I have decided that I love working with charcoal and am really excited about it. This is assignment #6 from drawing class.I want to discuss art in a slightly more serious tone. A girl in my drawing class, Kristen, and our professor, Farrah, were discussing another professor. Farrah said when she was in grad school she thought his (the other professor's) work was crap. She said, in a laughter with a tinge of bitterness, that she felt people who do Native American art in this country have a much easier time selling and that they have the biggest market. Farrah and Kristen were right next to me so I decided to chime in.
It's not that they have the biggest market, it's that they have a large niche market. The buyers who like Native American art like this style almost exclusively. However I think Farrah's tinge of bitterness was implying that these artists don't necessarily have to be very talented, educated, or skilled comparatively to artists in other styles. Kristen even compared the exclusive purchasing of Native art to decorating your home head to toe, "white trash". Kristen is part Native, as am I, but we have VERY different opinions of this. OKAY White trash? Keyword=Trash. This is a negative label obviously and it upsets me to hear another person with a similar background as mine to compare the pride of Native heritage to White Trash pride, implying we're ignorant savages. She also said, "I just never got into the dream catchers and all that other stuff." Thanks Kristen, you're not doing anything to advance your people. Do us all a favor and just stop telling people you're part Native.
I know this blog is supposed to be reserved for art but sometimes you just can't deny it's social importance. Artists and artisans that work in cultural relevance are vital to the identity of a society or group of people. This is something that has been on my heart for quite some time. It has recently come to my attention that in general Americans really don't understand what happened to the indigenous people here. It's great that minorities are found in pop culture more and more (even if it's unevenly and almost generically represented). Our country has a huge fascination with Asian culture, and again this is awesome. All cultures interest me, but when was the last time you saw Native Americans in our pop culture? I'm almost positive that you would find at least 100x more Americans that know the differences between ethnicities in Asia than you could Americans who know that there are even differences at all between the Native American tribes.
I don't want to turn this into a rant about the struggles of Native people, but I do want to point out the unacceptable lack of representation in pop culture. I think this even contributes to deep seeded issues similar to my classmate's, Kristen who doesn't feel like it's admirable to have Native pride. But seriously people, if we're not even represented in American pop culture, where is it you think we're represented? At our pow wows, huh? Leave the Native culture to those select events. There's no place for it in your media and your art world...
That's changing, maybe not as fast as I'd like but there are people who are pushing to make these changes, and artists are the most influential to make change in this way. Did you click on the link for Demockratees when I blogged about Lush Life? Well you should check this guy out. As a designer who happens to also have Native American heritage I am ecstatic to see this. There is no reason why we have to do "Native Art" traditionally. It is definitely relevent in preserving what we have left of our culture, but it is also necessary to continue building on this culture.
a few facts relevent to my tribal background, Choctaw:
I know this blog is supposed to be reserved for art but sometimes you just can't deny it's social importance. Artists and artisans that work in cultural relevance are vital to the identity of a society or group of people. This is something that has been on my heart for quite some time. It has recently come to my attention that in general Americans really don't understand what happened to the indigenous people here. It's great that minorities are found in pop culture more and more (even if it's unevenly and almost generically represented). Our country has a huge fascination with Asian culture, and again this is awesome. All cultures interest me, but when was the last time you saw Native Americans in our pop culture? I'm almost positive that you would find at least 100x more Americans that know the differences between ethnicities in Asia than you could Americans who know that there are even differences at all between the Native American tribes.
I don't want to turn this into a rant about the struggles of Native people, but I do want to point out the unacceptable lack of representation in pop culture. I think this even contributes to deep seeded issues similar to my classmate's, Kristen who doesn't feel like it's admirable to have Native pride. But seriously people, if we're not even represented in American pop culture, where is it you think we're represented? At our pow wows, huh? Leave the Native culture to those select events. There's no place for it in your media and your art world...
That's changing, maybe not as fast as I'd like but there are people who are pushing to make these changes, and artists are the most influential to make change in this way. Did you click on the link for Demockratees when I blogged about Lush Life? Well you should check this guy out. As a designer who happens to also have Native American heritage I am ecstatic to see this. There is no reason why we have to do "Native Art" traditionally. It is definitely relevent in preserving what we have left of our culture, but it is also necessary to continue building on this culture.a few facts relevent to my tribal background, Choctaw:
- The Choctaw people were the first to be removed from their land and placed in Indian Territory during the Trail of Tears
- It's estimated 70% of the Choctaw people died during this time.
- Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw words "ukla" meaning person and "humá" meaning red.
- The time period in which public education made it illegal to speak indigeous languages created a gap in the generations. To promote fluency in the language the Choctaw tribe offers free language classes to tribal members. Visit the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma for more information. Choctaw is also offered at several major universitites, including the University of Oklahoma.
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