2009: Lifetime Achievement Allan Houser Legacy Award Winners
July 14, 2009 - SWAIAOscar Howe (1915-1983)
Yanktonai Dakota
"My paintings have substantiated my thoughts of giving visual form to the poetry of worded beauty and truth." Oscar Howe
Modern painting has its share of monumental figures and artwork. In Native art, the terms that define the parameters of contemporary aesthetics are often tethered deeply to traditional forms. Still, there are iconoclasts and luminaries in Native art that reshape our perceptions about Native identity and transcend classifications. Oscar Howe's voice as a visionary artist and educator set an unequivocal standard in contemporary painting by re-imaging his Sioux heritage with a new and wondrous language.
In a letter written by Howe on April 18, 1958 to Jeanne Snodgrass, Curator of American Indian Art at the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, OK, Howe lamented a juried rejection of one of his paintings because it lacked "traditional Indian style." He wrote, "Indian art can compete with any art in the world, but not as a suppressed art" and noted the "power, strength and individualism" in the old Indian paintings, beyond "pretty, stylized pictures."
It is within this vantage point as both an artist and advocate for all Native art and its respective communities that Howe accelerated his artwork into bold terrain. Howe's paintings are meticulously measured and calculated and at times progress towards the avant-garde. Images often disassemble into abstract patterns and disjointed color combinations reminiscent of cubism, while other paintings express the hyper-reality of pop and graphic art.
Howe was born in Joe Creek, on the Crow Creek Reservation of South Dakota. He attended the Pierre Indian School until 1933. He entered the Santa Fe Indian School at 20 and studied with Dorothy Dunn where his artistic talent and creative restlessness quickly realized itself. As a student, he exhibited his art through the United States including Brooklyn Museums Gallery for Living Artists and San Francisco's Civic Center. Howe spent three and half years in the Army during WWII. While stationed in Germany, he met Heidi Hempel whom he later married in 1947. After receiving his MFA degree in 1954 from the University of Oklahoma, he was eventually appointed as an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at the University of South Dakota and was appointed as Artist-in-Residence of USD until his retirement in 1980.
John Day, Director of the Oscar Howe Memorial Association, Curator of the USD Oscar Howe Collection and Howe biographer writes, "Howe achieved a balance between traditional and individual artistic expression, and in the process he became a pivotal influence upon the future of Native American painting."
Oscar Howe's impact on contemporary Native art is still in its infancy. As the limits and boundaries of Native art continue to dissolve, Howe's legacy is undeniably present and a key ingredient to the foundations of traditional and modern Native expression. It is a legacy that emulates Howe's life applied to canvass.
Sofia Medina
Zia Pueblo
"Although I've been told that I make good pottery, I never thought I would get something like this. I'm very honored." Sofia Medina
There are ways in which the hands of the artist communicate a story. By holding chisels to stone or brushes to a canvass, a world unravels at the fingertips of the artist. Sophia Medina's hands have written volumes through her pottery. For the last 45 years, Medina has gathered, sifted and fired clay through the same methods as her ancestors. Each time a new pot is shaped from raw clay into a vessel, it carries a voluminous and sweeping chronicle of her life within its walls.
"Things haven't changed much," Medina says with understated tone about the methods she uses to create her pots; it is a ritual she has repeated countless times. "I started making these traditional potteries fulltime in1964. We use the same kind of minerals and the same kind of clay and paint; we really haven't changed what our ancestors used. We are following the same methods."
Indeed, it is this same method that has hardly changed over hundreds of years. The majority of her materials are collected near her home in Zia Pueblo. The red clay she uses is gathered in the pueblo, while minerals like basalt and other materials like white clay and volcano rock are gathered within a 25 miles radius. The clay is soaked and cleaned from rocks and roots. The basalt is put through a rock sifter and ground by hand. The remaining process--coiling, painting, polishing and firing--is what separates Medina and makes her pottery masterful and expressive.
To hold one of Sofia Medina's pots is to hold a compendium of her lifetime and legacy. Medina, who studied with her husband's grandmother, Zia Potter Trinidad Medina, also spends time teaching pottery technique to younger generations. With the exception of small chili bowls that bear the distinct Zia Pueblo designs, Sofia has remained steadfast in creating pots, which were originally used to carry drinking water from the river.
"We still use them in ceremonies or to tell stories and bake puddings," she says. Medina also uses the original designs that she learned from Trinidad. There are rainbows, lines that symbolize rain and of course the Zia bird, an image that in spite its ubiquity is a central and honored component in her pottery designs. "I have no copies," she says with a smile about the intricate designs while holding a pot in her lap and explaining the meanings behind their painted symbols, "they're all in my head."
There is little guesswork about Medina's contributions to Zia Pueblo pottery. She is simply one of the foremost architects of an art form, whose relevance to the Zia Pueblo is a central component to its identify. Somehow the designations that often compartmentalize art fall away when viewing her pottery. Its beauty lies largely in its nuance and the stories that wait beneath the clay.
Sam English
Turtle Mountain Chippewa
"Each blank canvas is a new journey." Sam English
Sam English has experienced, and at times survived, many transitions in his life. In a way, they are his shadow; a source of strength that fuels his creativity and his work with others, who resemble his own life by recovering from the darkness of alcoholism. To hear him tell the story of his life is nothing less than miraculous. There is the reoccurring cycle of bright chapters in his life where his creative talent and intellect earned him various leadership positions in the Native community only to be dismantled by the crippling weight of alcohol. But then in 1981 at age 39, he decided to rediscover and commit himself to the first love of his life, painting. It is a moment of resolve that literally saved his life.
English grew up wanting to be an artist. "I took some of those beginners drawing courses in College, but they really didn't work out. I guess I'm head strong and I didn't a want to listen. They said to do things one way and I thought there was a better way to do it."
English was raised in Ignacio, CO. It was period in his life when his native heritage was largely unknown to him. "I'm a Chippewa Indian Ojibwa. I'm enrolled with the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and a descendent of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indian of Red Lake Minnesota, but I was born and raised in the Southwest. I was around Indians, but I was still separated because I didn't know what a Chippewa Indian was, nobody really talked about it." It wasn't until he moved to the Bay Area to attend the University of San Francisco in 1965, that he discovered his heritage by becoming involved with various Native rights groups.
"There were these movements, everybody was exploring and so were the Indians. It was hard to find information because it wasn't really out there yet. I joined North American Indian Art Group. RC Gorman and Earl Livermore were also members as was Patrick Suazo Hinds from Tesuque Pueblo. He was one my role models. He said go out to these sidewalk art shows, show your work and let people buy it, if they want it. And I never forgot that."
In spite of the Bay Area's creative ethos, English was slipping further into binge drinking. But on December 10, 1981, after 25 years of battling with the disease, English had his last drink. What followed were tumultuous, but productive years that finally introduced the world to his art. Through his gallery in Albuquerque's Old Town, English dove deeply into acrylics and oils and attracted collectors from around the globe. Now at 66, English has found a new direction. His work in recovery and healing from alcohol, drugs, violence and diabetes in the Native community has inspired him to open a healing center to provide a place of hope, health and direction for others struggling with addiction. "I'm tired of watching Indians die like this," he says pointedly.
Many of the images of Native people in English's signature paintings are looking up at the sky. It connotes to what he refers to as his journey, which has been peppered with great success and debilitating struggle. What is certain is that his journey is far from over and if there is value from the things that has overcome it is surely to avail itself as a path for others to follow.