INTO THE FUTURE
Nine contemporary artists will celebrate the Museum of Northern Arizona’s 90th anniversary, and beyond.
Nine contemporary artists will celebrate the Museum of Northern Arizona’s 90th anniversary, and beyond.
FLAGSTAFF, AZ
Painters, jewelers, weavers, printmakers, photographers, sculptors, fashion designers…to find this variety of artists you typically have to visit Santa Fe Indian Market, but on June 23 nine vastly unique artists will present new and old works at a new exhibition at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, Arizona.
The show will celebrate the museum’s 90th anniversary by looking ahead at the next 90 years with artists whose works will remain important for new generations. The exhibition is titled Nine 4 Ninety: Artists for a New Era, and it will feature works from contemporary artists who each work in their own medium, style and discipline. The artists are Melissa Cody, a contemporary Navajo weaver and printmaker; Navajo fashion designer Orlando Dugi; Jason Garcia, a Santa Clara clay artist and printmaker; Tewa/hopi potter Arlo Namingha; Tewa/hopi mixed media artist Michael Namingha; Hopi silversmith Delwyn Tawvaya; Navajo painter and printmaker Melanie Yazzie; and two non-native painters, modernist landscape painter Michelle Condrat and more traditional landscape artist Josh Elliott.
“I’m totally psyched about this show. It’s incredibly diverse, so it’s going to be very fun,” says Alan Petersen, the museum’s fine arts curator. “Since the museum’s inception we’ve had a mission of art and sciences, and our early leaders were very much advocates for the arts and education, for Native and non-native artists. So for this show we’re looking at midcareer artists who are doing interesting and innovative work, thus paying homage to the museum’s tradition of promoting the arts of up-and-coming artists.”
Works in the show include Yazzie’s fantastical bronze sculptures done in a gray patina, as well as her mixed media works that show abstract arrangements of shapes, many of them feminine, and brilliant colors. Tawvaya will be showing his silver overlay jewelry, including pieces that are rings, pendants, bracelets and cuffs, while Arlo Namingha will exhibit his sculptures, many cut from Indiana limestone. Garcia will be presenting his powerful contemporary images
of Native Americans living within the larger American landscape. Some of his works make callbacks to pop culture, including superheroes, comic books and action figures.
For Michael Namingha, brother to Arlo, he will be showing photography, including works from his Black Place series. “I began to create this series in the spring of 2017. It is a landscape located in the northwestern corner of New Mexico. It is a landscape that inspired Georgia O’keeffe’s ‘Black Place.’ I first explored the landscape through Google Earth satellite images of the area. I discovered through these images the amount of natural gas and oil infrastructure that oil companies have made in the surrounding area. I took a drone with me to photograph the region as well as video footage. Upon arrival I realized just how fragile this landscape is and the drone provided a way to see the area up close without having to disturb it. The area is very otherworldly and foreign,” Michael says. “These images provide the viewer with an abstracted composition which is how I first encountered O’keeffe’s depiction of the ‘Black Place.’ The skewed perspectives in the pieces were inspired by having seen opera set design, and I noticed how set designers skew the set to trick the eye. I want to take that same approach to a twodimensional image of a photograph. The images appear three-dimensional but are in fact two-dimensional. The colors in the pieces relate to what is currently happening in the region that surrounds the ‘Black Place.’ About three years ago NASA reported on the discovery of the largest methane gas cloud in North America, which sits over this region. The satellite images of the cloud show up as red. In some pieces I used black to hide the image, I used this to represent a piece of the landscape that may not be there someday.”
Nine 4 Ninety will run through October 13. It is timed to open alongside the museum’s 13th annual Gala & Fine Art Auction, which takes place June 22 and 23.