The inner prism draws ourselves inward, bridging present and future. Whose presence do you sense within this test tube? I played the role of guardian angel. The future self does not regard darkness as error. Under pressure, coal transforms into diamond. Beyond metaphor, those who remember light are our twins. A duplicate understanding the difficulty of balancing weightlessness and density. It understands the roles of victory and defeat in competition, And how self-esteem influenced the game. When I glanced, the skull quietly whispered those words. It ceased its ceaseless chewing and shared its culinary skill, Grateful to the wise, self-improving animal. The tale is spun by the eternal lamp. Within its burning consciousness we find the deepest pain and joy. It understands the moon’s tides, the ovarian cycle, and the activity of sperm. Before finding the heavenly bride, the guardian knows our greatest love. The serpent’s body entwines with melting faces, creating our lifespan. Time remains unchanged while we age. Every molecular sphere shares me at its core, Yet I tell myself I must not dwell at the center. Why did I call myself a sphere? Was that the place to begin with? Meanwhile, the jewels we unearthed are the same point nourishing all things on Earth.
Aurora 41.0×31.8cm Sumi-ink, natural pigments and glue on Washi paper 2018 Sphenoid Bone 18.0×18.0cm Sumi-ink on Washi pape 2019 Blue Ouroboros 27.3×19.0cm Sumi-ink, natural pigments and glue on Washi paper 2022 Bodyscape 1045.5×38.0cm Sumi-ink and my body on Washi paper 2026
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ARTWORK IN THIS POST IS A COPYRIGHT OF MICHIYO KAMEI. THIS AN AUTHORIZED PUBLICATION WITH PERMISSION AND EXPRESSED CONSENT.
Parallel lines intersect, forming a diamond at the center. II is now X. This form lets us travel diagonally through space. One needs divination and shapeshifting for this kind of journey. I absorbed a triangular wave. Under the Pisces moon, I sipped from the cup. A tiny fraction of 360 Aquarius, a Kayayei, and the water porter, is playing live. Let’s toast to the lunar. It’s an old-time oracle. I use my geomantic knight on the synth console to twist the central square into a pyramid on the chessboard, bending the surrounding space. The sixty-four Yoginis from the eight phases of existence create a cosmic tapestry that illustrates awareness and extinction.
Through the checkered board, we can explore a chart of our interior states. Intertwined black and white squares represent yin and yang. This visual diagram has the ability to analyze and interpret events from different time spans. We are connecting. As a hand, claw, fin, hoof, wing, and tentacle united on a holiday to a foreign atmosphere. By being able to transform into different shapes, we plan to discover a new place to thrive, eat, and reproduce. Our honeymoon is amazing at the moment. With heightened senses working in perfect harmony. Each optical sense is a precious asset to detect whatever objects may be drifting in this void. Apps mimic snake pupils and cat eyes enhance night vision.
If we find nothing on that app, we activate a bat signal to identify what we overlooked. To combat boredom, we listen to the old fashion whale songs. There is plenty of room in the universe for invisible radio waves. We notice how unconscious shifts affect our awareness. Giving up vanity was my toughest astronaut challenge. Self-esteem improved by breaking free from consumerism. We practice Buddhism without a figure. The fading of charged particles into space is called “death”. Numbers are eternal, so we will test how long we can remember them. I am coming forward from within my ego to assert the words that I have spoken before the update. This is a hallucinatory voice. We get it, there’s no true self, but we are always expanding who we are.
For better well being, we are abandoning past programs that slowed our progress. The current speaker is about to stop speaking. Once we reach our destination, we intend to leave a circle. This storyline will trigger déjà vu and create a memorable mental image for the replicas.
001: the sun 41.0×31.8cm watercolor on paper 2017 002: Sea Fruit 41.0×31.8cm watercolor on paper 2025 003: Melancholia 35.0×26.0cm Sumi-ink, natural pigments and glue on Washi paper 2018 004: bodyscape 9 45.5×45.5cm Sumi-ink and my body on Washi paper 2025 005: Untitled watercolor on paper 2005 006: Rosescape magicboard Φ28.8cm watercolor on paper 2023
MY PAINTINGS ARE 100% SOCIAL, IN THE SENSE THAT THEY HAVE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS WHICH ALLOW THE VIEWER TO DEAL WITH ALL THE SOCIAL ETHICS OF MODERN AND TRADITIONAL LIFE. THEY ARE THE SHORT STORIES FROM ORAL TRADITIONS THAT TEACH, INFORM, AWAKE AND COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS. IBOU NDOYE
All Glass paintings are done on found windows. Please Click Image to Enlarge
Shoe Shiner, Glass PaintingEye glass repair, Glass PaintingAfrican art dealer, Glass PaintingImaginary childhood, Glass Painting and Found Print 2017
Born in West Africa’s most progressive capital city, Dakar, Senegal, glass-painting artist Ibrahima Ndoye has combined modernism and traditionalism to create a style unique to himself. Ibrahima, commonly known as “Ibou,” grew up as the oldest child of a family of four boys in the suburbs of Dakar. Ibou’s mother made her living as a dressmaker while his grandmother worked as a tie-dye artist. Regularly surrounded by colorful African textiles and fabrics, it is not surprising that Ibou says he “socialized with art and cohabited with colors” from a very young age.
The Family, Glass Painting 2016Story Teller, Glass PaintingMother and twins, Glass Painting 2016
Ibou began his career as a painter in the late 1980s during a period in Senegal called the “Set Setal,” or clean-up movement. The movement encouraged artists to embellish the environment by expressing themselves through murals on buildings and walls. It was during this time that Ibou painted several murals in the suburban city of Pikine. Some of Ibou’s murals were selected to appear in a French-produced documentary in 1990.
The Foulany couple, Glass Painting 2002Car rapide, Glass Painting 2007
Eventually Ibou’s interests changed. Following a tradition brought from the Middle East to Senegal one hundred years prior, Ibou entered and renovated the world of glass painting. When the technique was first introduced to the Senegalese, the subject matter was predominated by religious scenes- i.e. Abraham’s sacrifice, Noah’s Ark, Mary and Jesus. It wasn’t until after Senegal gained its independence from its French colonizers (1960) that glass painting expanded in new directions. However, through the 1980s only those holding degrees in fine art dared to play with the century-old tradition. These initial innovators tended to create images in such a way that the traditional style was barely recognizable through their abstractions.
From village to village, Broken Glass Painting
It was in the early 90s that a third wave of glass painters surfaced in Dakar. People like Ibou began to look back at the traditional style of their predecessors with a new inspiration. Instead of painting traditional African scenes on clean sheets of regularly shaped glass, Ibou started breaking and layering the glass to create new textures and effects. The incorporation of various other materials including copper wire, broken bottles, wood, bone, and animal skin began to appear in Ibou’s work as well. Later in his life, upon relocating to America, Ibou took one step further by mixing glass with plastics and other materials common to our modern environment. It is not unusual to find Ibou stapling scraps of soda cans and detergent boxes onto vibrantly painted CD cases portraying images of African women carrying jugs of water above their heads. As the times changed, so did Ibou’s work, creating a new style from an old tradition.
Happy kids, Glass Painting 2017Eyes of people, Glass Painting 2017Happiness in the Family, Glass Painting 2017Non Verbal Communication, Glass Painting 2017
In the late 90s Ibou began exhibiting his work around Africa and Europe in local and internationally touring shows. The Biannual of African Art hosted in Dakar regularly accepts Ibou’s work for exhibition in a show titled “The Salon of Glass Painting.” In 1999 Ibou expanded his involvement in Senegal’s art scene when he started running glass painting workshops at the El Hadji Doudou Mbath Primary School, and later at the Dakar YMCA.
Playful Child, Glass Painting 2016
In 2001 Ibou found himself on his way to join a friend in New England. For several months Ibou taught painting classes at Allen Special Needs Camp for the disabled in Bedford, New Hampshire. Later that year Ibou moved to Rhode Island where he acted as an art instructor for a program entitled “Kids at Risk” run by the Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program (UCAP). Ibou also appeared as a guest speaker on the Cox Television production “Cultural Tapestry.”
Wheelchair, Mixed Media, Acrylic And African Fabric On Canvas 2017Two Playful Kids, Mixed Media Acrylic And African Fabric On Canvas 2017
Now Ibou resides in Jersey City, New Jersey, and regularly exhibits his art both locally and internationally in addition to holding glass painting workshops at libraries and schools. Ibou intends to continue promoting and expanding his artistic vision through exhibition, education and cultural exchange.
Jaclyn Pedalino African Art Manager
When i paint i become blind and turn my painting brushes into walking stick ,then fumble until i reach where i want to be
It is then when the tree that tomorrow will summon the thorns loses its leaves, and the bumblebee falls, prey to the polar trails, to reinvent the powerful patient engineering of lytic promises, Well, that’s where I shelter, and where I rescue the omens, there I drink from the Paleozoic salts, which today move the migratory herds, those who come to the eyes without ears, of those attending Sunday services. By nature, I approve!!
They speak of love, and my bet is more on compassion, which is a kind of continuum in a collective warp, of an ineffable equation that they will never understand. Because perhaps love (like that image shown to us) does not exist and if it does exist it is a sum of chemical reactions where a set of hormones stimulates our syntax, and which may also be subject to the need for genes to be perpetuated. Maybe?. But there is also one who breaks this previous theory; crazy love, passionate love, eternal love, etc. that love that becomes unclassifiable. I only know that I know nothing. After all, I believe in love. Does the egg use the chicken to make more eggs? It is possible, but in a global and precisely circular analysis, the plot of existence is supported in a shed crossed by the polyform reality of infinite logics and illogics, where each of its corresponding paradoxes and balances avoids its critical tension. But, we can order them in the not well understood compassion, which could be a feeling deeper than that of the corruptible flesh (physical theory and cognitively plausible), which leads to understandable and celestial simplicity. But what if an infinitesimal were more than an integer, or if that time circulated in all directions? or love will not mean more than a necessary impulse to take risks in order to live the contradictions, so that the soul, when dying, will return with the pertinent knowledge to correct, deconstruct or ratify the whole of the so-called divinity . For this reason, the next step opens the temporality to dedicate more time to essential reflection, and to put aside an imposed competitiveness for the accumulation of objects that lead to the void that means pursuing a way of life that is subordinated to the symbolic relationship. of the object or objects, which is useless and inconducive (a simulacrum of the society of the spectacle) for our true purpose in this brief transit called life. Ars longa vita brevis. Or your existence is just an accident to offer a limited amount of data to accompany the equation that gives additional information to find the way out of the answer. By the way; nobody takes me into account, since my infallibility is very poor since periodically and statistically, my failures are more abundant than my certainties. And therein lies my wisdom; in realizing that my hypotheses are only attempts to find the truth within infinity. To think otherwise would be to err drastically and in the process lie to them. It would be, subjecting myself from the ego to an option to dress elegantly, but in the end, it would strip my limits. It is better to be honest in clumsiness than false in an inane and temporary charade. But: What if love were one of that unknown design in my intrinsic astral writing, waiting for you?
Primordial circulation approaching from a past spring, acrylic on Fabriano paper 250 gm. 35x45cm
So the wide dividing width will unload its useful molecules in this useless impertinent distance there where the lightning reigns without asking for their blind blows. Is when my pale measures they embrace their designs devoid of elytra to save the waters possessed of salt and fire that bathe the limits of my suffering body without entering the first cause that brings me down from within the muscle periphery.
Eros Phasianidae, acrylic and ink on Canson 300 gms paper. 11″ x 8.3
EROS PHASIANIDAE Yo And she saw the chicken rise from the ground a brilliant and ectoplasmic epiphany and she remembered the words of the feathered prophets: “before the primordial egg was the verb” and the pyrrhic evolutionary expedition embraced me so necessary and indeterminate where we are more but under sheds and I saw the grayish uncertainty that shakes my being h = 6.626 0693 (11) x 10 – (34) J. s = 4,135 667 43 (35) x10–(15)eV. s and the beast arose from the miasma without the feminine warmth it was in the offensive of the arches thousands of years ago on the Cartesian line of Har Meggido under the law of y = m x + b and those tears originated at 32°34’59″N 35°10’56″E. II huge old stars leaning out on the horizontal cobblestone sheets were dictated by an ancient manual of glorious epic forms where I did not read the cunning locks and from there lights fall like eagles that are suspended in front of your pale fortifications and despite the fact that I descend without air I cling to the desiccated edges of this abyss turning away from the waves of floral promises with summer mentions that anoint you. Thus the amaranth silence returns to rock the star and like the silent lymph you seek to break beyond the fundamental shell the one that you got to know in a primitive way in the sweet rooms of belief.
Interruption, acrylic on cut Fabriano paper, on black cardboard. 18x24cm. The inclination of one of the elements is voluntary.
GOLDEN VISION
The nothing, the void hold my duplicate fragments (Φ2 = 2.61803398874988…) It is the hollowness of the past and the future what you don’t have and don’t want the illusion of time and line Infinity so love surrounds swelling wisdom while on the musty boards of a camp absent light filters to tilt reciprocal reality that drives your transformation (1/Φ = 0.61803398874988).
Maybe this reality is true on this twilight island where the already worn bones falter by the persistent violet stings, and there is no choice but to live among the cyclones that guard the whimsical and invisible knots with its container meshes that hide half-open portals, those that I will leave like this for a while, since everything circulates in the promised packaging.
The self is the unconscious and conscious that allows you to enter these imaginary worlds of creation, that is why it is important
Bueno el yo es el inconsciente y consiente que te permite entrar a estos mundos imaginarios de creación por eso es importante
I knew when I entered the experimental artist school and I liked all the artistic disciplines such as sculpture, engraving, drawing, forge, in short, I wanted to learn all the arts and be good at it with a lot of discipline and read the theoretical and aesthetic knowledge, and I realized that I could do it.
Bueno supe cuando entre a la escuela experimental artista y me gustaron todas las disciplinas artísticas como escultura grabado dibujo forja en fin todas las artes quería aprender y ser bueno en ello con mucha disciplina y leer el conocimiento estético lo teórico y me di cuenta que podía hacerlo
The environment has a strong influence on my paintings sketches sculptures from the observation and reflection of nature as something as small as a seed or as big as a tree and as infinite as a hill and from an insect to a bird in flight
El entorno tiene una fuerte influencia sobre mis pinturas bocetos esculturas desde la observación y la reflexión de la naturaleza como algo tan pequeño como una semilla o tan grande como árbol y tan infinito como un cerro y de un insecto a un pájaro en vuelo
It inspires me when I get up every morning and breathe the pure air of my mountains and feel that I am alive again to create with my hands and my eyes and feel the smells of my trees
Me inspira cuando me levanto todas las mañanas y respirar aire puro de mis montañas y sentirme que estoy viví otra ves para crear con mis manos y mis ojos y sentir los olores de mis árboles
Looking at nature influences my work and the action of carefully observing the plants and everything that surrounds me is part of my daily work.
En mi trabajo influye el mirar la naturaleza y tener la acción de observar detenidamente las plantas y todo lo que me rodea es parte de mi trabajo diario
I read many authors and artists bibliographies, as many as ancient and contemporary books on aesthetics, books on theorists and mathematicians, I like it a lot, and I am investigating fractal logarithms, why life was created that way, matter multiplies thousands of times and infinitely. that what I want in my work
Bueno leo muchos autores y bibliografías de artista tantos como antiguos y contemporánea libros de estéticas libros de los teóricos y matemáticos me gusta mucho y estoy investigando los logaritmos fractales por qué la vida se creo de esa manera se multiplica Miles de veces y infinitamente la materia y eso lo que quiero en mi obra
Rene has exhibited work in Chile and Argentina. He is involved in many cultural art programs that have related to hospitals, children and teaching art professionally.
René ha expuesto obra en Chile y Argentina. Está involucrado en muchos programas de arte cultural relacionados con hospitales, niños y la enseñanza del arte profesionalmente.
“My concern is the human figure as a feeling of primitive and irrational states, whose main point is the heads, universal thought of the creation of man and center of the universe. All this led to a mutation of the plastic and pictorial language”.
“Mi preocupación es la figura humana como sentimiento de estados primitivos e irracionales, cuyo punto principal son las cabezas, pensamiento universal de la creación del hombre y centro del universo. Todo esto llevado a un mutamiento del lenguaje plástico y pictórico”.
The self is the unconscious and conscious that allows you to enter these imaginary worlds of creation, that is why it is important
Bueno el yo es el inconsciente y consiente que te permite entrar a estos mundos imaginarios de creación por eso es importante
I knew when I entered the experimental artist school and I liked all the artistic disciplines such as sculpture, engraving, drawing, forge, in short, I wanted to learn all the arts and be good at it with a lot of discipline and read the theoretical and aesthetic knowledge, and I realized that I could do it.
Bueno supe cuando entre a la escuela experimental artista y me gustaron todas las disciplinas artísticas como escultura grabado dibujo forja en fin todas las artes quería aprender y ser bueno en ello con mucha disciplina y leer el conocimiento estético lo teórico y me di cuenta que podía hacerlo
The environment has a strong influence on my paintings sketches sculptures from the observation and reflection of nature as something as small as a seed or as big as a tree and as infinite as a hill and from an insect to a bird in flight
El entorno tiene una fuerte influencia sobre mis pinturas bocetos esculturas desde la observación y la reflexión de la naturaleza como algo tan pequeño como una semilla o tan grande como árbol y tan infinito como un cerro y de un insecto a un pájaro en vuelo
It inspires me when I get up every morning and breathe the pure air of my mountains and feel that I am alive again to create with my hands and my eyes and feel the smells of my trees
Me inspira cuando me levanto todas las mañanas y respirar aire puro de mis montañas y sentirme que estoy viví otra ves para crear con mis manos y mis ojos y sentir los olores de mis árboles
Looking at nature influences my work and the action of carefully observing the plants and everything that surrounds me is part of my daily work.
En mi trabajo influye el mirar la naturaleza y tener la acción de observar detenidamente las plantas y todo lo que me rodea es parte de mi trabajo diario
I read many authors and artists bibliographies, as many as ancient and contemporary books on aesthetics, books on theorists and mathematicians, I like it a lot, and I am investigating fractal logarithms, why life was created that way, matter multiplies thousands of times and infinitely. that what I want in my work
Bueno leo muchos autores y bibliografías de artista tantos como antiguos y contemporánea libros de estéticas libros de los teóricos y matemáticos me gusta mucho y estoy investigando los logaritmos fractales por qué la vida se creo de esa manera se multiplica Miles de veces y infinitamente la materia y eso lo que quiero en mi obra
Rene has exhibited work in Chile and Argentina. He is involved in many cultural art programs that have related to hospitals, children and teaching art professionally.
René ha expuesto obra en Chile y Argentina. Está involucrado en muchos programas de arte cultural relacionados con hospitales, niños y la enseñanza del arte profesionalmente.
“My concern is the human figure as a feeling of primitive and irrational states, whose main point is the heads, universal thought of the creation of man and center of the universe. All this led to a mutation of the plastic and pictorial language”.
“Mi preocupación es la figura humana como sentimiento de estados primitivos e irracionales, cuyo punto principal son las cabezas, pensamiento universal de la creación del hombre y centro del universo. Todo esto llevado a un mutamiento del lenguaje plástico y pictórico”.
I’ve been making art my entire life, I actually remember my 1st studio was a closet in my bedroom, I probably was about 6 or 7 years old
Top Left: 2015 mixed media work The Rules of Science Top Center:It’s All I Can Do, 30inx22in, mixed media on paper, July, 2022 Top Right:The Giving, mixed media on canvas, 65inx50in June 2009 Bottom Center: Gather, acrylic on paper, 22inx30in, July 2022
There are many different kinds of artists in my family from lacrosse stick makers, stone carvers, beadwork artist, leather workers and of course painters
Jay Carrier studio scenes
I paint my life, my thoughts, the philosophies that I’ve studied, the culture and society that I was born into.
December 18, 2012 Painting. Jay Carrier
Left: mixed media on wood, 52inx 52in August 2018 Center:Mother and Child, 44inx 30.5in, mixed media on paper, 2014 October 2019 Right: mixed media on paper, 30in x 22in
I was born on the six nations rez near Brantford Ontario, moved to Niagara Falls NY when I was 4
Left: December 1, 2021 Painting Right:Monuments, oil on canvas, 60inx 57in July 2020
Adapted painting April 2020
Skull ship, acrylic on paper, 22inx30in, July 2022
The things that influence me were not necessarily art movements. The people of the six nations used what we call traditional art in contemporary society are made for different reasons. There was no term for art in our societies
Night painting, acrylic on canvas, 14inx 11in, July 2022
I paint intuitively so spirit can travel unimpeded
written by Jay Carrier
Left:Night Sky, mostly oil on wood 36inx 41in 3-4in, June 2022 Center: Couple, oil on wood, 36inx 48in, June 2022 Right: mixed media on canvas, December 2021
“The places that we dwell and live, the relationships that we form with the natural environment, the people that we surround ourselves with, and the many things that influence our thoughts are reflected in the paintings chosen for this show. I was born and briefly grew up on the Six Nations Reservation but predominately was raised in the Southend downtown Niagara Falls. I was constantly amazed by the city’s surroundings, the river, and, the Niagara gorge. Many memories were made that have a direct reference in these paintings; there were exciting times, there were hard times, there were happy times, and tragic times. These experiences in some regard formed the thoughts and ideas reflected in these paintings.”
Left: oil, spay paint, oil stick on canvas, 66inx72in. April 2017 Right: multi media painting on canvas August 2019
“There is a poetically tragic, glamorous, and beautiful reality about Niagara Falls. The beauty and seduction of the water as it travels, the brutal stark reality of living in a repressed small city, the fallen industry, the curio identity that was what the world would see…. these are the catalysts for exploring my art in relationship to the city.” -Jay Carrier
Jay Carrier at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, New York on September 18, 2021 photo by Dawn Carrier
JAY CARRIER 2115 Lockport Road Niagara Falls, New York 14304 Phone: (716) 534-0489 Studio: 20, NACC, 1201 Pine Avenue, Niagara Falls, New York 14301 e-mail: carrierj@roadrunner.com carrierjay@yahoo.com
EDUCATION 1993-94 The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, attended 1 year Masters Program 1993-95 The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, Bachelors of Fine Arts 1986-87, 92 The College of Santa Fe, New Mexico, attended, Major, Fine Arts: Painting, Sculpture 1984 Buffalo State College, Attended 1984 Niagara County Community College, Associates in Fine Arts
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021 Free To Roam Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo New York 2020 We Took Things With Us, Buffalo Arts Studio Gallery, Buffalo New York 2019 Places of Transformation/ City Indian, the NACC Gallery Niagara Falls New York 2016 The City is Clean, Recent works, Gallery Eleneneleven, Buffalo, New York 2016 Recent work by: Jay Carrier, Garden Gallery Niagara Arts and Cultural Center, Niagara Falls, New York 2014 Recent Drawings, The Garden Gallery, Niagara Arts and Cultural Center Niagara Falls New York 2006 Risen from the Ashes of 2 Fires, American Indian Community House Gallery, New York New York 2004 Chautauqua Center for Visual Arts, Chautauqua Institution Gallery, Chautauqua New York 2002 Polar Visions, Niagara Art and Cultural Center, Niagara Falls, New York 1995 Nothing is Sacred, Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe New Mexico 1993 The Blind Pig Gallery, Champaign, Illinois 1993 The Union Gallery, The University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana 1993 The South Garage Gallery, The University of Illinois at Champaign/Urban
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2020-2021 Native American and First Nations Contemporary Art, K Art Gallery, Buffalo New York 2018 At This Time, Burchfield Art Center, Buffalo New York 2017 Beyond the Barrel, Annual Exhibition Niagara Arts and Cultural Center Niagara Falls New York 2016 Amid/In WNY – Part 6, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, New York 2016 Featured Artist, 24 Below Gallery, Niagara Falls, New York, 2015-2016 2015 Stick, Stone & Steel, Niagara Art and Cultural Center, Niagara Falls, New York 2015 Diversity Works: Selections from the Gerald Mead Collection, El Museo, Buffalo, New York 2011 4 from 6: Four Artists from Six Nations curated by Shelley Niro, Hamilton Artists Inc., Hamilton, Ontario, Canada 2011 Haudenosaunee: Elements: Works by Artists from the Six Nations of the Iroquois, Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York 2008 Burgeoning: Artists Invite Artists, You Me Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada 2006 First Nations Art 2006, Woodland Cultural Center, Brantford, Ontario, Canada 2005 From Deep in the Forest: An Exhibition of Fine Woodworking, Niagara Falls, New York 2004 First Nations Art 2004, Woodland Cultural Center, Brantford, Ontario, Canada 2004 Collects Buffalo State, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York 2003 First Nations Art 2003, Woodland Culture Center, Brantford, Ontario, Canada 2002 1st Annual Exhibition, Niagara Art and Cultural Center Niagara Falls, New York, 2002 The Pan American Exposition Centennial: Images of the American Indian, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York 1997 Where We Stand, Fenimore House Museum, Cooperstown, New York 1995 Expressions of the Spirit, The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1994 In the Shadow of the Eagle, The Castellani Art Museum, Niagara Falls, New York 1993 The Second Floor Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri 1988 The Galleries, Buffalo, New York 1988 American Indian Institute, Iroquois Art, Connecticut, Washington
Biennials
2012 The Other New York 2012 XL Projects Syracuse NY
2007 Beyond/ In WNY Biennial, Castellani Museum, Niagara Falls NY
FELLOWSHIPS/RESIDENCIES
Art Matters Inc., New York, New York, 1994-1995 Artist In Residence, Native American Center for the Living Arts, “The Turtle”, Niagara Falls, NY 1987
Gerald Stone’s roots flow from 1/2 Seminole and 1/8 Cherokee tribes: These worlds are, out of time, landscapes within landscapes, tribes, spirits, watchers, seekers, giants, red-haired women, murdered and missing, space stretched and bent, stories vibrating across time.
From a show at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento a write-up describes Gerald Stone as a “beloved local master artist”. Gerald himself just brushed off the accolades and calls his work “weird”. His stylized art, which he describes as a conversation between himself and his Creator, bridges traditional and contemporary styles and themes.
1947 Born in the far reaches of rural Oklahoma, Stone was a kid who liked to draw and has lived a life of peaks and valleys, always around the midline of art. Just 3 days before he was scheduled to enlist in the Army, headed most likely to Vietnam, he was accepted for a 2 year post graduated program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, a city often considered the center of the Native American art world.
In 2009 Gerald Stone finally had the successful solo exhibition. He now shows in only a few galleries and also sells from his home.
edited by Mitchell Pluto from SULΦUR surrealist jungle archive 29 OCT 2021
In the painting Vision Quest-Spiritual Sex there are several metaphors relating to antlers. Are there more details you can provide us to inform our understanding?
In one of my earliest painting classes we were instructed to create a composition, painting with a live male model, using some of the still life objects on the stage with him, and, our imagination. One of the objects was an antlered deer skull and in my painting, it replaced the model’s head. This was not an unfamiliar concept in Native American imagery but it was the first time for me to play with this concept. It definitely placed me into a spiritual realm I was not intending to explore. But I am a spiritual person so it felt okay to me to proceed. For me, antlered people represent spiritual people. But this antlered man was nude (as the male model was) and displayed a penis. Now this was certainly not a familiar concept in Native American imagery. It has been a concept that has developed and evolved over the years in my art recently culminating with these new paintings, “The Storyteller-Spiritual Sex” (I and II) and “Vision Quest-Spiritual Sex.”
Spiritual Nite (Beautiful Witch)
The painting Spiritual Nite expresses a nude female figure and an enigmatic figure emerging out of the woods. What hint could you give viewers to add their interpretation or apprehension?
The painting “Spiritual Nite (Beautiful Witch)” has evolved from a series of paintings of female nudes over the last twenty years that have evoked a spiritual content. I have met several witches in my life (one a former lover) and made a decision to name this evolving series Beautiful Witches. In this particular painting (and others in this series) I am working intuitively with no planned outcome. I usually start with a sketch of the figure and then develop content and background imagery right at the easel, often letting color and brushstroke inform the direction and meaning of the painting.
Mother or Beautiful Witch
Mother or Beautiful Witch transmits a sense of being fed but who are the mysterious figures behind her?
The painting “Mother (Beautiful Witch)” is an example of an idea evolving right in front of me. Originally, this painting started out a year earlier as a portrait of a tattooed woman with semi formal abstractions in the background. It had an interesting beginning but after awhile it felt lost and I changed direction in midstream. I painted over the background and the entire body of the figure while at the same time changing the position of her arms and the direction of her gaze (impulsive decision making). She was now squeezing her breast and I then painted a stream coming from it. At this point I made a sketch of it to explore options and possibilities. In the sketch, the stream coming from her breast turned into a stream of small fish each getting larger as it moved away from her body and then sketched images in the background that I was recognizing from the brushstrokes and color forms. Getting back to the painting, I added the stream of fluid coming from her breast and then had the inspiration to add a young rabbit catching that stream in its mouth, being fed, leading me to the title “Mother (Beautiful Witch).”
The owl and wolf figures emerged form the brushstrokes creating a drama in the painting. I have felt a connection to rabbits since I was a young boy and have developed several understandings of that connection. One is this: It’s the rabbits that watch over our houses at nite, protecting us from predators, intruders and disease. And also, it’s the rabbits that lead the lost out of the woods but sometimes the owl and wolf beings find them first. Both the painting and the little essay were developed independent of each other but form a natural union.
The Storyteller-Spiritual Sex II
The Storyteller-Spiritual Sex II language appears birthed from the mouth, words become things, places and people. Can you tutor the viewer a little bit about the pantheon or activity in this painting?
Storytelling is a tradition of many of the tribes in North America (and many indigenous cultures) including my own, the Ojibwa or Anishinaabe, as we call ourselves. It has been portrayed visually, most popular as sculpture of the Southwest Pueblo and Hopi tribes as a woman with many children attached to her. My rendition of this concept was inspired by my experience and knowledge of the stories told by my people and was developed through sketching. In addition to my painting, I sketch prolifically, often capturing the tip of an idea or concept that may lead to or inform a future painting. Everything I paint or sketch comes from my memories, dreams or imagination, or directly from real life, never from photographs or screens. The imagery or episodes coming from the mouth of the woman in “The Storyteller-Spiritual Sex II” all come from my visual language developed over years of exploration and in this particular painting, from my dreams and imagination.
Jim Denomie 1955-2022
What role does the moon play in your paintings?
Often the moon merely emphasizes the nite time portrayal of my spiritual paintings. For me it is the nite time when the magic and the mystical happen. And it is my preferred time to paint or sketch as I am almost always out in my studio until 2 or 3am, or later.
I love to sketch. I love seeing other artists’ sketches. Children’s drawings are the absolute best, because their abstractions, inventions and raw honesty just blow me away.
I always carry a sketchbook with me wherever I go, especially when I travel. To me, drawing or sketching is a form of note taking. It is a method of recording the lucid or fragmented thoughts passing through my mind, conscious or dreaming. Sometimes I see a story, sometimes a phrase, or sometimes just a title. It’s also a camera photographing the weird landscape (my imagination) that I dare to allow myself to journey through. It is a process where I try to do some fearless exploration. But almost always, the scenes in my mind are only temporary, fleeting, unexpected images of dreams, imagination and memories. Frequent sketching allows me to capture some of those images and to discover the ones that are unseen.
When I was an art student at the University of Minnesota, I met a musician playing his guitar and singing songs for tips on the sidewalks in Dinkytown. His name was Jerry Rau. Jerry was a Vietnam vet and a gentle soul, and he and I became friends. One day I mentioned to him about sketching an idea before I forgot it. He told me that he always carries a notebook with him explaining, “You never know when a song will come to you. You think you will remember it, but sometimes when you turn your attention for even a second, they float away, like a dream. If you don’t write it down, it will go to the next songwriter. And if he doesn’t catch it, it goes to the next. And if he doesn’t catch it, they all end up with Bob Dylan.”
Sketching is also a method of exploring. Sometimes being able to see only the beginning of a story, a song, a poem, the artist begins illustrating an idea, not knowing what or where it will lead to. Like a clown who pulls what he thinks is just one handkerchief from his shirt pocket, he pulls out cloth after cloth, one idea leading to another until you have a more complete vision of the story or song.
For some time now, I have thought of my sketches as lyrics to a song and coloring and painting my sketches as putting those words to music. Adding color and the abstraction of loose brushstrokes brings a new dimension of the sketch to life. The drawing becomes a leaping-off point and is eventually abandoned as the artist responds to what is evolving right in front of him/her. While translating a sketch to a painting, the artist starts painting but sometimes begins to experience new inspirations right there at the easel (pulling new or different handkerchiefs from his shirt pocket). These realizations make the process original (again) and the sketch and the painting become two different works of art, each significant. Sometimes I find it necessary to make quick little sketches or studies to assist a painting in progress as new ideas emerge or because I feel the need to alter the composition.
For me, sketching is instrumental for evolving ideas and for understanding the incomplete.
Every time I ordered my papers I found these poems that correspond to my years of militancy in the communist youth under the period of the dictatorship, which in my personal case took place between 1979 and 1989
Already a couple of years ago, around 1977, my concern for writing verses had been awakened, and I still have those first poetic stammers. Those sheets speak of those attempts to provide something different to the word, since when adding two, these would give a different meaning and significance, more subtle, in short, that it had a broader meaning.
I had finished high school, and shortly after I met a landscape painter and an art student, who showed me the secrets of easel painting, it was then that I was already clear that my destiny was the visual arts. Parallel to the instruction, I received from these two friends, others close to the cultural circle that was forming in the neighborhood, they enlightened me about the dark passages that happened daily in our country. There was the coup d’état, the intervention of the United States, the disappeared detainees, the torture, the prison and the political persecution, which were some among many the prison, and the political persecution, which were some of the many atrocities that devastated our people.
poetry was still present, and names like Nicolas Guillen, Ernesto Cardenal, or Roque Dalton had been added to my library. I wrote in my spare time, and much of that poetry served the cause of the offended and their fight for liberation for the construction of a new, fairer life. It was then, during a sunny winter afternoon that one of my friends invited me to join the Communist Youth.
I accepted and from that moment my new name was Freddy. The following year he entered the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile, where the student agitation had restarted after complex years where the repression was brutally violent. Now there were more of us and all the universities were setting up Student Centers ready to fight for student and human rights. They were two hard years, of strikes, street actions, propaganda, and confrontation with the repressive forces-Carabineros de Chile, which at that point was a militarized police force trained for repression-Between art classes, paintings, and struggle, of from time to time some of these poems that I have rescued arose. Others were lost among notebooks or were forgotten on a table in my school.
The months went by one after another; meeting, bells, protests, repression, hiding and reappearing, that’s how the years went by, with a lot of political activity, little appearance, and some verses that are being accommodated in these sheets.
At the beginning of 88, love came with force, since one day in January I met Valezka, who would be the mother of my three beloved daughters. That year, party activity would turn to the campaign for the October plebiscite and find a way to insert myself into the workplace, since by December there would be three of us in the family. It was a tough year for both of us, but we went to all the big marches where we joined the people who had said enough to so many people of darkness and opprobrium. The triumph of the “No” option brought hope for the daughter to come and the verses changed color, approaching a less arid and somber texture. 1989 I arrive with a stable job, my party life is focused on the union. That year Patricio Aylwin was elected, he would be the President “as far as possible”, or put another way: what was impossible for the people, while everything possible was given to the de facto groups and the oligarchy. Those were the years of asking for permission from the dictators and fascists who held key positions in the Armed Forces, Parliament, and the production and communication media. Large state companies continued to be privatized and neoliberalism deepened. From the 90s onwards, were the years of shame, of a protected democracy, and of the deepening of the model
Enrique of Santiago, December 2021
The Smoke Base (1979)
the base of the smoke it is base without eye for the bell a lock vibrates ten times, and the bewildered sight writes How many broken ideas are there in the mirror? for the bell the ear is deaf with pain of 10,000 years the crazy race has an end everywhere lips are pursed, the exit is praised, spitting black earth and the black earth spits us to the sky burning the pupils since the base of the smoke has no eye The base of the smoke has no eye and the ash drowns a siren and they crash by the thousands Well, it’s the autumn of man the bell screams in fright and the eardrum tells him to shut up.. but the cry is crying dog crying, of worms of mice human crying shoes melt and the frost boils in its hour pine is charcoal and the race burns and burns The base of the smoke has no eye but the beginning yes, but underlies its lock
Carnival and duel (1980)
Dreams have been trampled in the mud and the moans are silenced with screens and neon fun to lead the century on the trembling of absent birds but one day the crystal clear rain will come and after the sun with your new water kissed by the moon while the rebellious ligaments they give off longings on the gray asphalt under waiting stars the smooth flight of lepidoptera
The Pedaling (1981)
On a colorless bike pedal to a sleeping atoll in that corner of the skin of a rosy vision under the dark green chair so that the sole kisses the yellow sands the contemporary chip already inside my starry pants I think it is appropriate to say with a red voice: Long live this surreal expression! I then say: Your violet rifle jumps from the dark tides Stepping on the shapes that you don’t have yet and you were submerged in your numerical sea where they surprised you between mastabas and whips and embraced the heavy centuries under the belly of the galleys to cross the maps of the centuries chasing the useless and ephemeral
Night (1983)
Have you felt that the bats They come to your room one day agitated? They laugh and denote expired fangs while the music falls, abandoning each note, and I look for an onomatopoeia to simulate my brain hitting the floor, so as not to perceive how it is extinguished the spent life of those who do not have feathers I just want my fingers intact to pull a certain trigger and make my way through the gray tangle of his name
Observations (1984)
They are cloudy days vermin crawl and abound the palace beasts the city wears its best corruption suit and in each office a crime is perpetrated but there are still your kisses and your moisture in a brief but broad sincerity in that street that corrects my face and faith
Reading in Heaven (1985)
The fly refrained from ascending and stopped at folded hopes perceiving a usual odor had drilled all the diameters known and unknown of the present medieval apathy Repelled by bullets the nonconformity wears black tile and resume the flight causing the last ulcers to existing weight Tomorrow the cage is undressed before the soup gets cold
Painting (1986)
Alone, in front of the support clinging to thousands of flaming voices and be one and all following the thread of Ariadna in that challenging labyrinth where she is shipwrecked and pales her life, next to the truth and hers custodian loves be both and call what principle Without us realizing that we always carry with the fear of what ends
Dream (1987)
In the courtyard of my memory I did not pave stone *pastelones and on the most humid and fertile land grow a red flower burdensome and geometric without the language of capitulation and got up watered with the brief bravery that drives almost irrationally to the martyrs from every barricade in this city charnel house
Demystifying (1987)
The feather vortex perishes before the litigation of stillness and from so much looking for potions on nights covered with the moon shell I then went to the annals of oblivion while the image of the eroded sky appears under the uncertainty of its dim flashes going through the rubble of your memory My withered pupil arrived there to forget you
September Notes (1989)
They will hide my lean meat, under the cover of earth and parallel, where the traces left by my dreams will not be visible in those coordinates where the dragonflies nested In the softest parts of a solstice insistent the consecrated spells will be hidden for future generations while I drink from a larval porphyria since each wing contains the history of time, what takes my breath to set your levels without further limits that the one that extends in the red slope of a fallen where each segment of the man fulfills with the fragility of his own destiny In vain many look at their savings account on the gray sidewalk, when in reality life goes by insignificant before your eyes Now do you understand why? of the sound of crafty sabers in spring
Enrique de Santiago, Born in Santiago, Chile (1961). Visual artist, poet, researcher, essayist, curator and cultural manager. He studied a Bachelor of Art at the University of Chile and at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Chile). Since 1984, he has exhibited in individual and group exhibitions, counting to his credit around more than 100 exhibitions. He has edited five books: Fragile Transits Under the Spirals in 2012, with La Polla Literaria; Elegía a las Magas and the book essay: El Regreso de las Magas, both with Editorial Varonas. In 2018 he edited La Cúspide Uránica with editorial Xaleshem and Dharma Comunicaciones, and Travel Bitácora with Editorial Opalina Cartonera. He has participated in various poetry anthologies, both in Chile and abroad. He has collaborated in the newspaper La Nación with articles on new media art, and in magazines such as Derrame, Escaner Cultural and Labios Menores in Chile, Brumes Blondes in Holland, Adamar from Spain, Punto Seguido from Colombia, Sonámbula from Mexico, Agulha de Brazil, Incomunidade de Portugal, Styxus de Rep. Czech, Canibaal de Valencia, Spain, Materika de Costa Rica and other printed and digital publications.
Mitchell Pluto 