Creating our future while honoring our past
Kathleen Wall’s artistic collaboration
Among the many exquisite artworks in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ 2021 Virtual Scholarship Auction is a collaboration that represents the history, talent and diversity of the school. Featured artist and IAIA alumna Kathleen Wall (Jemez Pueblo), class of 2014, convened an incredible lineup of artists for a collaborative project, Create Our Future—Honor Our Past.
Wall sculpted and painted four female figures. Then different artists created or decorated culturally relevant accessories for them. The sculptural series will be part of an online auction on Wednesday, Aug. 18, beginning at 5:30 pm Mountain Time. The auction will raise muchneeded funds for IAIA scholarships.
Wall, named the 2020–2021 Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Native Living Treasure, says she has wanted to collaborate with IAIA alumni for years. The invitation for this project provided the perfect opportunity. “I’ve had ideas and dreams about collaborative work, but so often it just didn’t pan out because we’re all busy,” she explains. “Being a featured artist allowed me to take on the majority of the work and create these sculptures that represent Navajo, Pueblo, Woodland and Plains people. All of these artists donated their time, their energy, their art, their names and their signatures to this project. It was a big ask, and I am honored because these are people who I look up to, who shaped my career and contributed to who I’ve become as an artist.”
Contributing artists include Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw), Tony Abeyta (Navajo), Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo), Penny Singer (Navajo), Kelly Church (Potawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe), Wanesia Spry Misquadace (Fond du Lac Ojibwe), Jody Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo), and Marcus Amerman (Choctaw Nation).
“This project was mailed and shipped and thought about over miles and miles,” says Wall. “It was a great project to start emerging out of the pandemic. These connections that I thrive on as an artist were reaffirmed.”
Wall invited collaborators to paint the shawls the figures hold and to contribute accessories, and all enthusiastically agreed to be part of the project.
“Kathleen’s really a storyteller with clay, and as a result she has been an amazing force in the Native American sculptural world,” says Abeyta. “She’s created an immense amount of language with clay. When she asked if I’d be interested in painting one of the shawls that would be part of the series, of course I was going to say yes. I love her work.”
The shawl Abeyta painted is red, with bands and lines to simulate landscape and terrain. He says he chose red because it is “culturally prestigious and bold.” It was the same red he used in a painting he was working on at the time. “It just sort of flowed from the canvas to my brush to
the shawl,” he says. Along with Abeyta’s shawl, the figure carries an intricately appliquéd purse by Singer.
Lomahaftewa, who was Wall’s faculty adviser at IAIA, used blue paint from the sky of a painting she was working on for the background of her shawl, which is decorated with spirals that are a recurring motif in her work. “I thought it was great that she wanted to include all these different people from different decades,” says Lomahaftewa. “I was in the first class of students at IAIA, and she was able to reach out and get me to do this. There aren’t too many of us still around, doing art, and I was really happy that I was able to be a part of this project.”
The figure whose blanket Lomahaftewa painted holds a tiny bag made by Amerman. It is beaded with a portrait of IAIA cofounder and influential fashion designer Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee Nation).
“I was in tears when I opened that package and saw Lloyd Kiva New’s portrait in beadwork,” says Wall. “I couldn’t believe it. It amazed me. Marcus never saw my piece. I never saw his piece, but together they have the same coloring. It just blew my mind that all the artists’ work came together so well when we were working apart from each other.”
Naranjo painted the blanket on the Pueblo figure, who also carries a piece of pottery by Diego Rivera. Naranjo met Wall around 30 years ago at IAIA in sculpture class, and the two have been friends ever since. “She wanted all of us to do our personal style,” says Naranjo. “I designed different animal motifs like those I carve on my pottery. I made sure to add some geometric pottery background designs too. It was a fun project, and I am so happy to be a part of it!”
Church imagined a meaningful backstory for the figure whose basket she wove. “I imagined Kathleen’s clay person to be a weengush (sweetgrass) gatherer,” Church explains. “I wove a harvesting basket out of black ash and embellished it with copper. The handles are woven sweetgrass braids. When sweetgrass is dry, it breaks easily and can be sharp, and it hurts if it pokes you. When sweetgrass is nourished with water and taken care of and loved, just like people, it will grow and flourish. When the blades of sweetgrass are woven together, it is stronger, just like when people work together.”
Wall says the collaboration honors the generations, the diversity, and the enormous impact of IAIA on both art and individual lives. “We are so diverse, and yet the alumni and the IAIA community have become family,” she says. “We’re family from nation to nation. I want to embrace everybody who wants to go to IAIA in the future or who has gone to IAIA in the past, our community stories, our growth. This is a collaboration of all those generations, from Linda all the way to Wanesia, the youngest graduate in the collaboration.”
The project showcases not only what IAIA brings to students but what the students bring to IAIA. “All the artists contributed their own medium,” she says. “The painting, the beadwork, Penny’s sewing, the basket making, Wanesia’s jewelry made of birch bark biting. We bring these parts of our culture to IAIA. We bring who we are, and that’s who we are: We’re beadwork. We’re basket makers. We’re pottery makers. At IAIA, who we are is supported, and our work is translated into who we become as artists.”
For in-person viewing, the Balzer Contemporary Edge Gallery exhibits the art from Aug. 4 to Aug. 13, with a preview for IAIA President’s Circle members and corporate sponsors on Aug. 3, from 1 to 5 pm. Balzer is located on the IAIA campus at 83 Avan Nu Po Road. For information and registration, visit the IAIA website: iaia.edu.