Arteffects | season 7 | episode 708

- In this edition of "Arteffects," The Impactful Story of Jean LaMarr. (indigenous music) - [Jean] I hope when someone sees my work, that they feel joy and feel the parlors and how

exciting the indigenous life is. (indigenous music) - [Beth] A fabric artist. - Portraits, landscapes, anything, sports pieces, I do it all. If I feel it I'm gonna do it. - [Beth] A

multidisciplinary artist. - I make work that explores our connection to the natural world, with ideas from Eastern philosophy and Western science co-mingled together. - [Beth] And Native

American culture, tradition and art on display. - It's important for other ethnicities to understand what we do as Native Americans and how we were brought up and how we were raised. -

It's all ahead on this edition of "Arteffects." (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors,

Meg and Dillard Myers, The Nevada Arts Council. Heidemarie Rochlin. In memory of Sue McDowell. And by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members. - Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and this

is Arteffects. For our featured segment, meet artist and activist, Jean LaMarr. Jean uses printmaking, murals and community workshops to address important topics, including representations

of Native Americans and traditions from her ancestors. While overcoming many challenges in her lifetime, Jean shares an important message through her artwork that the native people of this

land are still here. We meet Jean in Susanville, and at her exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art to hear her story. (indigenous music) - Well I hope when someone sees my work, that they

feel joy and feel the parlors and how exciting the indigenous life is and designs... These were all created by my ancestors and they were experts in these fields. - She has been committed to

rejecting the idea of the vanished American Indian. She wants audiences and everybody who sees her art to know that Native American cultures are a living and vibrant culture. - There's

nothing about us in the fourth grade, I never learned about California Indians. And I said, "We're all Indians?" Because just me and my sisters were going to school and we

were the ones that were getting beat up on. - [Ann] When Jean went away to college at UC Berkeley, she was told by her professors that she couldn't include cultural content in her

artwork. She couldn't paint things that had native relevance or cultural relevance, or it would be considered folk art. Jean has always rejected those types of ideas, and she's

been committed to forging her own path. - I went to Berkeley and it was a class of over 500. Peter Selz was this art historian talking and he made a comment about a artist's work, and

one student in the class said, "I object to that, I don't think you are right about that. I think it should be this way and this way and this way." Right away, It felt like,

"Oh man, that guy, he's gonna be in a lot of trouble. He'd get kicked out of class." But Peter Selz welcomed that and thanked him for his input and said, "Yes, that

did add to that." So I finally realized I have a voice because we're the product of the boarding school parents and students, and we're told not to talk, say, dance, do

anything whatsoever. Well, finally, we get to be recognized. We finally get to be recognized and we're proud of who we are. We know our own history and nobody can put us away because we

had a lot of brave people. Because they were so brave, we're able to be alive now. (indigenous music) (calm guitar music) Murals are so important, 'cause they're they like a

community statement, especially if you can go out and get the oral histories and learn some of the early histories and what really happened to that community. You can put that image in that

community and no non-Indian can come in there and say, "No, that's all wrong." I worked on a mural in the gymnasium on the Susanville Indian Rancheria with the community. The

Susanville Indian Rancheria is where we all live. Most Indian home places are called reservations, but in California they called it the rancheria. So this is beginning of life. So we heard

about the coyote stories, and here's Mr. Coyote sneaking around going looking for food. We showed sagebrush and the baskets that are made from here. It comes around here too. An era

that was ancient from hundreds of years ago, they had layers and layers of baskets of (indistinct). Then it goes all the way over, goes to the times when Larson was here and then to the bear

dance that had been a real long tradition, then old man Joaquin is in the middle. Then it comes to the contemporary times. We're still alive. We're still celebrating our heritage

and our culture. This mural is done in Susanville, California on East Larson Street. Our ancestors' our future so I interviewed all these different people in town 'cause I know

they had ancestors here from a long time ago. We got a lot of good comments. People walking by, "Oh, this is really nice." The Indian people, I see them standing by their

relatives. Oh, look there are kids standing in front of their relatives and they take a picture of it. It's just really nice. It's really nice, that's what I like to see. And

I respect the fact that murals do need to be changed. They can't stay forever. It's not a Michelangelo where they have to keep repairing it. So it reflects the time. If we do

murals, that says we're present, here and now. That means we're still alive. (bright gentle music) - In the early 1990s, Jean returned to her hometown of Susanville, where she

established the Native American Graphic Workshop. The graphic workshop is a unique community hub where she brings together youth from the community, elders as well as different artists. -

It's fun for people to do. It's an introduction to printmaking, working with the oils, solvents, paper, how to handle press, how to handle the paper. I got people that do some

fantastic work, but they don't even realize what they're doing. They're doing something beautiful. 'Cause if I could do it, they can do it. I hope I can block down

barriers. (machine whirring) See I like how the transparency looks, it's not too heavy. It's softer then you can bring up some hard lines with a definite imagery. - All of us here

have either learned from her, worked with her. Been inspired by her work. Continue to be inspired by the work tonight or as for Jamie and Toby Stump to come up and sing an honor song for

Jean. (singing in an indigenous language) - The Nevada Museum of Art is really proud and honored to be able to present this retrospective exhibition of Jean Lamar's work. It features

over 50 years of her paintings, prints, murals, installations. - I'm so grateful for Ann to giving me this opportunity. No other museum would've given me this opportunity. I'm

a community artist, political artist. So it's difficult to get into a place. (indigenous music) - As you're looking at Jean's artwork, you'll see a variety of symbols

and motifs appear from time to time. Sometimes that's a military fighter jet flying overhead. Sometimes it's sort of this ubiquitous barb wire that you see throughout the American

West. Sometimes it's an American dollar sign, and she uses all of these symbols in different ways to critique American culture and to critique what has been a dominant culture

that's for a long time suppressed Native American cultures in the United States. (indigenous music) - Everyone has a hope. Everything has hope, happiness in there. It might look

negative, but there is hope for every little thing or I'm making fun of something. I would never hurt anybody's feelings on purpose. That's not my personality because

we're really kindhearted people. Being positive, being positive on all notes. That there's a way out, there's hope. There's always hope. I always have that hope.

(indigenous music) - You can see the exhibition of Jean's artwork at the Nevada Museum of Art through May 2022. Find out more at nevadaart.org. Doncee Coulter is a fabric artist, with

his x-acto knife, he works with leather, suedes and denims to render one of a kind textured artworks. We head to Ohio to meet the artist and learn about his technique. - I grew up in

Columbus, Ohio, I went to Columbus High School. After I graduated high school, I went to CCAD, took up Ad design and illustration, but somehow I ended up doing fabric artwork. So that's

a totally different story. It started with just growing up in the hiphop era. We used to love to just create and we would go to Schottenstein's and we would buy these partly-torn jean

jackets and then we would even tear them up even some more. And then what I would do would paint on either like denim, sometimes even just canvas and we would get a seamstress and she would

sew in some of the scenes into the jacket. So that kind of really got me into studying fabric. After a while I would start going to the fabric stores and just start buying fabric and just

creating clothes just freehand. Didn't know anything about patterns, I was just basically being my creative self. Well, the technique, I guess, it's a collage style. So it's a

process of where I'm taking something and I'm just putting layers on top of layers. (piano music) Obviously I'll start from the background and move it up to the foreground.

When I initially started working, there were more or less like two tone pieces, and I would go into art galleries and I would look at my work, compare it to other paintings. And I said,

"Okay, I gotta do better. I gotta step what I'm doing." I was like, "I wanna take this to a level of where it looks like a painting." So there was a lot of trial and

errors and a lot of experimenting. I mean, in the beginning my pieces were really bulky 'cause I would use the more heavier fabrics, when I learned a technique for cutting the thinner

fabrics it was almost game over for me because at that point I was able to put shadows and highlights and bring more or different elements into my artwork without it looking bulky. That was

the key. And that's why today people look at it and can say, "This looks like a painting," until you walk up on it, and it's like, "No, this is all fabric." Oh,

number one, leather and suede, number two would be denim and everything else after that. I think that when I work with leather and suede, it just really translates really well with my

pieces and I just love the texture of it. And I think that it really comes out. Denim is another totally different look. I really like that as well. I love blending the different types of

denim together. As the same way with the leather and suedes. My only tool is the x-acto knife, and the technique is just learning how to cut those thin fabrics with accuracy. There are a lot

of little different techniques that I use. I don't wanna disclose them all. I'll go on and I'll say one technique I'll use. If you got a real thin fabric, there's a

certain glue that you can use, you can apply to the back of the fabric, which at that point gives it a more of a solid feel. And it's easier to cut. Typically I would say about 95% of

what I do basically comes from out of my head. I typically really don't use references a lot. It's just things that I just think about. I just love to create. So when I'm

creating a piece, I really get in to it. So if I'm creating let's say a city scene and I'm creating buildings, I'm not just an artist, I'm an architect. If I'm

doing a portrait and I'm creating a person, I am also, I'm designing their outfit, designing their look. So yeah, that's the thing when I do a piece, I am all in. I think the

funnest part is when you're right in the middle and when you can see that vision come together. 'Cause initially when you're creating a piece, you're like, "Oh, is

this gonna work?" And then as you're working, you're like, "Oh, I'm starting to see it now, it's coming together." On the flip side, the worst part I think

it's coming towards the end trying to finish that piece. 'Cause at that point you're ready to move on to the next piece and that's when you really have to be careful.

'Cause you're like, "No stop, take your time. Make sure you complete this correctly." One of the reasons why I use the bird, it represents freedom. And when I first

started doing our work, I felt like that actor that gets typecast, people were expecting me to do a certain type of artwork. And one of the reasons why I adapted that bird, 'cause that

bird allows me to do anything I wanna do. If I wanna do an abstract piece, it's gonna be, "I'll do that tomorrow." Portraits, landscapes, anything, sports pieces. I do it

all. If I feel it, I'm gonna do it. Art is my therapy. I really hope that for the viewer that it affects them the way that it affects me. So a lot of times if I'm dealing with

something, I go into my studio, the art is, that's my release and I'm able to just basically deal with stress in that way. So I want that to be conveyed with my artwork with also

with the viewer. So that's one of the things I wanted to also accomplish with some of my new pieces as well. So I really hope that resonates with the viewer. - See more of Doncee's

art at doncee.com. And now it's time for this week's art quiz. Nevada's Great Basin holds a large number of Native American tribes including the Washoe, Shoshone and Paiute

tribes. Just how many federally recognized tribes are there in Nevada? Is the answer, A: 17, B: 22, C: 27 or D:32 And the answer is C: 27. Multidisciplinary artist Sri Prabha's artwork

encompasses a variety of mediums, such as video, sound, light, and painting. Up next, we travel to the Orlando Museum of Art in Florida, to see one of his vivid installations. - You can

imagine how somebody might be walking through these spaces and you'll see the video on both sides of these panels. My name is Sri Prabha, and I'm a multidisciplinary artist. And I

make work that explores our connection to the natural world with ideas from Eastern philosophy and Western science co-mingled together. In my studio I like to set up possible installations

and experiments to see what my next installation will look like. I think about everybody that would come to an installation of mine and multiple ways that they can learn from the experience.

So some people like to see just the visuals, I'd spend a lot of time continually in the process of creating the videos and they're mixture between filming the physical

environment, the physical world with some specialized cameras. And then those are taken into some certain different software. Now I'm not even thinking about it as video. It's just

one more tool within this multidisciplinary stuff that I'm using. Some people like to hear the sound component of it, just the feeling that you get when you hear certain frequencies.

So all those things come together and they tell a more richer story, a new way of looking at the world and our relationship to it. I'm absorbing what's happening in space. And

eventually, some of these lines and shapes come out of the videos that are playing and I will end up making that as a painting in itself. - [Interviewer] Do you have a clear path of where

this piece will go? - Sure. So when I look at specific installations and things I have in mind, the one I just recently did at the Orlando Museum of Art, it's called "Space

Research Center." So I was thinking about that particular installation idea for about a year. And I knew exactly how it was gonna turn out. What I don't know is the interactions

that will happen in place once it's up, when people come and view it and experience it, that finishes the cycle. But I went up there and looked at the space and by and large it's

like the biggest space that I'd ever done up to now. That particular one is based on the five elements, Eastern elements. And so each one has a corollary to contemporary environment

issues. There's also the beauty, the strangeness, people can view it at a lot of different levels and it encourages repeated viewing because you can't go there at any one time and

experience the same thing. I think that's the great thing about it because for me art is never still, it's just constantly in flux, just like life is. - To see more of

Prabha's work, go sriprabha.com and instagram.com/sriphaba. Each summer, students from the Pyramid Lake Junior/Senior High School display their latest paintings, beadwork, pottery, and

other cultural crafts at the Spanish Springs library. This annual art showcase also features Native American music, storytelling and dance. (bright music) - My name is Teresa Hendrix Wright,

I teach at Pyramid Lake Junior/Senior High School which is located in Nixon, Nevada on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation. Our school is a BIE school, which is Bureau of Indian Education.

Any student can apply to our school. It is not just restricted to native students. And we have about a 98% native population. We have students from many different tribes, just not Pyramid

Lake. So we have students from the Great Basin tribes, Paiute, Shoshone, Washoe, but we also have Sac and Fox, Potawatomi, Iroquois We have all different tribes. I teach native studies,

native art, native dance, and a college prep class. I just ended my fourth year teaching at Pyramid Lake. The first year I started, I got a email from the Spanish Springs Library saying,

"Would you like to submit a couple pieces of artwork?" And I replied back, "I'd love to submit artwork." So this year will be our fourth annual art show for art town

at the Spanish Springs Library. Pyramid Lake High School will be showcasing our student work from native studies and native art, which will be ceramics, painting, baskets, jewelry making.

You may see things that may look very native and traditional, but some things that look very contemporary. - It's new to me. This is like the first time I've had pieces out there

and for people to see. I created the pastel creation. It's about an urban legend creature that goes by the name of Goatman. And then the little ceramic piece I have in a little case

over there, it's just a little dragon teapot thing that just came into mind. - We like to showcase our dance group, (speaks In a foreign language) means young dancers are beginning to

dance. (drummer drumming) (singing in an indigenous language) - They are the Great Basin Pageant Dancers and the swan Dance and the basket dance. There is two couple dances we did was the

antelope and the barnets. This is my first time doing it in probably about a whole year. So I was nervous but other than that, it's really fun sharing your culture with other people.

It's important for other ethnicities to understand what we do as Native Americans and how we were brought up and how we were raised, and how other people do some different and how we do

stuff differently than other races, other backgrounds. For kids like my age and younger to come out and show what we've learned is pretty cool. - One thing that I want our students to

learn is be leaders where they're also teachers, 'cause teaching is very important. I want our students to understand they are teachers, they're teachers of their culture and

traditions 'cause they're carrying that on. So I have the old older ones teach the younger ones coming into class how to sing the songs and how to do the dances. - So next year I

plan to show everyone what I've learned over the years at Pyramid Lake. - If you go out to the lake, there's an island there and you can't get to the island because of the

water. - I have storytelling in my natives studies class. It's a part of it because that's part of how traditions were passed down as far as our history, everything was passed down

'cause we didn't write things down. So stories were passed down on how things came to be. It's important for native art to continue in Nevada because it's a way of our

cultural identity and our traditions continuing. We're always changing as a culture, tribal people we always change because contemporary things change, techniques change, methods

change, but our traditions and our stories behind how what we learn is important because it influences their artwork. It's very inspiring to see the students be successful and carry on

what they learn in the class. Not only from just learning it, but they're keeping their traditions alive. - And that wraps it up for this edition of "Arteffects." For more

arts and culture or to watch past episodes visit pbsreno.org/arteffects until next week, I'm Beth Macmillan. Thanks for watching. - [Announcer] Funding for "Arteffects" is

made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Meg and Dillard Myers, The Nevada Arts Council. Heidemarie Rochlin. In memory of Sue McDowell. And by the annual contributions of

PBS Reno members. (bright upbeat music)