Native American women in the arts
Encyclopedia
Women in Native American communities have been producing art intertwined with spirituality, life, and beauty for centuries. According to mixed-media artist, Nadema Agard, "Native American women have always been an integral part of the creative vision, and [they] continue to contribute to Indian aesthetics independently, in collaboration with other women, and in tandem with Native American men." Women have worked to produce traditional art, passing these crafts down generation by generation, as well as contemporary art in the form of photography
, printmaking
, and performance art
.
, an African American
-Ojibwe sculptor during the mid-1800s, began her studies at Oberlin College
, a college known as the first in the United States to admit African American students. It was there that Lewis changed her Ojibwe name Wildfire due to discrimination and pressure she felt from the community. She began to study under the guidance of popular sculptor Edward Augustus Brackett after moving to Boston in 1863, and there she created a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
, the commander of the African American 54th Regiment
. This work drew great praise from the community, including that from fellow sculptor Harriet Hosmer and the Shaw family, who offered to buy the bust. With the payments she received from Shaw's likeness Lewis was able to fund her trip to Rome, Italy in 1865. There she expanded her arts in the neoclassical
realm and became the first American woman to to seek training in neoclassical sculpture.
In Rome, Lewis shared a space, the studio of 18th-century Italian sculptor Antonio Canova
, with fellow sculptor Anne Whitney
. Lewis began to carve in marble to avoid accusations some would make of fellow artists that their work was done by studio stone cutters. She found inspiration in her dual ancestry, the abolitionist fight, and the civil war. Another great inspiration of hers was the work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
and his poem, The Song of Hiawatha
, and she sculpted a bust in his honor due to her admiration. As described by Anne Whitney, "Mr L. sat to her & they think it is now quite a creditable performance, better I think than many likenesses of him." Another well-known sculpture of hers, Forever Free, stands in white marble. Inspired by the Emancipation Proclamation
, it depicts a man with his hand raised with a broken chain and shackle. Beside the man is a woman on her knees praying.
In 1876, Lewis' work was shown at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition
. Lewis's epic work, The Death of Cleopatra, was presented for the occasion. In this piece she portrayed the Egypt
ian queen in a vulnerable state, which was unprecedented for the time. Artist William J. Clark commented at the time:
In the late 1800s Angel De Cora
(Ho-chunk
) was a painter and writer who contributed to art as a Native American who had been assimilated through a policy put forth by President Grant
. Her earliest paintings appeared with her own stories, The Sick Child and The Grey Wolf's Daughter, in Harper's Magazine
. In her writing De Cora sought to change attitudes about Native Americans and described situations everyone could relate to. De Cora had a talent with combining a mix of Native American painting style with the mainstream European American style popular at the time, otherwise described as transculturation
, and reflected the emotions from her stories in her art. Her success with her stories in Harper's helped her start a career in illustrating books about Native Americans for children. Though she had other interests in art, she was encouraged by her professors to pursue Native American influenced art because of an erroneous idea that art and ethnicity were linked. Though De Cora flourished as an artist, she was still torn between two identities that were placed on her: one the noble savage
, the other a product of successful assimilation, and though Harper's had published her work, it described her as a "naive (...) Indian girl," and one of her mentors only had this to say about her: "Unfortunately she was a woman and still more unfortunately an American Indian."
In 1900 De Cora was given the opportunity to design the frontispiece
for ethnologist Francis LaFlesche's book, The Middle Five, and soon after won a contest to also design the book's cover. On the cover she created her own typography with its own Native American influence and illustrated it with the simplistic style that was popular at the time. Not long after De Cora became a professor of Native Indian Art at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
in 1906 and was invested in building an appreciation for Native American art and history with the idea in mind to bring Native American art into mainstream culture. De Cora felt art was central to the economic survival and preservation of Native American culture and encouraged her students to combine their Native American art into modern art to produce marketable items that could be used in home design. By doing so, De Cora enabled a trend toward art. She knew Native Americans would eventually leave certain aspects of their culture behind in time, but she also felt art would be one of the things to create a united community and help Native Americans to be proud of their heritage. "He may shed his outer skin, but his markings lie below that and should show up only the brighter," she said of Native Americans during a speech in a 1911 proceeding of the Society of American Indians
.
Though the history of Dat So La Lee
is slightly of a mythic quality, what is known of her is her discovery as a washerwoman by Amy and Abe Cohn
in 1895, who found her baskets incredibly intriguing. The Cohns began selling her baskets in their shop in 1899 to tourists of Lake Tahoe
. Though her basketry was revered, like many Native Americans of the day Dat So La Lee
was presented by Amy Cohn as the noble savage through her lectures. "To the whole audience there was no incongruity in having a white woman explain the basket's symbols, while the weaver herself remained silent." Further, Dat So La Lee
's image was displayed on flyers as a simple-minded, unattractive native who Abe Cohn had to put up with. The Cohns fabricated much of her life for their own advertising purposes. It was Dat So La Lee
who created the degikup style of basket weaving, though Amy Cohn preferred to boast in lectures this was of the native "pre-contamination" past (that is, before European settlers had appeared). During this time much appropriation and romaticization of Native American culture was popular, and this was not necessarily out of place: Amy Cohn would dress in native regalia for her lectures. Eventually, as a ploy to raise the demand for baskets, the Cohns announced that baskets would be made less and less due to Dat So La Lee's oncoming blindness, though a reporter at the time who interviewed Abe Cohn blamed the decrease on alcoholism. Whether either of these claims are true is undocumented.
was a new medium at the turn of the century and women quickly added it to their repertoire, finding ways to send powerful messages about identity through their images.
Jennie Ross Cobb (Cherokee
) began to break stereotypes about Native Americans by presenting Cherokee
women who were "poised, self-assured, fashionable, confident carriers of two cultures and extremely proud of their Cherokee heritage." Cobb, the great granddaughter of Cherokee chief John Ross
, began photography as a child in Tahlequah, Oklahoma
after receiving a camera from her father. Though formal poses were more traditional at the time, Cobb insisted on taking photographs of women as they did daily activities. Through her photography Cobb was able to capture women with the care that no other photographer could have brought to the medium. This was attributed to Cobb's close connection to her subjects and the ability to, as Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie
puts it, "truly (imagine) Native American women with love and a humanizing eye."
As a child Mabel McKay
(Pomo) had dreams that foresaw her roles of a sucking doctor and basket weaver
. During these dreams she learned to weave baskets as young as six years old and was inspired for designs and their special uses. McKay believed "baskets are living entities, not just pretty objects to look at, and each basket has a particular purpose." She connected baskets with her healing as a doctor and would give a patient a basket of their own. McKay began holding classes to share her basket weaving skills and helped to introduce traditional basket weaving to those outside of the Native American community. During the 1950s and 1960s McKay also made public-speaking engagements at universities and museums in California on Native American culture and the art of basket weaving. By 1975, McKay was known as the last remaining spiritual adviser of the Pomoans. McKay said of her basket weaving, "It's no such thing art. I only follow my dream. That's how I learn."
By 1920 an interest was growing for Native American art, either made by or influenced by Native Americans. Pop Chalee
, who originally came from Taos Pueblo
, ended up running away from her mother's home in Utah when she was only sixteen years old. She and her family settled in Taos Pueblo where, for the most part, she felt like an outsider. These clashing feelings made Chalee and her family decide to move back to Utah.
Chalee began attending the Santa Fe Indian School
in 1930 as a student of Dorothy Dunn
. Chalee was taught in a specific design which would come to be associated with the Kiowa Movement. At Dunn's studio, Native American students were encouraged for the first time to pursue a career in art. In 1936 one of Chalee's paintings was purchased by Disney as an inspiration for Bambi
. After graduating Chalee was commissioned to paint a mural for Maisel's Trading Post along with fellow artists of the time: Awa Tsireh, Joe H. Herrera, Pablita Velarde
, Harrison Begay
, and Popovi Da. Chalee, and continued to paint murals which included sites such as the Albuquerque Airport and the Santa Fe Railroad.
Chalee was not just a visual artist. She also performed while promoting the film version of Annie Get Your Gun
, telling stories, lecturing, and even singing while wearing native dress and elaborate accessories.
Around the same time as Pop Chalee was gaining popularity, another artist, Ellen Neel
, was taking risks in Canada by taking part in potlatch
. This was banned by both the United States and Canada, who saw it as a "useless custom." Neel (Kwakwaka'wakw
) was a totem
woodcarver who was the first to transfer elements of her totem designs to paper and fabric and carved miniature poles for tourists. In 1946 Neel opened Totem Arts Studios and began her work in a former World War II bunker. During this time she also worked on repairing and restoring older poles for the University of British Columbia
, but this work proved tedious and time consuming, and she eventually returned to work on her own art. In 1955 Neel carved five totem poles for Woodward's
department store. In her history, Neel also carved major poles for Stratford, Ontario, and the Museum of Copenhagen in Denmark. "In spite of the fact that she predated (Mungo Martin
) and acted as his mentor, Canadian Council turned down a request to fund her totem pole projects as late as 1960." She would die six years later.
As Ellen Neel was becoming nationally renowned for her carving work, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
(Flathead Salish
) was still in high school, completing a correspondence art course from Famous Artists School. Born in 1940, Quick-To-See Smith did not have an entirely stable childhood. As a daughter of a migrant worker, her family was constantly moving, and she lived in foster homes intermittently. Her father would later inspire Quick-To-See Smith's art in the area of aesthetics, and by 1978 Quick-To-See Smith would display her paintings in her first solo art show before she had even completed her M.F.A. at University of New Mexico
. Quick-To-See Smith's "art responds to art's historical misappropriations of Native cultures' symbols," with horses, buffalos, and petroglyphs as constants. Jaune said in 1994 about her work:
Other concerns that influence Quick-To-See Smith's work are racism, sexism, and environmental issues. Quick-To-See Smith is a member of Greenpeace
and has organized protests over land rights, and uses natural art products.
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, printmaking
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
, and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
.
19th century
Edmonia LewisEdmonia Lewis
Mary Edmonia Lewis was the first African American and Native American woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world...
, an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
-Ojibwe sculptor during the mid-1800s, began her studies at Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
, a college known as the first in the United States to admit African American students. It was there that Lewis changed her Ojibwe name Wildfire due to discrimination and pressure she felt from the community. She began to study under the guidance of popular sculptor Edward Augustus Brackett after moving to Boston in 1863, and there she created a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
Robert Gould Shaw
Robert Gould Shaw was an American officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. As colonel, he commanded the all-black 54th Regiment, which entered the war in 1863. He was killed in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina...
, the commander of the African American 54th Regiment
54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry
The 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment that saw extensive service in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The regiment was one of the first official black units in the United States during the Civil War...
. This work drew great praise from the community, including that from fellow sculptor Harriet Hosmer and the Shaw family, who offered to buy the bust. With the payments she received from Shaw's likeness Lewis was able to fund her trip to Rome, Italy in 1865. There she expanded her arts in the neoclassical
Neoclassical sculpture
Neoclassical sculpture was a sculptural style of the 18th and 19th centuries. The neoclassical period was one of the great ages of public sculpture, though its "classical" prototypes were more likely to be Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures. The neoclassical sculptors paid homage to an idea of...
realm and became the first American woman to to seek training in neoclassical sculpture.
In Rome, Lewis shared a space, the studio of 18th-century Italian sculptor Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova was an Italian sculptor from the Republic of Venice who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh...
, with fellow sculptor Anne Whitney
Anne Whitney
Anne Whitney was an American sculptor and poet. She was born in Watertown, Massachusetts on September 2, 1821 and died in Boston, Massachusetts on January 23, 1915.-Early years:...
. Lewis began to carve in marble to avoid accusations some would make of fellow artists that their work was done by studio stone cutters. She found inspiration in her dual ancestry, the abolitionist fight, and the civil war. Another great inspiration of hers was the work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
and his poem, The Song of Hiawatha
The Song of Hiawatha
The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem, in trochaic tetrameter, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, featuring an Indian hero and loosely based on legends and ethnography of the Ojibwe and other Native American peoples contained in Algic Researches and additional writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft...
, and she sculpted a bust in his honor due to her admiration. As described by Anne Whitney, "Mr L. sat to her & they think it is now quite a creditable performance, better I think than many likenesses of him." Another well-known sculpture of hers, Forever Free, stands in white marble. Inspired by the Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
, it depicts a man with his hand raised with a broken chain and shackle. Beside the man is a woman on her knees praying.
In 1876, Lewis' work was shown at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition
Centennial Exposition
The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. It was officially...
. Lewis's epic work, The Death of Cleopatra, was presented for the occasion. In this piece she portrayed the Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian queen in a vulnerable state, which was unprecedented for the time. Artist William J. Clark commented at the time:
this Cleopatra (...) resembled the real heroine of history (...) Miss Lewis' Cleopatra, like the figures sculpted by Story and Gould, is seated in a chair; the poison of the asp has done its work, and the Queen is dead. The effects of death are represented with such skill as to be absolutely repellent—and it is a question whether a statue of the ghastly characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of legitimate art. Apart from all questions of taste, however, the striking qualities of the work are undeniable, and it could only have been reproduced by a sculptor of very genuine endowments.
In the late 1800s Angel De Cora
Angel De Cora
Angel De Cora Dietz was a Winnebago painter, illustrator, Native American rights advocate, and teacher at Carlisle Indian School. She was the best known Native American artist before World War I.-Background:...
(Ho-chunk
Ho-Chunk
The Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago, are a tribe of Native Americans, native to what is now Wisconsin and Illinois. There are two federally recognized Ho-Chunk tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska....
) was a painter and writer who contributed to art as a Native American who had been assimilated through a policy put forth by President Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
. Her earliest paintings appeared with her own stories, The Sick Child and The Grey Wolf's Daughter, in Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
. In her writing De Cora sought to change attitudes about Native Americans and described situations everyone could relate to. De Cora had a talent with combining a mix of Native American painting style with the mainstream European American style popular at the time, otherwise described as transculturation
Transculturation
Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures....
, and reflected the emotions from her stories in her art. Her success with her stories in Harper's helped her start a career in illustrating books about Native Americans for children. Though she had other interests in art, she was encouraged by her professors to pursue Native American influenced art because of an erroneous idea that art and ethnicity were linked. Though De Cora flourished as an artist, she was still torn between two identities that were placed on her: one the noble savage
Noble savage
The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...
, the other a product of successful assimilation, and though Harper's had published her work, it described her as a "naive (...) Indian girl," and one of her mentors only had this to say about her: "Unfortunately she was a woman and still more unfortunately an American Indian."
In 1900 De Cora was given the opportunity to design the frontispiece
Frontispiece
Frontispiece may refer to:* Book frontispiece, a decorative illustration facing a book's title page* Frontispiece , the combination of elements that frame and decorate the main, or front, door to a building...
for ethnologist Francis LaFlesche's book, The Middle Five, and soon after won a contest to also design the book's cover. On the cover she created her own typography with its own Native American influence and illustrated it with the simplistic style that was popular at the time. Not long after De Cora became a professor of Native Indian Art at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School was an Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1879 at Carlisle, Pennsylvania by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the school was the first off-reservation boarding school, and it became a model for Indian boarding schools in other locations...
in 1906 and was invested in building an appreciation for Native American art and history with the idea in mind to bring Native American art into mainstream culture. De Cora felt art was central to the economic survival and preservation of Native American culture and encouraged her students to combine their Native American art into modern art to produce marketable items that could be used in home design. By doing so, De Cora enabled a trend toward art. She knew Native Americans would eventually leave certain aspects of their culture behind in time, but she also felt art would be one of the things to create a united community and help Native Americans to be proud of their heritage. "He may shed his outer skin, but his markings lie below that and should show up only the brighter," she said of Native Americans during a speech in a 1911 proceeding of the Society of American Indians
Society of American Indians
The Society of American Indians was a progressive group formed in Columbus, Ohio in 1911 by 50 Native Americans, most of them middle-class professional men and women. It was established to address the problems facing Native Americans, such as ways to improve health, education, civil rights, and...
.
Though the history of Dat So La Lee
Dat So La Lee
Dat So La Lee, whose birth name was "Dabuda", meaning "Young Willow", , was a renowned American basket weaver and one of the most famous Native American artists of the 20th century...
is slightly of a mythic quality, what is known of her is her discovery as a washerwoman by Amy and Abe Cohn
Abe Cohn
Abraham Jerome "Abe" Cohn was an American football and basketball player, coach and official. He played football and basketball at the University of Michigan from 1917 to 1920. He coached football and basketball at Whitworth College from 1921 to 1922 and at Spokane University from 1923 to 1924...
in 1895, who found her baskets incredibly intriguing. The Cohns began selling her baskets in their shop in 1899 to tourists of Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe is a large freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the United States. At a surface elevation of , it is located along the border between California and Nevada, west of Carson City. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. Its depth is , making it the USA's second-deepest...
. Though her basketry was revered, like many Native Americans of the day Dat So La Lee
Dat So La Lee
Dat So La Lee, whose birth name was "Dabuda", meaning "Young Willow", , was a renowned American basket weaver and one of the most famous Native American artists of the 20th century...
was presented by Amy Cohn as the noble savage through her lectures. "To the whole audience there was no incongruity in having a white woman explain the basket's symbols, while the weaver herself remained silent." Further, Dat So La Lee
Dat So La Lee
Dat So La Lee, whose birth name was "Dabuda", meaning "Young Willow", , was a renowned American basket weaver and one of the most famous Native American artists of the 20th century...
's image was displayed on flyers as a simple-minded, unattractive native who Abe Cohn had to put up with. The Cohns fabricated much of her life for their own advertising purposes. It was Dat So La Lee
Dat So La Lee
Dat So La Lee, whose birth name was "Dabuda", meaning "Young Willow", , was a renowned American basket weaver and one of the most famous Native American artists of the 20th century...
who created the degikup style of basket weaving, though Amy Cohn preferred to boast in lectures this was of the native "pre-contamination" past (that is, before European settlers had appeared). During this time much appropriation and romaticization of Native American culture was popular, and this was not necessarily out of place: Amy Cohn would dress in native regalia for her lectures. Eventually, as a ploy to raise the demand for baskets, the Cohns announced that baskets would be made less and less due to Dat So La Lee's oncoming blindness, though a reporter at the time who interviewed Abe Cohn blamed the decrease on alcoholism. Whether either of these claims are true is undocumented.
20th Century
PhotographyPhotography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
was a new medium at the turn of the century and women quickly added it to their repertoire, finding ways to send powerful messages about identity through their images.
These photographers portray their cultures not as vanishing, but as part of a lively, assertive group of people confident about the importance of their cultures in the past, their importance to the present and their influence on the future. They sometimes use images identified with Indian cultures, but these images are not used as emblems of a generic unified past. Instead the images carry specific messages or stories about how individual artists interpret family and tribal histories, how they experience the present, or what they project for the future.
Jennie Ross Cobb (Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) began to break stereotypes about Native Americans by presenting Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
women who were "poised, self-assured, fashionable, confident carriers of two cultures and extremely proud of their Cherokee heritage." Cobb, the great granddaughter of Cherokee chief John Ross
John Ross (Cherokee chief)
John Ross , also known as Guwisguwi , was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Native American Nation from 1828–1866...
, began photography as a child in Tahlequah, Oklahoma
Tahlequah, Oklahoma
Tahlequah is a city in Cherokee County, Oklahoma, United States located at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. It was founded as a capital of the original Cherokee Nation in 1838 to welcome those Cherokee forced west on the Trail of Tears. The city's population was 15,753 at the 2010 census. It...
after receiving a camera from her father. Though formal poses were more traditional at the time, Cobb insisted on taking photographs of women as they did daily activities. Through her photography Cobb was able to capture women with the care that no other photographer could have brought to the medium. This was attributed to Cobb's close connection to her subjects and the ability to, as Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie
Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie
Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie is a Seminole-Muscogee-Diné photographer, curator, and educator living in Davis, California.-Background:Hulleah J...
puts it, "truly (imagine) Native American women with love and a humanizing eye."
As a child Mabel McKay
Mabel McKay
Mabel McKay was a member of the Long Valley Cache Creek Pomo Indians. She was the last Dreamer of the Pomo people and a basket making prodigy....
(Pomo) had dreams that foresaw her roles of a sucking doctor and basket weaver
Basket weaving
Basket weaving is the process of weaving unspun vegetable fibres into a basket or other similar form. People and artists who weave baskets are called basketmakers and basket weavers.Basketry is made from a variety of fibrous or pliable materials•anything that will bend and form a shape...
. During these dreams she learned to weave baskets as young as six years old and was inspired for designs and their special uses. McKay believed "baskets are living entities, not just pretty objects to look at, and each basket has a particular purpose." She connected baskets with her healing as a doctor and would give a patient a basket of their own. McKay began holding classes to share her basket weaving skills and helped to introduce traditional basket weaving to those outside of the Native American community. During the 1950s and 1960s McKay also made public-speaking engagements at universities and museums in California on Native American culture and the art of basket weaving. By 1975, McKay was known as the last remaining spiritual adviser of the Pomoans. McKay said of her basket weaving, "It's no such thing art. I only follow my dream. That's how I learn."
By 1920 an interest was growing for Native American art, either made by or influenced by Native Americans. Pop Chalee
Pop Chalee
Pop Chalee, also known as Merina Lujan , was an American painter, muralist, performer, and singer.-The early years:Pop Chalee was born Merina Lujan on March 20, 1906 in Castle Gate, Utah. Her father, Joseph Cruz Lujan was from Taos and her mother Merea Margherete Luenberger, was predominately Swiss...
, who originally came from Taos Pueblo
Taos Pueblo
Taos Pueblo is an ancient pueblo belonging to a Taos speaking Native American tribe of Pueblo people. It is approximately 1000 years old and lies about north of the modern city of Taos, New Mexico, USA...
, ended up running away from her mother's home in Utah when she was only sixteen years old. She and her family settled in Taos Pueblo where, for the most part, she felt like an outsider. These clashing feelings made Chalee and her family decide to move back to Utah.
Chalee began attending the Santa Fe Indian School
Santa Fe Indian School
The Santa Fe Indian School is a secondary school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. It was founded in 1890 as a boarding school for Native American children from the state's Indian pueblos. But in the course of its history, the school has also served as a major cultural catalyst for the...
in 1930 as a student of Dorothy Dunn
Dorothy Dunn
Dorothy Dunn Kramer was an American art instructor who created The Studio School at the Santa Fe Indian School.-Background:Dunn was born on 2 December 1903 in Pottawatomie County, Kansas and educated in Chicago. She first encountered Native American art at the Field Museum in Chicago in 1925...
. Chalee was taught in a specific design which would come to be associated with the Kiowa Movement. At Dunn's studio, Native American students were encouraged for the first time to pursue a career in art. In 1936 one of Chalee's paintings was purchased by Disney as an inspiration for Bambi
Bambi
Bambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand , produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten...
. After graduating Chalee was commissioned to paint a mural for Maisel's Trading Post along with fellow artists of the time: Awa Tsireh, Joe H. Herrera, Pablita Velarde
Pablita Velarde
Pablita Velarde born Tse Tsan was an American painter.-Early life:After the death of her mother when Pablita was about five years old, she and two of her sisters were sent to St Catherine's Indian School in Santa Fe...
, Harrison Begay
Harrison Begay
Harrison Begay , is a renowned Navajo painter, perhaps the most famous of his generation. Begay specializes in watercolors and silkscreen prints. He is the oldest living former student of Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School...
, and Popovi Da. Chalee, and continued to paint murals which included sites such as the Albuquerque Airport and the Santa Fe Railroad.
Chalee was not just a visual artist. She also performed while promoting the film version of Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun (film)
Annie Get Your Gun is a 1950 American musical comedy film loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. The Metro Goldwyn Mayer release, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin and a screenplay by Sidney Sheldon based on the 1946 stage musical of the same name, was directed by George Sidney...
, telling stories, lecturing, and even singing while wearing native dress and elaborate accessories.
Around the same time as Pop Chalee was gaining popularity, another artist, Ellen Neel
Ellen Neel
Ellen Neel was a Kwakwaka'wakw artist woodcarver and is the first woman known to have professionally carved totem poles. She came from Alert Bay, British Columbia, and her work is in public collections throughout the world....
, was taking risks in Canada by taking part in potlatch
Potlatch
A potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and United States. This includes Heiltsuk Nation, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Coast Salish cultures...
. This was banned by both the United States and Canada, who saw it as a "useless custom." Neel (Kwakwaka'wakw
Kwakwaka'wakw
The Kwakwaka'wakw are an Indigenous group of First Nations peoples, numbering about 5,500, who live in British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the adjoining mainland and islands.Kwakwaka'wakw translates as "Those who speak Kwak'wala", describing the collective nations within the area that...
) was a totem
Totem pole
Totem poles are monumental sculptures carved from large trees, mostly Western Red Cedar, by cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America...
woodcarver who was the first to transfer elements of her totem designs to paper and fabric and carved miniature poles for tourists. In 1946 Neel opened Totem Arts Studios and began her work in a former World War II bunker. During this time she also worked on repairing and restoring older poles for the University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
, but this work proved tedious and time consuming, and she eventually returned to work on her own art. In 1955 Neel carved five totem poles for Woodward's
Woodward's
Woodward's was the name of a department store chain which operated in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada for one hundred years, before its sale to the Hudson's Bay Company .-History:...
department store. In her history, Neel also carved major poles for Stratford, Ontario, and the Museum of Copenhagen in Denmark. "In spite of the fact that she predated (Mungo Martin
Mungo Martin
Chief Mungo Martin or Nakapenkem , Datsa , was an important figure in Northwest Coast style art, specifically that of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples. He was a major contributor to Kwakwaka'wakw art, especially in the realm of wood sculpture and painting...
) and acted as his mentor, Canadian Council turned down a request to fund her totem pole projects as late as 1960." She would die six years later.
As Ellen Neel was becoming nationally renowned for her carving work, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith is a Native American contemporary artist. Notably her work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Museum of Modern Art in New York City.- Biography :Born in 1940...
(Flathead Salish
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation are the Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pend d'Oreilles Tribes. The Flatheads lived between the Cascade Mountains and Rocky Mountains. The Salish initially lived entirely east of the Continental Divide but established their...
) was still in high school, completing a correspondence art course from Famous Artists School. Born in 1940, Quick-To-See Smith did not have an entirely stable childhood. As a daughter of a migrant worker, her family was constantly moving, and she lived in foster homes intermittently. Her father would later inspire Quick-To-See Smith's art in the area of aesthetics, and by 1978 Quick-To-See Smith would display her paintings in her first solo art show before she had even completed her M.F.A. at University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...
. Quick-To-See Smith's "art responds to art's historical misappropriations of Native cultures' symbols," with horses, buffalos, and petroglyphs as constants. Jaune said in 1994 about her work:
My paintings are expressing my feelings about particular things. They are not generic works (...) Each painting is a kind of story about something that I'm thinking about. And if I can't relate to it personally, if it doesn't have meaning for me (...) then how can I make a painting about it?
Other concerns that influence Quick-To-See Smith's work are racism, sexism, and environmental issues. Quick-To-See Smith is a member of Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
and has organized protests over land rights, and uses natural art products.
See also
- Depiction of women artists in art history
- List of indigenous artists of the Americas
- List of Native American artists
- Native American ArtNative American artVisual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic traditions of the indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present...
- Native Women in the Arts
- Timeline of Native American art historyTimeline of Native American art historyThis is a chronological list of significant or pivotal moments in the development of Native American art or the visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas...
- Women artistsWomen artistsWomen artists have been involved in making art in most times and places. Often certain certain media are associated with women, particularly textile arts; however, these gender roles in art change in different cultures and communities...
External links
- Pablita Velarde Museum of Indian Women in the Arts, proposed museum