Kevin Red Star, Dorothy Grandbois, Laura Fragua Cota

As a member of the Institute of American Indian Art’s (IAIA) inaugural class, Crow artist Kevin Red Star sees himself as one of the school’s “test students” in a kind of visionary experiment. In 1962, high school students from 80 tribes nationwide were invited to enroll in a program in Santa Fe, N.M., unlike any other at the time.

“You’re giving young Native American students the proper environment, the proper tools, and really fine Indian instructors,” Red Star recalls. “Would the students excel?” The artist laughs softly, as if the question answers itself. “And we did,” he said.

Founded as a high school and later expanded to a two-year college offering associate degrees, IAIA was conceived as a means of reawakening artistic traditions that had been a primary mode of American Indian expression for centuries. The vision included employing successful Native artists as instructors and role models, giving students a broad foundation in art history and contemporary art from the larger art world, and bringing together students from diverse tribal cultures in a richly creative environment.

The “experiment” worked so well that over the past 30 years IAIA has produced many award-winning, nationally and internationally renowned artists. Other alumni are involved in museum administration and curating around the country, teaching the arts, and working with tribal communities. And significantly, the school seems to instill in its graduates a deep appreciation for the uniqueness of the IAIA experience and a strong desire to give back something of what has been gained from their experience, according to Joanna Bigfeather, director of the IAIA Museum.

A Western Cherokee and 1987 IAIA graduate, Bigfeather is the first female and first alumna to serve as director of the highly acclaimed, contemporary Indian art museum. Before taking this position she was director and curator at the American Indian Community House Gallery/Museum in Manhattan. There she worked extensively with the New York Foundation for the Arts and in outreach to Iroquois and other tribal communities. She helped gain more Indian representation on boards and on juries for artistic competition. She facilitated workshops to assist Native Americans and other ethnic minority artists in applying for fellowships and gaining a foothold in the art world.

The direction of her career, Bigfoot believes, was powerfully influenced by her experience at IAIA, which rooted her in her Indian-ness, through the arts, and at the same time provided practical skills in such areas as museum management. She sees herself as characteristic of other graduates who feel a desire to give back.

“What I notice about our Native American artist community is: We don’t get MBAs, so we don’t give money. We volunteer, we give our art, our time,” she said. “I see it from our school more than most.”

"Geronimo's Vision" Dorothy Grandbois

Advice from an art Star

With an artistic mother and musical father, Kevin Red Star had strong family support and encouragement for his own artistic inclinations as a child growing up on the Crow Reservation in Lodge Grass, Mont. He lacked, however, any working artists nearby to look to as mentors or to talk to about the practical aspects of making a living as an artist. Most of the adults around him were busy making a living with farming and ranching or working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) or tribe.

At IAIA, Red Star was introduced to a wide spectrum of art from around the world. Just as importantly, he was in close contact, for the first time, with Native American students his age from cultures as diverse as the Pueblos of New Mexico and other Northern Plains tribes, whose languages, traditions, clothing, and even design motifs and color usage differed greatly from his own. He noticed how other tribes traditionally wore their hair, tied feathers on their arrows, or painted designs on their tipis in different ways.

"Pueblo Woman" Laura Fragua-Cota

Following this immersion in art and Native cultures, Red Star went on to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. Eventually he developed his own distinctive painting style, characterized by a potent sense of design, rich colors, and meticulous accuracy in historical and tribal details. In the decades since then his work has won numerous awards and been added to the permanent collections of such institutions as the National Museum of the American Indian, the Heard Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of Western Art.

Now 57 and living in south-central Montana, Red Star enjoys being the mentor he never had as a boy. It’s not unusual to find aspiring young artists from the reservation or nearby schools in his studio, invited by the artist. He shows them what he’s working on and points out how the studio is set up. “Whoa, look at that! I can do something like this!” the kids say. Red Star lends them art books and videos. He offers suggestions. “Buy a little paint box and a portfolio to keep your drawings in,” he says. “Give yourself an hour or two before dinner to draw or paint. All you need is a table and chair to start.”

For many years Red Star has offered his talent in other ways as well, in support of schools and organizations aimed at supporting young artists and tribal communities. He gives presentations and workshops at high schools all over Montana, Wyoming, and elsewhere; he has served as a judge at Indian art fairs; he donates art for posters and other fund raising activities for such organizations as the American Indian Film Institute and the American Indian College Fund.

“When I was starting out, in the ’60s, they didn’t consider art as a way to make a living,” he explains. “So now, when they come to me and ask for advice and encouragement, I’m happy to give it.”

Becoming visible in the 21^st century

Photographer Dorothy Grandbois was deprived of more than role models in her early school years. A Turtle Mountain Chippewa from North Dakota, she was shipped off to Catholic boarding schools where Native Americans were severely dissuaded from speaking their own languages and where assimilation into the mainstream culture was a primary goal. The trauma of this experience remains deeply imprinted on Grandbois’ soul. As a child, and later as the wife of a BIA employee, she witnessed both pain and survival in difficult situations. As an adult student at IAIA, she learned how photography can be a powerful tool for change.

Grandbois attended IAIA in the late 1980s as a divorced mother of two children. Her degree was in museum studies, but she also took photography courses with acclaimed photographer Meridel Rubenstein — courses that greatly expanded her conception of the medium. As a result, her own work with a camera began to take on a much more socially and politically aware role, especially in making visible the Native American experience today.

After graduation from IAIA, Grandbois continued photography studies at the University of New Mexico. She now teaches photography at IAIA and during summer break pursues documentary and fine art photography projects. Her work has earned first place awards at Santa Fe Indian Market and has been shown in traveling exhibitions, galleries, and museums around the country and internationally. She is the 2001 recipient of the Allan Houser Memorial Award in the New Mexico Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts.

For the past two years Grandbois has been engaged in a major documentary project she calls “Journey into the 21^st Century.” Spending weeks at a time on reservations and in tribal villages in the United States and Canada, she talks with people of all ages. She records on black and white film the realities of economic, health, and social problems they face.

In roadless, far northern Cree villages in Canada’s Northwest Territories, for example, Grandbois documented the results of a 50-year-old Canadian law prohibiting pregnant women from giving birth in their own homes and villages. Instead, they are “evacuated” by helicopter or Lear jet to boarding houses in distant cities, often taken from their families and communities two months before the birth. As Grandbois witnessed the hardships and heartbreak, the people she photographed expressed their desperate hope that increased awareness of the situation will help bring about change.

Grandbois has the same hope, eventually planning to publish her photos in magazine articles, a book, and a traveling exhibition. But her work focuses on more than the painful aspects of Native life. She also photographs the powerful beauty and closeness revealed in multi-generational families, pow wows, and community gatherings — evidence of strength and survival.

On the local level, Grandbois has taken part in an arts-focused mentorship program in the public schools. She has contributed to the Native art world by helping revise the standards for entry of photographic art in Santa Fe Indian Market. And in her teaching, she attempts to pass on not only technical skills but some of the inspiration that has guided her own career. “Going to IAIA made me realize we have our own issues to address, in our own communities,” she reflects. “I could have gone mainstream as a photographer, but this is where my interest is.”

In the footsteps of the Ultimate Artist

"Fancy Traditional Dancer" Kevin Red Star

A recent Indiana limestone sculpture by Laura Fragua Cota, titled Praying Heart, is a simple figure of a woman with her hands held together above her head. In its quiet eloquence, the piece reflects the artist’s deeply held belief in turning to the Creator to acknowledge the gift of life. It also speaks of Fragua Cota’s embrace of an artistic medium not traditionally done by Native American women, and in particular, by women of Jemez Pueblo, in north-central New Mexico. But Fragua Cota has always been comfortable blending the traditional and contemporary in her art, and she considers her experience at IAIA as key in her ability to do so. It was also key in giving her the confidence to envision herself as a working artist, she said.

“I’ve always been around art, but we didn’t think of it as art — it was part of our life, our traditions. Our ancestors never thought their cooking pots would be in a museum. They were used every day,” she said. “When I said I wanted to be an artist, my grandma said, ‘Why don’t you get a secretary job, dress up nice and get a check every two weeks?’ That’s not what I wanted to do.”

At IAIA Fragua Cota was delighted to find herself surrounded by other young American Indian students who also felt a powerful need to create. She was fascinated to learn about the traditions of other tribes and still cherishes the friendships she made there. She took classes in almost every medium and eventually found her artistic niche in stone sculpture, clay figures, and painting.

In the years since her 1984 graduation, Fragua Cota — who now lives in south-central New Mexico — has won numerous awards with her art, including Best of Show and the 1999 Allan Houser Memorial Award in the Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts. As IAIA alumni president for two years, she helped encourage other Native artists by raising money for scholarships through alumni art shows and other events. She has led clay workshops for children at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe and elsewhere. And she remains involved in life at Jemez Pueblo, donating art for community causes and taking part in the Pueblo’s annual art show.

Fragua Cota’s dream, however, is to take her gift a step farther. She hopes to obtain a masters in art therapy and use these skills to help Native Americans in a setting such as a rehabilitation center. “It’s not enough to do art for yourself,” she said. “For me, I cannot say it enough, that the ultimate Artist is the Great Spirit. All we have here is what He has given us, and as artists we just re-create what has been given us. I want to use what the Creator has given me, to help Indian people out.”

Freelance writer Gussie Fauntleroy lives in Santa Fe and writes about the arts and other subjects for local, regional, and national publications, including Southwest Art, Native Peoples Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and The Santa Fean magazine. She currently is working on a book on Santa Clara Pueblo artist Roxanne Swentzell, to be published by New Mexico Magazine Press in August 2002.