Tag: Native American Art

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Daily Art Moment: Cowlitz artist

Image description: Basket, Cowlitz artist, cedar root, beargrass and dyed beargrass, 7 ¾ x 10 x 9 ¼ inches. 1. A round woven basket featuring a chevron pattern rendered in three tones of materials: light beige, medium brown, and dark brown. The basket has a wide mouth and gently narrows to a small base. It is tightly woven using the medium brown tone as a background on which the light beige and dark brown are used to create pattern. The dark brown and pale beige combine to repeat a double chevron pattern around the basket in an upper and lower row. At the center of each chevron at the top is a small, inverted triangle shape.

Plateau basketry traditions encompass several techniques including coiling which we see with this delightful Cowlitz basket. The vibrant design of this sturdy and well-balanced basket is a wonderful example of the decorative use of imbrication. This process transformed a basket of plain appearance (as seen on the inside) with the addition of different colors of…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Cheyenne Blanket

[Image description: Cheyenne artist, Blanket, 73 ¾ x 55 ½ inches, wool, glass beads. A rectangular, leaf green blanket with a narrow strip of beading running lengthwise along the middle. The blanket shows some discoloration where the fabric has faded and its edges are frayed where the stitched binding has come away. Stretching across the work, a narrow strip of white beading is punctuated by five blue beaded squares that are flanked on either side by slim yellow and red stripes and rows of blue beaded triangle shapes. Four round white beaded circles with blue crosses are interspersed between the squares. Pairs of long beige cords emanate from the circle centers, some lay stretched across the beading, some are coiled.]

Green is a color infrequently seen in most collections of Plains material, which makes this beaded trade blanket all the more striking. The wool blanket, probably received from a trader in exchange for other goods, was embellished in the same manner as a tanned animal hide: a long, beaded strip was attached along the middle,…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Shaun Peterson

Circling Ravens II. Shaun Peterson. 2014. Pigment and Cor-Ten steel on red cedar. 2 in x 22 in diameter. Round wooden circle with a bright red edge, a strip of flat gray with carving revealing the natural cedar color. The pattern of a beak with two oval eyes as seen from a front-facing perspective is repeated four times around the circle. Inside is a flat black square with rounded edges with four crow heads carved into the black with shiny black marbles as eyes. The raven heads are viewed from a side perspective and have intricate carvings revealing eyes, beak, face feathers, and a neck. A smaller square in the middle of the ravens is filled with repeated patterns that resemble crow footprints and a four point star in the middle.

Ravens hold special significance and symbolism in many cultures and traditions, and especially in the Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwest, as seen here in Shaun Peterson’s Circling Ravens II. These birds are woven into art, into storytelling, into deep personal and cultural connections. Peterson, whose Native name is Qwalsius, uses the phrase “traditional…  Read more

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Podcast—Playing With Fire: in Conversation with Virgil Ortiz

On this episode, Kathleen Ash-Milby and John P. Lukavic are joined by multi-hyphenate Native artist, Virgil Ortiz. With his work in subversive clay sculptures, futuristic fashion design, and a years-long science-fiction film & museum exhibition project about the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, Virgil Ortiz is breaking boundaries and using his platform to educate and inspire awe. This…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Shan Goshorn

Shan Goshorn was a respected Cherokee artist who initially became known for her deeply personal work in the 1990s as a photographer and mixed media artist. She became best known for her paper baskets which combined historical imagery and text with traditional Cherokee basket-weaving techniques. Chief Antoine Moise is part of a series of works…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Terresa White, Mark Tetpon, and Don Johnston

A multi-media sculpture composed of three main segments. At center is a bronze seal seen with its hind flippers at top and its head at bottom. A round opening in the center of the seal’s body holds a woman’s face partially covered by the profile of a silver-gray seal. Round ivory inlay circles in cream and orange are on the seal’s front flippers at bottom. Another round opening at the seal’s head holds woven baleen surrounding an ivory circle in cream and orange. Five brown spokes radiate out from each side of the central seal and are tied to dark, gently curving half hoops that cup the seal body. At the end of each spoke are ivory figures, each side mirroring the other. The sculptures are from bottom polar bears, seals, dancers holding drums and drumsticks, fish and ulus (knives). Facial features like eyes and noses and details on the dancers clothing are in black on the almost white ivory. The ulus have ivory handles with black dot decoration and short, dark fan shaped blades. The sculpture is topped with a hunter in a canoe set on the seal’s flippers. The hunter holds a fishing spear and coiled rope and wears wide-brimmed hat rendered in orange and cream ivory. The sculpture stands on a single post set into a round base.

Seal Vision: Shared Spirit celebrates the inter-related lives of seals with the people and animals of the far north. Echoing the format of Yu’pik dance masks, this striking mixed media sculpture is the result of a collaboration between Terresa White (Yup’ik), Mark Tetpon (Inupiaq) and Don Johnston (Qagan Tayagungin Aleut). There are so many stories…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Mary Adams

Strawberry Basket by Mary Adams (Mohawk, Canadian), 2 inches x 2 inches, ash splints and commercial die. This tiny basket with a lid is a natural golden color overall and topped with a decorative loop handle that is dyed green to imitate leaves and a stem. The whole basket has a bumpy texture due to the weave of the materials. The weave creates rows of small looping circles that hug the surface with the open ends of the loops facing outward. They are tilted slightly downward on the body of the basket and more upward on the lid. Around the edge of the lid, where it meets the body of the basket, the weaving materials are bound together with a splint spiralling around the edge. It looks very much like an unripe strawberry with the dark shadowy centers of each of the loops resembling rows of seeds.

At two inches by two inches in diameter, this piece by Mary Adams (Mohawk, Canadian) feels quintessentially “small but mighty” and so full of intricate beauty. In these fraught days, we invite you to spend some time writing in this spirit of “small but mighty,” knowing that each of us has a mighty role to…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Haudenosaunee / Iroquois artist

Haudenosaunee/Iroquois artist, Pouch, 8 x 4 inches, cotton, silk and glass beads. A photo of a colorful U-shaped pouch with handle against a gray background. The pouch is slightly narrower at the top then widens at the bottom. At the center, set against black velvet is a large, white, beaded flower topped by a pink, beaded flower with pale green, gold, and blue, beaded leaves. Surrounding the flowers are white and brick-red beadwork lines composed of three white beads, two larger brick-red beads, then three white beads. Each line radiates outward from the flowers at center. Two lines of white beading encompasses the center designs running along the edge of the pouch. At the outer edge of the pouch is a red cotton border with loops of gold beads along the sides and turquoise blue beaded loops along the bottom. Some areas of beading are missing at the bottom center and at the left edge. The top of the pouch shows a thin, short, tan cotton handle. Pale blue ribbon embellishes the opening of the pouch but is partially missing, exposing the hand stitching along the pouch’s opening.

This small but ornate pouch represents a very distinctive beadwork innovation created by Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) artists in the mid- to late-19th century. Small fabric bags, pin cushions, photo frames and other purely decorative forms, known as “whimsies,” were beaded with thick layers of stacked beadwork. The artists often favored translucent beads on black or bright…  Read more

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Write Around PAM: Dyani White Hawk

Wókaǧe/ Create from suite Takes Care of Them, Dyani White Hawk, 44 x 23 ¼ inches, screen print and metallic foil. A vertical rectangular print featuring the bodice of an embellished, yellow dress. The bodice is rectangular shaped with the top being slightly narrower than the bottom. The top quarter of this rectangle has a semi- circular yoke composed of ten rows of narrow white strips placed close together that resemble fringe. On this yoke three bunches of ribbon fan out from the top of the bunch in red, white, purple and navy. The bottom of the yoke has small, round, copper shapes along its edge. The majority of the bodice is a bright, variegated, golden yellow. At the bottom hem of the bodice are horizontal rows of “ribbon” in navy, purple, white, red. Just above the ribbon rows are five crosses composed of the white fringe strips from the yoke with a copper circle shape at each center. The bodice is set on a white background.

This screenprint by Dyani White Hawk was inspired by a Plains style women’s dentalium dress. You can almost feel the ribbons, the wool, the shells, the metallic details, the hemline. Learn more about the creation of this piece and the series Takes Care of Them. Then take some time to write a bit, using something…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Marcus Amerman

The Gathering, Marcus Amerman, 10 1/8 x 17 inches, glass beads on cotton cloth. A horizontal, rectangular work depicting a grouping of individuals on horseback arranged in a line in front of the Portland skyline with Mt. Hood in the distance. The grouping takes up the lower half of the work. They are shown on a patch of pale green grass wearing white feather headdresses and finery in blues, brick red, white and yellow. Their brown and white horses are adorned in similar colors. Just behind the group on the left are 2 brown tipis. The cityscape in the middle ground is composed of geometric buildings beaded in gray, white and black set against the blue and white mountains and blue sky in the upper half.

For #NativeAmericanHeritageDay, it seemed a most appropriate choice to feature this celebratory work by Marcus Amerman (American and Choctaw, b.1959), titled, The Gathering (1997). In this completely beaded panel, the artist has depicted a group of Native American riders, bedecked in their finery, including feather headdresses and beaded horse gear, standing proudly against a Portland cityscape.…  Read more