Spring Exhibit 2018

Claver Garcia & David Naranjo

We welcome you to join us for the Opening Reception with our featured artists David Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo) and Claver Garcia (Ohkay Owingeh)

Reception begins at 5pm and will include Fashion Showcase by David Naranjo. A lecture on the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 will follow by Institute of American Indian Arts Faculty Porter Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo) at 6pm.

For more info please call (505) 455-5041

Remember the Revolt to Create a Revolution

Curatorial Statement

Revolution is as much action as it is prophesy, and those motivated to act often do so with the hope of producing enduring positive change. While remembrances of revolution, such as the 1680 Pueblo Revolt are important as centennial commemorations, the works of Claver Garcia (OK) and David Naranjo (Santa Clara) reveal through different media and process, the spirit of revolution made personal in every day life.

Claver’s paintings remind us of the importance of retelling the story of the Revolt any time of year. Whether it be the faceless runners in Po Pay Day, into which any face can be superimposed, to the rear of Tesuque Runners Warn Their Village, the urgency of memory is apparent. His paintings, as well as the chromatic patterns rendered on magnets, remind us of the challenges contemporary Pueblo people face to retain identity in the midst of drastic cultural adaptation and change. The urgency of memory cannot be diminished, even in the ashes of razed villages and churches, so that people can continue to ask themselves, “What have we learned from this trauma, and how can we grow as we look to the future?”

David’s work stands at the fore of that future, as he utilizes contemporary digital technologies to render traditional Tewa designs in new media. His work shows us how “traditional” media changes as new materials are made available to each generation. They are interpretations of patterns that have been created and rendered with digital plotters and printers that have revolutionized the creative process and products of culture-based thought. His work stands like a young moccasin-clad man straddling the divide between analog and digital. We must remember that tradition is as much, and maybe even moreso a behavior as it is media, and that the tradition expressed in David’s work is that of adornment.

Stephen Fadden, 2018

 

David Naranjo

David Naranjo is from the pueblos of Santa Clara, San Juan, Cochiti, and resides in Santa Fe, NM. He is working toward a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Recently, Naranjo is working in multiple mediums to depict cultural symbolism through stylized Puebloan pottery designs and fine geometrical linear work. Currently, His work merges contemporary Puebloan traditions with non-traditional materials and elements to create meaning and purpose in each composition.

My inspiration for my work comes from the beauty I experience from my community of KhaPo Ohwingeh. My work integrates modern forms and concepts combined with traditional Puebloan aesthetics to create contemporary Puebloan art. I want to depict, reimagine, and re-contextualize such designs and iconography and apply them in a different format while being respectful and keeping the designs integrity intact. Puebloan pottery designs and geometrical linear work serve a purpose and have meaning within a cultural context which are inclusive of the natural world, change of seasons,  and emotional cognitive meaning.

I find our way of life to be a form of poetry and seek to show understanding and respect while making my art as a form of prayer. In my work, I try to apply that same level of intimacy, understanding, and respect in order to create the beauty that exudes from my community of Santa Clara Pueblo. I am using and incorporating traditional forms and techniques and various forms of technology as a way to create, adapt, and preserve our cultural traditions. Although my work isnt traditional art, they serve as examples to the ever changing, adaptation of modern culture and indigenous Puebloan traditions.

Claver Garcia

Claver Garcia was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1992 and raised between Ohkay Owingeh and Tesuque Pueblo. His father the late Gordon Garcia and mother Angela Vigil helped support and inspire Garcia to pursue his Artistic career. Claver Garcia is the second oldest of four children and the only male. Art influences include 90s cartoons/animations, traditional/contemporary Native American paintings and designs.  He currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he is attending the Institute of American Indian Arts.  Working on a BFA in Studio Arts with a minor in creative writing, Garcia focuses on painting, ceramic and sculpting.

Poeh Summer Arts Market

You are invited to the Poeh Cultural Center’s inaugural Summer Arts Market. Spend the day talking to artists and shopping for original jewelry, pottery, textiles and other arts by Native artists from across the Southwest. Come eat at one of the local Native food vendors with fresh flavors and traditional recipes.

Main market page link here.

Betty Padilla Artisit Demonstration

Betty J. Padilla (Diné/Navajo) from Ganado, Arizona is a contemporary Native American jeweler. She resides in Santa Clara Pueblo with her husband and children. She has always wanted to make jewelry and was greatly inspired by her Godmother, Lucy “Year Flower” Tafoya.
She enrolled in her first jewelry making class at the Poeh Arts Program, her instructor was the renowned, Fritz Casuse. She has learned many techniques of making jewelry with the guidance and patience of Fritz Casuse.

She has had the opportunity to participate in several art shows throughout her “learning process.” She has participated in Native Treasures, SWAIA Indian Market, IFAM, and the Heard Museum Guild Art Show.

Right now she plans to continue “learning” (a continuous process) and create the jewelry she loves.

Poeh Winter Arts Market

You are invited to the Poeh Cultural Center’s Winter Arts Market. Spend the day talking to artists and shopping for original jewelry, pottery, textiles and other arts by Native artists from across the Southwest. Located at the Buffalo Thunder Resort in the Hilton Hotel lobby and adjacent spaces.

Event Page

Youth Art Workshops

Poeh will be having youth art workshops during the week of Indian Market week.

3:00pm – Arrow Making
4:00pm – Rattle Making
5:00pm – Stencil Art
6:00pm – Painting

Pueblo Revolt Lecture: Joseph R. Aguilar

The Poeh hosts, “Understanding the Pueblo Revolt & Spanish Reconquest through the Lens of Indigenous Archaeology,” a talk by Joseph R. Aguilar (San Ildefonso Pueblo – Ph.D. Canidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania).

The Pueblo Revolt and Spanish Reconquest were critical moments in Pueblo history that defined the state of Pueblo communities into contemporary times. In the aftermath of the Spanish Reconquest, Pueblo communities settled in the locations that we know today, and a new era of pueblo history was brought forth. Recently, archaeologists and pueblo communities have partnered on projects that investigate the nature of Revolt Era sites on pueblo lands and, have offered new perspectives and interpretations on this critical juncture of history. Advances in archaeological methods and the rise of Indigenous Archaeology have helped lead the growing trend toward an archaeology that incorporates indigenous values and points of view. This presentation will present some of the findings and innovative methods used in Pueblo Revolt Archaeology, and how this research is leading to new conversations and understandings about the Pueblo Revolt.


About the Speaker

Joseph Aguilar is an enrolled member of San Ildefonso Pueblo, and is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His primary research focuses on the archaeology of the North American Southwest, with a specific interest in Spanish-Pueblo relations during the late 17th century. His general research interests include Indigenous Archaeology, landscape archaeology, and tribal historic preservation. A collaborative research project with San Ildefonso, his dissertation research examines Tewa resistance to the Spanish Reconquest efforts in the latter part of the Pueblo Revolt Era (1680-1696) as evident in the archaeological, historical and, oral records.

Jason Garcia Exhibit Preview & Artist Panel

The Poeh Cultural Center will feature the Jason Garcia and his series entitled “TEWA TALES OF SUSPENSE!”

2:00pm – Doors Open
3:00pm – Artist Panel w/ Jason Garcia, Tony Chavarria & Joseph Aguilar

“Tewa Tales of Suspense!” is a series of serigraph prints that illustrate the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. In the late 17th-century, Spain’s empire in the Americas extended north to New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California, where Spanish soldiers, settlers, and missionaries began to settle. The missionaries resettled the indigenous Pueblo people into peasant communities, building forts and missions to subdue and convert them to Catholicism. The Tewa people of Northern New Mexico, along with other Pueblo communities resisted Spanish conversion efforts and forced labor demands. Their sporadic resistance became a concerted rebellion in 1680 under the leadership of Po’Pay, a Tewa leader from O’ke Owingeh. The revolt was the most successful of Native American efforts to turn back European colonists, and for over a decade the Pueblos were free from intrusion.

 


About the Artist

Jason Garcia (Okuu Pin) does what great artists have been doing since the beginning of time: he carefully examines and interprets life around him and then shares those uniquely personal observations with the rest of the world. In his finished work—most often clay tiles that are created in the traditional Pueblo way with hand-gathered clay, native clay slips and outdoor firings — he transforms materials closely connected to the earth into a visually rich mix of Pueblo history and culture, comic book super heroes, video game characters, religious icons and all things pop culture.

The son of well-known Santa Clara Pueblo potters John and Gloria Garcia (known as Golden Rod), and the great grandson of the equally revered Santa Clara potter Severa Tafoya, Garcia notes he has been an artist all his life. He says, “I really don’t know much else…” However, in 2002, when he created his first “graphic tile,” he secured this calling while simultaneously expanding the norms of contemporary Pueblo pottery. His creative experimentation seamlessly blended ancient Pueblo designs, stories and scenery with images taken from Western popular culture. In his seminal piece “Grand Theft Auto – Santa Clara Pueblo,” for instance, Garcia replaced the illustrations from the cover of the video game Grand Theft Auto with scenes from Pueblo life, deftly joining worlds that may, to outsiders, seem unrelated.

Since that time, he has participated in several significant exhibitions including Comic Art Indigene at both the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC and Native Pop! at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Garcia has also received numerous awards and honors including a Ronald N. and Susan Dubin Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research, and both the coveted Best of Classification and Artist’s Choice awards at the world-famous Santa Fe Indian Market. Important museums have purchased his work for their collections, as well, including the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.

With a number of artistic accolades already under his belt, Garcia shows no signs of slowing down. His work continues to evolve with opportunities to experiment in other mediums (like printmaking via the Map(ping) Project at Arizona State University) and with series such as “Tewa Tales of Suspense,” where Garcia documents important Pueblo events in a narrative, comic book style on clay tiles (a nod to both his fondness for “Love and Rockets” by Los Bros. Hernandez, as well as Santa Clara Pueblo artists such as Pablita Velarde and Lois Gutierrez de la Cruz).


Panelists

Tony Chavarria is the Curator of Ethnology at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. He was the first Branigar intern at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe and  has served as secretary and board member for the Council for Museum Anthropology in the past. He contributed to the publications A River Apart: The Pottery of Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblos, Painting a Native World: Life, Land and Animals, and Here, Now and Always: Voices of the Native Southwest. Among the exhibitions he has curated are the traveling exhibition Comic Art Indigene and Heartbeat: Music of the Native Southwest. He also served as a community liaison and curator for the inaugural Pueblo exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.


Joseph Aguilar is an enrolled member of San Ildefonso Pueblo, and is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His primary research focuses on the archaeology of the North American Southwest, with a specific interest in Spanish-Pueblo relations during the late 17th century. His general research interests include Indigenous Archaeology, landscape archaeology, and tribal historic preservation. A collaborative research project with San Ildefonso, his dissertation research examines Tewa resistance to the Spanish Reconquest efforts in the latter part of the Pueblo Revolt Era (1680-1696) as evident in the archaeological, historical and, oral records.

 

 

 

Douglas Miles Exhibit Preview & Artist Panel

Exhibit preview of Douglas Miles’ exhibition “Residency” at the Poeh Cultural Center.

2:00pm – Doors Open
3:00pm – Artist Panel w/ Douglas Miles, Cannupa Hanska & Joseph Sanchez

In “Residency” Douglas Miles will show all new work created during his recent stay in San Francisco, California. The deYoung Museum Global Fellow residency allowed him time and space to create new large scale multi-media works. His constant work in the city resulted in creating four new murals, curate a group art show, three short films and designed four new Apache Skateboards. His new work was inspired by the streets of San Francisco as well as informed by the creative historical communities such as the Mission District and the Tenderloin.


About the Artist

Artist and founder of Apache Skateboards Douglas Miles is San Carlos Apache, Akimel O’Odham, and White Mountain Apache from the San Carlos Apache reservation.

As an indigenous visionary, Douglas Miles is one of those rare and important figures who continues to reside one step ahead of the main stream Native American art world. Miles tells his experiences through an array of mediums including graphic design, photography, spray paint, stencil, fashion, found objects, community organization and whatever else he can use to speak truth about his experience.

The imagery of Douglas Miles invites the viewer into an iconic conversation of progression regarding indigenous existence. Miles creates a new set of rules and then breaks them down, never compromising for the status quo, and always inviting a necessary representation to the current understanding of what it means to be Native American. His career is a poem written to all who have come before him and to all who will come after.


Panelists

Born in North Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger comes from Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent. Luger’s unique, ceramic­-centric, but ultimately multidisciplinary work tells provocative stories of complex Indigenous identities coming up against 21st Century imperatives, mediation, and destructivity. Luger creates socially conscious work that hybridizes his identity as an American Indian in tandem with global issues. Using his art as a catalyst, he invites the public to challenge expectations and misinterpretations imposed upon Indigenous peoples by historical and contemporary colonial social structures.

Cannupa Hanska Luger is the recipient of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship Award among other notable acclaims and has participated in artist residencies and lectures throughout the Nation. Luger currently holds a studio practice in New Mexico, maintaining a clear trajectory of gallery and museum exhibitions worldwide.

Cannupa Hanska Luger’s work has been noted as “a modern look at ideas of colonization, adaptability and survival as major components to the development of culture” by Western Art Collector Magazine and The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation noted that “Luger could well rise to be one of those artists whose caliber is unmatched and whose work will be studied by students to come, thus furthering the path for many more contemporary Native artists.”

Cannupa Hanska Luger graduated with honors from The Institute of American Indian Arts in 2011 with a BFA focusing in studio ceramics. He has been exhibited at Radiator Gallery New York NY;  L.A. Art Show Los Angeles CA; La Bienalle di Venezia Verona, Italy; Art Mur Montreal, Quebec; Museum of Northern Arizona Flagstaff AZ; Rochester Art Center Rochester MN; Navy Pier Chicago, IL; University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK; National Center for Civil and Human Rights Atlanta GA; Blue Rain Gallery Santa Fe, NM, among others. Luger is also in the permanent collections of The North America Native Museum Zürich, Switzerland; The Denver Art Museum Denver, CO; The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Santa Fe, NM; and The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art Norman, OK.


Joseph M. Sánchez is an American artist from Trinidad, Colorado, by way of the White Mountain Apache Reservation and Taos Pueblo. A leader in Indigenous and Chicano arts since the 1970s, Joseph has worked with hundreds of artists creating work, developing exhibitions, and advocating for the rights of minority artists, most importantly with the Professional Native Indian Artists (Native Group of Seven). A spiritual surrealist, Joseph’s work is sensual and dreamlike, provocative and thought-inducing. Still producing work, and exhibiting across the United States and Canada, Joseph M Sánchez is simultaneously a community elder, and an instigator at the front lines of the battle for the creation of art and how we define it as a culture.

Born in Trinidad, Colorado to Pueblo, Spanish, and German parents, Joseph Marcus Sánchez was raised in Whiteriver, Arizona on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. In 1966, he graduated from Alchesay High School in Whiteriver, with the intent to join the priesthood. This was not the right fit, and he returned home to the White Mountains. Sadly, his mother became ill and died unexpectedly. Soon after, in 1968 he joined the United States Marine Corps and was stationed at the El Toro UCMC Base in California, where he trained soldiers drafted for the Vietnam War.

In 1970, He travelled to Canada, where he met Ann Nadine Krajeck, a young photographer. They were married and settled in Richer, Manitoba, eventually purchasing a 20-acre farm in Giroux, Manitoba. In February 1975, Sanchez returned to the United States under President Gerald Ford’s amnesty program. Ann stayed in Canada, and Joseph traveled back and forth until she joined him in Arizona in 1978.

In 1981, Joseph and Ann had a daughter, Rosa Nadine Xochimilco, and they lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Joseph maintained a studio on Cattletrack Road. During the 1980s, Sánchez developed a program as an artist in residence at Rosa’s schools, teaching college level art history and technique to elementary school students. More than half of those students have gone on to become professional artists.

Sánchez travelled for his work, and in 1990 began traveling to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he met Margaret Burke. In 1996 he made his Santa Fe residence permanent, and they had a son, Jerome Bonafacio Xocotl. Joseph and Margaret were married in 2006.

Poeh Summer Arts Market

 You are invited to the Poeh Summer Arts Market

Saturday, June 17, 2017

You are invited to the Poeh Cultural Center’s inaugural Summer Arts Market, Saturday, June 17, 2017. Spend the day talking to artists and shopping for original jewelry, pottery, textiles and other arts by Native American artists from across the Southwest. Native food vendors will be onsite to satisfy your appetite for regional cuisine.

Here, at the Poeh, old rhythms of life and ways of making beauty continue. People bringing beauty to the world on a pathway of being, doing and sharing called the Poeh.

 
Vendors, please contact Lynda Romero at 505-455-5047 or email he at lromero@pojoaque.org
-Booth Fee is $75 and additional persons is $25

-Food booth are $200

Application Deadline & Full Payment: June 2th by 5 pm.

 

 

Opening Reception: Douglas Miles & Jason Garcia

Join us for a week of artist panels, exhibitions, workshops, traditional dances and live performances to celebrate the opening of our two newest exhibits, “Residency” by Douglas Miles (San Carlos Apache) and “TEWA TALES OF SUSPENSE!” by Jason Garcia (Santa Clara Pueblo). The opening reception takes place on Thursday, August 17 at 6pm and goes until 10pm with a live band and DJ.

6:00pm – Museum Doors Open
7:00pm – Pueblo Dancers
7:30pm – Apache Dancers
8:00pm – Desert Loops Band
9:00pm – DJ Vanessa Bowen