Lasting Impressions

Joe Feddersen is well known for his prints and paintings. His abstracted visual representations of ancient designs are reminiscent to those found on traditional Plateau bags, baskets, and parfleches. Feddersen explores the patterns and colors indigenous to the Columbia Plateau in his five-color lithograph “Plateau Geometric.” His reinterpretation of these designs is achieved through his use of geometric patterning and color.

Joe Feddersen, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, lives and works in Omak, Washington and was a faculty member at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington from 1989 until his retirement in 2009. His work was included in Weaving Past into Present: Experiments in Contemporary Native American Printmaking at the International Print Center, New York, Autumn 2015. He has been featured in numerous national exhibitions, including Continuum 12 Artists: Joe Feddersen, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution at the George Gustav Heye Center, New York, New York, curated by Truman Lowe; Land Mark, Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, Spokane, Washington; and was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition and monograph, Vital Signs, organized in conjunction with Froelick Gallery and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Feddersen received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington in 1983 and his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Washington.

Edgar Heap of Birds is known as a “word” artist. He uses language as his primary subject to illustrate his political concerns common to many Native people. His 19-color lithograph “For Arizona Denials” reflects his interest in political issues and his quest to avoid the manipulation and distortion inherent in the history of art.

Heap of Birds received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas and his Master of Fine Arts from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and has pursued graduate studies at the Royal College of Art in London. He has been awarded numerous public art commissions and his work has been featured in Times Square; the Banff Center, Alberta; Seattle; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Heap of Birds has taught as Visiting Professor at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island and Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa. At the University of Oklahoma since 1988, Professor Heap of Birds teaches in Native American Studies. His seminars explore issues of the contemporary artist on local, national and international levels.

G. Peter Jemison represents the generation of Indian artists that began to be university trained as artists during the 1960s and 1970s. This generation of “protest” artist incorporated issues relevant to Indian people: land, language, and culture. Jemison’s involvement in cultural repatriation continues today. His six-color lithograph “Snowball Shadows” uses delicate lines and washes of color to evoke the severe beauty that is winter. Jemison’s keen observance of his surrounding environment is captured in his print.

Jemison is a Ph.D. candidate in the American Studies Department at the State University of New York-Buffalo, where he received his Bachelor of Sciences in Art Education in 1967. Among the numerous exhibitions that have featured his art are “Indian Humor,” a traveling exhibition organized by American Indian Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; “Shared Visions,” Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui, New Zealand; “Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century,” the Heard Museum Phoenix. The subject of numerous articles and publications, Jemison is often called one of the most “eloquent Native American voices.”

Truman Lowe’s four-color woodcut “Sun Form” combines the icons of yesterday with today to create a whimsical yet poignant interpretation of life in today’s world. Lowe is known for his powerful sculpture and installations that use wood, steel, plastic, and rocks to convey nature’s essence.

Lowe received his Bachelor of Science in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse and his Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among the many private and public collections where his art can be found are the Denver Art Museum and the Tucson Museum of Art. Lowe’s work was exhibited on the White House Sculpture Lawn as part of the Native American Sculpture Show in 1997, sponsored by the Heard Museum in Phoenix. In 1999, Lowe received one of the Eiteljorg Museum’s first fellowships for Native American Fine Art.

Mario Martinez’s six-color lithograph “Scottsdale Yaquis: Generations” reveals his close relationship with his family and his Yaqui spirituality and community. It also recalls his growing up in Phoenix observing his Yaqui village being engulfed by the city of Scottsdale. Martinez is recognized for his use of abstract color and space to depict the sights and sounds of his Yaqui ceremonial culture.

Martinez received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Arizona State University and his Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. The Rockwell Museum of American Western Art, Corning, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago are among numerous private and institutional collectors of his canvases.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is a painter, lecturer, and advocate of Native American fine art and Native artists. Her involvement in the feminist art movement brought her art and subject of Indian issues to the attention of the mainstream. Her seven-color lithograph “Ghost Dance Dress” presents traditional cultural images colliding with contemporary global icons. She is referring to the colliding of Indian cultures with contemporary society at the beginning of the new millennium.

Quick-to-See Smith received her Bachelor of Arts in Art Education from Framingham State College in Massachusetts and her Master of Education in Art from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Her work is collected by many institutions including the Denver Art Museum, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Museum of Modern Art. In 1999, Quick-to-See Smith was awarded an Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Native American Fine Art.

Duane Slick’s six-color lithograph “Coyote’s Blue Laughter” uses washes of color to reveal images of Coyote as he emerges into the foreground and then recedes into the background again. Slick is also known as a storyteller. His presentation of the “Coyote Report from Indian Country” is his modern interpretation of the traditional trickster present in many Native cultures.

Slick received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and a Bachelor of Arts in art education from the University of Northern Iowa in 1986, and his Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of California-Davis in 1990. Slick travels widely  as a storyteller and performer, presenting “Coyote Report from Indian Country” and “Coyote Looks Into His Mind,” and other original works to art centers and universities. He has received numerous awards and honors, including a Rockefeller Foundation Travel Grant, College Art Association, in 1993, and an Eitelijorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art in 2011.

Kay WalkingStick’s four-color lithograph “Magical Night” reflects her travels to Rome with dramatic use of color and depiction of the human form. The legs and torsos of the dancing couple rendered in black with vibrating lines of red convey a stirring of the senses. Her hand-painted golden panspectra is applied to magnify the dramatic stylized stars that hang in balance in the black sky. WalkingStick is best known for her diptych canvases of landscapes and abstraction.

WalkingStick received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1959 from Beaver College (now Arcadia University) in Glenside, Pennsylvania and her Master of Fine Arts in 1975 from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. The Heard Museum, Phoenix; the Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; AT&T; and Prudential-Bache are among the museums and corporations that have collected her work. WalkingStick has retired as Professor Emerita of Cornell University.

Emmi Whitehorse is best known for her delicate works on paper that explore and magnify nature. Her use of color has an ethereal quality achieved by the building up of the surface with layer upon layer of color pastels. In order to achieve this same quality of color,  which is her hallmark, Whitehorse has printed her untitled five-color lithograph on both sides.

Emmi Whitehorse has a Bachelor of Arts (1980) and a Master of Fine Arts (1982) from the University of New Mexico. Her large canvases that explore and magnify nature have been displayed in many solo exhibitions (Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago; Horwitch LewAllen Gallery, Santa Fe; the Stonewall Series, “Sola,” the Tucson Museum of Art) and group shows (“The Native American Spirit in Contemporary Art,” Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, Michigan). The artist lives and paints in Santa Fe, where her work can be seen at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Wheelwright Museum, and the State Capitol, as well as in other selected national and international collections.

Melanie Yazzie’s five-color lithograph “Thelma and Me” is a mixed-media print that utilizes the techniques of collage. She has printed a photograph of herself and her grandmother over a copy of the tribal newspaper Navajo Times. Her commentary on contemporary Navajo life is represented by the coming together in this print of two generations of Navajo women. Yazzie is trained as a printer and is a Professor of art at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

A professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, Yazzie received a Bachelor of Arts in printmaking in 1990 from Arizona State University and a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from the University of Colorado Boulder. She has been a guest lecturer at cultural events throughout the world and her work can be found in the Anchorage Museum of History & Art, Alaska; the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe; the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington DC; and the Australian National Gallery in Canberra.