New lines on old ledgers
Young Plains artist finds her voice
For a long time, shyness has hampered Wakeah Jhane’s efforts to speak her stories, so she has learned to tell them through images she draws on old ledger pages and fills in with watercolors.
Repeated inclusion of loving mothers and babies tells of her own dream to become a nursemidwife, helping to bring new lives into the world.
A new work in progress, rare for her in that it includes an urban background, tells of a trip to New York City, where everything seemed black, gray and white, and Jhane felt conspicuous in her own red skirt.
And what she calls her favorite, “Walks Ahead Family,” shows her embrace of all that is healthy and loving in Native culture, rejecting the stereotypes of drunken Indians and broken families.
“My artwork, I found, was my voice,” said Jhane in her workspace at her family home in Santa Fe. “I wasn’t the best at speaking or writing. It’s hard for me to find my voice. Once I started doing art, it was a way for me to share my views.”
Now 21, Jhane (Comanche, Blackfeet, Kiowa) first showed her work in the youth category at Santa Fe Indian Market in 2012 and earned her first blue ribbon. She’s had a booth every year since and now appears in the adult portion of the market. She said she often sells about 25 pieces of varied sizes. This year, she expects to bring from 30 to 40.
“I was born and raised in the art world,” she said of her family. Growing up — she was raised in Oklahoma until her family moved to Santa Fe when she was 12 — she attended many art shows and explored all the booths. What she always felt the strongest bond with, she said, was ledger art. While she often talked to the artists about prices in thinking of buying some, the late George Flett told her that her attraction to the form might indicate that she should try it herself, she said. “He really encouraged me to do it.”
Now, a framed piece of that renowned artist’s work depicting riders on horseback hangs at the entry to her family’s dining room opposite her own depiction of three women with their babies in cradle boards.
What appealed to her, she said,
was that ledger art tells stories both in content and form. The Plains tribes, to which she belongs, used to paint their stories on hide, offering narratives of major events in their daily lives and history. As the buffalo were decimated and tribes were confined to reservations, the Natives had no hides to work with, so they took pages from cast-off ledger books and used them to depict scenes from their lives.
Those old ledger pages still are available, complete with the records written within. Jhane said she uses only those from Oklahoma and Montana, where her tribal roots lie. She draws and paints her pictures across the lines on the pages, and even, as in one case, over a written record of tax payments at the time. She collects and uses ledger paper from 1805 to 1903.
Many of the scenes depict people with her tribal background, garbed in traditional clothing, in scenes with little background except for the occasional trees or tipis. Asked how she learned the styles and decorative symbols, Jhane answered that she grew up amid them.
Actually, she says she took her first steps in a powwow arena. She danced at those events “ever since I could walk,” traveling throughout Indian country, Jhane said. In 2009, she was Head Young Lady in the Grand Entry in the 2009 Gathering “Walks Ahead Family” is Wakeah Jhane’s favorite of her artworks for the story it tells of a healthy, loving family moving together into the future. of Nations in Albuquerque, according to a Journal story.
Behind the door of her workspace, dresses of beaded buckskin used by her and her family members hang with long fringes that swing during dances.
And while Jhane wore a slim, stylish dress that reflects her experience in modeling for fashion shows in Indian Market and for designer Orlando Dugi, on her feet were humble beaded moccasins. It’s the footwear she prefers, she said, after having started to wear moccasins regularly during her high school years. Her fellow students teased her, thinking she was trying to make a statement about her Indian heritage, she said, but her motivation is simple.
“They’re really comfortable,” Jhane said. “I feel more confident, more grounded when I wear them.” She learned later that her greatgrandmother wore moccasins every day. “It was her identity. I embrace that as mine,” she said.
Most of the year, she’s wearing those moccasins in a far colder climate: She’s entering her second year studying nursing at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. While it’s still some time in the future — her nursing degree takes four years of study, with a couple more added on for a midwifery specialty — Jhane said she’s inclined at this point to practice that specialty in Canada. If that doesn’t happen, then she’d likely come back to New Mexico, she said. Jhane said her ancestry includes one of the last traditional Comanche midwives.
In the meantime, she said she feels really blessed that she is able to earn enough through her art that she doesn’t have to take another job to help pay for her education.
Over the years, her art has become more detailed and incorporated more of a sense of movement, she said. “I feel I’ve grown as a person ... . I’ve moved out of my comfort zone.”