Exhibition Checklist

Small Baskets

Direct Link, 2017 Archival inks and acrylic paint on paper, polyester sinew 2 x 1 ½ x 1 ½ in. (5.1 x 3.8 x 3.8 cm) Artist’s collection

Lure, 2017 Archival inks, acrylic paint, and silver leaf on paper, polyester sinew 4 ½ x 1 ¾ x 1 ¼ in. (11.4 x 4.4 x 3.2 cm) Artist’s collection

Marketable, 2017 Archival inks and acrylic paint on paper, polyester sinew 2 ¾ x 2 ½ x 2 ½ in. (7.0 x 6.4 x 6.4 cm) Artist’s collection

Red to White, 2017 Archival inks, acrylic paint, on paper 3 x 2 ¼ x 2 ¼ in. (7.6 x 5.7 x 5.7 cm) Artist’s collection

Valuable, 2017 Archival inks and acrylic paint on paper, polyester sinew 3 x 2 x 2 in. (7.6 x 5.1 x 5.1 cm) Artist’s collection

Decline, Challenged, 2014 Archival inks and acrylic paint on paper, polyester sinew 6 x 3 x 3 in. (15.2 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm) David and Sue Halpern Collection

On the Shoulders of a Child, 2013 Archival inks and acrylic paint on paper 3 x 3 x 3 in. (7.6 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm) Artist’s collection

Forever a Part of Us, 2012 Archival inks and acrylic paint on paper, polyester sinew 1 ½ x 2 ¾ x 1 ¾ in. (3.8 x 7 x 4.4 cm) Artist’s collection

Artist Biography

I have been a professional artist for over thirty years. Although I launched my career in the early 1980s, with my hand-colored black-and-white photographs, I don’t consider myself a photographer, nor a painter, a silversmith, a glass worker, nor a storyteller, even though I have proficiency within all these genres, and more. Rather, I consider myself an artist who chooses the medium that best expresses a statement, usually one that addresses human rights issues, especially those that affect Native people today. As a teenager, I worked for a summer at my tribe’s Qualla Arts and Crafts Cooperative in Cherokee, North Carolina, where I became familiar with the work of top Cherokee artists and traditional arts. That experience led to a job with the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, where I became involved with organizing exhibitions for Native artists and photo-documenting the gathering of raw materials and preparing them for Cherokee basketmaking, carving, and other crafts. After graduating from the Atlanta College of Art, I was commissioned by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the US Department of the Interior to illustrate in pen and ink twenty traditional Cherokee basket patterns. These drawings taught me the math and rhythm of basket weaving and convinced me that I could probably make a basket, but I never had a desire to try, until 2008. I became politically active with my art in the early 1990s, in response to the US quin-centennial (the country’s 500-year celebration of Columbus’s blundering onto our shores). Using a variety of multimedia techniques with photography, I created several bodies of work that addressed human rights issues unique to Native people. They include:

Honest Injun: a series of hand-painted black-and-white photographs of commercial products that use Indian names or images to hawk their wares.

Reclaiming Cultural Ownership; Challenging Indian Stereotypes: a body of thirty-six blackand-white documentary-style photographs that show Indian people as they really are, challenging the way they are portrayed every day.

Kituwah Motherland: a double-exposed, hand-tinted black-and-white photograph that helped to raise awareness about the corporate giant Duke Power and its plans to build a power plant overlooking the place most sacred to the Cherokee, the Kituwah Mound in North Carolina. This work was used to raise money for grassroots efforts to investigate legal options for the Cherokee people, who felt this spiritual mecca was in danger.

Vagina Monologues was created in support of the reading of the play by the same name to raise awareness of the incredibly high statistics of domestic violence and sexual abuse in Indian Country.

High Stakes, Tribes’ Choice: two black-and-white photographs tinted with a high-grade glitter, to illustrate the tension between the glitz of casinos and traditional values.