Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
The latest: Indian Market in Santa Fe is the place to be starting on Friday, Aug. 18. Presented by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, events will spiral out from the historic downtown plaza into various hotels and museums and into separate festivals up the road toward Taos at the Buffalo Thunder Hilton Resort. In addition to the arts, film and music featured this year, the market includes a growing number of fashion and other entertainment events. See you there.
ART: Artist /activist solo show ‘can reach millions’
Visitors arriving for Indian Market will find “The Art of Jean LaMarr” as the main art exhibit at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. The exhibit opens Friday, Aug. 18, and runs through Jan. 7, 2024.
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Colorful with a graphic narrative that satirizes and enchants, LaMarr, Northern Paiute/Achomawi, makes artworks that challenge cultural stereotypes and preconceptions about Native people and cultures.
The new exhibit, organized by the Nevada Museum of Art, features more than 60 artworks, including paintings, prints, and sculptures spanning from the 1970s to the present.
LaMarr is an internationally recognized artist, educator and advocate whose work “sparks powerful and important conversations about racist imagery, representations of Native women, legacies of colonization, and environmental justice,” according to the museum website.
LaMarr is descended from Wada Tukadu Numu (Northern Paiute) and Illmowi, Aporige, and Atsugewi (Pit River) ancestry, with family ties to Northern Nevada and Northern California. She was born and raised in Susanville, California, where she still lives. She is a citizen of the Susanville Indian Rancheria.
In 1964, LaMarr relocated to San Jose as part of the Indian Relocation Act, and in 1976 she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where in the spirit of the times she became involved in activist politics and participated in protests including the American Indian occupation of Alcatraz and the Pit River Occupation in Shasta County.
She founded the Native American Graphic Workshop in Susanville in 1994 to help engage Native youth, elders, and community members to make art. LaMarr built her artistic reputation as a skilled printmaker while teaching and practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s and 1980s. She went on to teach at IAIA in Santa Fe for many years before returning to Susanville.
LaMarr believes “that one painting would be in one home or museum, but a print or video or mural would reach everyone… One painting might be worth a million dollars, but prints will reach millions of people,” according to the IAIA website.
The exhibition will also be accompanied by “Purple Flower Girl,” a 2022 short video about LaMarr, produced and directed by Tsanavi Spoonhunter.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Nevada Museum of Art has published a hardcover book, “The Art of Jean LaMarr,” that will be available for purchase in the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts store.
A panel conversation with LaMarr and guest curator Ann Wolfe is set for Saturday, Aug. 19, starting at 9:15 a.m.
The museum will also feature a panel discussion on Saturday, Aug. 19, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with longtime filmmaker and director Chris Eyre, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, who has recently worked on “Dark Winds” as a director and executive producer.
ART/FILM: Pathways at Poeh Cultural Center
Up the road from Santa Fe at the Poeh Cultural Center, the annual Pathways Indigenous Arts Festival takes over the Pueblo of Pojoaque or P’o-suwae-geh Owingeh, (Water Drinking Place Village) in Tewa Country.
“We are excited about the festival because it’s an all-inclusive event that’s planned by Indigenous people, run by Indigenous people, for Indigenous people,” Karl Duncan, executive director of the Poeh Cultural Center, said in a statement. “We’re committed to providing new opportunities for Indigenous creative entrepreneurs as they envision and advance an Indigenous future.”
The festival, which also runs Aug. 18-20, will showcase an impressive selection of jewelry, beadwork, pottery, sculpture, painting, and textile apparel from more than 350 artisans, with booths located outside under tents and in ballrooms of the Buffalo Thunder Resort.
The festival, which is organized and operated by the Pueblo of Pojoaque Tribal program at the Poeh Cultural Center, will also include dancers, live music, and informative booths on social issues and health. Activities will include live mural making, art demonstrations, film screenings, artist panels and a Pueblo Fashion Showcase.
Films will include screenings of “Reservation Dogs” episodes, a documentary on Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero, and “Fancy Dance,” featuring actress Lily Gladstone, Blackfeet.
Among the highlights is a musical act by Mozart Gabriel, Taos Pueblo, on Sunday, Aug. 20. Gabriel recently helped create an Indigenous-themed short film for heavy metal supergroup Metallica.
FILM: Best of new cinema at history museum
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian is presenting the annual Native Cinema Showcase in Santa Fe on Aug. 18–21, providing a unique forum for engagement with Native filmmakers from Indigenous communities throughout the Western Hemisphere and Arctic.
All screenings are free and take place at the New Mexico History Museum. Genres include documentaries, music videos, kid-friendly shorts, films in Indigenous languages and more.
“While these films resonate with Native and Indigenous people, they also speak to shared, human experiences,” NMAI Director Cynthia Chavez Lamar, San Felipe Pueblo/Hopi/Tewa/Navajo,said in a statement. “The museum acknowledges the filmmakers who have earned widespread recognition and thanks them for being a part of Native Cinema Showcase throughout the years. We’re looking forward to their continued success as well as supporting those filmmakers in the early stages of their careers.”
Film highlights include:
*“Lakota Nation vs. United States,” Aug. 20, 2 p.m.: The film, “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” is a a lyrical and provocative testament to a land and a people who have survived removal, exploitation, and genocide—and whose best days are yet to come, according to the Native Cinema website.
*“Powerlands,” Aug. 19, 3 p.m.: A young Navajo filmmaker investigates the displacement of Indigenous people and devastation of the environment caused by the same chemical companies that exploited the land where she was born. The film is making its New Mexico premiere.
*Future-focused shorts program, Aug. 19, 11 a.m.: Family friendly short films are suitable for kids of all ages.
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