Contemporary Native American artists at new Nazareth gallery in Pittsford
Native American artists blend time periods in work on exhibit at new Nazareth art gallery
A pioneering art show at Nazareth College brings age-old Native American designs into the world of iPods and space aliens.
“Inside Out Haudenosaunee” features seven contemporary Iroquois artists with a dual identity. With one foot in tradition and the other in the computer age, they infuse familiar clay and beads with today’s images.
You might find a portrait of a young Mohawk man with a nose ring, headphones and Ozzy Osbourne sunglasses. Another picture will make you ask: Why’s that Seneca woman flying over giant Budweiser billboards in Times Square?
“These 21st-century images reflect who the Seneca are today,” says Cathy Sweet, director of Nazareth College Arts Center’s new gallery. “But the notion of displaying their art in a white, contemporary gallery like ours is new to them.”
The exhibit was launched by Nazareth and Ganondagan State Historic Site, the Seneca cultural center in Victor. Ganondagan artists felt honored to have their work showcased.
“We’ve never been asked to participate in a gallery’s opening,” says Jeanette Miller, executive director for Friends of Ganondagan. “But we often get called upon to put a Band-Aid on art shows trying to prove their ethnic diversity. Here, we’re doing much more.”
The show will jolt visitors who think of “Indian art” as the $5 eagle pin they bought with their bison burger at last summer’s powwow. The experimental works at Nazareth are neither commercial nor cheap. They go for $500 to $10,000, and will appeal to free spirits with deep pockets and an open mind.
Even traditional-looking figures pack an unexpected depth charge.
Peter B. Jones creates sculptures of Seneca elders with traditional materials such as clay, beads and deer sinews. They have classic simplicity of form. But how serene are these figures below the surface?
Take a close look. One elder clenches his fists and tenses his face with outrage.
“He’s an angry Indian,” says Jones, 62, who lives on the Cattaraugus Reservation in Erie County.
“Perhaps it’s my own anger at everything going on with the U.S. government. No one’s owning up to the fictional system of finance that we have. It reflects today’s moral standards.”
Another of his sculptures shows Sky Woman — a legendary Seneca spirit who falls to earth and creates North America on a turtle’s back. In Jones’ version, she’s a casino cocktail waitress who tumbles with a tray of drinks onto the turtle. Jones comically alludes to tax disputes over Native American casino resorts and cigarette sales.
“My work tries to capture what’s going on in the world,” he says.
The same creation myth gets equally offbeat treatment by Katsitsionni Fox, an artist from Akwesasne Reservation in Franklin County. Her computer-manipulated photos show Sky Woman floating over the glitz and congestion of Manhattan’s Times Square. Perhaps she’s thinking: The Dutch paid $24 too much for this garish eyesore.
Victor resident G. Peter Jemison uses photos from his wife, Jeanette Miller, to build a true creation story: the history of her family. A large collage of carefully arranged Office Max copies portrays four generations of Millers — including her father, Ray, after fighting in the Normandy invasion.
Albany artist Melanie Printup Hope also puts a family member in her beads-on-leather portrait, Iroquois Man. She shows her brother welding steel beams near verdant farmland. To make form match content, she stretches the leather picture over rebar — a tool of her brother’s trade.
Onondaga County sculptor Tom Huff goes for more futuristic technology: telepathy. His subjects are two space aliens whose mother ship crashes in Roswell, N.M. They escape from evil captors and find sanctuary on a reservation.
Huff shows them reading books on Native American culture. They face one another, wordlessly sharing their thoughts.
If you prefer a more hands-on encounter with books, head for a companion exhibit. “Nya:weh” displays paintings and sculptures by Nazareth art teacher Doot Bokelman. Her newly published Native American fantasy, Knotties of Ganondagan, has a cast of “stick people” that she re-created in whimsical wooden figures.
Knotties is part of a five-year Nazareth partnership with Ganondagan to produce modern Seneca tales for children. Nazareth teachers and students wrote and illustrated four books, two of which were assembled by students at the Industry School in Rush. These paperbacks have just gone on sale for $9.50 to $20 at Nazareth and Ganondagan.
Visitors to “Inside Out Haudenosaunee” and “Nya:weh” may come away believing that Native American art is changing at breakneck speed.
Not so. Only a few fellow artists innovate, says Jones. They can identify with Fox’s Sky Woman, trying to build a Seneca world out of skyscrapers and Bud Lite. The spirits of old didn’t wear iPods.
“We have a saying, ‘You’re going down the river with one foot in two canoes,’” Jones says. “It does feel like that.”
If you go
What: “Inside Out Haudenosaunee,” an exhibit by seven contemporary Iroquois artists.
Where: Nazareth College Arts Center Gallery, 4245 East Ave., Pittsford.
When: Through March 28.
Linked exhibit: “Nya:weh,” Doot Bokelman’s paintings and sculptures inspired by Seneca culture. On view through March 14 at Nazareth’s Colacino Gallery.
Admission: Free for both exhibits.
Call: (585) 389-5073.
