Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Indian Canyon, 2019, archival pigment print, Courtesy of the artist. © Cara Romero
Our study in this Session focusses on the special relationship that Indigenous people have with the land. It means being stewards of the land, rather than owners. It also means respecting and protecting the national environment through practices deeply connected to one' ancestral knowledge and relationships.
Yasmine Vera (he/him/they/them), Education Coordinator and Executive Assistant, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University will be joining our class to discuss with us about some of the Indigenous Art work which Rose has in its Collection.
Kay WalkingStick, (Native American, b. 1935), Long Valley Caldera, 2013, Oil on panel, 40 x 80 x 2 in., The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art
Three Artists
Kay Walkingstick (b. 1935)
Andrea Carlson (b. 1979)
Joe Fedderson (b. 1953)
Scroll through the work of these three artists mindful of their work expressing a relationship with the land.
See quote by Andy Warhol (non Indigenous artist) at the end.
# 1. Kay Walkingstick, born in Syracuse, NY, is a member of the Cherokee Nation.
Further background information
Reframing the American Landscape. In her largest New York museum show, Kay Walkingstick, an 88 year old Cherokee painter, reminds us that "we are all living in Indian territory". By Hilarie M. Sheets, NY Times, Oct. 19, 2023
Kay WalkingStick on Her Painting "Niagara", Kay Walkingstick Hudson River School, YouTube, 4.16 min.
KayWalkingStick, An American Artist, YouTube, 8.16 min.
See work below by Kay WalkingStick.
Kay WalkingStick, Niagara (2022), 40 x 80 inches, marked by a Haudenosaunee design motif. New-York Historical Society
"In the 1980s, she found meaning in using the diptych format, juxtaposing textured abstractions evocative of geologic strata directly with more representational paintings of the land. Such duality and symbiosis persists in her paintings of the last two decades that superimpose abstract Native patterns on illusionistic scenes." NY Times, Oct. 19, 2023
Kay WalkingStick, Thom, Where are the Pocumtucks? (The Oxbow) 2020, Oil on Panel, 241/8 x48 x 7/8 in.
In 2022 Kay Walkingstick was invited to view the NY Historical Society's reknown collection of Hudson River School paintings. For more information see Artist/Curator, A Conversation Kay Walkingstick/Hudson River School New-York Historical Society by Wendy Nalani E. Ikemoto, 2023)
Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northhampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm- The Oxbow, 1836 . Kay Walkingstick/ Hudson River School, by Wendy Nalani E. Ikemoto, NY Historical Society.
Kay Walkingstick, Fantasy for a January Day, 1971, Acrylic on canvas, 50x56",
Exhibition, Preoccupied Indigenizing the Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, April 21, 2024 to February 16, 2025.
Andrea Carlson (b.1979)
# 2. Andrea Carlson (b.1979), a mixed-media visual artist, is a descendant of the Grand Portage Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.
Additional background information
Andrea Carlson, Shimmer on Horizon, YouTube, 4.58 min.
Andrea Carlson, Perpetual Genre, 2024. Oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper; overall: 45.5 × 61 in.
"Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent, b. 1979; based in northern Minnesota and Chicago, IL) considers how landscapes are shaped by history, relationships, and power. Her artworks imagine places that are “everywhere and nowhere,” visualizing these shifting yet ever-present dynamics. Grounded in Anishinaabe understandings of space and time, the works in this exhibition reflect on how land carries memories of colonial expansion and violence, as well as Indigenous presence and resistance.
"Across painting, video, and sculpture, Carlson organizes imagined landscapes around one constant—the horizon. This line is reminiscent of her homelands on Lake Superior. It is also a significant art historical trope that artists have employed to depict territories as vast and vacant, ripe for the taking. Carlson’s prismatic works are not empty: they are densely layered with an abundance of motifs, making reference to the tactics of colonialism as well as her family and peers, Ojibwe culture, and Indigenous sovereignty. Confronting ongoing histories of erasure and dispossession, Carlson proposes that what appears to be lost can be remade, reimagined, otherwise regained." 1/1/24, 9:23 PM Chicago Works | Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons - MCA Chicago, Chicago Works, Aug 03, 2024 - Feb 02, 2025
Andrea Carlson, Red Exit, 2020, Oil, watercolor, opaque watercolor, ink, acrylic, colored pencil, ball-point pen, fiber-tipped pen, and graphite on paper, 60 parts, Overall (In-situ): 115 × 183 in.
"Andrea Carlson (b. 1979) presents a panoramic seascape informed by ideas of re-creation and renewal. Vibrant, prismatic motifs—some drawn from the land of the artist’s ancestral home, and others from effigies, petroglyphs, and navigational signs—pulsate and collide across a series of horizons. The composition is anchored by a loon, known in the Ojibwe re-creation narrative as an Earth-Diver, who alongside other surviving animals, helps remake the world.. Through her images, which take shape as a continuous wake pattern, she invokes moments of resistance and empowerment. Symbols of Native advocacy come together in a gesture of reclamation, creating new narratives of Indigenous experience in North America. While Red Exit confronts the ongoing erasure of Indigenous cultures, it is, in the artist's words, a celebration of “the place we (Native People) reserve for ourselves . . . places of joy amidst removal, exclusion, and attempted assimilation.”
The composition is anchored by a loon, known in the Ojibwe re-creation narrative as a Earth-Diver, who alongside other surviving animals, helps remake the world. Carlson also incorporates the infinity sign from the flag of the Métis People and the silhouetted figure of “Man Mound,” a destroyed earthwork—fractured by a road—that appears here to rise up from the land. Through her images, which take shape as a continuous wake pattern, she invokes moments of resistance and empowerment. Symbols of Native advocacy come together in a gesture of reclamation, creating new narratives of Indigenous experience in North America. While Red Exit confronts the ongoing erasure of Indigenous cultures, it is, in the artist's words, a celebration of “the place we (Native People) reserve for ourselves . . . places of joy amidst removal, exclusion, and attempted assimilation. Alongside prints and multidisciplinary projects, Carlson primarily makes large-scale, multi-part works on paper through a combination of drawing and painting. Highly intricate and graphic, these compositions coalesce into expansive, disorienting scenes that often evoke futuristic and, at times, apocalyptic worlds. Whitney Museum of American Art.
Joe Feddersen, b. 1953
Joe Feddersen
# 3. Joe Federsen, born 1953, Washington (state) to a German American father and an Okanagan/Sinixt mother
For further background information
See work below by Joe Feddersen.
Joe Feddersen (Arrow Lakes/Okanagan; born Omak, WA, 1953; resides in Omak, WA) grounds his vision in the confluence of twenty-first-century life and traditional Plateau crafts and culture. Through his glass works, twined baskets, and prints, he merges conventional patterns and contemporary iconography to reflect his lived experience of the land. Smithsonian American Art Museum
Joe Feddersen, Gathering Under the Stars, 2010, waxed linen, wool, fabric, and thread, 8½x 7½x 7½in. Collection of the artist. Photograph by Dean Davis. © Joe Feddersen
Joe Feddersen, Fish Trap, 2021-22, fused glass and metal, 24 x 72 x 24 inches. Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023,Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC.
"The glass work Fish Trap, featured in the exhibition, Sharing Honors and Burdens, is based on a piece of fishing equipment used by many Native communities. While on a visit to the Salish Kootenai Community Center nearly twenty years ago, Feddersen noticed a willow fish trap on the wall. This fish trap was constructed in a slender, conical shape with one end having a radiating circle, or “mouth,” meant to draw the fish inside. The other end is narrow and bound, preventing the fish from escaping. In constructing his glass Fish Trap, Feddersen embellished it with multicolored glass rods, except for the circular opening, which he adorned with blue glass to draw the viewer in. When hanging from the ceiling, the glass fish trap appears to be floating in suspended animation. While based on an ancient basket form and fishing equipment, Feddersen’s Fish Trap celebrates the union between art and technology". Katie Hondorf, Smithsonian American Art Museum
From Andy Warhol