Native American – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Oche Wat Te Ou

Posted by Cindy on March 21, 2018

Mar 212018

Yerba Buena Gardens

Oche Wat Te Ou – Reflections is by Jaune Quick-to-see Smith and James Luna.

It sits in Yerba Buena Gardens and was installed in 1993.

This tribute to the native Ohlone Indians, created by artists Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and James Luna, takes form in a semicircular wood wall patterned with Ohlone basket designs. Standing behind a crescent-shaped pool and a circle of moss covered rocks, it’s a contemplative environment, set beside a redwood grove with a single live oak tree nearby. The artists intended the piece to serve as a performance area for poetry, storytelling, and other events in the oral tradition. The Memorial is significant since at one time this area held an Ohlone Indian burial ground.

Tiles in the reflecting pool

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was born at the St. Ignatius Indian Mission on her reservation. She is an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana.

She received an Associate of Arts Degree at Olympic College in Bremerton Washington. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, received her BA in Art Education at Framingham State College, MA and a masters degree in art at the University of New Mexico.

James Luna (February 9, 1950 – March 4, 2018) was a Payómkawichum, Ipi, and Mexican-American performance artist, photographer and multimedia installation artist. His work is best known for challenging the ways in which conventional museum exhibitions depict Native Americans. With recurring themes of multiculturalism, alcoholism, and colonialism, his work was often comedic and theatrical in nature. In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The Responsibility of Raising a Child

Posted by Cindy on October 20, 2014

Oct 202014

5th Avenue between Yamhill and Taylor Streets
Portland, OR

Along the TriMet route you will find this 2004 bronze buy Rick Bartow. Rick Bartow weaves Native American symbols of parenting and life cycles throughout The Responsibility of Raising a Child. The sculpture started out expressing the difficult circumstances of single parents, but by placing the infant in the basket it becomes a hopeful, encouraging and optimistic work.

Rick Bartow was born in 1946 in Newport, Oregon to a Yurok and Wiyot father who relocated to Oregon for work and married Bartow’s Euro-American mother. His artwork is influenced not only by his Native American heritage, but also by the effects of a thirteen-month tour of duty in Vietnam. He graduated from Western Oregon University in 1969 with a degree in Secondary Art Education, prior to being drafted into the Army.

Bartow is highly prolific working in sculpture, print, etching, monotype, ceramics, mixed media, and painting.

Bartow is currently working on a permanent outdoor installation for the Smithsonian Institute-National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.

Taking Life Lying Down

Posted by Cindy on January 23, 2013

Jan 232013

100 Block of Hemlock
The Tenderloin

This Native American is by Spencer Keeton Cuningham. Cunningham is responsible for another Native American mural in the tenderloin.

Cunningham is a member of the Indigenous Arts Coalition, a Bay Area organization started in 2008 that advocates for Native American artists.

Spencer Keeton Cunningham (Nez Perce) is originally from Portland, Oregon and along with drawing and painting, he shoots experimental and documentary films. He graduated from SFAI with a BFA in Printmaking in May 2010. Spencer currently works at White Walls Gallery in Central San Francisco. Since 2010, Spencer has shown his prints and drawings internationally in Canada, and most recently Japan, all the while collaborating with Internationally recognized artists such as ROA and Ben Eine.