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[Theme music plays]
Joe Feddersen: And what I wanted to do was to celebrate the process. But I wanted to ground it in where I was from. And I chose to ground it in the baskets, the flat bags. And to expound upon them, kind of like improvisation, like you would in jazz, where you can bring the color and play with the color, but still at the same time have a reference to Plateau art.
G. Peter Jemison: So if that's what we work toward, is when will the art world embrace us, me, it's beginning. It is as close as it can be right now to the art world embracing Pete Jemison, but I did it my way. I said I'm a Native artist, I'm an Indian artist, I'm Seneca, my subject matter comes from my heritage.
Anna Rimel: Hi and welcome to ARTiculated, I’m Anna Rimel and I work as an archivist here at the Archives of American Art. This podcast receives support from the Alice L. Walton Foundation.
Tradition has a way of reinventing itself, and in this episode, we will hear from two artists who have preserved, nurtured, and extended Native traditions. Joe Feddersen is a Colville artist from northern central Washington and G. Peter Jemison is a Seneca artist from upstate New York—both artists have brought Indigenous forms and imagery to the fore of contemporary art while cultivating community across generations.
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Anna Rimel: Joe Feddersen fuses Indigenous iconography and landscape with contemporary composition across glass, baskets, ceramics, and prints. His work is currently on view in Sharing Honors and Burdens, the 2023 invitational show at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
In his 2021 oral history with Cécile Ganteaume, a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian, Feddersen recounts his formative years in Omak, Washington:
Joe Feddersen: I usually refer to myself as Native. I'm Okanagan and Arrow Lakes lineage. As a child we would go visit my grandparents who lived on the Penticton Reserve in Canada. That's where my mom was raised. I grew up in a family; I had five siblings. It was a large household. My dad worked in a lumber mill. He's from a German heritage. I'm not too sure if it's his dad or his grandfather came from Germany. But they lived in kind of a German community in a place called Havillah. And that's in the northern—that would have been in the northern half of the Colville Reservation. So he grew up speaking German, and my mother grew up speaking Native, Okanagan. So English is both of their—both second language to both of them.
Cécile Ganteaume: So they both had accents. They both spoke English with accents?
Joe Feddersen: Yes. My mom had a Canadian accent. [Laughs.] I guess we would—I don't think so, they didn't really have accents.
Cécile Ganteaume: So how do you remember your dad? And did you mention what he did for a living? Did you say he worked in a lumber mill?
Joe Feddersen: Yes, he worked in a lumber mill. My mom stayed at home. And he grew up on a farm—you know, in the farm near Havillah, and so he—they both came to the—to Omak to reside most of their lives. We've always lived here. We've—you know, they were married until my mother passed away in the early '90s.
Cécile Ganteaume: You had them for a good long while.
Joe Feddersen: Yes. We think that, you know, she was getting older then, but as I look back, she was still young when she passed away. She was only, like, 64 back then.
Cécile Ganteaume: Well, she was; she was.
So what was it like growing up in Omak? it's a small town today. It must have been quite rural, was it, when you were growing up?
Joe Feddersen: It's still a small town. Omak is on the edge of the reservation. Half of it is on the rez, and half isn't. As a child, we—things were different in the '50s. Kids could—I guess the whole community raised the kids, I guess, because we would just do whatever we wanted without adult supervision. There were no such things as helicopter parents back then, or—
Cécile Ganteaume: [Laughs.] And no soccer moms.
Joe Feddersen: No. We would, as a group of kids, look out for ourselves and do things all day long.
Anna Rimel: He also talked about his involvement in preserving the traditions of Plateau Native artists, the plateau meaning the area from Cascade Mountains to Continental Divide, reaching into Canada and down to Northern California. Through efforts like educational publications, he aims to make history more accessible to spark future generations:
Joe Feddersen: And what I'm working on now with the Museum of Art and Culture in Spokane, is to do a book and an exhibition on Plateau Native artists. And it's kind of, again, about bringing them together. And I keep trying to tell them that it's—that this is
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not about exclusion, it's about inclusion, celebrating the community. And one way of doing that is by having community participation.
We want to bring the communities in on this, and we're trying to find a way of doing a project. Because Washington State has a regulation that they have to teach about Native art and, you know, culture, in the high schools. So I'm trying to tell them that this could be a book slated that would fit into high school education. It would be so great to have a book that would educate our young and the rest.
I'm more interested in having something that would help our young people to realize that there are these things, and you can do this. When I grew up here, I didn't know you could do anything. We had very, very little information. We would—like we would—we lived in Omak, and we would go from Omak to Penticton often; and maybe to Wenatchee. But we would never really go east that much. It would be rare that we would go to Spokane or something. So we had a really limited view of the world in general back then. And so, this is a way of just trying to bring them together to realize that they're not alone. A lot of times I've been in school, and you're the only Native there in the room. And to bring these people together; and to create friendships and bonds amongst them. So that's the goal of this new project.
Anna Rimel: Feddersen has worked with many artists over the years, including the Salish painter Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and he elaborates on the generative power of their connection and how playfulness, process, nature, and poetry continue to propel his work:
Joe Feddersen: —the baskets, the cylinder baskets. I reference those too. A lot of times, you know, in the Canoe Journeys—you know, like you mentioned—those ceramic pieces? One of them references Washington Crossing the Delaware, except it has a Coyote in it. And it's actually kind of referencing Trump and, you know, his fiascos there.
So he's in this little boat and it's part of the thing. those things interweave, also. I teased Jaune [Quick-to-See Smith] a little bit. And Jaune, I was—we were doing this thing about canoes and stuff. And Jaune sent me a canoe. And then I made a whole—one of the canoes out of the drawing that Jaune sent me. So these things are—you know, in part, some of them are—they're just whimsical kind of things that are part of it. But other ones reference different events going on around me, you know, like Jaune sending me that thing. So I made a whole part that was just Jaune's canoe in there, and added it into the variety, and other things. Other ones are kind of like personal references involved into that work.
Cécile Ganteaume: Was there a piece of art where you thought you had found your voice as an artist? It was more than being technically accomplished. It was just something that you thought was really expressive, and really unique to who you are, and you really thought, you're on the road now.
Joe Feddersen: if I was to choose that, I would think that, that the—some of the more important pieces would be coming from the Plateau Geometric because, you know, before the Plateau Geometric, with the Rainscapes and things, I think there was really an effort to not call attention to where I was from, to be kind of like, you know, an artist, and be successful. But when I came back from Madison, I started the Plateau Geometric suite.
And what I wanted to do was—you know, I know how to do all of these long lists of processes in printmaking. And what I wanted to do was to celebrate the process. But I wanted to ground it in where I was from. And I chose to ground it in the baskets, the flat bags. A lot of the flat bags, they have kind of ambiguous geometric designs. And I wanted to not to mimic that, I didn't want to draw a basket, but I wanted to take some of the design elements and to kind of expound upon them, kind of like improvisation like you would in jazz, where you can bring the color and play with the color, but still at the same time have a reference to Plateau art.
And that started a whole other series. It started from there, it became ones like—those kind of morphed into the one, like the Okanagan, the large geometric pieces, where they definitely referenced the designs more. And, like the Wyit View, from Crow's Shadow, the piece I did there, where you can see that that's transitioning into beyond the reference to the baskets, into incorporating new elements of the landscapes, like the cul-de-sac, or the towers that are, you know, these high voltage towers go across our ridges now, where in my youth, you would look up there, and there would be no towers going across the landscape. And so those are the ones that, you know, I think of the Plateau Geometrics as, like, the starting point for that whole set of work.
And I would work on these baskets when I was in committee meetings. You probably have been in a lot of meetings where you just go,
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"I would just love to do something instead of just sit here." And so I would bring them to the meetings, and the waxed—I liked the feel of the waxed linen. And it also enabled me to do them, to just pull it out and to start weaving, sitting there and going to the meetings.
These are the two baskets I just brought. This one is called, Roll Call. And when I made Roll Call, I know that this has four going this way, and four going the other way. And each one of those has 16 inside of it. So I know that every 16 is a repeat. So, these things—these are all on rows of 16. Basically each person has a row of 16.
Roll Call comes from—it's about the world around us. So I look at them kind of like winter counts, where it talks about what's around, and what happened. And so this is kind of like, just stopping and thinking about what's around you. There was also this poem by [William E.] Stafford. And it was called "Tracks." And he was on a train. And he was doing the same thing. He was saying, "Who's around us?" And on a fresh snow, you would see the tracks. And he would say, like, "Fox is here," and so on. And it's kind of who has survived.
And so we have all of these figures, and we have like a television person here, and android. Here's an android guy, and a little person there. And I was out—I think I was up at the Burger King, and I looked across and there was a whirlwind across the valley. And I thought, yes, I should bring that in, and a cat, and so on, a high voltage tower, and a mosquito, and just things that are around you, and kind of thinking that, you know, this is our world today. And, who is here? Who has survived? And we have, like, Eagle here. When I grew up in Omak, there were no eagles, you know, in the '50s. You never saw eagles. And so, it would say, "Ban the DDT." And eagles came back. It's a common sight to see eagles today. And, you know, we have, like, space people, and our trees, and a snake. And this house I live in has these praying mantises. And all of a sudden, they'll be at my front door, and you go, "Oh, well, thanks for coming by and visiting." So it's kind of a narrative about who's here. And it also makes me think of those high school pictures, where they have the class pictures.
All of the people in it and this grid and stuff. And it kind of references that. So these—that's what these are about.
Cécile Ganteaume: Wonderful. So is it Elizabeth Woody that taught you basketry?
Joe Feddersen: Yes, Lizzie did. She was working with Mary Slick. And I don't know, it would seem very intuitive for me. And I think I told you about the story my mom told you, about how I would just take one can of rocks and pick one out at a time and put it in the other. And it's kind of—it's like that when you're weaving. It's just very methodical. And it's kind of like a pacing. It seems soothing to just sit there and work.
And I brought another one along here too: this one is called Highway With HOV Lane. So, you can see the highway and the HOV lane. And on these, I really liked them when they—the design fluctuated. Like, you wouldn't normally look at that and think, highway with HOV lane.
Cécile Ganteaume: Exactly. No, that's not really what comes to mind if one doesn't know your work.
Joe Feddersen: And then you go, "Of course, it is, it looks like traditional baskets, kind of." So some of them kind of have that way of like being in two worlds.
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Anna Rimel: In his 2011 oral history, Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary told Mary Savig, the Lloyd Herman curator of craft at the Renwick Gallery, about working with Feddersen:
Mary Savig: Who have you been collaborating with recently?
Preston Singletary: some of the more recent collaborations I was working with Joe Fedderson, who's a Native American, McCallville native from eastern Washington, and he approached me a long time ago about Making some glass baskets. I think the first group of baskets that he wanted to make—he's a basket maker by trade, you know, that's his, one of his mediums.
He's also a great printmaker and he was an educator down in Evergreen. Anyway, he approached me about making these glass baskets based on his his artwork. And then I think the first group went to actually the NMAI, when the Heye Foundation had just opened sort of a prelude to the opening of the bigger museum in D.C. So those pieces went there, that was one collaboration.
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Mary Savig: Another process that you—I think invented might be the right word—is with Joe Feddersen and the baskets, you guys worked together for a long time to come up with that texture of the basket on glass.
Preston Singletary: Yeah.
Mary Savig: How long did that take? What was that process like?
Preston Singletary: You know, I wanted to create some pieces again that would be more referencing of traditional object, and so I worked on the basket designs. The hats are also typically traditionally made out of basketry, and they're woven and then they're painted. So I wanted to figure out how to get the texture of woven texture just blasted into the thickness, and so I came up with the idea of this—so Letraset used to make this vinyl tape that was used for graphic design, and so I contacted a company that could take this vinyl tape and slit it into very thin—
Mary Savig: Very thin, maybe like an eighth of an inch or a sixteenth of an inch?
Preston Singletary: Yeah, a sixteenth of an inch. And so I figured by putting the sub-pattern or actually, it'd be sort of the geometric pattern that typically wraps around the baskets was made with the vinyl tape, a very thin, thin vinyl tape that is drawn and cut. And then applied the thin strips of vinyl tape, you know, line by line very tight so it looks like a basket, and then sort of a spiral wrap down the length of the basket. And then blasting at different stages creates sort of a texture which looks like basketry, you know, because when you blast one stage and then you peel off a layer. The first stage continues to reduce because of the carving process of the sandblasting. And so therefore, it creates different layers, secondary layers and tertiary layers, so they were able to mimic the looks of baskets.
Mary Savig: Did Joe—did you watch him make a basket or did you just talk with him about it and…?
Preston Singletary: You know, I guess truth be told, I had been developing the process of basket and he told me that he wanted. And Joe's geometric patterns within his baskets are always referencing sort of modern society. You know, he'll take the very abstract form, say, for instance, a brick pattern. You know, the mortar in between the bricks and that technique, and so he would sandblast it. And I said, "Well, you could take it further, and you can put the sub-patterns of the basket texture."
So I basically showed him how to do it, and he kind of ran with the technique. But also, some of his other images—and that's why I felt like, well, by giving him this technique, it's— he's doing something his own with it. So his pieces and my pieces look very distinct, and so it's not like a competition or anything. But some of the other patterns that he creates are sort of like a parking lot, like the lines in a parking lot, and so these are all modern patterns and symbols that he sees in the modern world. And so he brings them into the basket, and sometimes it'll be like a tire track. So it looks like a traditional design, but if you look at it closely, you realize that it's actually—like there's the basket up there of the parking lot [gestures to basket.]
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Anna Rimel: G. Peter Jemison, a member of the Heron Clan of the Seneca nation, lives and works in Rochester, New York. In addition to his paintings and works on paper, Jemison has been an advocate for Native rights in politics, serving as the chairman for the Haudenosaunee committee on burial regulations, ensuring proper repatriation of sacred objects and remains. He was also the longtime caretaker for Ganondagan, a historic site that preserves Seneca and Iroquois art and culture.
In his 2021 oral history with Nicole Scott, he recalls his childhood:
G. Peter Jemison: Yes. Okay, I was born January 18, 1945, and I was born in the small town called Silver Creek, New York, which is in western New York State, and it is probably 10 minutes away from the town where I actually lived. There is a small hamlet called Irving, and I grew up in Irving, New York, which is a border town of the Cattaraugus Reservation.
The reservation was across the Cattaraugus Creek, and I could throw a stone across the creek, literally. This is more of the size of a river, the Cattaraugus Creek,
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especially the part where I grew up. And there was a car bridge that went across the creek that connected the reservation with, I say the hamlet of Irving, the small village of Irving. And so I grew up in this border town, or border village, but I was back and forth across the car bridge, the walking bridge, I wouldn't say daily, but, you know, maybe almost daily, because, you know, we played on both sides of the river. We fished, we hunted, we rode our bicycles. I worked, later I worked in a canning factory that was on the reservation side; my grandmother lived there, my cousins lived over there, and, you know, we were in and out of people's homes, you know, and that kind of thing.
And so, it's where I grew up, and I have been describing it to people as a kind of a multicultural community, and the reason I say that is, in the summertime, these men came from the tropical islands like Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and Jamaica to work for the farmer who lived next door to me, and they literally stayed in a housing that he provided at the back of his property. And then in the summertime, when the canning factory was working, and it went until the early fall, people came from the South, Black people came from the South, and they worked in the canning factory. And people from the town worked in the canning factory, Senecas worked in the canning factory. And then there were a group of Italian immigrants who had kind of a dormitory style of housing that they all lived in, and they came out of Buffalo, and they worked in the canning factory. So there were all kinds of people around, you know, especially in the summertime. And, you know, it was a place where they canned beans, and tomatoes, and beets, and so it was a job. One thing I laugh about is that our hourly rate was one dollar an hour. Regardless of what you were doing, you made a dollar an hour.
I also describe the town this way, and I say that there was a general store in the town, and everyone came there to pick up their mail, those that didn't get rural delivery, and they also came there to get cold cuts and other kinds of things that he had. You could buy rope there, you could buy pants there, you could buy some shirts, and things like that. And in the back of the store was a post office, and so I often describe that there were all kinds of different smells inside there. You could smell the cheese that was behind the counter, you could kind of smell the area that was a little bit dusty where all of these older things were. It was kind of jumbled up, it wasn't really well kept on one side of the building where the clothing and other items—I don't know what they called that, but dry goods, they were there. And then a post office, seemed like it had a kind of its own smell, too. And as a kid, you know, you notice these things, and you think about them.
Anna Rimel: He goes on to describe his time in college and his decision to move to New York to pursue a career as an artist:
G. Peter Jemison: And it took me five years, but I managed to graduate with a degree, a Bachelor of Science in art education. And I'm going to maybe end it at this point, but I did not get into the college, or the university that I wanted to go to for graduate work, which was Yale. And the reason I wanted to go to Yale was because I had a professor now, who was young, and who had just graduated from there, and he was going to help me get in. But there were two of us going together; my friend got in and I didn't get in. And I decided then I was going to move to New York City and become an artist. I always also say I was going to move to New York City and become a famous artist, which is kind of a joke, you know. I had no idea what I was doing, I just knew that if I couldn't get into graduate school, I might as well go and become an artist in the place that was the center of the art world at the time.
This was before I really learned who I was. You know, this is before, this is in 1967, so I'm just still not really knowing what it meant to be Seneca. I hadn't met all my relatives yet, I hadn't met those that were the preservers of our traditions. So I was following this path of the white art world, and going to the center of the art world, and I was going to try to make it there. And I had this idea in my head that you went and you starved, you went and you struggled. And you made enough money somehow to be able to feed yourself, but you had to accept the idea that you had to struggle and live and deprive yourself of things, because you were going to get your art, you were going to do your art. And almost like, somehow or other, that gave you some special, you know, whatever it was, meaning, or you knew more by that struggle that you would go through, I don't know. But it was rough, you know, it was really rough.
And about mid-way of me being there and thinking that way,
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I had read some quote by Picasso, which said you have to, kind of, go out into the city, or into the bars, or wherever the artists hang out. If you're going to become known, you have to put yourself out there so that people know who you are, and meet people, and meet the right people, and make your way, you know. Staying in your studio by yourself, you're not going to be able to accomplish what you want to do, so you've got to put—you've got to step outside of yourself and go out there. And I took that to heart, and I did it.
When I was 23, I had a chance encounter with a well-known gallery owner, and he came to my studio, looked at my work, and included me in a show with other professional artists, you know, and some artists that were really—had a big name; they were established, and I was showing with them
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G. Peter Jemison: Anyway, I had this self-confidence, this belief that I could do things, and that I would try it, you know, if it was within the possibility. And really it has remained with me my whole life, you know, that if I think I can do it, I will do it, you know? I will keep trying and I'll work at it and attempt to accomplish that idea. And, you know, when I think about where I came from, you know, as a small—from a very small community, you know, and a pretty sheltered life, you know, really, and in a—you know, in an environment which was not really accepting of Indians, you know, at the time. I was one of the very lucky ones, I think, where I was given opportunities by people to do the things I've done. I feel like I—well, I've always had this other feeling, which is that, whether they're my ancestors or who they are, are looking after me, looking out for me and have helped me through difficult times, you know.
That's something that has remained with me, and it—and I didn't really come to fully understand that until I began to focus on my traditional way of life, that I began to really think of those that had gone before me, you know, and want to learn more. And yet, even before I knew these things, I still had some kind of belief.
I had this one experience that really stuck in my mind. Around Around 1972, my grandmother passed away, and at the time I was staying in the gallery in New York City where I was going to—where I had some work on exhibit, and this was a gallery focusing on Native artists. It was called American Art, but it was run by a Native American, and we were showing only Native artists, and I was volunteering there during this particular summer. And my grandmother passed away, and I had a dream that she came to me and kissed me on the lips. And I didn't remember my grandmother ever doing that, so I felt, like, her spirit came to me and kissed me on the lips, you know. And I immediately, when I woke up, called home to find out what was going on, and I learned that my grandmother had passed. And so I made every effort to get home and go and see my grandmother, you know.
And it sort of was that, kind of, beginning of this connection that, you know, I really felt closer, I guess, to those ancestors that had come before me. And this was what was happening, like, you know, I was beginning—I was really beginning to think about being an Indian, you know, and really beginning to think about the things I would learn later, like, what does that mean, you know, what does it mean to say I'm a Seneca? And I knew that, if anything, I wanted to be knowledgeable about that. I really wanted to understand it; not just words, you know, not just I'm a Seneca.
But one of things I had been taught was—by one of my teachers—that art is a long game. That it isn't who finishes the race first, it's who has the longevity to stay in the race, or in the—in the act of being an artist, you know. That it may take you a long time to achieve what you set out to do.
Anna Rimel: Jemison also discusses his involvement with the American Indian Community House Gallery, a nonprofit center in New York that fosters intercultural dialogue and understanding while supporting Native Americans in the city. He met artists like Joe Feddersen there in the 1980s, and the close-knit community sustained his drive after the loss of his earlier works
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and as he started his landmark painted paper bag works, which considered contemporary notions of Native life in his bustling urban setting:
G. Peter Jemison: And then, moved back to New York City in 1978 after having done several other things. I was offered a job to run the gallery for the American Indian Community House, and because I had the experience of working with that art gallery that I spoke about where my grandmother came—her spirit came to me—and because I had organized a few exhibits of Native artists, I thought I could do it, that job in New York. And I was, kind of, thinking it was a way to get my art career going again, because my art career had sort of gone to the side while I was ironworking and being an administrator and doing that kind of stuff.
And there been a fire on my grandmother's property where a lot of my art burned up, a lot of the art I had first created in New York, and some of the work I had done in California, and some of the work I did in Schenectady. When I moved back to the reservation, moved back home, it all burned up, and it was devastating for a while. For a couple years, I didn't do any art, I couldn't—I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And finally, I got back to it, but it really was after I moved to New York City the second time, in 1978, that a couple of opportunities opened up to me, and I really started to create art again and think of myself as an artist and think of my art career.
And I think about this man, his name was Robert Davidson—he's a Haida from the northwest coast of British Columbia; when we met he said to me, "Peter, what happened to your art career? Where's your art?" And I told him, "Well, you know, I kind of set it aside while I run this art gallery," but he, kind of, implied that I should get back to it, you know, I should start working again on my own art. And he was right, and I wanted to, but I had to have a space where I could work. And eventually, you know, by the time I met him I had an apartment in Brooklyn, and there was a room that I could use as a studio to do some artwork, and so I kind of gradually eased my way back in. And an opportunity came my way because of paper bags, of all things, an opportunity to show paper bags. And they kind of opened the door to the art world again.
Nicole Scott: So, if you don't mind going more into those feelings of losing your art, how did you get out of it, how did you—?
G. Peter Jemison: Well, you know, what happened was somebody had set fire deliberately to this building where my art was stored. I assumed it was a guy that I had caught on my property, who was driving a pickup truck. I kind of convinced myself that it was him that did it, and he was white. But kids on the Rez were also destructive, you know, some of them that were unsupervised, they would, you know, do all kinds of stuff, and so I didn't know if they had done it. And then while I was teaching on the Rez, and we had set up an art area, an art studio, someone had come in and really vandalized one of my paintings, you know, that I had there, and I kind of knew who the kids were. And so, I was like, they don't understand what my art is about, they don't really appreciate that, and somebody burned my paintings up, they didn't even know they were in there probably, they probably didn't get inside. And all those thoughts went through my head that, yeah, I'm home, but my work is so different that people don't really understand what I'm doing, you know. My work doesn't look like the classic, very naturalistic, very, you know, like, Indian subject matter, whatever, you know. It didn't have those characteristics, and so I thought, you know, what do I have to share with people, what can I tell them?
I was still struggling to figure out what I was going to do. Now that I was learning more about who I was and what it meant.
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Anna Rimel: Reflecting on the topography of contemporary Native art and the contemporary art scene more broadly, Jemison discusses the role of community or heritage labels for artists as well as the insight he gained from the painter Jack Whitten:
G. Peter Jemison: Native artists to me are in a class by themselves. The best ones are just unbelievable, they have the skill level that you don't find in other artists, the skill level that they have, and the aesthetic. Their work is just flawless in that way, and usually it just really, boom, it's right there, just has
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this incredible impact. And I can't help but admiring their work, and it might be a very traditional type of work; pottery, it might be basketry, it might be jewelry, or it might be, you know, some kind of a beadwork, or something like that that—I mean, it might be a traditional art form, but the work is just, like, outstanding. Some Northwest Coast carvers that I got to know, Robert Davidson, his work really impressed me.
Nicole Scott: We had talked about this before, about being labeled a Native artist rather than just an artist.
G. Peter Jemison: Okay, we have talked about this, and it really was a conscious choice on my part. And this conscious choice took place quite a while back now, because it would've been as far back as 1973, '72, when I made a conscious choice to show with other Native artists and to be considered as a Native artist, as an Indian artist, as a Native American artist, as an Indigenous artist, whatever label you want to put on it.
I made the choice that that's what I wanted to do, and I recall saying to you I was advised not to do that by a Black artist that I knew, who warned me that I was pigeonholing myself, and I would wind up limiting my opportunities by acknowledging that I was an Indian artist, or a Native artist. And my thought was, yes, but I am. I mean, my parents are both Senecas, I grew up in a Seneca community, I—you know, my being is as a Seneca, okay? Yes, it took me a while to understand what that meant, but that is who I am, okay.
And so, this man who was telling me that it wasn't a good idea, I want to say his name was Jack Whitten. Now Jack was Black, and he was from Bessemer, Alabama. He left Alabama due to racism, and he moved to New York City and went to a school called Cooper Union and developed as an artist. But along the way, he made a decision that he would not call himself a Black artist, he would only refer to himself as an artist. And he would work in an abstract manner, and really work to develop his ideas and paint according to what he was thinking, his thoughts and his emotions and his ideas. And for a—for quite a long time, Jack worked as I did without real recognition, and then as he got older—I forget the year he passed away, but he was getting toward the end of his life when he suddenly got major recognition. I'm saying—I think I've got recognition, he was really—in the white art world being in New York City, he got the full treatment. And I went to see one of his shows sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he was showing all of his work, even the works that I liked that he was not ready to show when I saw them, these carvings in wood. So Jack made it, and today, Jack Whitten is, like, a blue-chip artist in the art world. It's weird, because that's the art world. The art world will profit from Jack Whitten for decades because they've given him the recognition, he did a lot of work and his work is selling; he made it the way he wanted to do it, is what I'm getting at. It is a way to do it.
So if that's what we work toward, is when will the art world embrace us, me, it's beginning. It is as close as it can be right now to the art world embracing Pete Jemison, but I did it my way. I said I'm a Native artist, I'm an Indian artist, I'm Seneca, my subject matter comes from my heritage, and sometimes it doesn't look like it. People wouldn't know for sure that that's what's behind it, but I know what it is about.
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Anna Rimel: This podcast is produced by Ben Gillespie and Michelle Herman at the Archives of American Art. It was edited by the team at Better Lemon Creative Audio. Our music comes from Sound and Smoke composed by Viet Cuong and performed by the Peabody Wind Ensemble with Harlan Parker conducting.
For show notes, work cited, and additional resources, visit aaa.si.edu/articulated.bIf you enjoy ARTiculated, please consider rating and sharing it. The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations from individuals like you to sustain our ongoing operations and special programs like ARTiculated. To support our work, please visit aaa.si.edu/support. Thank you.
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