Artist Statement for 

Basket Memory exhibitions, 2024 - 2025

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My work draws from my connection to my homelands  with organic materials like willow and pine nuts and experimental mixtures of acrylic mediums.  I layer materials intuitively to create a visual in which Indigenous life is told through the perspective of a Native woman, mother, and American artist.  My recent work, titled Access Denied, is about two parallel concerns to Indigenous peoples in the Great Basin: limited access to natural resources, and limited representation within positions of power, specifically as it relates to the visibility of Indigenous artists. The basketry images transforms into the barbed wire that separates Indigenous peoples from access to the basket materials, food, and water on our homelands in Nevada, which is the essence to our traditions and survival.  

 

The process of these works evolved from painting abstract figures and landscapes to experimental combining of mediums and objects on canvas to create my current mixed media work.   The ideas of my current work applying willow and other objects to the canvas came from making parts of my sons’ Paiute basket cradleboard.  From the willow alignment to the beadwork for his cradleboard hood, family members and I created and assembled the pieces for his cradleboard, and that is when my work started to develop and evolve.  This started me down the path to exploring basketry and design as well as the concerns basket weavers have with diminishing access to materials on Indigenous and public lands.  Going down this path, I also started to weave and have become an advocate for weavers who are still experiencing conflict with ongoing colonization, racism and encroachment on our tribal lands in order to gather materials.

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Watch video

 

SAR Fellowship Residency:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCqspz_UxbU

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