot stainless steel sculpture by Jaume Plensa positioned outside of the Museum entrance. The piece features alphabets in eight languages and symbolizes Notre Dame’s commitment to diversity, internationalization, knowledge and global service.

A monumental carved text panel by Jenny Holzer welcoming visitors on the front façade of the building reads, “We are in the midst of reality responding with joy.”

Stepping into the atrium reveals a circular terrazzo and bronze floor installation by Kiki Smith. Sea of Stars, one of the artist’s largest public projects to date, features 39 hand-drawn and cast stars inspired by celestial images frequently seen in Medieval, Renaissance and Byzantine depictions of the Madonna as protectress and “Star of the Sea.”

Also prominently mounted in the atrium is Maya Lin’s St. Joseph (River) Watershed, a reflection on our shared natural environment. The expansive relief with shimmering recycled silver honors the region’s Indigenous people and celebrates the unique geographic, sociological and environmental elements of the St. Joseph River and watershed.

The Raclin Murphy will also unveil new acquisitions by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Zhang Huan, Dietrich Klinge, Julie Mehretu, David Ocelotl Garcia, Jamie Okuma, Yinka Shonibare, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Dana Warrington, Jason Wesaw and others.

A-listers, each and every one.

“It would be great to call out any of the recent acquisitions by Jenny Holzer or Jaume Plensa, Maya Lin or Jamie Okuma, Kiki Smith or Julie Mehretu, but there is something larger and of greater importance here,” Becherer said of highlights at the new museum. “This is a museum about tradition and innovation, the classic and the contemporary–a respectful celebration of time and place, but, simultaneously, illuminating the human condition which breaks down time and place.”

Siting the Raclin Murphy within a sculpture park also allows for the continued growth of the museum’s outdoor sculpture collection. The park installation will feature new acquisitions by Sir Anthony Caro, Dietrich Klinge, Clement Meadmore, Louise Nevelson, Beverly Pepper and Ursula von Rydingsvard among others and provide a new environment for works by Deborah Butterfield, Peter Randall-Page and George Rickey.

‘More than a Treasury’

Notre Dame’s art collection had resided in the Snite Museum of Art since 1980. The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, which also includes several research and study venues, a gift shop and café, and a chapel, Our Lady, Queen of Families, represents Phase One of a two phase overhaul of the University’s arts footprint.

Inclusion of the chapel acknowledges the University’s Catholic charter.

“One has to recognize that the history of art and the history of the Catholic Church have been intermingled for millennia,” Becherer said. “We are not a religious art museum, but these foundations recognize the significance of human creativity, human expression, through the arts, and our museum celebrates that every day and now, in an astonishing new way.”

A planned second phase for research will provide additional galleries as well as a works-on-paper study center, allowing greater access to the museum’s extraordinary collections, along with additional space for teaching, administrative and curatorial offices, open collections storage and an auditorium. The Raclin Murphy joins the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, Charles B. Hayes Family Sculpture Park, Matthew and Joyce Walsh Family Hall of Architecture and O’Neill Hall of Music in an assemblage of new facilities dedicated to the arts on the south side of the Notre Dame campus.

“The physical location of the museum at the very entrance to the campus allows the arts to be a welcoming ambassador to all. We have always been here for the academy, but now we can reach out to the community, the world, with authenticity and sincerity,” Becherer said. “A great museum must be more than a treasury, it has to be a resource and touchstone, a microscope and a telescope.”

Admission to the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art is free.

Native American artists create unique items that can beautify a home. 

Chandler resident Katherine Shields appreciated their beauty from a young age as she was exposed to a collector’s world. Now, she chairs an upcoming Valley event that showcases this art.

About 110 Native American artist vendors, some of them “rock stars” of the Indigenous art world, will sell their wares during the S’edav Va’aki Museum Indian Market from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 9-10 at 4619 E. Washington St., Phoenix. (The venue was formerly known as the Pueblo Grande Museum.)

“There are not many places where visitors can engage with Indigenous artists in an informal setting,” Shields said. “Shoppers have a rare opportunity to chat with the artists about their art form, how they came to learn it, and its importance in their lives.”

Arizona’s second largest Indian Market provides a great opportunity to pick up paintings, woven rugs, pottery, sterling and gold jewelry, kachinas, Zuni fetishes, Native flutes and drums, sculptures, beaded items, arrowheads and other similar items. Prices start at $5 and can cost more than $3,000. 

The U.S. Department of the Interior adjudicates the event, requiring vendors to adhere to stringent rules and regulations.

Each item sold at the Indian Market is individually hand-made from materials that are authentic to the art form, said Shields, who co-chairs the event and is the director of the S’edav Va’aki Museum Foundation. 

This position is volunteer based, and her regular job is a contracted member for the Arizona Opera Orchestra, where she has played the viola since 1999. 

Shields said the market is “not like an art fair where you just walk through and look at art and then maybe buy something or maybe you don’t. We have actual things to do.”. 

In addition to the vendor booths, visitors may walk through the Ki:him, or “village,” a cultural demonstration area with 15 booths. Artists include Tony Duncan, who teaches hoop dancing, and the Kehewin Native Dance Theatre that teaches mask making.  

The entertainment is provided by four big name acts and food trucks will be selling Native American food and a coffee truck. 

Now in its 46th year, the market drew about 3,000 people last year.

 “Some visitors are collectors, there to visit specific artist vendors; some are interested in the main stage entertainment; some families come primarily to visit the Ki:him area and eat Fry Bread,” she said. 

“The Indian Market Committee has always viewed the market as a community-building event; the willingness of Ki:him demonstrators, entertainers and artist vendors to return year after year is evidence of the success in that arena.”

Shields’ grandparents and parents were interested in Native American culture and art since the early 1900s, and are collectors. 

“My father took me to my first Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when I was 9. I have been hooked ever since,” she said. 

She is most fascinated by how the art is interwoven with the artists’ spiritual life and cultural practices.

 “I find that each piece holds so much meaning. It’s not just another painting of a landscape,” she said. 

 In college Shields started collecting Santa Clara pottery from New Mexico’s Santa Clara Pueblo, but said, “I don’t think of myself as a collector, I just think of myself as a person who buys jewelry and paintings.

 “I buy things that speak to me. Things just pop out. It just jumps up and says, ‘I need to go home with you.’” 

Shields began volunteering for the Indian Market in 2017. She also began volunteering at the museum, facilitating school tours and working the Artifact Cart, where they demonstrate unprovenanced objects that can be passed around.

She chaired the Young Artist Market in 2021. In 2022, she joined the board of the S’edav Va’aki Museum Foundation. 

“On the board, we each have a position, so I became chair of the Indian Market Committee. I have a co-chair, Jim Walker, and our committee of about 20 works hard every year to put on the Indian Market, which is the foundation’s biggest fundraiser for the museum,” she said.

Arizona has 22 federally recognized indigenous tribes and several are represented in the market. Besides Arizona, the artists come from New Mexico and California. 

The market is pan-tribal, which means it is not promoting any tribes, but Native American art as a whole. 

The S’edav Va’aki Museum Indian Market is one of about six markets in the US that are annual events that adhere to the Indian Arts & Crafts Act of 1990. It customarily draws the high-profile artists in the Indigenous art world, Shields said. 

The Phoenix-owned Pueblo Grand Museum changed its name earlier this year to S’edav Va’aki Museum to more accurately represent the heritage it preserves and to recognize the living cultures and homelands of the Native peoples who have inhabited the land for centuries. “Pueblo” means town or village in Spanish.

Va’aki means “platform mound” and S’edav Va’aki translates as “Central Platform Mound,” referring to the ceremonial house of a village, of which there were several along the Salt River. 

At one time, about 1,000 people lived on the site until it was vacated around 1200, probably due to drought.

Asked about the general interest in these cultures, Shields said: “I think interest in Indigenous art and culture is on the rise. Now that travel has opened up, cultural tourism is back in force.”

Details: phoenix.gov/sedav-vaaki  

Art from more than 100 Indigenous students was showcased Friday during the first in-person art show Haskell Indian Nations University has held since 2019.

David Titterington teaches art at Haskell. In his classes, he introduces students to Native American artists and situates their work within the context of their time.

For their final projects, students create artwork inspired by, or informed by, the artists who came before them, and use art to make a statement.

A unifying theme in modern Native American art is the expression of messages the artists find important. The art is intended to teach a lesson or share a message.

Common themes in Friday’s art show ranged from MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), refuting stereotypes, environmental issues, depression and personal identity.

Remixing and reclaiming

There is a tradition of Indigenous artists “remixing” the work of Edward Curtis, whose infamous photography — intended to document the “vanishing Indian” — left a stereotypical and limiting legacy that Indian Country is still dealing with today.

Rasheed Shorty, Navajo, made a digital collage that invokes satire to show the absurdity of the stereotypes still applied to Native Americans today.

The work features the engine (a play on the slur “Injun”) of a Jeep Cherokee, overlayed on an Edward Curtis photo. The engine is wearing a stock photo image of a Plains-style headdress. This piece uses humor to transmit a message and was inspired by Cannupa Hanska.

Morgan Noisey, Cherokee Nation, was inspired by Steven Paul Judd’s work where he added pop culture icons to old photos. In this image, Noisey added elements of Star Wars to an Edward Curtis photo.

Lawrence Aguilar, San Ildefonso Pueblo, added an interactive element to an Edward Curtis photo, encouraging the audience to engage with the environmental horrors afflicted upon the people of San Ildefonso Pueblo by the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

“To this day no justice is being served for the Pueblo people suffering from the Lab’s detrimental actions against their ancestral land and its people,” Aguilar wrote in the artist’s statement.

There are hidden truths painted with UV-reactive paint to be revealed with flashlights which are available to anyone who chooses to look. The piece was inspired by Steven Paul Judd and T. Cannon.

Bradley Billy, Choctaw/Muscogee Creek, remixed Jeff Widener’s infamous Tiananmen Square photo by situating the faceoff in the context of Manifest Destiny. In the artist’s statement, Billy states that he hopes his “ancestors are proud of the fact that I will not let their sacrifice be forgotten. They will be remembered for their fight against American ‘democracy’.”

Ledger art

Ledger art is a distinctly Native American genre of art. It originated in boarding schools during the assimilation era of Federal Indian Policy. Indigenous children were prohibited from making art while detained in the forceful assimilation work camps, but that didn’t stop them. The resourceful children made art in ledger books because that’s what was available to them. 

Many Haskell students continue this tradition, as shown in some works displayed Friday.

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Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Violence against Indigenous women, girls, and Two Spirit people is an issue that some students expressed in their art.

Megan McCain, Diné, paid homage to Cara Romero’s “symbolically rich photographs of strong Indigenous women” with this piece on domestic violence.

McCain wrote that many people “feel trapped in their situation, like a ghost, and they try to process all the emotions and invalidate their feelings. … Under that ghostly shell of conformity is a strong Indigenous person waiting to be freed.”

Personal meanings

Taneille Lewis, Hunkpapa Lakota of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, was impacted by the Dakota Access Pipeline and the ensuing assault on Water Protectors and Indigenous sovereignty.

With this piece, she wanted to focus on the river that her people would “spend endless summer days and nights in.” About the river, she said, “if we did not protest, those memories would be swimming oil, genocide, and the dehumanization of our Native relatives, forever tainted for future generations.”

Isabelle “Jojo” Blackwood, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Cherokee, displayed an interactive piece. Her art is “just a little compact, and that’s okay.”

The travel-sized version of Stan Herd’s “Little Girl in the Wind” is a portrait of Blackwood. Herd takes lifesize images and makes them larger than life, and in this piece, Blackwood reversed that process by making a Herd piece “smaller and cheaper” to express how she feels compared to her mother — the “little girl” in Herd’s earthwork piece, Carole Cadue-Blackwood.

Tea Murray, Diné, was inspired by Damian DineYazhi. Murray grew up in the middle of the Navajo Nation reservation and would drive hours with their mother to get essentials. While driving through boarder towns they’d see American flags on the homes of non-Natives. Despite being citizens of the United States, Murray knows they live under white supremacy. 

“Living in a colonized country, Indigenous peoples are forced to relive atrocities that are being perpetuated even today,” Murray wrote.

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Molly Adams (she/her), photojournalist and news operations coordinator for The Lawrence Times, can be reached at molly (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Check out more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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About 20 vendors gathered to sell art, jewelry, baked goods, holiday decorations and even muktuk Saturday at Haskell’s fifth annual Holiday Bazaar.

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The all-horse Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade returned to downtown Lawrence Saturday, drawing spectators who lined Massachusetts Street and beyond to see all the sights.

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Teen leaders of the Lawrence nonprofit Honor Moon invite community members to drop off a donation and shop awhile during their holiday fundraiser.

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Trust plays an important role in developing design solutions that meet the needs of a community and specifically underrepresented and underserved communities of color, according to presenters of the session “Relationship-Based Design—The Role of Trust in Healing” at the 2023 Healthcare Design Conference + Expo, held in early November in New Orleans.

Throughout the nation, many underserved communities of color face the challenge of access to quality, comprehensive healthcare, which can lead to numerous health disparities within these communities, according to speakers Christina Yates, designer, senior associate at NBBJ (Seattle) and Antwanette Lyons, manager, community health program and development, at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic (OBCC; Seattle).

“Health systems are generally built around driving throughput and efficiency,” Lyons said. “Additionally, many health organizations that serve communities of color are often federally funded and have specific requirements and associated limitations to how care can be delivered and by whom.”

Community-led design process

To help illustrate their point, the speakers shared how gentrification and rising costs Of living in Seattle’s Central District displaced many residents near OBCC’s Yesler Way clinic. In response, OBCC sought to develop a new pediatric clinic in Southeast Seattle’s Othello neighborhood to move closer to displaced community members.

Key to delivering the project and creating a clinic that met the specific community’s needs was developing a trusting relationship among the provider, residents, and the project team.

“The mission of the OBCC is to provide quality care with dignity to those in need, regardless of ability to pay,” Lyons said. “OBCC has always been a part of the community and has always valued the partnership within the community and families. The clinic was specifically created to serve the Black community within Seattle’s Central District neighborhood and to provide quality care with dignity.”

During the project, OBCC and NBBJ intentionally invited families and community members to be an active part of the design process. “A truly trusting relationship allows for vulnerability and sharing of true needs and innovative design solutions are born out of a connection to solving specific problems,” Lyons said. “They are the experts about what the challenges and barriers are and what needs are priorities for their community.”

The design process began with listening to what programs families want and need. OBCC also developed a governance council comprised of community and staff members and patient families to “act as a checks and balances system for OBCC to make sure we are engaged,” Lyons said.

Community clinic design features

Opened in 2022, the Othello clinic is located in an urban space that includes a charter elementary school and mixed-income housing, helping to address health disparities and build a relationship of trust in the care the clinic provides to pediatric patients and their families.

“The new clinic is easy to access as it is located next to light rail, it has ample and free parking,” Lyons said.

Inside the clinic, several design features were chosen to also help foster community relationships, including local artwork. Specifically, the speakers said the new OBCC Othello location includes more than 20 commissioned art installations and more than 20 portable art pieces from local artists of color, including for the exam rooms and public spaces.

“[The] artwork is created by native indigenous artists to honor and reflect the history of the place and their role in the community,” Yates said. (For more on OBCC Othello artwork, read “Using Artwork To Alleviate Patient Anxiety.”)

Another clinic design feature meant to build trust with locals is the use of larger exam rooms for families and multiple care providers and waiting spaces outside of exam rooms for siblings and parents to wait when privacy is needed during a clinical visit.

An open work space for providers in the front of house portion of the clinic (called the Town Square) allows patients and families to connect and see their care provider in real time when they come in for an appointment. Additionally, the OBCC Othello clinic provides a recreation center and community kitchen that helps support groups and community-based learning to address key health challenges.

“There are different models of delivering care that make sense for different communities,” Yates said. “Take risks and challenge assumptions and be okay with some unknowns. A good trusting relationship between the client, community and the design team can facilitate a process that leads to a successful outcome.”

For more session reviews from the 2023 HCD Conference + Expo in New Orleans, visit hcdmagazine.com/news/awards-events.

Submitted photo
James Shawn Crum, a graduate of East High School and native of Youngstown, has shown his artwork at Kent State University at Trumbull, Trumbull Art Gallery in Warren and the McDonough Art Museum in Youngstown.

YOUNGSTOWN — James Shawn Crum recalls playing “the artist” whenever he and his sister played house during their childhood.

Little did he know back then that he would find himself at the legendary Cedars Lounge in Youngstown hanging out with painters, photographers sculptors, musicians, poets and many others who live the artist lifestyle. It was the creative atmosphere of Cedars circa the 1990s that groomed Crum, 53, into the expressive artist that he is today.

“I moved out to California where I did sculpture, and then I dated a local artist named Robert Walker and he gave me paint supplies. That moment was what inspired me to paint,” Crum said. “From that point, I traveled to city to city with my paints, canvases and clothes. I lived in Columbus, New Orleans, San Diego and Brooklyn, New York. I considered that the artist lifestyle, and I showed my art in art exhibitions in all those cities. I think the art community here in Youngstown is friendlier, more inviting and inspirational.”

He grew up on Youngstown’s East Side and graduated from East High School. His parents are James and Mary Crum.

His family left Mississippi to work in the steel mills in Youngstown. Crum’s mother came to Youngstown when she was a teenager and his father arrived in Youngstown on his own. Both of his parents ended up working in the steel mills.

“I was one of those kids who remembers when the steel mills in Youngstown closed and how life changed drastically for a lot of local residents back then,” he said. “I was living on the East Side, and it was a great place to live back then, but then it became poor, and there was a lot of violence, especially during the 1990s.”

When it comes to artistic influences and inspirations, Crum has a long list. However, some of his greatest inspirations include Jacob Lawrence, Jean -Michel Basquiat, Romare Beardon and the Ukrainian-born sculptor, Louise Nevelson.

“I look at Louise Nevelson’s work, and it’s breathtaking. It’s like something spiritual is screaming for my attention whenever I look at her work,” he said. “I was drawn to Jacob Lawrence because his style is very raw, and he tells a story in his artwork. When I look at his work, I understand what his life has been like at the time.”

On Sept. 9, Crum’s exhibit, “Black Noise White Gaze, Paintings by James Shawn Crum,” opened at the Coy Cornelius & Judy Rogers Studios in Youngstown. This exhibit was a showcase of Crum’s collection of acrylic on canvas paintings that are centered around the current socio-political climate. The exhibition addressed the issues of social inequality, African-American cultural and activist history, class, sexuality and race. The exhibition closed Sept. 28.

“My partner, John Noga, who is also a local artist, helped curate the show,” he said. “The theme of the exhibition is inspired by the idea that I have been thinking about our society today and about myself being homosexual and black. With this show, I was able to quietly articulate what it is like to be black and homosexual during this time period and the struggles we face. I felt like I needed to tell my story because everyone feels so powerless right now.”

Crum is a self-taught artist and over the years, has experimented with collage and painting. Crum’s main concentration now is acrylic on canvas.

“I would like to do more collage, and I like mixing collage and painting together. I would also like to get more into print-making and incorporate that with my painting with collage,” Crum said. “I did a lot of sculpture when I was in my early 20s while living in California.”

Crum has shown his art at Kent State University at Trumbull, Trumbull Art Gallery in Warren and the McDonough Art Museum in Youngstown. He also has shown his work at various coffee shops and small art spaces in Columbus and in numerous shows in New York City.

“I think with art, it’s important for people to be comfortable enough to share their stories. I felt that when I was younger, there weren’t enough people sharing their art,” he said. “Art back then was seen more as a hobby. I want young people today to see that art is something to take seriously as a career and to make it a part of their lives. I want to encourage young people that art can be a serious vocation.”

To suggest a Saturday profile, contact Features Editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday.com or Metro Editor Marly Reichert at mreichert@tribtoday.com.

Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, well before smartphones and selfies, artists played a crucial role in introducing Americans to the otherworldly red rock landscape of Zion Canyon.

In a time when visiting in person was a challenge, those early impressions of Zion’s grandeur helped both to popularize it and gain its protection as a national park, said Sears Art Museum director and curator James Peck.

“Once painters got out to Zion and people started to see the colors and the contrast and the amazing slot canyons and all that, it’s hard to overestimate how important that is for what we have today.”

Zion National Park doesn’t need much help with publicity anymore, but a new exhibit at the museum on the campus of Utah Tech University is celebrating the connections between art and this remarkable landscape. Even in the age of iPhones and Instagram, Peck said, nothing can replace an artist’s ability to capture the depth of emotion Zion’s scenery inspires.

When someone puts paint to canvas, he said, they aren’t bound to the same conventions that a phone is. Artists have the license to inject emotion and meaning, he said, by choosing to focus on one element, shifting the color palette or presenting a view from an angle that humans can’t physically access.

“Artists in many ways are able to do things with our memories that we can’t do,” Peck said. “So they become the guardians in the vanguard of protecting our memories and changing and challenging our perceptions of it.”

The free exhibit is the first in a series called The Mighty Five that will eventually showcase work from each of Utah’s destination national parks.

In all, the Zion exhibit features around 100 pieces of art. Each one is a bit different — there’s even a series of three divergent paintings of the same scene by the same artist — showing how every visit to the ever-changing landscape can show us something new based on the season, how the rock has eroded or how the light creeps into the canyon.

Between walls lined with pastel, oil and watercolor paintings, a set of glass cases holds intricately designed Indigenous pottery found in the Virgin River that carved Zion Canyon. It’s an acknowledgment of the rich history of art among Utah’s native peoples, who were often excluded from pioneer-era depictions of this region.

The exhibit also highlights how Zion’s natural beauty has fueled southwest Utah’s art scene, with dozens of pieces from modern local artists like Mary Jabens of Cedar City.

She visits Zion and other public lands in southwest Utah at least once a week through the fall and winter to paint, often as part of a group of local artists who call themselves The Kolob Society after Zion’s Kolob Canyons area.

Trying to do this intricately hued landscape justice is a challenge, she said. But for her, it never gets old.

“When the light hits the different colors of those red rocks with the hidden pinks and purples and oranges and iridescent blues,” she said, “you can’t help but sit back and just stare at it going, ‘Oh, my. It’s beautiful.’”

Two of Jabens’ paintings found a place in this exhibit, a large vertical piece with a pair of condors soaring over Angels Landing and a wide horizontal piece that focuses on light hitting a bend in the Virgin River.

The second piece came from a stroll she took in one of her favorite parts of the park, the Riverside Walk trail that leads to The Narrows. She turned to look downstream, the sun hit the canyon’s green springtime leaves just right, and she was struck by the beauty like she was seeing it for the first time.

That’s a feeling she hopes people who visit the exhibit walk away with.

“It just inspires me. It fills my heart,” Jabens said. “It’s like a promise that things are still good.”

The exhibit opened Dec. 1, 2023, and runs through Jan. 12, 2024, at the Sears Art Museum at Utah Tech University in St. George.