Prints
“Ambivalence” - 2022, series of four giclée prints on archival paper, in editions of ten each.
Photos of family members and myself riding horses juxtaposed with images of Hollywood Indians being shot off their horses by cavalry. “Ambivalence” refers to my love of old movie westerns growing up. I remember rooting for the enemy and then later feeling ashamed and troubled. Of course, this is how colonization works on the minds of the colonized.
“I’m An Indian, Too” - 2021 (series of 10 manipulated digital photos printed on 13 x 19inch archival paper)
For this series I did a Google-search for Native American costumes (try it yourself, it is depressing). I chose ten images to recontextualize. I then superimposed these images over well and lesser-known historical photographs of various Native people from the late 19th and early 20th centuries taken by photographers such Frank Rinehart and Edward Curtis. At first, the superimposed image was transparent, allowing the viewer to faintly see the “real Indians” underneath. However, I decided I didn’t want to implicate these ancestors, and chose instead to place the opaque fake Indians in front of them, as if they were screaming “Hey, look at me!”, obscuring the person behind them. Of course, many of these so-called “authentic” photographs were taken under very in-authentic circumstances, with the figures posed within a staged scene inside the photographer’s studio. While I like the complexity of this situation, I must admit that these images make me want to laugh and weep simultaneously.
Images used under the terms of Fair Use.
The series title is taken from a song in “Annie Get Your Gun”, written by Irving Berlin. If you are curious, I encourage you to watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEpmkqWZgT8
“Greetings From Navajoland (uranium)” - 2015. Lithograph prints on rag paper. Editions of eight.
Three lithograph prints, series of 8. Printed with the help of graduate students from the University of Arizona Phoenix printmaking program.
“Collectibles” - 2007 - 2020. Giclée prints, various sizes. Editions of six.
“Collectibles” is a responce to the wealth of bizarre advertising copy that can be found in various magazines and websites, feeding the public’s apparent hunger for exotic, spiritual and hot-bodied crystal-wearing Native Americans continually accompanied by spirits of wolves, bears and eagles. The prints utilize old photographs of my family members (faces obscured) combined with selected quotes from advertisements for "Indian Style" porcelain figurines marketed by The Bradford Exchange and similar manufacturers of exotic kitsch objects. The weave of a Navajo rug is superimposed over the photographs to underscore their status as collectibles. My intention is to question the desire for the exotic and spiritual "Other", as well as the efforts of some to commodify their own culture (am I guilty of this as well?). While on the surface the series addresses the appropriation and misreading of Native American culture and spirituality, it is my hope that it will also motivate the viewer to reflect upon their own desires for connection, meaning and identity.
“Vanitas” #’s 1 - 4. 2011. Four-color lithographs on Rives BFK white. Paper size: 30” x 22 ¼”. Image size: 30” x 22 ¼”. Edition of 12. Collaborating printer Frank Janzen, TMP. Please contact Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts for purchase and availability.
The four prints in the Vanitas series incorporate photographs of old abandoned rusting cars, taken some thirty years ago while in my early twenties. These wrecks were scattered along roadsides between my grandparents’ homestead on the Navajo Reservation and the town of Farmington New Mexico. They are probably still there to this day, housing insects, rattlesnakes, or various other wildlife.
When I took these photos, I knew I wanted to include them within some sort of art piece, though I had no idea what form that might take. However, when Crow’s Shadow Art Institute invited me for a printmaking residency in 2011, I felt these photographs could act as catalysts for new work.
For me, each car wreck image acts as a kind of Vanitas, a reminder of the vainness of pride and pleasure, as well as our ultimate mortality. At the bottom of each print is a large rattlesnake that I imagine now inhabits these wrecked cars. Hovering above each wreck, printed in gold ink, is an abandoned gas pump that I photographed on a trip to to my grandparents’ land to spread my mother’s ashes--symbolic of a spent life force or soul. The pumps reminded me of carcasses or reliquaries. Two “X”s are printed in one of the four Navajo sacred colors (white, black, blue, and yellow). These “X”s refer to the four directions (a fundamental theme within the Navajo worldview).
