Things were way too stuffy for the young West Coast California photographers; they needed fresh air, wide-open spaces, cars, the Pacific Ocean, the desert, a dash of eroticism (except for Ansel), dramatic light, and most of all, freedom from the stifling East Coast crowd and their mind-numbing Pictorialist dregs. The date was November 15, 1932, exactly 79 years ago today. It marked the date that the f/64 photographers had their coming out exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Come to think of it, these West Coast photographers didn’t really care for much of anything that remotely smacked of the East Coast (well, except for maybe killer bagels and lox), and even named their Oakland gallery the “683,” mocking the Alfred Stieglitz New York “291″ gallery. Mocking is good, I like that. Sometimes all you’ve got left is spunk and a nearly empty box of film. These new photographers couldn’t stand the pretentiousness of the cramped New York scene and were brazen about it. Danged if they were going to let a bunch of haughty East Coasters define them, and after naming themselves “Group F/64,” they even came up with a manifesto. How’s that for audaciousness?

Imogen Cunningham, Plant Pattern, 1920's

I absolutely love this photograph by Imogen; it reminds me of a ferocious great white shark being hunted down by Killer Whales from my ancient homeland in Alaska. The paper with the mottled light has echoes of mountainous waves and the black values at the top echoes the drama of a night sky, which is a perfect metaphor for trying to survive in the worst depression America has ever witnessed. It feels ominous and predatory without being didactic, and the coolest part is simply naming it something as innocuous as “Plant Pattern.” Brilliant, simply brilliant. Especially when you realize that it was the 1920’s and other artists were pretending to make work with relevance as Imogen was quietly making a portfolio of photograhic prints that had this visual aesthetic; she was a master of light in addition to the artistry of her compositions. I can only imagine her figuring out the light for this photograph, because like many of her other works, the negative spaces and shadows were just as pivotal as the highlights and mid-tones. Her carefully crafted rim of highlights served to add weight to the negative spaces. This is where blacks were so important, and I’m sure she spent many hours in the darkroom emphasizing this look, it wasn’t accidental by any means. Imogen knows blacks.

Not only that, but Imogen studied chemistry in Dresden Germany and her key research had to do with improving the platinum printing process. Printing with a platinum handmade emulsion is part chemistry, part alchemy and in my opinion, part mojo. There is something extremely challenging about working in that media because so many things can go unexpectedly wrong, but when you get it on target, you end up with the most beautiful photographs with a tonality and range of values that today’s digital photographers can only dream of attaining.

Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams were the most well known of the original seven members. They were fierce about breaking out of the painterly, soft-focus romanticized Pictorialist style and presented their own visual aesthetic that was a reflection of the new modernist times.

Pepper Number 30, Edward Weston, 1930

Unfortunately, the modernist times also included the Great Depression, which was in full swing, with poverty and unemployment the norm for most of the country. This was an essential part of what informed the mindset for this f/64 group, that the average person would have to fight for social justice in the land. It’s part of what fueled the radical “Manifesto” part of their identity; it was both rebellious and assertive about hammering out a new paradigm for themselves.

Floating Nude, Edward Weston, 1939. Weston was starting to experiment with spacial values that were nearly surreal, but also wanted to hold onto the realism that Group f/64 developed.

They wanted a style that epitomized what big cameras and high quality lenses were capable of making; they wanted to stretch the capabilities of what photography could offer, including a look that had the entire photograph impeccably sharp from corner to corner with a tonal range that pulled as much out of their film as it could offer, which meant rich blacks, a full range of mid-tones and detail in the highlights.

Aspens, Northern New Mexico, Ansel Adams

In order to capture this new modernist look, they needed lenses that could stop down to f/64 in order to maximize sharpness, especially if camera movements were involved that minimized distortions, hence their name. They also needed to shoot with view cameras, generally either 4×5 or 8×10 if they could afford the larger more expensive film. Part of their photographic workflow included using the large camera that took a great deal of patience and meticulous handling in order to make the careful and studied compositions. They needed the large cameras because the larger film translated to less enlarger magnification, which in turn meant dramatically finer grained prints or almost eliminating film grain altogether.

Dunes, Oceano, Weston 1936

Agave, Imogen Cunningham, 1920's

Van Deren Coke, who used to be the Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and then later a scholar at the University of New Mexico, described Cunningham’s photographs as “Her inherently sensuous subjects- large graceful flowers, elegant tapered leaves and rounded cacti- were transformed into formal compositions by her emphasis on close-up views, geometric detail and the tendency of shadows to appear as opaque silhouettes in photographs. Cunningham speaks to the beauty of pure geometry in nature… (From “Photography: A Facet of Modernism” P.36).

Van Deren Coke is one of my heroes because he helped establish the Photography Area at the University of New Mexico where I earned my Master of Fine Arts degree and also earned a Van Deren Coke Fellowship as a graduate student.

So how does this Group f/64 body of work stand the test of time 79 years later? Especially as we slip and slide around in the Postmodern zone, where anything goes? I’d say that Group f/64 set a nice standard for photographers and artists who want to break out of outdated conventions, aesthetics and ideas about the creative process. They made it just fine for photographers to let go of the old ways of thinking, especially in troubling times as we are in again with a large scale socio-economic depression of our own. I’m reminded that perhaps it is time for another manifesto that signifies a shift in the social strata of the land, and have it reflected in a new paradigm of art making.

All I really know is that as a photographer, I have an appreciation and gratitude for the beauty of the f/64 work. There came a time back in the late 1990’s where I needed to use a 4×5 camera in a studio with lights and everything. I couldn’t get the look I was looking for with scanned negatives, so I shot on 4×5 Polaroid film and made platinum prints from them because it had a wider tonal range, so I could squeeze out a few additional tones of black. It did the trick, so it was cool that I was able to pull this modernist stuff out of the hat like it was a magic rabbit or something.

Raven asks Pontiac, McNeil, 1998. Made with Polaroid type 55 negative film and a handmade platinum emulsion. I'll have to confess that I was looking for a modernist look with the hood ornament, because I really love that Group f/64 feel, especially when combined with the 19th century platinum printing process. It was a total hybrid.

Ordinarily, the story would end here, but since I’m an artist and photographer first, I thought I’d share what I’m doing with some of these f/64 modernist tools in 2011. I take that back, my Schneider lens only goes to f/45, but that’s plenty good enough for my plan. I just purchased a heck of a camera on eBay, a very cool Wista 4×5 rangefinder field camera. What’s cool about it is that it uses the large format film, but you can use a rangefinder for focusing, which makes it way faster for photographing people. I guess that means I’m not really an f/64 purist, but that’s okay I guess. I’m not the least bit worried about it,but am very excited at the idea of using a 4×5 camera again, because it has that beautiful f/64 look that digital cameras can’t quite squeeze out yet.

Wista RF 4x5 field camera for my next project.

But wait, you haven’t heard it all yet– I have ten boxes of Polaroid Type 55 negative film to use with this. Wow. For you photographic peasants who don’t know what this means, too dang bad, I’ll show the photos in a future entry. But for now, happy 79th year of having the f/64 photographers splash on the scene. Here’s to all of you, bottom’s up, man.

Story by Larry McNeil, Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved.

X’áant xwaanúk Tléil yee ushk’é, I’m angry you are bad is from my body of work about the global climate crisis.

Artists try and make sense of the world. It doesn’t always work because sometimes the world simply doesn’t make sense. So we end up capturing the lunacy.

I assembled this collage around two core images. Raven was first. I was looking for an authoritative, stately posture that would be an iconic black silhouette with a rich, pure charcoal feel. This raven went through the heat and was slightly carbonized, so he was perfect for a cheerful black day at the power plant. Our creation story involves raven and carbon emissions.

I'm Angry you are bad.

I’m Tlingit and we take shit from nobody. If it weren’t for us, Siberia would extend into North America. Either that or Canada would extend west into what is now Alaska. We drove both groups of colonists out of our homeland at the loss of many lives and I mention this only because it is this warrior philosophy that drives nearly everything I do, especially as an artist. The triangles on the right are stylized Killer Whale teeth and there is a faded Chilkat robe pattern in the decayed wall.

Stylized killer whale teeth. I am from the Tlingit Killer Whale Fin House, and the teeth have their origins in some of our ancient spruce root basket designs.

Chilkat robe pattern chipped into an eroded wall with a white raven peering into the empty head of a human.

I felt filthy from photographing coal-fired power plants around the country and actually got a nasty nasal infection from being around them. I feel bad for the people who have to live on the same planet as these thousands of massive coal-fired power plants scattered all over Earth. I also feel bad for the home planet and how badly humans have brutalized her. It makes me rethink the definition of humans and whether it is natural for us to ruin our environment because we do it so well. In that sense, it also has me rethinking the definition of the term “nature,” especially when describing humans and what we make, how we treat our environment and each other. It may mean that a Styrofoam cup is as natural as a buffalo, which kind of scares me.

Earthscape #31 is from the Rocketship Chronicles series. When the Apollo astronauts viewed Earth from the moon, they had a profound revelation. Earth was magical. It also had no borders. They knew from a glance that humanity, all the life there, and the planet were one. This is precisely what every Native tribe has been saying since long before they first met White Man. We are all one; you cannot separate just one element and treat it differently. If you pollute the land and the air, you pollute yourself and all other life, we are all connected. It almost seems gratuitous to say this until you look around and realize that most people don’t get it, especially political leaders and industrialists who only care about their most recent earnings statements.

My Earhscapes are about strengthening the notion that our home planet is indeed all we’ve got to live on and we’ve got to start treating it like it’s a home planet and not a colossal waste heap. It’s a little playful in that there is a quasi- yearning for finding another planet where we can find refuge. Then we come to our senses and think, “Wait a minute. This is OUR home planet. It’s the polluters whose damn asses should be on rocket ships out of here, not ours…

Earthscape #31. I made this photo last year from my rocketship, over the coast of southern California after assisting MFA Photography students at Brooks Institute.

Hasselblad Moon film back from a NASA camera. For real. This is so perfect for my Rocketship Chronicles photos.

I have a portfolio of photos regarding my Rocketship Chronicles on facebook. What’s really cool about it is the feedback I get from friends.

My Rocketship Chronicles portfolio on facebook.

Kimowan’s Journey

One of the most profoundly beautiful, sad and mysterious experiences I’ve had this year was when our sister Hulleah and I went to say farewell to our brother in art Kimowan Metchewais up in Alberta late this summer. I’m reminded that we meet many gentle spirits on this journey of life and the journey is so short, painfully beautiful, and so damn hard sometimes. We ease the journey with each other, at least this much is clear.

After Kimowan started his journey into the spirit world that morning, a series of peculiar events started to unfold. Hulleah and I tried to be unobtrusive as Kimowan’s family went about taking care of Kimowan’s passing in the hospital that morning. Antje was beside herself with grief, as was everyone else. Kimowan’s mom was so gracious and offered to ride with Hulleah and I up to Cold Lake later that morning.

In a moment of silence, Kimowan’s hospital room was vacant, even as people gathered in the guest suite next door sipping coffee and talking quietly, giving each other hugs and tender assurances. There was a feeling of peace and calm amongst the sorrow. Someone laughed gently and gave us the Cree translation for “strong coffee.” I wish I could remember those Cree words. I stood at the window looking out at the view as his family went about taking care of business. I noticed a few young ravens playing right outside his window. One in particular was hopping on the roof, doing what was obviously a shadow dance. He was very taken with his shadow and was clearly enjoying it’s presence. It’s shadow looked like a rocketship. Without even thinking about it I pulled out my camera phone and shot off a bunch of photos, smiling at raven’s oblivious playfulness. It made me wonder if perhaps Kimowan was having a bit of fun on his way, and nature couldn’t help but play along. Kimowan would’ve smiled at the camera phone too, I’m sure. We don’t need no stinkin’ fancy pants cameras, we wing it quite well, thank you.

"Raven Rocket from Kimowan's Window." It's stylized a bit, but is essentially what the scene looked like outside Kimowan's window. Raven loves rocketships even more than me I think.

I have a portfolio of photos that I made on that journey, including many other instances of nature living it up that day. Way more than usual. Here’s to you Kimowan, we miss you.

These are the three prints that I have in our 2011 Biennial Art Department Faculty Exhibition today at the Visual Arts Center. Come and check it out, I’m in some most excellent company.

Story Copyright Larry McNeil 2011, All Rights Reserved

We have much to be thankful for. Sh tugáa haa ditee yagéiyi át kaax.

(From the Tlingit Phrase of the Week from the Sealaska Heritage Institute website.)

Our thankfulness stems from having known Dr. Soboleff and being the recipient of his decades of service to the community doing so many distinct tasks for the community that he so obviously loved.

Dr. Walter Soboleff at the pulpit of the Memorial Presbyterian Church in Juneau, where he became Alaska's first Native ordained minister (photo courtesy of First Alaskans Magazine).

Thinking about Dr. Soboleff’s passage “Into the forest” as they say, left me sad. His service to the Church and Native organizations intertwined with so many families in Southeast Alaska. He performed our parent’s wedding ceremony back in the 1940’s; it must’ve been soon after he earned his degree at the Theological Seminary from the University of Dubuque. My only baby picture has my dad cradling me and my mom holding my hand on the same day that Walter baptized me in the Presbyterian Church. Everyone is in their Sunday best and it’s a happy photograph.

Like many other teenagers of the day, my mom, Anita Brown McNeil was one of his students in the church bible school in the early 1940’s when she was still a teenager. Our family connection with Walter goes back long before I was born.

These are some of the graphics that I made for the Sealaska Annual Report. I really love the way the raven is marching, the ancient weaving designs, including the killer whale teeth on the right border.

In January of 2009, I got a call from Todd Antioquia, the Director of Communications for Sealaska Corporation. He asked if I was interested in doing some commissioned art for their upcoming annual report. The theme had to do with “the spirit of perseverance,” and they wanted me to photograph three elders who epitomized this spirit and use my visual aesthetic with the compositions.

One of the elders was Dr. Walter Soboleff. We talked about how we wanted the final print to look, and I loved the idea of making prints that honored these three elders from Southeast Alaska (Dr. Soboleff represented Tlingits, Dolores Churchill represented Haidas and Mary Jones represented Tsimshians).

The first step towards this project was making the portraits. I shot them all with a Canon 5DMKII 24MB camera with a set of portable strobes set up in one of the meeting rooms at the Sealaska building in February of 2009. There was a heavy snowstorm and Walter was attending meetings all day and it was challenging to fit me into his busy schedule.

I had a good idea about how I wanted to portray Dr. Soboleff in his collaged print because I knew that he had a gentle sense of humor and a sharp wit. My challenge was to try and capture this fleeting moment. He came into my makeshift studio with a very neutral expression, like he was deep in thought about something else. Having worked for various projects with Sealaska over the decades, I knew a lot of his colleagues very well, so I started asking about which one he left in his dust today, and that made him actually laugh. I told him “I bet it was so and so,” and that left him grinning. It was a good natured banter, and I got him to laugh again by saying “I bet ’so and so’ came back from lunch looking like he needed a nap,” and he laughed again, which is the photograph that I ended up using. We both enjoyed the good-natured jokes, because in reality, his colleagues are the hard driving types who don’t put up with much nonsense in their lives.

When I'm shooting portraits, I'm really fast behind the camera and try to capture the very elusive looks that I'd preconceived.

I was finished with the photographs in pretty short order, and he stood up, shook my hand and gave me a nice complement. He’s had his portrait made dozens of times by pros over the years, and he said “You’re good. You’re really good.” I told him, “I ought to be, I was baptized by one of the most intellectual ministers in Juneau.” He laughed again, because he clearly remembered both my mom and grandmother, and of course, baptizing me all those decades ago.

I was very happy with how Walter's collage turned out in the Sealaska Annual Report. It was a labor of love, as were the other two. My intent was to have Walter making eye contact with the viewer, allow their eye to go in a general circle and back to him again.

Walter’s gentle spirit is what made the print work. Here is to you Dr. Walter Soboleff, for having made this a much kinder, better world for all of us.

Sh tugáa haa ditee yagéiyi át kaax.

Story Copyright Larry McNeil, 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Sue Latta is one cool artist. She graduated from our Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at BSU a few years ago, and in addition to having a busy exhibition calendar and teaching art, she’s been conducting a number of most excellent art workshops.

From the series "Works of Fiction" in her most recent exhibition at the Visual Arts Collective in Boise. In her own words, "This body of work incorporates the photographic image along with various sculptural and recycled materials to create 3-dimensional tableaus.

I am very proud that Sue earned her MFA in our program; she makes art that has a critical relevance to it, is very intriguing and quite beautiful. There is a visceral mystery to her art that only unfolds after spending time with it, almost as if it’s speaking to the intuitive part of your perceptions. There is a also a very intellectual aspect that is very thoughtful and poetic. Go to her site and see for yourself, or better yet, see her art in person the next time she’s having an exhibition.

Sue has been conducting a number of workshops here in Boise at The Sculpture Studio, where her website states, “The Sculpture Studio is a place for learning. We are here to fill the need in our community for a process oriented, skills based education for every level of artist, from the lifelong sculptor to the art curious, and we make it fun!

I’d have to agree with this; I’m a very advanced artist, yet had a LOT of fun and learned some very cool skills about resin casting. I brought my 15-year old son with me and he loved it too. There were six other people at the workshop with various degrees of expertise and I think I can speak for all of us in that we certainly learned what we’d hoped and did indeed have fun.

My little Olympus rangefinder about to be submerged in the molding material. And you wondered why my cameras sometimes look kind of beat up. This is what happens when when cameras go astray...

Yep, that's my camera submerged in there.

My son T'naa getting ready to take his mold apart. Notice his taped up shirt? If you get any of the chemicals on your clothes, it solidifies and breaks. He covered up two holes with the tape.

Sue showing T'naa how to get his resin piece out of the mold.

Sue helping me add just a touch of blue to the resin.

I'm doing a bit of hand jive to add good mojo to the resin.

There was some resin left over from my second piece and it solidified before we could use it up. Oops.

This is a solid. It would look cool on the edge of our table.

The teenage critic gives it a thumbs up.

One of the reasons I took Sue's workshop was because I wanted to make one of my cameras look like ice for a photograph I'm working on.

The bottom of the resin camera is cut off  so that it’ll have the appearance of melting into a puddle. In reality it was a happy accident. I didn’t mix enough of the resin, so the mold was only partially filled, but due to a modicum of synchronicity, it’ll be most efficacious for my stratagem. In other words, due to a bit of hand jive and luck, it’ll work nicely.

Sue Latta, thank you for a great workshop! She has her workshops often throughout the year and are most highly recommended! She has a Kid’s Art Workshop and an Intro to Welding Workshop coming up in June.

Story Copyright Larry McNeil, 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Work-in progress, Earthscapes. Inspired by Marcus Amerman’s comment about sharing new work with our artist friends on facebook. View from my rocket ship window. Sorry for the low quality, but the window got a few smudges on it from liftoff.

I love our home planet.

I included the photo file info so you could see it was taken with my Canon G9 infrared camera. It has the settings I used & date, & as you can see, this was 10-10-10, a very auspicious date indeed, my friends.

Story and photos Copyright Larry McNeil, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Happy Birthday, Arnold! You would’ve been 93 today, and your warm spirit touched so many people’s lives, including my own.

The great Arnold Newman (photo from the Arnold Newman Archive)

For those of you who didn’t have the privilege of meeting or knowing about Arnold Newman, he was none other than one of the best portrait photographers of the 20th century. Arnold loved the humility that people shared, especially when times were tough and the underdog prevailed. In addition to being a humanitarian with real class, Arnold was a dazzling, yet low-key teacher.

Many of his portraits are timeless and iconic, including this 1946 portrait of Stravinsky. This is one of my all-time favorite photographs. The magazine that commissioned the portrait didn't like it and didn't use it. Can you even imagine the boneheads who couldn't see the masterpiece as it bonked them over their thick skulls? Let this be a lesson to all you artists who get their work rejected on a regular basis; believe in yourself and keep on producing, no matter what.

“We do not take pictures with our cameras, but with our hearts and minds.” –Arnold Newman

Even his early work had his trademark sense of bold, yet elegant and understated composition.

I met Arnold Newman in 1987, when as a young man, I took a photography workshop with him at the Maine Photographic Workshops. It was when I was just starting to find my own way with photography and was trying to figure things out, looking for answers. Even though it was only a week with him with a small group of photographers, I discovered some very important things about myself and came to some self-realizations about some latent strengths that I didn’t even realize I possessed.

Spending a week with Newman was phenomenal. The workshops were all about being able to spend time making new work, interacting with like-minded photographers, and getting critical feedback from a master. The number one characteristic that I learned about myself at the workshop was that I had the latent ability to give my fellow students insightful and inspiring feedback about their own work.  All of this seemed to unfold by itself at Newman’s workshop, as if I were a witness on the sidelines, and I was just as taken aback as everyone else with my abilities. It’s where I learned that it takes a special kind of person to teach photography and I also had one of the best right in front of me.

At any rate, it was a humbling experience and was one of my best weeks ever as a photographer. For the first time, I blossomed as someone who could help other photographers with their work, and  have Newman to thank for helping me find my gifts. Thank you Mr. Newman, and here’s to you.

Newman had a nice surprise for us on the last day of the workshop. He wanted to make a group photograph of all of us, including his assistants who were right next to him, arm in arm. That's me on the far left wearing a Curious George watch with my spiffy new Canon F-1N that I got especially for this workshop. Arnold gave each one of us a signed print of this negative he made. I like his camera dark cloth around his shoulders from his 4x5 camera; it gave him the air of wearing venerated photographic robes. Made with Polaroid Type 55 negative film, 1987.

Newman's book "Five Decades" is still one of my favorites.

It strikes me that when it comes to photography and life, we never reach where we want to be by ourselves. It got me to thinking about photographic lineage, and how we always have special people along the way who have helped us in some manner. There is no such thing as a self-made photographer, that is a complete myth. Newman had a long list of photographers who had influenced and helped him along the way, so a photographic lineage was something that he acknowledged too. All photographers have branches of photographic roots going in all directions.

As someone who learned photography from both Brooks Institute and the University of New Mexico’s Graduate School of Fine Arts, I think I have a longer list than usual, and am not shy about crediting all of the very giving people from this journey. Arnold Newman was a natural teacher and loved sharing not only his knowledge about all things photographic, but also the more rarefied parts of life that had to do with humility, giving, and having a heartfelt love of humanity in general.

Happy Birthday Arnold, you were the gift to the world, we miss you, and we’ll never forget you.

Story by Larry McNeil, Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved.

This is a true story.

Flashback to photo school in the 70’s. The instructor in a white lab coat recited the technical characteristics of curvilinear and rectilinear lenses, shooting out facts like a machine gun. I had to scribble notes in fast motion and wished he’d slow the heck down.

Our instructor was oozing professionalism and had a dazzling knowledge about the science of photography.

I thought he said rectal-linear lenses and with all my small-town boy innocence, was a little taken aback that he’d be so direct, but also quite impressed that they could predict how a photographer was going to lean with her or his work, actually muttering “wow” to myself. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be anal or obsessively anxious with my own work, so made a mental note to avoid the rectal-linear lenses in the future.

"Native Epistemology" detail and what is clearly not a rectal-linear lens diagram. It's from one of my own most honored lenses, a Hasselblad 80mm Planar. Lithograph collaboration by myself and Frank Janzen at the Crow's Shadow Art Institute.

The "Native Epistemology" print at my website. The lens diagram is in the top left.

PS: A rectilinear lens renders lines as being fairly straight, as opposed to a curvilniar lens, which has what is known as barrel distortion, kind of like what extreme wide-angle lenses render. Each has it’s own set of physics & mathematical formulas.

Tamarind Art Institute link to the Migrations Project

Native Epistemology Larry McNeil link

Migrations: New Directions in Native American Art Amazon link to the book

Late Night Existential Tequila (click this link)

This about the creative process and being frozen at the proverbial precipice.

The cage

Existentialist Philosophy

Will he listen?

This is kind of a cool idea; the Xtranormal site allows you to make a fairly easy animation. You essentially just type in the script at their site, select your characters and the characters speak the script in a peculiar robot-like manner. You can also select camera angles, gestures, characters and facial expressions.

The user agreement states that Xtranormal owns anything you create, but I placed a copyright along with the animation anyway. I’m not going to make any more because of their ownership claim and this was more of a fun foray just to see what would happen. I could imagine something like this really taking off if authors had clear ownership of their own work.

My most surreal experiences in life have to do with encountering people who choose to live in self-imposed cages. Fear of failure, fear of expression, fear of new ideas, whatever. I tell them that if a small-town boy from a Podunk town can run around free, so can they. Here’s to simply opening the door & jumping out. So I made a cartoon about it. Ha.

Enjoy. But don’t keep yourself in any cages.

One of my favorite gigs is to be a visiting artist at various places. One of the very positive elements is that a lot of the audience members are either art students or art scholars, so they have a heightened interest because they’re in the midst of doing some heavy-duty creative problem-solving themselves, and like to hear how other artists solve creative problems.

I’m going to be a visiting artist at the University of Colorado at Boulder early this week. My main presentation is going to be on November 2nd, Tuesday evening at the Visual Arts Complex.

Webpage for the University of Colorado at Boulder Events section.

I’ll be interacting with both the public, students and faculty and will be showing art from a couple bodies of work, including my most recent Global Climate Crisis and earlier Fly by Night Mythology work. One of the prints from the series, Carbon Footprints was made in 2007 as part of the print exchange Animal Connection that Melanie Yazzie organized in 2007. Melanie is an Associate Professor of Art there at the University of Colorado at Boulder. See you there!

Link to the University of Colorado, Boulder Events Page

Da-ka-xeen Mehner  and I have interesting stories to tell. I think that our stories are very compelling and are about how to navigate the challenges we all encounter along the way. It’s not so much about what happens, but how we all respond to the quirks we encounter. Life is certainly not predictable.

Da-ka and I flew in on Keet Air*, naturally.

I would put forth the case that life is bewildering at best and illogically paradoxical at worst. Doesn’t it seem that some of the things that happen in the world defy logic? Commander Spock would be totally appalled and order that he beamed back forthwith. It seems that we don’t have that luxury, so we’ve just got to deal with it.

This is where things get interesting, because artists enter the fray and offer their take on what’s going on. I like it that artists offer their interpretations of what’s going on with the universe, because sometimes they’re their take on things are right on target, and it isn’t always so much about what is examined, as it is the visual manifestation of how they relate whatever is is that they’ve learned or experienced. This sometimes translates to images that speak to your life force instead of your intellect. In my opinion, it is what we artists do best.

Sometimes when I’m teaching I finish a session by asking if anyone has any questions about anything. If they’re all quiet I say “Nothing? What about the meaning of life? Any takers?” Some of them smile, and I tell them that it’s kind of a one-liner, kind of not, because if they get exceptionally well at what they’re doing, insightfully examining  life is exactly what they’ll be doing with their art too.

I feel good about this exhibition and presentation for a few reasons. 1) It is at the C.N. Gorman Musuem, a place unique in the universe of museums in the world, run by Hulleah Tsihnahjinnie and Veronica Passalacqua. Sure, it’s small, but it also offers viewers unique voices in the world of art. Please make this a regular stop when you’re in the area. 2.) It is a two person exhibition with Da-ka-xeen Mehner and myself. We are connected by blood in the most direct manner possible in our Northwest tribe; you will witness what it means today in our contemporary world, especially in the midst of everything that is going on at this moment. Because you are experiencing a lot of these events yourself, it is relevant to you, regardless of your cultural background. 3). I am in the midst of making new work, and I hardly ever do exhibitions while in the middle of new work. I usually let the work “settle” a bit especially as new ones are constantly added. It’s kind of a sneak preview of things over the horizon.

As a side note, I understand that the first game of the world series is on the same evening we’re doing our talk. Wouldn’t you know it? We do everything we can to plan for a good schedule, but something unexpected invariably intrudes on our plans. Record the game, have fun with it later and have fun with us in person. I hope to see you there.

*Keet Air is an inside joke, because Keet translates to Killer Whale, and we’re both men of the Killer Whale Fin House, which is what the wing kind of looks like. Da-ka’s son is also named Keet.

You are cordially invited, Wednesday, October 27th 6:00pm at the C.N. Gorman Museum.

Here is a link to place, map & time: C.N.Gorman Museum