Artist Statement~as of 1/18/2013

This work navigates through “split-headedness,” which comes from being raised within an indigenous/tribal paradigm as well as having education in linear, Western concepts and society. This journey continues by sifting indigenous identity through a colonized being searching to decolonize, discovering ways to bridge understanding of what it is to exist in a state of two conflicting paradigms. The aim is for this work to reverberate the current spirit of resilience and healing within my community with expressive mark making and vibrant colors. This exploration allows reclaiming misconceptions about how indigenous identity is depicted. My studio practice of painting and research leads to experimentation with indigenous symbols, depictions, and philosophy, creating an artistic space for these expressions to exist within the art-historically loaded realm of Western (a tradition of European and Modernist American) painting. Creating scarred, layered surfaces with palette knife painting and scraping, bringing forth emerging and disappearing figures with squeegees, I create emotive landscapes that bridge between literal and abstract, searching for where my identity belongs. Following an oil-paint bar line transverse ancestral maps leads one through these plains of generational trauma, nostalgia, histories and stories. By using a Euro-centric historically packed medium, oil painting, the dichotomy of understanding contemporary indigenous people hoods struggle to relate, connect, and live in a society created to destroy them is ambiguously revealed. By excavating complicated and ugly psychological depths, beauty is unveiled through re-creation, using marks that manifest qualities of present and lost ceremonies, bodies, language, song, and homelands.

Tobacco Tie Red String Frame

I have been thinking a lot about how to 'finish' my paintings, in particular the large oil painting I've been working on through out this first term. I ended up choosing to hand sew the edges of my painting with red, 'tobacco ties' string and free hang the piece so the edges hang and lift off the wall. This red string has a very specific meaning to me, it is the type of string I've grown up using at ceremony to tie together tobacco tie prayers, which are used in sweatlodge and other ceremonies. Through hand sewing these edges it adds an element of labor and hand sewing clothes, garments, and the dolls I've been making recently.

Monotype Workshop at Crow's Shadow

Had a great Saturday making monotype prints at Crow's Shadow institute of the arts on the Umatilla Rez in Eastern Oregon. Got to work with and learn from Frank Janzen the master printer out there, trained from Tamarind and has worked with lot's of great artists. It was a crazy day! Shirod Younker and Kaliko picked me up at 4:26 am in the dark and rain and then we went the TA truck stop off 84 to wait for Toma, who was late!! Once we all made it in the car and got some truck stop coffee (tea for me) and ate some donuts, we were off to the Rez! Making it at 9 am just in time to view the incredible artwork up, watching a demo from Frank, and then diving in to a full on day of printmaking! :) It felt good to be indigenous, with my peers, out in indian country, making art....