Artistry in Their Blood
The Joe family has carved their place in the art world through sculpture, jewelry and paintings
Artistic talents run deep in many Native American families, where some children are literally born into it. Grandparents and parents teach the young ones how to weave, create stunning pottery and perhaps jewelry. Silversmithing techniques are passed down to son or daughter, with each generation putting their own twist or mark on it.
There’s one Navajo-ute family where it’s not just one discipline to excel in. The Joe family of New Mexico is far from being limited to one medium, as the public will see this year at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market.
Patriarch Oreland Joe Sr. is a world-renowned sculptor. His pieces of stone, alabaster and bronze grace museums, galleries and private collections. Two of his six children are also very creative in their own mediums. Bo Joe is making a name for himself when it comes to crafting fine jewelry, while Hyrum Joe is
already well known for his paintings and drawings. Father and sons may work with different mediums, but take great pride in how their different talents reflect their own Native American culture.
“My mother’s Navajo,” says Oreland. “My mother’s side did quite a bit of music. My father’s side, they’re all visual, basket makers, painters, silversmiths, that’s from the Ute side. It just fell in my lap.”
Oreland’s skills as a painter were noticed by his high school art teacher who saw his artistic potential and encouraged it. A six-week tour of France with a hoopdancing group in 1978 got him into the Louvre. That experience, plus seeing many Parisian galleries opened his eyes to what great art could be.
“I had a chance to think about it,” Oreland says, “and then went back to my high school art teacher…she had some knowledge about sculptors, so I started with a screwdriver, a kitchen knife and regular hammer, not knowing where to get the tools.”
He spent the next three years learning about stone, tearing out every magazine article he could find on sculpturing and soon was selling pieces at a trading post in Shiprock. Oreland returned to Europe—italy this time—to attend a sculpture workshop.
“I knew what I wanted to do, just the concept of polish and texture, how that blended together,” he explains. “That was my reason for going to Italy, because I had to know firsthand.
“It’s a tremendous influence for a young Native American to travel abroad, or even go to get some schooling,” he continues. “It changes your whole outlook, and you’re able to process what, as far as art is concerned, is on the world market and to get a taste of what is really happening…you’re able to comprehend it and bring it back near the reservation and practice it.”
Practice it he most certainly did, truly becoming a master himself in sculpting. So it’s no surprise two of his six children also are now “taking on the art world,” as he calls it.
“Hyrum left right after high school,” says Oreland. “He’s got his own influences for his Native American portrait and figures, but being away from home and not in that Indian nucleus he’s able to develop his own style.”
Still, Hyrum, who lives in the Phoenix area, travels back home often for inspiration. “You’ve got to be home,” he says. “There’s always something to see that can turn into a painting for sure. Doing this type of painting that I do, I feel blessed and fortunate to be Navajo, to paint the Navajo people.
“To me, when I paint my people,” he continues, “when I paint the Native American Indian, it’s not something that I’ve seen in a magazine or book. I’m able to go back to the reservation and be among my own people, to see things firsthand and be inspired by it firsthand.”
Hyrum’s younger brother Bo, whose true name is Oreland Joe Jr., also left home early. He worked as a recording engineer in Los Angeles and Chicago for 15 years before taking some time off back home, hanging around his dad’s studio while Oreland was experimenting with making jewelry the traditional way, with tufa casting.
“We were kind of exploring that technique and learning the history [of it] as well,” Bo explains, describing how one thing led to the next, and he realized he could make a living doing this.
You hear pride in Oreland’s voice as he speaks about Hyrum and Bo as artists, and the different ways all three work at honing their talents. “We’re very hard on ourselves, as three individuals,” he says. “I feel that by exploring individually, you find your own path, and that’s what makes you unique.”
“It was also just reconnecting with the culture,” says Bo. “Making my decision to do this was because my father and I are on the same page, very in tune traditionally.
“I’m inspired to help preserve the culture,” he continues. “To be able to do that in a professional format and also to teach, at the same time, culture to not only my own generation but the young, and the older generation that have missed it.”
This is why Bo and his father, along with involvement from Hyrum, created the Sacred Youth Foundation (www.sacredyouthfoundation.org), which teaches cultural art to 150 Native American kids every summer.
“We’re doing it on a much higher level than just in family,” says Bo. “We started here on the Navajo region, and we’d like to expand further to other tribes.”
The foundation, combined with Oreland’s newest project is very exciting to this incredibly artistic family. Several years ago, Oreland realized his sculpting had given him the independence to go in a different artistic direction if he chose to…and he did. Oreland began looking back to the medium where he first started with as a teenager: painting. But this time, painting with a mission. It’s called ledger art, and will be on display when Oreland and Bo bring their artistry to the Museum Shop’s Collectors Room at the Heard.
As more explorers headed west in the early 19th century, they brought paper with them—maps, ledgers, sheet music, all kinds of paper. Native Americans got hold of it, and it became like their own canvas for art. “That led into historical events of each warrior, recounting his coups, the battles, courting scenes,” explains Oreland. “And it’s all kidlike, the drawing. That was the style back then.”
So, Oreland and son Bo, who were working on another project at the time, started traveling all over the country, looking at surviving pieces, as well as seeing some of the places depicted. “We know what ledger art is, after four years of studying and looking and handling the books themselves,” Oreland says. “So I wondered ‘Why can’t I do this, modernize it, only blow it up to canvas and oils?’”
So instead of using antique pieces of paper, Oreland does canvas on canvas, taking one piece of canvas,
roughing it up on the outside, so it looks almost like buckskin, then gluing it to another canvas. “I went back to my research and what I’ve seen…incorporating the factual part of it. So every painting I’m doing, is an oil, it has a historical context, whether it’s by group, by individual, by tribe.”
Oreland is bringing his new ledger art pieces along with one or two sculptures, along with Bo and some of his own jewelry, to the Heard, which is thrilled to have this father and son collection on display. “He’s so excited about it,” says Laura Cardinal, the Heard’s fine arts purchase buyer and Collectors Room manager.
“He’s been showing a lot of it at the western art shows,” she says. “He’s been getting really good receptions from those things, and now he’s entering the world of ledger paintings, so we will be featuring in the shop a lot of his ledger work.”
Kelly Gould, Museum Shop/gallery Manager at the Heard, says the Joe family fits in well with what is displayed in the shop during the fair. “These are top artists,” he explains. “They’re world-renowned, and they bring a great attraction to the shop.
Bo says some of his father’s ledger art pieces have already been shown in some exclusive art shows and at a museum level, but until now hasn’t been widely exposed.
“We started on a path of research with his [Oreland’s] Ute tribe,” says Bo, “and what we followed was really more than we anticipated. Not just tribal… we uncovered so much, not only new information but linked together factual, documented history, and we’re able to pinpoint a timeline, locations…able to link and tie together what made sense.”
Talking about what he sees as a powerful movement, Oreland’s words literally tumble out with excitement. “It’s self-identity…trying to save the language, trying to save songs, dances, stories. That’s the whole core behind everything I’m doing.
He considers himself a historian, but more importantly a tribal historian. “That’s what it’s all about, trying to portray true Native American art, where it came from and its historic meaning. That’s all I’m doing.”