Native Art Visual Visions

Tom Kanthak - Waa-Waash-Ke-Shi, Mii-Gwech (Deer, Thank You) In Ojibwe (2014)

The curator of this Imago Mundi collection, Jennifer Karch Verzé, traveled 10,000 kilometers in forty-five days: 4 geographical regions (Central Canada, New England, the Northern Plains, the Southwest); 11 States (South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Minnesota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado); 2 Provinces (Ontario and Quebec); 8 reservations (Crow, Cheyenne, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reservation, Mohawk, Navajo, Hopi, Apache).

Denesse Paul - Across The Big Water (2014)

My journey - says the curator - took me through some amazing country: from sweeping landscapes in North Dakota to majestic mountains and buttes in Monument Valley; through golden deserts dotted with saguaro cactus in Arizona, to endless fields of sage and sweetgrass in South Dakota; from the forests of wild pine and rock of the Canadian Shield to stretches of flatness with clouds blaring above in Montana; from the wide, rose-colored deserts and broken mesas of New Mexico to sprawling cities with networks of highways. I had the utmost confirmation that the world of North American Natives is a complex matrix of spiritual cosmologies, art content, legends and personal histories, unlike anything I had ever experienced.”

Nathalie Bertin – Rabbit (2014)

In this wide and diverse geographical framework - Karch Verzé continues – “Native artists, trained in their communities and in professional art schools and universities, living in cities or on reservations, work in a broad range of media, conceptual modes and expressive styles. Sharing their art as a contemporary expression, derived from cultural memory and their hidden history, the collection becomes a composite awareness of symbol and concept, of new creation, experimentation and experience.”

Frank Buffalo Hyde - Close Encounter On The Rez (2014)

A noteworthy perspective in the development of Native American art is that of the trading posts, that have existed since the days of the Western frontier. These were often managed by traders who, both intentionally and unintentionally, have guided the production of an artistic movement and have become collectors of unique, valuable and often amazing works. Ed Chamerlain gives the example of the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado Arizona, of which he is the former curator, where “visitors, artists, collectors and explorers from around the world stop by Hubbell’s daily to learn, look, and laugh, seek sustenance, grounding, and guidance, and discover a world of unlimited creative opportunities with an abundance of inspiration.”

Phillema Brown - Beauty, Prayer, Strength, Unity (2014)

All these elements converge in a new expression, that of ‘Native Renaissance’. Anthony Deiter, Chair and Professor of Art at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, clarifies its meaning: “This renaissance is now manifesting itself on a dynamic level in the art and media world. In short, Native America is talking and they are bringing to the international artistic narrative a unique and colorful Indigenous palette. Within this area of our ‘Indigenous’ world are some very great artists, from some very respected peoples and who possess some very powerful visual narrative, here yesterday, now today and into the future.”