Sandra Hale Schulman
ICT
The latest: @Home is where the healing is, multi-venue art in Santa Fe, get bear greased in New York City.
STYLE: Artist revamps homes for culture
An ingenious Indigenous spin on home renovation shows, a new series on APTN called @Home is premiering this spring with Tamara Bell, Haida, who is the artist, TV host, executive producer, and director.
In 13 episodes, she is on a mission to bring culture and design together by helping Indigenous Canadians explore their often-lost traditions and to revamp their homes with heritage and style.
One full episode features Marlene, a Haida woman boarding school survivor who receives a life changing and emotional home transformation that reconnects her to the culture she was taken away from. Bell brings in artists to design and paint ravens, create patterned rugs, and other meaningful Haida symbols to bring back the culture the woman had lost. Bell then brings her to a powwow and presents the weeping woman with her first button blanket.
“The goal of the show is to make people heal their trauma,” Bell told ICT. “It is a very personal show. It is really different from any renovation show because it focuses on the participants. They have trauma and are missing community and tradition. It’s how we fix it, help them along the way to use that tradition as a way to embrace that healing. I said to an Indo-Canadian lady recently that when you live with things in your home that reflect who you are, it impacts your children because they have access to items that have a deeper spirit and meaning to you or your people.”
The show idea started when Bell renovated her mother’s house. She went to residential school and was handicapped.
“I redid her whole house. It was very run down. I brought in Native artwork. At first, she didn’t know what to make of it, but then people would come over and say, ‘Wow, your place is amazing.’ She started to see it through their eyes and her shame disappeared. She started having people over all the time. Then the whole neighborhood asked that we redo their houses to have a relationship with their culture. It made them feel happy and proud. Because it is an old connection.”
ART: Sprawling art show in time in Santa Fe
Over a dozen locations will take part in the 12th SITE SANTA FE International titled “Once Within a Time,” curated by Cecilia Alemani, that places works by local, national, and international artists in dialogue with a cast of regional figures and local characters to explore the power of storytelling.
Opening June 27, the International extends beyond SITE SANTA FE to institutions and unconventional venues across the city. The exhibit includes 98 participants, with works by 71 international artists, alongside 27 “figures of interest” — both real and fictional, historical and contemporary — with ties to Santa Fe and the surrounding region.
Partner locations include the New Mexico History Museum, the Palace of the Governors, the Museum of International Folk Art, the New Mexico Military Museum, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, the St. Francis Auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the Center for Contemporary Arts, as well as spaces in a local park, a former foundry, a toy store, empty storefronts, the lounge of a cannabis shop, and more.
Visitors will encounter the stories of the characters who are incarnated through a collection of texts, documents, images, and objects. The locations set the tone for novel dialogues between figures, artists, and places, prompting visitors to explore different corners of Santa Fe.
The grand opening weekend starting June 27 and going through June 29 includes first-look events for exhibition sponsors and members. On Friday evening, a public celebration at SITE SANTA FE features an outdoor concert in the Railyard by Tank and The Bangas, food and drinks, and a late-night dance party DJed by Devendra Banhart. Over the weekend, a curator talk with Cecilia Alemani and a panel with participating artists will take place at SITE. On Sunday, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian will host gallery talks by artists presented in the venue. The full schedule of events can be found here.
THEATER: Bear Grease in the Big Apple
Bear Grease, the musical, makes its off-broadway debut at the St. Lukes Theater on W. 46th Street now through Sept. 7 after rocking audiences across North America with more than 200 performances in the last four years.
Dubbed the reservation sensation, this clever all-Indigenous, laugh-out-loud musical reimagines the iconic 1950s themed rockabilly movie Grease through a contemporary Native lens — fusing powwow-step, hip-hop, and Native humor with vibrant dance, bold storytelling, and traditional languages. A show in Santa Fe found the show to be fresh, fearless, and hilarious — a true joyride of culture and comedy that has audiences dancing in their seats and rolling in the aisles.
Bear Grease has a rip-roaring score by Crystle Lightning and Henry Cloud Andrade, and direction by Lightning, this all-Indigenous concert-style musical is a pow wow-powered love story that’s equal parts hilarious homage and cultural celebration.
The songs of Grease are revitalized with vibrant cultural voice and Cree (Nêhiyawêwin) language: “Hopelessly Devoted” becomes a soul-stirring round dance, “Bear Grease Lightning” bursts with Traditional, Grass, Chicken, and Fancy footwork, and “Wichihin” delivers a powerful new take on “Stand by Me.”
