Photography Studies

1800-1830's Cemetery, Northbridge, Massachusetts

"Afternoon Tea"

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Medium(s): Micron Pen .005

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"Afternoon Tea" was definitely a test of patience with such a small-tipped micron pen. The crows themselves took me about a half hour each, maybe more on the flying one. I'm sure I could have used something similar with a bigger tip like a sharpie or pen&ink, but I love the black that comes out of these pens when given the time to make something black in its entirety.
The piece is pretty complex, as my works usually are subject/meaning wise.

After drawing Mr. Umbrellaman there, I got the idea that I wanted to make Natives doing a "routine" activity that just screams Western culture. I couldn't really think or find anything better than afternoon "tea time". Afternoon tea is a light meal typically eaten between 3pm and 5pm. The custom of drinking tea originated in England when Catherine of Braganca married Charles II in 1661 and brought the practice of drinking tea in the afternoon with her from Portugal. It became prominent in the 18th century of aristocratic culture and those seeking the same for themselves.
Since thats explained as predominately Western custom, I attempted to bring that aspect into modernization, assimilation, and colonization, my usual topics. Dressing nice and drinking tea (aka following Western customs and trying our best to be Americans/Canadians) will never cloud over the fact of what we are, and definitely as what others see us as. In these acts of colonization, the decomposition and decay of traditional ceremony, culture, and beliefs die out if not become infected by radiation (modernism/mainstream society). Socio-radiation I like to personally call it.
To further show direct decomposition of traditionalism, crows come to the top of the umbrella where they one by one take the cottonwood branches; the couple and their dog seemingly surrounded by crows as if they themselves are near death.
The umbrella itself represents ceremony, particularly akoka'tssini, Sun Dance. The prayer ties represent our sufferings and indulgent hopes of things changing, when clearly we further aide in the decay of our hopes, dreams, and traditional ways.
The sign falling apart implies to the viewer the setting is a Native reserve. This also represents what we have done to ourselves, our land, and our environment for attempts to stimulate tribal economies and simply cash, again dependency on the government. If we are dependent on a mass-global warming contributor, we cannot be any less to blame if we support and even partake in their efforts to further unbalance and outright destroy. Our own people in the arctic north have already been documented and interviewed about how much their culture and traditional lifestyles have changed due to melting ice alone.
Smaller aspects are my notorious beer bottles covered in traditional-evil colors and hailstone symbols to represent evil beings. The Lakota best describe this as "Iktomi has you"..the trickster spider. Iktomi is in every bottle, and within every bottle is sorrow, despair, and violent acts waiting to happen. The effects of alcoholism on reservations is a ultimately worse contributor to many issues of sexual assault, rape, and domestic violence.
The dog, of course, represents loyalty, represents children and future generations. The world we teach and show our children is the world we ensure they will know well and live in, and unfortunately most of the time pass down to the next. Children, like dogs, blindly and loyally follow those they love and look up to, regardless of a good or bad role model. Dragging the travois represents the burdens we have that we subconsciously force upon them to experience.
Any native will tell you, children are our future, they always have and will be. What kind of world are we bringing them up in and teaching them to treat it as? The livelihood of our orally-surviving culture depends on people now preserving it and passing it on. Are you decolonized enough to rightfully say you are your nation, or are you the man and woman here? Living lies, living someone else's culture.
Absorption rather than adaptation. It plagues our native world, and our whole world.

Untitled Micron Pen WIP III

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I'm rummaging now with names and ideas as this kinda self-forms itself into this, apocalyptic, culture genocide, prim-and-proper tea party.
The top of the umbrella was bothering me, that it needed some sort of movement and actions in an effort to more centralize the umbrella as a symbolic Sun Dance tree. The ravens/crows come, a symbol is death and decomposition, as they one by one take bits and pieces of cottonwood branches, to symbolize the slow death, decay, and loss of ceremonial practices as we bring, still, our colonized ways and views to them.
The dog with the travois might be carrying something related to this "tea party", perhaps a picnic basket. Maybe something more apocalyptic like gasmask tubing/filters. Still up in the air.
I also added some smal things. The row of hanging drying meat was to coverup my mistake that I originally had him planned to be sitting on a park bench. In front of the woman and man's feet are beer bottles covered in traditional-evil symbols and colors...my well-known addition to art these days.
Excited now finally where this composition is bringing me, as I'm excited to work more and more on it.

Untitled Micron Pen WIP II

A piece I've started to work on, not much to say about it yet because I'm struggling to decide what I want to do and where for it to go. I'll update constantly.

The balance of the piece was bothering me (look at update prior to this one). I wasn't sure at all what to put, or where to put it, that would balance the piece, yet keep it interesting, unique, but along the same lines as the first subject. What balances a man better than a woman version? I'm enjoying where this composition is going now.

Untitled Micron Pen WIP

A piece I've started to work on, not much to say about it yet because Im struggling to decide what I want to do and where for it to go. I'll update asap.

"Where do we draw the Line?"

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Medium(s): 2H Pencil, Pen, Sharpie Pen

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A quick, yet thoroughly and exploratory worked sketch, "Where do we draw the Line?" defines and illustrates that question for Indigenous people on where it is we stand today, technologically, politically, environmentally, medically, every way possible that affects us from the Western world compared to our Old world. The questions are a bit difficult to grasp as I had been researching and reasoning/discussing with a friend on Existentialism. Where is it we, as cultured Indigenous people, place ourselves? As individuals? In this globalized and colonized world where mental and technological assimilation has no preference to race, sex, gender, religion, etc...

The human figure defines an elder, someone of extreme cultural, social, and governmental importance to Indigenous culture.

The figuratively-implied shape out of lines defines a traditional-style horse.

These two one in the same relatives and relations in traditional culture, still amidst the same world, but have become vastly separated in ways that are not recognizable, to the point it is easy to make out the human face in our eyes, but the horse figure almost abstract and unrecognizable unless putting in some visual effort. An abstraction to visually define a broken connection..an old belief and view now apathetically unthought of. This defines symbolically our lost sight of animals as our relatives (symbolically including our earth's place as a whole), as we have become swallowed by cooperate agendas and dependence on colonized needs. We now exist as Indigenous people in a synthetic-nature, where everything is clearly defined with an exact scientific and mathematical answer, purpose, and reason.

I quote from my artistic thesis the part this piece defines visually:
"Technological acceleration does not affect out way of living - it is our new and comprehensive host of life, the environment of living itself. It is not the effect of technology on the environment, culture, economy, religions, etc., but rather that all these categories exist in technology. In this sense technology is new nature. The living environment, old nature, is replaced by a manufactured milieu, an engineered host-synthetic nature. In a real sense, we are off planet, swelling on the lunar surface of stone, cement, asphalt, glass, steel and plastics, engulfed in the atmosphere of radioactive oxygen and electromagnetic vibrations - the soothing aroma of atomic nuclear energy, the soothing lullabies of the machine. The common notion tells us that technology is neutral, that we can use it for good or bad. Though, in my opinion, we do not use technology, we live technology; technology is our way of life. Being sensitive entities (especially as Indigenous people), we always have and will become our environment - we become what we see (or may not see), what we hear, what we eat, what we smell, what we touch, etc. Where doubt and questioning is prohibited (indigenous or not), we become, without question, the environment we live in..."


Where does the line exist between adaptation and absorption? Between integration and imitation? Who defines these lines?

This line is completely individual-based. Which is what this entire piece is created from, individual lines.

"Assimilation Shelter in Sweatlodge"

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Medium(s): Acrylic, Pen & Ink, Sharpie, String, Tracing and Palette Paper Mix Media

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"Assimilation Shelter in Sweatlodge" is a mixed-media composition I completed in two weeks during my staffing of the Oscar Howe Native American Summer Art Institute (OHSAI) at the University of South Dakota. During the visiting artists of Bunky Echo-Hawk and Roger Broer, I was inspired by the gallery of Northern Plains Indian Art Market collections the Fine Arts department owned during OHSAI. I had never done mixed media in this fashion, nor had I taken a painting seriously. This was the result of ultimate experimentation outside of my comfort zones.

I leaned into the works of abstract by my mark making. Using the teeth on a buffalo jaw, I covered the teeth in paint and dabbed the canvas, which created a very unique and decomposing-looking texture. Aside form painting, I used adhesive spray to directly place my drawing of the sundancers on tracing paper directly onto the canvas. The sundancers being my startingpoint, I expanded outward in the composition from there, like an atomic bomb.

The piece has unlimited symbolism, but will review the major points here. Below is a link of a close-up photo of my pen&ink work alone of the sundancers.
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http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs038.snc4/34268_405896237927_549737927_4365412_3619457_n.jpg
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The Sundance, akoka'tssini, is one of the most sacred and most honorable spiritual practices that can be done in our traditional culture. It is the iconic ceremony that makes us Indigenous people, completely non-western ceremonies that we've done annually every summer for centuries and generations.
THis piece is about the decomposition of it, of the people who should be involved. I incooperated materialistic objects and things related to society that tempt us, but we choose to let overcome who we are freely, based on our own decision-making rather than some adversary thats holding us back. Things that cloud our mind from who it is we are as Native people, and recognizing the fact that it is what we do that makes us Native, not what we happen to be in bloodlines.
The strings off the sundancer connect to a dead tree, to symbolize decomposition of ceremony. Much fighting goes on about who is doing what wrong and it seems everyone individually knows "the right way", nevermind those who do not even attend or recognize the Sundance as a primary event in their life. Hanging from the tree are alcoholic containers and cut braids, to show how many people are no longer connected to the tree, but the reasons they are not there. Addictions, issues, and loss of cultural fundamentalism all relate to why we are not involving or attending ourselves to not just sundance but all red road commitments and ceremonies. A lone cross rooted into the ground showing the dominance of Christianity and other western-origin beliefs that many of my people have turned to.
Traditional symbolism is related to my color choices. Black and white was and is considered an evil color-palette of evil spirit beings that visited and tempted us so long ago. My view is that since we as people have changed, so have they. This belief resulting in my design of traditional evil colors and markings on beer bottles; the direct temptations that destroy us from within.

I combined it all with a Fallout Shelter sign used in the 50's and 60's during the Nuclear-era. As a means to direct people to a safe haven and protection from harm. I'm thinking about doing a series of these with that similar topic. C.D. (Civil Defense) put them out, and figured it'd be fun to twist it to C.D. (Culture Defense). Overall, this piece I believe is the start of a new direction.

Graphic photoshop work for Screenprint Project

This is a image I made in photoshop and gimp mostly for my next assignment in Printmaking II (screenprinting). We were required to make our own images graphically, posterize them around 9 levels, and use them as referances for our screenprint processes.

I chose a photo of a traditional painted Native, black face with a red forhead which usually signifies he is a veteran of war. I darkened most of the image with speckle tools of black and then began to work in my detailed white parts in. After putting a cigerette in his mouth, I spent a while creating a realistic crying running tears effect on his left side, then continued to make traditional symbol hailstones and lightning bolts, even added one in his eye to create a more vampiric looking pupil.
White hailstones and lightning bolts were used traditionally in a lot of traditional cultural stories and artwork were used to portray evil, or evil in a physical form. I wanted to show the battle of classic good and evil I suppose in a more Indigenous style portrayal. The battle of traditional culture vs. modernism and technology.

I'll update with screenprint processes.

My Official Current Artist's Thesis

"By any measure, we live in an extraordinary and extreme time. Language can no longer describe the world in which we live like it used to. With antique ideas and old formulas, we continue to describe a world that is no longer present. In this loss of language, the word gives away to the image as the 'language' of exchange, in which critical thought disappears to a diabolic regime of conformity - the hyper-real, the omnipresent image. Language, real place gives way to numerical code, real to virtual; metaphor to metamorphosis; body to disembodiment; natural to supernatural; many to one. Mystery disappears, replaced by the illusion of certainty in technological perfection.
Technological acceleration does not affect out way of living - it is our new and comprehensive host of life, the environment of living itself. It is not the effect of technology on the environment, culture, economy, religions, etc., but rather that all these categories exist in technology. In this sense technology is new nature. The living environment, old nature, is replaced by a manufactured milieu, an engineered host-synthetic nature. In a real sense, we are off planet, swelling on the lunar surface of cement, asphalt, glass, steel and plastics, engulfed in the atmosphere of radioactive oxygen and electromagnetic vibrations - the soothing aroma of atomic nuclear energy, the soothing lullabies of the machine. The common notion tells us that technology is neutral, that we can use it for good or bad. Though, in my opinion, we do not use technology, we live technology; technology is our way of life. Being sensitive entities (especially as Indigenous people), we always have and will become our environment - we become what we see (or may not see), what we hear, what we eat, what we smell, what we touch, etc. Where doubt and questioning is prohibited, we become (indigenous or not), without question, the environment we live in.
With our Indigenous origins based in the natural order, should this context radically change, the mysterious nature of the human being shall also radically change - a change that will reflect the transformation of nature itself, whether it be a turning point or vanishing point. Natural diversity becomes a burnt offering, sacrificed to the infinite appetite of technological homogenization. We now live in the fiction of science. We are most definitely now, not in some made-up future, cyborgs. As we always have been, we are at one with our environment - we are technology. In this 'wonderland', freedom becomes the pursuit of our technological, industrial, and material happiness. Our standard of living is predictated on commodity consumption, as the practice our new spirituality is "pray for more". In vehicles of ecstasy, with cinematic engines of inertia at audiovisual speed, trans-port and tele-port blend into one. The beginning becomes the end. The 'port' disappears in the speed of light. The nanosecond, technological speed, transforms reality as it creates an ecstatic phenomena of compelling and unparalleled intensity. By human measure, charismatic technique portends the miraculous, as it engenders the condition of 'exit velocity' - a condition that blurs human perceptions, shatters all meanings, drains all content and breaks our bonds with the earth's natural order. All locations are consumed into the startling terra firma of the image, a demonic conformity that is the genesis of man. In this shadow of the mass, all previous definitions crumble.
The 'time' and 'space' of history exist to a homogenized zone of no return. In this supernatural implosion of g-force, human moorings give way, sending humans out-of-orbit into the void of technological space. The loss of original habitat and our subsequent relocation into accelerated space, throws nature into catastrophe, as it engenders traumatic stress syndrome as the now normal condition of post-human existence. Technology, while promising comfort and happiness as its 'result', means power, means control, means conformity, means destiny. Technology creates a condition of war that is at once both universal and unseen. The explosive tempo of technology is war; the untellable violence of genocide, relocation, assimilation and colonization in technology is war.
All of us, are refugees driven from our human and indigenous state."

(ENG283-Creative Writing) Ballad Poem Assignment

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The nobodies that want to somebodies,

but not until they're dead.
Not worth the bullet that kills them,

worth more than what they said.

The people who live has gastank heads,

televisions instead of faces.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects,

empty souls in alcoholic cases.

Who are not but could be, is what I see,

Who don't have culture, but folklore.
As toxic as they make the air today,
gas masks have no use anymore.

The surest way to them is only the same,
the different is who they hate.
With work to "change" they'll never see past,
the elitest barriers they create.

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