A Generation of Innovation
Redefining Indigenous Art for the 21st Century
Photo by Phil Karshis, courtesy Poeh Center
Image Untitled by Mateo Romero from his Buffalo Dancers series
(page 1 of 3)
It’s “very chic right now” to be Native, admits Mateo Romero, the Cochiti painter who, at 40, already has an international following for his photo-transfer and mixed-media paintings that merge historical tribal imagery with a contemporary edge. “Our Pueblo ancestors are from this area,” he says, “and to be able to speak to a contemporary audience from the perspective of the history of this place is extraordinary.” He also admits attitudes weren’t always this way. From his small studio in Pojoaque, Romero recalls the life of his father, the late Santiago Romero, a traditional Cochiti painter who studied under Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School and took part in the 1937 American Indian Exposition and Congress. “In his day, local Pueblo Indians were looked down upon. They weren’t allowed to use the public restrooms,” he says, “they had to sit in the balcony at the Lensic Theater marked ‘Nigger Heaven,’ and were generally despised by most Santa Feans.” Even in New Mexico, home to some 74,000 Pueblo people, the right to vote wasn’t fully enforced for Native Americans until the 1960s.
But these days, Native art and artists are given “tremendous attention and respect,” Romero says, with a sly sense of humor. “They even let us use the public bathrooms.” The variety of cultures indigenous people must circumnavigate in today’s multi-faceted world makes for a complicated yet creative dance. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, approximately 2 million people in the United States identify themselves as Native American—a mere 2 percent of the population. Yet this tiny fraction of our country’s people produces a high-profile—and high-dollar—art market with a global audience, from world-class museums to international collectors. And each August, Santa Fe Indian Market is the epicenter of this world.
“Our art speaks with the voice of the people,” says Romero. Even though he grew up in Berkeley, California, studied at Dartmouth, and earned a master of fine arts from the
University of New Mexico, “ultimately,” he says, “the Native art community is my community, the one which I feel closest to on all levels—culturally, aesthetically, socially.” As a 15-year veteran of Indian Market and a three-term board member of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, he calls SWAIA “the foremost organization symbolizing these issues to me.” To him, “Santa Fe Indian Market is a feast day for artists.”
Romero is not alone. With Native people scattered globally these days, Santa Fe Indian Market becomes a microcosm of indigenous arts, unrivaled in the depth and breadth of work, brought together for two short days on the Plaza each summer. More than 1,000 artists are accepted into this juried show and sale, each of them on hand with paintings, sculpture, jewelry, textiles, and other traditional and non-traditional forms. All of them—from iconic art figures to rising stars—are from Native American nations, cultures, and families.
Some artists initially are drawn to the show by the money: Many earn over half their annual income during these two days each year. Yet many return for the recognition, the fellowship, the inspiration, and the unparalleled gathering of like minds despite the enormous variety in aesthetics and style. “It’s like sitting on the bank of a river of people,” says accomplished bead artist Marcus Amerman (Choctaw), who, at 47, has shown at Market for the past 22 years and has had work exhibited at major museums across the country, the Eiteljorg and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian among them. Although he’s mastered various mediums, from painting to glass, Amerman is best known for his unusual beading, in which he often recontextualizes Native and non-Native imagery, including portraits of such icons as Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, pop star Janet Jackson, and even the Statue of Liberty. When asked what it means, for him, to be a Native artist today, he replies, “That is such a hard question to answer, because the range of creativity and purpose is so varied in the Indian art world.”
The bottom line: When you come to Market this month, make sure to lose—or at least loosen—your expectations about what Native American art really is these days.
Case in point: At 40 years of age, metalsmith Kenneth Johnson is taking traditional Native American jewelry-making into a new realm. This Oklahoma artist who is Muscogee and Seminole studied mechanical engineering at the University of Oklahoma before taking up silversmithing in 1988, when he apprenticed for Choctaw jeweler Johnson Bobb. By using high-tech tools like CAD software to design what he calls “virtual stampwork,” and incorporating traditional Seminole patterns and Southeastern iconography—birds, spiders, turtles, and bears—Johnson fashions distinctive pieces instantly recognizable as his own. “Traditional methods use contrast: stamping to create relief. I create that through different materials and different heights. … I incorporate the basic elements of circle, square, and triangle into concentric lines that relate to our old designs.” His pieces bridge the gap between what you might think of as Native American jewelry and what is simply elegant—and often elaborate—design, with subtle hints of his indigenous heritage cleverly woven throughout each piece. For the cuff bracelet titled Cahcahcakwv, the Muscogee word for the ivory-billed woodpecker, Johnson created a silver, copper, and 18K yellow gold design featuring two heads of the mysterious bird (thought to be extinct for roughly half a century), based on iconography from his Southeastern Moundbuilder culture. “It was my response to the supposed recent rediscovery of the woodpecker in Arkansas,” he explains. “To me, it’s funny to think that something can be rediscovered, kind of like how Indians were ‘rediscovered,’ because we’ve always been here.”
