Despite an entire museum dedicated to the work of Andy Warhol, there is a collection of 10,000 works by the native Pittsburgh pop artist that have never been in the public eye.

People can now see more than 60 of those pieces in “Unseen: Permanent Collection Works” at The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Shore through March 4.

“It is our responsibility as a museum to show our collection,” Patrick Moore, director of The Warhol and curator of the exhibition, said during a media preview.

Massoud Hossaini | Tribune-Review

Andy Warhol’s artwork in “Unseen” exhibition.

He said the museum spent a year and a half taking a “deep dive” into every piece of its collection — which is how they found the ones that had never been seen.

Moore collaborated on the project with Matt Gray, the Warhol’s director of archives; Signe Watson, an independent researcher; and the Warhol collections and exhibition department.

The museum holds the largest collection of Warhol’s artworks and archival materials.

“The Warhol staff works every day with an extraordinary collection that continues to surprise and confound,” Moore said. “ ‘Unseen’ is an opportunity for the museum to delve into areas of the collection that are new even to us. These are objects that are both aesthetically beautiful and that have stories to tell. We’re proud to share them with the public for the first time.”

Massoud Hossaini | Tribune-Review

A view of the “Unseen” exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

The works had not been displayed for various reasons, Moore said. It might be Warhol didn’t think those particular pieces were valued at the time. Some appear to be unfinished — although Warhol created artwork that might not look like it was finished, but to him it was.

“He left things incomplete,” Moore said. “He left mistakes and left it up to the viewer to decide on their meaning.”

Others were possibly too sexually explicit or revealing for their time. Some of those works are on display in an adults-only area, sectioned off from the rest of the exhibit.

The artwork shows that Warhol yearned for romantic love, Moore said. His lover, Jon Gould, who was a vice president at Paramount, died in 1986 from complications relating to AIDS.

“There is also some sadness in some of these pieces, which were sold privately because of their sexual nature,” Moore said.

“People are more open and accepting of sexuality,” Moore said. “It has been an evolution. We are more comfortable with our sexuality as a museum.”

The first piece in the exhibit is a gift from Irving Blum, one of Warhol’s early art dealers. It is called “Red “Blank’,” circa 1963. Warhol used the term “Blank” to describe monochromatic canvases. It arrived in a crate that also contained 10 “Silver Liz” paintings (of Elizabeth Taylor).

Warhol is known as a portraitist, and the show presents several portraits, including one of him. Some are distorted. One is of a woman without a mouth and another has double registers of the silk screen. A portrait of O.J. Simpson is among the pieces on display for the first time.

Warhol might be suggesting that suggest that celebrity and wealth can warp an individual to the point of becoming grotesque, as described in the press materials. That portrait without the mouth “has kind of a ghostly quality to it,” Moore said.

Massoud Hossaini | Tribune-Review

Patrick Moore, director of The Andy Warhol Museum and curator of the “Unseen” exhibition, discusses a self-portrait of Warhol’s on Thursday.

For the self-portrait, Moore said, Warhol most likely wanted to portray his fragility. He became concerned about his health after being shot in 1968 Valerie Solanas, who thought he was stealing her play manuscript. He spent months in the hospital. Warhol died in 1987 of cardiac arrest suffered after gallbladder surgery, a procedure he had delayed for several years due to his fear of hospitals.

In his work, Warhol utilized every medium, from painting to sculpture to film. He produced 600 screen tests, a series of short, silent black-and-white film portraits, and 1 million feet of film.

When asked to pose, subjects were lit and Warhol filmed them with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black-and-white, 100-foot rolls of film.

Two of those are part of the exhibit. They are preserved in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The research revealed many previously unknown facts, which have raised both additional awareness of the collection and of Warhol’s practices and intentions, Moore said. These findings are part of the exhibition.

“The fact that these works have never been shown reflects the enormity of the museum’s collection, and the complexity of Warhol’s legacy,” Moore said. “It also shows that there is more to learn about Andy Warhol.”

“Unseen: Permanent Collection Works” is on display until March 4. The Andy Warhol Museum is located at 117 Sandusky St., North Side.

Details: warhol.org

JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact JoAnne by email at jharrop@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Conservators and artists have worked this past year to restore a work of art created by artist George Morrison half a century ago. Morrison’s vision is felt by the people who helped to restore his work, and by those redesigning the building where the mural lives.

The late artist George Morrison was from a small town near the Grand Portage reservation in northern Minnesota. He attended art school in Minneapolis and New York City and was part of a leading generation of American artists working as abstract expressionists. 

Known for his intricate wood sculpture and collage, George Morrison was commissioned to create the mural for the Minneapolis American Indian Center in 1974.

Morrison once told a biographer the design was inspired by feathers. Its chevron V-shapes work in unison to create an optical illusion.  

Although never formally named, Morrison suggested the work might be called — “Turning the Feather Around: A Mural for the Indian.”  

Sam Olbekson is an architect and the chair of the Minneapolis American Indian Center’s board of directors. He is a part of a team working on the center’s renovation.

“That pattern and the way it’s constructed allowed us to take it apart piece by piece, and one of the main goals of this entire project is to preserve this piece art,” says Olbekson.

In 2022, the Midwest Arts Conservation Center, or MACC, answered the center’s call to restore the mural.

Chief conservator Megan Emery served as the manager of the project. MACC called on another team of conservators from Montana with expertise in rigging and reinstalling complicated works of art.

“We decided we were going to have to start the project by doing full documentation with photographs of the mural to basically map out exactly out how it looked and how everything was laid out,” says Emery.

“When it was time to start to start the project, we physically removed every single board, and that’s when we need a team of people.” 

Josie Hoffman is an Anishinaabe multi-media artist whose family is from the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Hoffman was tasked by MACC to work on the restoration.

“There wasn’t a ton of problems. And actually, when we were taking it down it came down really easily. It was also the documentation of [the mural],” says Hoffman. “It’s about over 700 cedar boards, so it’s about documenting and making sure we have all these pieces in the right place.”

Once the pieces were carefully removed, they were packed into crates and shipped to specialists at the firm Wolf Magritte in Missoula, Mont. The firm cleaned the mural again and worked to design a series of interlocking panels on which to mount jigsaw-like pieces for reinstallation.

When the full sun hits the mural at its new home on the east side of the building, the contrast of the light and dark surfaces of the cedar planks is striking — adding a sense of movement. 

Olbekson says the restoration of the mural is a part of the long-term vision for community development along Franklin Avenue. 

“Where it was on the building … [George Morrison] was so intent on it being open to the public. So that art was accessible to the community. He wanted it to be large scale, in your face, out, and unapologetically Indigenous on Franklin Avenue,” says Olbekson. 

Olbekson points out the mural’s new location on the east side of the center will mean that it has a different experience with environmental elements and weather. 

“We tried to preserve the aging, the integrity of it,” says Olbekson. “It was about making sure the original artist’s intention was conveyed in the new building, to do it in a way that will make it last there in another fifty years.”

The restoration of the mural is part of the Minneapolis American Indian Center’s first major renovation since opening in 1975.

Rooms of their own: New exhibit at Springfield Museums celebrates 200-plus years of work by a broad range of women artists

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  “Dancing on the George Washington Bridge II,” a 2020 quilt by Faith Ringgold, is part of the varied work in “As They Saw It.” Image couresy Springfield Museums

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  “Maremaid,” a 1815 watercolor by Mary Ann Wilson, a folk artist from New York state. Her piece made the case for female empowerment well before the term was coined. Image couresy Springfield Museums

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  “As They Saw It” at the Springfield Museums features work by women artists dating back to the early 19th century.  Staff photo/Steve Pfarrer

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  “Self-Portrait,” an 1885 oil painting by Massachusetts native Ellen Day Hale, features the artist’s self-assured and unabashed gaze, at a time when women were not expected to be assertive. Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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  “Victory Lap,” by photographer Amy Sancetta, captures the members of the winning U.S. Women’s 4 x 100 meter relay team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Staff photo

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  A Diné (Navajo) dress from the late 19th century, cinched with a sash belt made by D.Y. Begay, a contemporary Diné artist. Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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  Curators at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield ready a work for “As They Saw It: Women Artists Then & Now.” Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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  Text in “As They Saw It” is in both English and Spanish, something that has become a more common feature at Springfield Museums. Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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  Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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  “Black Barbie,” a 1996 quilt by Kyra Hicks, seems especially timely in the wake of all the media buzz about this summer’s “Barbie” movie.  Image courtesy Springfield Museums

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  “Untitled No. 10,” a photograph of a female teenage wrestler by Eve Fowler, is part of “As They Saw It” at the Springfield Museums.  Staff Photo/Steve Pfarrer

Staff Writer

Published: 11/3/2023 10:53:04 AM

Paintings that date to the early 1800s. Native American crafts and textiles from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Depression-era photographs and ones taken just a few years ago. A quilt that offers interesting commentary on a pop culture topic that was all the rage this past summer.

What do they have in common? All these artworks are part of a new exhibit at Springfield Museums, “As They Saw It: Women Artists Then & Now,” that offers a broad look at how female American artists have approached their subjects and worked to overcome numerous barriers — social, economic, cultural — to shape their stories.

With over 60 works on view, drawn from artists from a broad mix of racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds, “As They Saw It” is a collaboration between curators from the Springfield Museums, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA Boston), and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

And the exhibit, whose work is drawn from all three museums, is part of a multi-year initiative at MFA Boston with four regional museums, including the Springfield complex.

The new show might be the only one at which you’ll see an 1815 watercolor by a folk artist, Mary Ann Wilson, who lived openly in upstate New York with another woman, alongside photos by Dorothea Lange — or a quilt by Kyra Hicks, a contemporary African American fabric artist whose 1996 work “Black Barbie” is emblazoned with the words “America’s Doll was never intended for me.”

Or how about a varied display of late 19th/early 20th century baskets by Native Americans from Oregon and northern California, juxtaposed with work by mid/late 20th century abstract painters Alice Trumbull Mason and Emily Mason?

“We didn’t want to limit ourselves to one time period or one kind of genre,” said Maggie North, a co-curator of the exhibit and until recently the lead curator at the Springfield Museums (she’s currently in a doctoral program in art history at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia).

“The idea was to have these pieces be in conversation with each other,” North said during a recent phone call from Philadelphia. “I think that encourages us to look at art, to look at the world, in different ways.”

A collaborative show — this is the second full one Springfield Museums has done with MFA Boston — is also a good way for museums to “maximize the strength of our collections,” she said.

And, North noted, an important goal of what’s known as the Art Bridges initiative at MFA Boston — a goal shared by Springfield Museums, she added — is to build new exhibits along more inclusive lines, showing work from artists who haven’t received enough past recognition.

“One study we looked at from a few years ago showed that just 14 percent of exhibitions at 25 major American museums were of work by women,” she said. “So this exhibit is one way to address that.”

The show, in the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, is divided into three sections. One includes self-portraits and other explorations of identity; a second features work examining themes of “sisterhood” and community among women, such as “Dancing on the George Washington Bridge II.”

This colorful 2020 quilt, by Faith Ringgold, shows over a dozen African American women floating along and just above the framework of the New York City bridge.

A third section looks at multi-generational relationships among women artists, and perhaps the best example is a red Diné (Navajo) dress, dating from approximately 1890, to which a contemporary Diné artist, D.Y. Begay, has added a sash belt.

“That’s the way the dress would have been worn,” said North.

Bucking convention

Though most of the artworks date from the 20th and 21st centuries, some older works stand out for the way they bucked social conventions of 19th century women.

Consider “Self-Portrait,” an 1885 oil painting by Ellen Day Hale, an impressionist painter from Massachusetts who lived and studied in Paris, London and Boston. In the work, Hale looks boldly at the viewer in a way considered unusual and perhaps rather daring for women of that era.

As exhibit notes put it, Hale’s “unabashed gaze” led one critic to declare that the artist displayed “a man’s strength,” which “he meant as a compliment.”

And Mary Ann Wilson, the New York state folk artist, in 1815 crafted “Maremaid,” a watercolor painting that depicted a mermaid-like figure clutching a weapon in each hand rather than a mirror and a comb. The painting stands out as a “visionary representation of female empowerment,” exhibit notes state.

North says she and her co-curators — all women, by coincidence — from the two other museums were also committed to showing work not just by women but by women of color and Native American women.

“Those artists have historically been even more under-represented,” she noted.

She added that the curating team had been mulling the inclusion of Kyra Hicks’ “Black Barbie” quilt when the much ballyhooed “Barbie” opened this summer. The resulting media crush about the film, North said with a laugh, “meant that we all said ‘yes’ to including it.”

And in one of the “conversations” North refers to in the exhibit, as well another pop culture reference, next to Hicks’ “Barbie” quilt is a photograph by Cara Romero, titled “Arla Lucia,” which depicts a Native American woman as Wonder Woman.

A member of the Chemehuevi Nation of southern California who also grew up partly around Houston, Texas, Romero did not see herself or her community reflected in popular culture or academia, exhibit notes state — so she opted to fill that void with her own photographs.

“As They Saw It” includes a number of other striking photos. A 1973 image by Nan Goldin, “Ivy in the Boston Garden,” captures a female-presenting person at ease at a time when LGBTQ people had far less visibility or acceptance.

And “Untitled No. 10,” a 1999 portrait by Eve Fowler, shows a determined looking teenage girl wearing wrestling gear, poised to strike — part of a series that Fowler, who’s also a filmmaker and multimedia artist, did on teenage girls playing boys sports.

North says she hopes the exhibit, which runs through Jan. 14 and moves in April to the Fenimore Art Museum, will appeal not just to women but to all manner of visitors — anyone interested in seeing a wide range of art arranged in an unusual context.

“I’d love to see mothers and daughters visit together,” she said. “But really it’s a great opportunity for anyone to consider how art is presented, and how museums can be more responsive to the community and be more equitable.”

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.

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Norman attracts creative people from around the nation and world. It’s one of this small city’s most endearing features. AnnaVittoria Conner-Pickett is one of these folks. She came here for a 2018 Master of Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma and is now Director of Education at Artspace at Untitled in Oklahoma City.

Pickett is organizer and curator of an art group exhibition titled “Confluence” at Resonator Institute, 325 E. Main. The show opening reception is Friday, November 10, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. as part of Second Friday Art Walk. In addition to work by Pickett the other artists contributing to Confluence are Nicole Emmons, Kai Gregory, Zoeen Wasim Janjua and Lety Rios.

“The exhibition is fairly loose,” Pickett said. “We wanted to have one where everybody got to celebrate and highlight their heritage in whatever way made best sense to them.”

In name order from above the women’s heritages are Italian, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Sac and Fox Nation, Pakistani and Mexican.

“For me personally I’m recreating archetypes from the Italian side of my heritage,” Pickett said. “I’m half Italian and half American. They’re objects that take me back to the homeland. There’s a series of enlarged Briscola cards and also my own version of Sicilian tiles.”

Briscola is an Italian card game with imagery that recalls Medieval Queens, Kings, Knights and Knaves. Pickett has played the game since she was a child. She’s spent a significant part of her life in Italy, visiting family during summers and holidays. Her mother presently resides there.

“I’m doing a cyanotype type piece that has images of all the famous Italian people I think of when I’m trying to imagine my culture and best describe the people who are important to me,” she said. “Everybody in the exhibition is doing their version of what’s important to them in their heritage and culture. It’s a celebration we want people to partake in and learn about our cultures.”

It could be viewed as an alternative to the idea of “cultural appropriation.” The artists encourage viewers to purchase this work and celebrate these cultures in their homes.

“Kai Gregory who is one of my former students is making ceramic moccasins and I think it’s an important conversation to have and everybody’s going to have their own perspective on that,” Pickett said. “If you want to support Native artists who create moccasins then how else can you do it other than buying them. It’s about creating a dialogue around supporting people of different cultures and wanting them to respectfully participate by owning the art work made by people of those different cultures.”

Nicole Emmons is the best known artist of the exhibition group. She’s a stop-motion animation filmmaker who famously created a sequence for the Netflix children’s culinary show “Waffles + Mochi” starring Michelle Obama.

“Emmons has participated in a lot of really big projects,” Pickett said. “She has created heritage specific stop-motion animations at some really big institutions to teach people about Native culture. They’re really beautiful and she’s one of my favorite artists in Oklahoma.”

As an arts educator Pickett sees the difficulty younger artists such as Gregory and Rios have getting their work exhibited. She wanted to be the one providing a conduit for shows.

“A Resonator exhibition in Norman will be a really good opportunity for them,” she said. “Their art work blows me away already and they’re so young. It’s important they get chances in the art world. In ten years they’ll be well known in the area if they decide to stay.”

Gregory recently graduated from high school and Rios is a senior.

“Zoeen Wasim Janjua and I met through Artspace at Untitled’s annual Steamroller exhibition,” Pickett said. “She was a participating artist and brought in work that just blew me away. It fits in perfectly with the narrative we want to tell. We’re all straddling the line of being part of two different cultures or of one that is not the American culture. We’re all women and all practicing artists in Oklahoma.”

Resonator Institute has an ongoing history of providing a work and exhibition outlet for young artists.

“It’s not that it’s easy to get an exhibition there but they are so open and welcoming to having younger artists that aren’t as established in the Oklahoma art show world,” Pickett said. “I just can’t thank Curtis (Jones) and Tammy (Gordon Jones) enough because they really are wonderful people.”

Confluence will interest viewers in no small part because of its accessibility. Pickett explained that in terms of reasonable art purchase price.

“Most of it is under $500 with much in the $100 to $250 range,” she said. “That’s a positive experience for the collector to own a piece of art work, for the gallery to make some money and for us artists to be reimbursed for our time making it.”

Pickett’s day job includes mentoring and teaching printmaking to over a 150 students a year. She likes that she’s collaborating with some of her former and current students on the show.

“That’s a first and I think the quality of the art work is going to blow a lot of people away,” she said. “They’re new and upcoming artists that most people won’t be familiar with.”

Personally Pickett is excited to shift gears because much of her art work has been western USA-centric.

“Exploring and sharing my Italian side will be nice as well,” Pickett said.

Even though these five artists come from distinctly different cultures she sees similarities in their work.

“We’re all very experimental,” Pickett said. “We have a lot of ties visually in that we’re whimsical and playful. It’s the content of the work that separates us most. We’re all kind of weirdos and that shows through in our art.”

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In honor of Native American Heritage Month, the University of Nevada, Reno’s John and Geraldine Lilley Museum of Art in the School of the Arts is presenting a traveling art exhibit called “We Remember Your Sacrifices; You are Not Forgotten: The Story and Art of the Stewart Indian School” from Nov. 9-30, 2023, with programming taking place throughout the week from Nov. 13-17, 2023.

The opening reception will take place on Thursday, Nov. 9, from 6 – 7:30 p.m., with remarks and light refreshments at the Lilley Museum on campus.

The exhibit tells the story of the Stewart Indian School, a federal government boarding school located south of Carson City, where Native American children of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, Western Shoshone, Northern Paiute and Southern Paiute were removed from their families and land to learn English and job skills. Eventually, Native children from over 200 tribal nations attended the school between 1890 and 1980.

Many Stewart School students studied art and expressed their creativity learning stone masonry found in the beautiful buildings on campus. The students were taught by Hopi stonemasons from Arizona, and their artistry is demonstrated in the buildings still existing on the 110-acre campus. In addition to stone masonry, students painted murals in some of the buildings and left behind much of their artwork in the form of paintings, wood carvings, baskets and beaded work.

The vision of the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center & Museum is to honor the children at Stewart, tell their stories through museum exhibits and first-person accounts on touch screens and help the living alumni, their families and tribal communities to heal. This exhibit invites visitors to come to Carson City and learn from stories shared by Stewart alumni of how the school evolved from the early boarding school days with the cruel assimilation policy into a high school that Native students wanted to attend.

The artwork continues today in the contemporary work by Great Basin Native Artists Collective, curated by Melissa Melero-Moose (Fallon Paiute/Modoc) and displayed at the museum’s Great Basin Native Artist Gallery.

In addition to the exhibition, there will be a film screening of a documentary called “Home of the Braves,” a film by JoAnne Peden, followed by a roundtable conversation with the Stewart Indian School on Friday, Nov. 17, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Assistant Director of The Multicultural Center Markie Wilder was instrumental in making this exhibit at The Lilley possible.

“This exhibit provides a platform for raising awareness about the historical injustices that Indigenous communities endured through the boarding school system,” Wilder said. “It’s an opportunity to engage the entire campus community in a meaningful conversation about the impact of these policies on Indigenous people. By sharing the stories, art and experiences of those affected, it humanizes this history and fosters empathy and understanding among students, faculty and visitors.”

The exhibition and programming at the University are made possible through a partnership with the Great Basin Native Artists Collective, the Nevada Indian Commission, the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center & Museum, The Multicultural Center and the Office of Indigenous Relations at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The Lilley is located at 1664 N Virginia Street, Reno, and is open Tuesday through Saturday, from noon to 4 p.m. The Stewart Indian School Cultural Center & Museum (SISCCM) is located at 1 Jacobsen Way, Carson City, Nevada, and is open Monday-Friday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed on state and federal holidays.

For more information about SISCC&M, email Bobbi Rahder, museum director, or call 775-687-7606, or see the Stewart Indian School website.

For more information about the Great Basin Native Artists Collective, visit Great Basin Native Artists.

Groups across Colorado are celebrating Native American Heritage Month starting this weekend and throughout November. Activities range from petroglyph site tours to cultural dances and Indigenous art on display.

About 74,000 people who identify as American Indian/Alaska Native live in Colorado, according to the 2020 Census Bureau and there are an estimated 370 million Native Americans in 70 countries around the world.

This weekend, the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder will host the Creative Nations Indigenous Arts Market and Festival. The event will feature music by Levi Platero and poetry and dance by other indigenous artists, as well as a display by Native artist Walt Pourier.

Courtesy photo.

“A lot of our vendors are also going to be selling art that you can just look at,” said directing manager Nevra Murdoch. “You don’t have to buy, but if you want to come and look at their art, they always appreciate it.” 

The event runs from Saturday, Nov. 4 to Sunday, Nov. 5 and is free except for a ticketed concert. The Dairy Arts Center is located at 2590 Walnut St. in Boulder. Find the schedule here.

For a more serious activity, there’s a lecture at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, looking at how data collected about Native Americans isn’t always reliable, looked at how sometimes people who aren’t actually indigenous, say that they are. 

A lecture on Nov. 8, titled “Indigenous Educational Experiences and Survey Research,” delves into what happens when people misidentify themselves as Native — often for financial gain or to qualify for an opportunity designated for someone who actually is. 

Courtesy photo.

JD Lopez, 38, is from the Quechan nation, which borders Arizona, California and Mexico. He will be coming to present the talk from Tucson, where he’s a professor at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Study of Higher Education.

“So what I’ve done is just collected a lot of survey research from various topics from college affordability, persistent sense of belonging, those types of topics,” he said.

Over time in this discipline, Lopez has found that sometimes, when people refer to themselves as Native American and they actually aren’t, that skews the data.

“You find a lot of limitations when you look at federal or state data,” he said. “So most of my research has been trying to focus on mitigating some of those limitations and then finding ways to be able to just produce better and more accurate data for those communities, for our Indigenous communities.”

The lecture starts at noon on Wednesday, Nov. 8 at the Lory Student Center 288, Colorado State University Fort Collins. If you can’t make it in person you can register here to get the Zoom link.

Other activities include two-Indian Museum leading tours of the Shavano Valley Petroglyph site outside Montrose on multiple dates throughout the month.

And for those who’d prefer to stay home, both Denver Public Library and the Denver-based American Indian College Fund have put together lists of suggested books and films with Native American themes on their websites.

Back when the hip-hop record producer L’Orange was growing up off Greenville Loop Road and going to high school and college in Wilmington, music was already his thing.

He’d dig through stacks of vinyl at Gravity Records, back when the shop was on Kerr Avenue instead of Castle Street, and he’d enter his musical creations into “beat battles” at the old 16 Taps music venue, where Bourgie Nights is today. When L’Orange was at the University of North Carolina Wilmington he met the rapper Solemn Brigham, and their musical partnership in the well-regarded underground hip-hop duo Marlowe persists to this day.

Having toured Europe multiple times with Marlowe, and with nearly a quarter-million listeners for his music on Spotify each month, L’Orange, now based in Asheville, has already gotten his music on the world stage. This past summer, however, he decided to take things to the next level by lauching his own record label, Old Soul Music.

“What made me want to do my own thing,” he said, was seeing many artists having to choose between making hard choices about compromising their creativity when signed to a label, or basically going fully independent, which involves tough tasks like distributing their music themselves.

“I’ve seen the emotional toll it takes on artists: being forced to view music as a job, to compromise, release music when they don’t want to. That takes the agency away from artists,” L’Orange said. “I thought there had to be a third option, where artists could release music independently, but not alone.”

The Old Soul roster already has more than a dozen signed artists from around the United States (New York hip-hop duo Brasstraks, L.A. rapper blu, Atlanta beatmaker STLNDRMS) and the world, including Kenyan hip-hop artist Roy Rutto and French beatmaker ProleteR. That number will soon climb to close to two dozen, L’Orange said.

In addition to L’Orange, the label also has at least two other Wilmington connections, starting with his businesses partner and Old Soul’s chief operating officer, Dylan Hubbard, who L’Orange met while attending high school in Wilmington (he didn’t want to say which high school).

The sole Wilmington artist on Old Soul is indie-folk singer and filmmaker Justin Lacy, who just released a spooky new single, “Khaki Cameraman,” with local singer Haley Heath.

When L’Orange lived in Wilmington he knew Lacy but they weren’t close friends, he said. Rather, he was attracted to Lacy’s singular sound.

“His music is so incredible and so unique, but his audience is very narrow,” L’Orange said.

He said he sees his role as a label owner as “galvanizing existing audiences” for artists like Lacy, wherever they exist around the world.

While Old Soul’s roster is primarily made up of hip-hop artists at the moment, L’Orange said he wants it to grow to be more diverse and “comprehensive,” both musically and culturally, representing such genres as pop, folk, electronic and more. He said he’s close to signing soul artists from Nigeria and South Africa, adding that the continent of Africa has been producing “so much incredible music, and for years it’s been marginalized and put in this box of Afro-beat,” something he’d like to help change.

It’s a long way from where he was when L’Orange, 31, whose given name is Austin Hart, graduated from UNCW over a decade ago, moving to Asheville to work for a country music label.

“I was working 80 hours a week for about three years,” he said. “It was really brutal, but it taught me a lot about music, and the industry.”

From there he moved to Seattle where his debut album, “The Mad Writer,” got him signed to Mello Music Group. He ended up also going to work for Mello, alongside founder Michael Tolle, and had his hand in releasing well over 100 albums over the course of a decade.

“It’s a role I didn’t talk about a lot,” he said, partly because he was focused on marketing himself as a producer and creator. “But I’ve had quite a lot of experience in the music industry.”

He said “a common misperception is that the music industry is evil or greedy. From what I’ve seen, that’s not the truth.”

Rather, the problem as he sees it is “the way these labels are built. They’re protecting their businesses model.”

L’Orange has certainly had quite a bit of success as an artist, though, and is known for building songs the old-school way, writing beats and then pairing them with samples of jazz, soul and other genres, all of it culled from obscure vinyl records. Often, he’ll insert snippets of dialogue grabbed from what sound like black-and-white movies or old radio shows.

His music, and the songs he’s made with Brigham in Marlowe, have been featured in TV shows, video games (“NBA 2K22,” “Fortnite”) and on commercials for such well-known brands as Gatorade and 7-Eleven stores.

Earlier this year, L’Orange was featured in a documentary, “The Mad Writer,” that screened at the Slamdance Film Festival and focused on his struggles with hearing loss. (L’Orange is deaf in one ear.)

As he moves forward with Old Soul Music, L’Orange said he wants to be part of forging a new way to support artists, tailoring his approach with each one. Some artists want to know all of the ins and outs of the business, he said, while others are more purely creative.

“It took me a while to realize that most artists don’t like this side of the buisiness as much as I do,” he said. He gets the idea that “learning more about streaming isn’t going to help you be more creative. I mean, no one becomes an artist in order to master the Spotify algorithim.”

He’s all about “helping musicians go from being creative to being able to build up something” they can see a return from, whether it’s by helping them increase their streams and sales, or helping them land marketing deals.

As an artist himself, “I want to be able to support artists and their visions,” he said, “without asking them to sign away their masters.”