The Tradish.ish Consistency Project 2023 Exhibition

Rez Rat

Artist: Emma Robbins
Nation(s): Diné
Price: $1000

From the artist: Rez Rat is a material heavy piece, incorporating items I generally use in my work--quills, fabric, jingles--but using a color palate that I don't generally work with. The piece is considered a self portrait mashed together with focusing strictly on the amazing materials provided. Oftentimes my work is so research heavy I feel like I get in my head too much, and this time I wanted to just make. When deciding which processes to use and color, shape, and material choices, I intentionally moved away from things that I normally don't work with, and worked in ways that I don't normally. I also decided to work with a canvas, which is something I very rarely do. It was strange/new/nice to have to think ahead about how something would be hung and presented, vs. doing what I always do, which is making something and then at its completion thinking, "shoot..how am I going to install this..??"

Proof of Pedigree Pouch

Artist: Gabe Colhoff
Nation(s): Northern Cheyenne & Blackfeet
Price: $187.60

From the artist: My piece is called, Proof of Pedigree Pouch. Eugenics has never looked more beautiful. Made with brain tanned leather, this pouch allows you to carry your ancestors not in your heart, your head or your blood, but on a necklace. Your individual blood quantum will be sewn, with porcupine quills, directly on to the front of your personalized pouch, which can be easily read, for the convenience of indigenous and non indigenous people alike.

Inside your pouch, inquisitive folks will be able to flip through pockets carefully designed to hold your enrollment card (if you have one) your proof of pedigree paper (ie family tree) and any photographic evidence of verified indigenous ancestors you have obtained. Why carry generations of history, culture, language and traditions, which can become too cluttered and heavy? Lighten your load and carry a Proof of Pedigree Pouch instead!

Transition Traditions

Artist: Adeline Clemmons
Nation(s): Kumeyaay & Mescalero Apache
Price: $300

From the artist: I called this piece Transition Traditions because it’s a point of a wake. The people are Bird singing and dancing, using their spirts to help the person being released from these earthly plains, transition into their next phase in life. Lots of these wakes have an even mix of colonizer religion and our traditional customs. If you grew up on our around a rez, then you’re sadly more than likely become all too familiar that goes on with burial traditions, but you know how important these things are. These traditions stay strong for a multitude of reasons, respect, honor, integrity, community….it’s a beautiful thing.

*The beads hanging on the side are to mimic the sounds of the gourds.

Resilience

Artist: Mandarin Whitlow
Nation(s): Mvskoke Creek Nation
Price: $500

From the artist: My design for my doll came from my Grandma. She used to use this design on quilts and pillows she’d make for us. I love following in her footsteps and creating from her designs she left behind, while putting my own twist on them. I hope you enjoy her as much as I had making her.

Nóávóse
(Bear Butte)

Artist: Courtney Little Axe
Nation(s): Northern Cheyenne, Absentee Shawnee
& Seminole
Price: $800

From the artist: This two-panel piece has various components to it. Nóávóse or Bear Butte is a sacred place to my nation and is represented in the background of this piece. The phrase “Ne’evemetsemenesto’ane” roughly translates to “Land Back” in Cheyenne. The reason I painted this on there is to state that sacred places belong to their respective tribes. Bear Butte has been desecrated time and time again by visitors and I believe this would not happen if it weren’t deemed a State Park and could be fully stewarded by the tribes themselves.

The design on the first panel is my great grandfather’s design from a parfleche bag that is kept in my family. My great grandpa Douglas Glenmore was a cowboy and an artist. When I was a child, I looked up to him and he always encouraged me to be an artist. I have many memories of him sitting at the dinner table and crafting works out of hide, willow branches, other types of wood, paints, etc., while I would watch and draw on sheets of paper beside him. He told me many stories as we bonded through art. He was also given the role of being a flute maker for our tribe. I added his design to my piece to pay tribute to him and the amazing artisan, mentor, and teacher that he was.

On the second panel, I added mountain designs on the top with each one representing different styles of dresses that Cheyenne women wear. The mountain designs are often found on many items within our culture, including on the bottom of our buckskin dresses, which is what I was told by my grandmother, Rhoda Glenmore. The horse hair was used to add dimension to the piece; to make it feel more realistic, as if you are standing there looking at Nóávóse from a distance.

A Day In The Village

Artist: Cheyenne Kippenberger
Nation(s): Seminole
Price: $150

From the artist: A Seminole camp on the edge of the glades featuring a woman holding a baby, her daughter next to her showing her a basket she just completed, while her grandmother in the back sits and watches under their family chickee. The dresses painted in acrylic feature traditional capes and skirts designed with old-style patchwork designs that Seminole women were known for creating by cutting small strips of bright-colored fabric together. The mother and daughter in the center of the painting are wearing beaded necklaces that show the traditional way women and girls would wear long beaded necklaces from their chin down to their chest.

ᎠᎹᏱ (Amayi, at/in the water)

Artist: Adrienne Keene
Nation(s): Cherokee Nation
Price: $550

From the artist: Cherokee double-walled basket. Commercial round reed, acrylic yarn, brass cones, wooden beads, horse hair, buckskin ties, artificial sinew. 9"x10"

This basket is made using a traditional Cherokee double walled technique, meaning the interior is woven first, and the weavers are flipped over and the outer wall is woven downward on top of the interior. For the outer wall I utilized yarn and twining techniques that are normally used for textiles to create a central line of water, broken by a brown layer of mud. In the Cherokee origin story of the earth, the world is covered in water and tiny waterbug dives down to retrieve mud to place on turtle's back, which spreads out in all directions and becomes Elohi, earth. The three layers also represent the three Cherokee worlds--the sky world, the world in which we live, and the underworld. Finally, there are thirteen horsehair cone adornments, to tie in to traditional regalia, and to represent the 13 moons and ceremonies of the Cherokee calendar.

Many Missing Branches
& Ocepihkis

Artist: Jalynne Geddes
Nation(s): Beardy’s and Okemasis Cree Nation
Price: Many Missing Branches $300
Ocepihkis SOLD

From the artist: Many Missing Branches

I used fabric to make up the sky, with ribbons to make up the earth. I wanted it to gently mimic a ribbon skirt. I used the hide for the tree, with the pellon as the leaves, with beaded edges and cones. The woman was a ribbon dress made out of the farbic and hair from yarn. The tree is in the foreground and she is in the background picking up the scattered leaves and branches. This is to symbolize many of us as we piece together our history. Our history deals with MMIW and the residential schools, which is present in the tree. Even though she is piecing together her history, she is building something to pass on in a good way and she is nourished by the ancestors in her family tree. Our family trees might have many missing branches sometimes, but they are strong. I hope we always have grace and gentleness even as we protect one another, as a tree protects us from the elements when it needs to.

Ocêpihkis

I wanted this second piece to display more of the roots of the tree. Often we see the grandeur of the tree before we ever see the roots that made the tree. I wanted this piece to have more beadwork because that is how I often translate my own feelings. I wanted this piece to show that even though our family trees might have missing branches, it doesn’t have missing roots. In fact, those roots are long and deep.

I relied on fabric again for the sky and earth, and used hide and yarn for the roots. I wanted to use several of the materials from the box to show how woven together everything is, how we can each be woven together, and how our ancestors left behind a sense of community for us most of all.

I also wanted to showcase what it might mean to not know where your roots are and the sorrow and confusion that results. My roots are not someone else’s roots, and another’s roots are not mine, but I can create community regardless. My roots protect me so I’ll protect my roots, but I’ll also try and protect in a good and responsible way.

Eclipse Portal 2023

Artist: Kitana Marie Connelly
Nation(s): Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde
Price: $400

From the artist: Eclipse is a small abstract, acrylic painting on canvas. Various beads are added to the surface, contrasting the soft shapes of the paint. Also included in the painting are 2 Coyote Eyes and 1 of their seeds in an unstraight line. The edges of the canvas are covered with light blue ribbon and the bottom edge with a pattern of beads.

Double Wide NDN / He is of the Star People

Artist: S.A. Lawrence-Welch
Nation(s): Métis & Néhiyaw
Price: $850

From the artist: Growing up in a double wide in the mountains of Treaty 6, I would always admire my fathers breastplate that hung on the wall in our living room. This piece is an interpretation of my childhood memories.

He seldom wore it, but to me it was such a significant symbol of how far my father had come. He was a residential school victim and had already lost one child during the scoop, so to see him honoring the stolen parts of his identity was, in retrospect, incredibly formative for me.

This piece is dedicated to George, honouring his Nehiyaw and Metis heritage.