ATHENS, Ohio -- "Multiple Impressions: Native American Artists and the Print" opens at the Kennedy Museum of Art on Sept. 10. In 25 works by 13 artists, the exhibition presents a concise overview of recent Native American art. At the same time, the works demonstrate the unlimited expressive potential of the print medium.
Not satisfied to provide the expected, these artists synthesize aspects of their Native American heritages with elements from contemporary art. The results will surprise and challenge viewers. The artists employ a wide range of imagery -- from landscape and ancient rock art to popular culture -- to dissolve the boundaries that have long constrained Native American art. Artist Dan Namingha describes the situation this way: "Living in two cultures simultaneously as I do, I am constantly aware of the dual nature of all things: night and day, past and future, then and now. I think one cannot exist without the other, so I try to bridge that gap in my work."
Curator of the exhibition, Joyce Szabo, professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico, has drawn upon works from the Tamarind Archive at the University Art Museum of the Museum of New Mexico to highlight the diversity of lithographs created by Native American and Canadian First Nations artists at Tamarind Institute between 1970 and 1990.
Tamarind Institute
Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc. was founded in Los Angeles in 1960 to "rescue the dying art of lithography." Ten years later, it became affiliated with the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and the name was changed to Tamarind Institute. At Tamarind, invited artists work with master artisan-printers in a collaborative work environment that is designed to encourage experimentation and extend the expressive potential of the medium.
A lithograph is a print made by using a press to transfer to paper an image that was originally created on stone or a metal plate. Aloys Senefelder, who invented lithography in 1798, preferred to call it "chemical printing," since the process depends on the chemical interaction of grease, nitric acid, gum arabic and ater, unlike many other types of printmaking, which depend upon incised or carved lines. Although the term can refer to commercially reproduced images, such as those on posters or in magazines, at Tamarind a lithograph is an image made by an artist who works closely with an artisan printer.
Native American Artists and the Print
Among the first artists to work at Tamarind after its move to Albuquerque was Fritz Scholder, who printed at Tamarind almost every year between 1970 and 1984. By the time he first came to Tamarind, he had already established an international reputation for forceful presentations of Native subjects. His work confronted a public used to inoffensive idealized representations of Indians. For Scholder, the technical possibilities of the print medium are the vehicles through which to explore Native American reality versus stereotype.
R. C. Gorman, who like Scholder was one of the first contemporary Native American artists to develop an international reputation, first worked at Tamarind in 1971. Over the years, he produced five suites and eight individual lithographs there. Gorman was attracted to lithography for its ability to offer the freedom and spontaneity of drawing and the potential to reach a broad audience.
Another artist who printed at Tamarind during the 1970s was Solomon McCombs, who brought with him from Oklahoma a strong tradition of a representational style that developed in Oklahoma during the 1920s and Santa Fe during the 1930s. Szabo describes the style as being characterized by "strong outlines, flat color application, stylized landscape elements, and decorative patterning used with frequency in narratives detailing traditional Native life."
Since 1982, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith has printed many times at Tamarind. Each visit has brought new directions and technical experimentation. Her early works, such as Sandhill North (1982) and Fancy Dancer (1988) make clear reference to rock art in their juxtapositions of multiple drawing styles and seemingly unrelated imagery. She calls these vibrant abstractions "narrative landscapes," images of places filled with stories that refer to the importance to Native Americans of environmental concerns and land claim issues. Her later work demonstrates an evolution towards more direct social commentary. In the Future (1995) makes reference to the 19th-century Austrian monk Gregor Mendel's studies of genetics to comment on heredity, prejudice and the future of humanity.
Native American Humor on Display
Several of the artists in the exhibition use humor and irony to bring smiles as well as to activate the warning bells of conscience. Speaking in an interview about Native American humor, Quick-to-See Smith states: "It's part of our culture. There's lots of humor that's self-deprecating and comedy based on people's hard luck. It's our version of someone slipping on a banana peel." An example of the artist's wry humor is Christmas from Word Suite (1996) her contribution to a portfolio produced by Tamarind of works by various artists that combine word and image. Quick-to-See Smith pays homage to Andy Warhol in a work full of cross-cultural allusions. A Pop Art soup can is labeled "Posole," a hominy stew that is a staple of the Southwest diet and a traditional feast day food. The title of the piece is a reference to both the holiday and the local term used to describe a combination of red and green chile.
A central figure in oral traditions of cultures around the world, and North America cultures in particular, is the Trickster -- part hero, part fool, part animal, part god. In "Trickster I" and "Trickster II" (1999) Felice Lucero uses juxtapositions of word and image, along with bold black-and-white images of a Pandora's box and jester's hat, to connect the trickster of Southwest Native cultures to universal narrative traditions that cross the boundaries of time and culture. Duane Slick has twice been a guest artist at Tamarind. In 1993, he produced two lithographs that focus on the transformative powers of the trickster Coyote. Slick's "Diagrams for Landscape" and "The Manifestations: The Coyote Tree" (1993) presents a complex allegory. As Szabo interprets these encoded images "The battle here is for the tree, the land, the rights of Native people. Is the fate of the tree, its bark pulling away from the trunk, associated with an agreement or treaty suggested by the folded hands and the battle below?"
Translating Paint into Print
Most of the artists in the exhibition are painters who transfer their painting styles into the medium of lithography. In some cases the process is quite direct, as in Dan Namingha's "Evening Silence" (1980). According to Szabo, "The strong outline of a Hopi village rises against the vibrant sky while the light of the Southwest reveals the solid geometry of the warm adobe. This is a painting translated into the lithographic medium, the textures and colors echoing those of the artist's canvases."
In other cases, the translation from painting to print is much freer, as for example in Medicine Lodge (1997). Patrick Houle, a painter of abstract landscapes and installation artist known for works of biting social commentary, uses an image from a 1907 German postcard of a Blackfoot Medicine Lodge gathering juxtaposed with a written passage about the popular authors Karl May and James Fenimore Cooper. Gestural markings and red drip marks emphasize the destructive effect on Native cultures of the fictional construct of the noble savage. James Havard, a painter who received wide recognition as an abstract illusionist during the 1970s and 1980s, translates that illusionism from painting to lithography in Peyote Meeting (1983) in which bold gestural applications of color contrast with a photograph of the traditional ritual.
Emmi Whitehorse, represented in the exhibition by two works, union, from "Word Suite" (1994) and "Leaf" (1997) stands out as an artist who began her career as a printmaker and only later gained recognition as a painter. Inspired by the landscape and memories of the Navajo reservation, Whitehorse, an abstract artist, uses a layering process to build up complex atmospheric spaces -- not as depictions of specific locations, but rather as poetic evocations of nature and geometry. An important influence on both her process and her vision has been her grandmother, a weaver, for the process of weaving is also one of layering geometry and nature.
The exhibition was organized by Joyce Szabo, for the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and is traveling under the auspices of TREX: the Traveling Exhibitions Program of the Museum of New Mexico.
A public reception for Multiple Impressions: Native American Artists and the Print will be held on Oct. 16 at 7 p.m. The exhibition will remain on view at the Kennedy Museum through Dec. 1.
The Kennedy Museum of Art is located in historic Lin Hall at The Ridges on the Ohio University campus. The museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 12 to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 12 to 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. Admission and parking are free. Guided tours are available on most Saturdays to provide information about current exhibitions and Lin Hall. Pre-arranged guided tours are available to community and school groups with advance notice. For information or to book tours call (740) 593-1304. For more information please visit our Web site at www.ohiou.edu/museum.
