Artist's Statement
“Before starting my residency, I challenged myself to use cyan, yellow, magenta, and black to create art for this gallery, inspired by my love of print process. For added interest, I decided to throw in a wild card and chose a rusty red color. It was important to me to use bright colors to counter any stereotype that Native American art, is only earth-toned and 'natural.' Brown tones, black, grays, and white are beautiful, but I wanted to show that our peoples’ culture and our presence in the world is not neutral or always calm. A lot of indigenous art, including our stories can, and should be, told in bright and colorful ways. Being a contemporary artist, each piece is influenced by Catawba stories and culture, in ways the viewer may not expect. It is my hope that this challenges any preconceptions of what Catawba art looks like. It is also my hope that viewers will see this as an allegory for coming to terms with their own identities without expectations.”
This piece was inspired by the Catawba folk tale that keeping red flowers in one’s home would bring about good fortune.
Ugni the Comet is a Catawba tale of a woman who steals a child, chases him to heaven, but falls back to earth as a comet. This is the traditional story that inspired this piece.
The yehasuri are trickster spirits believed by the Catawba to inhabit the forest.
Model: Ericka Pursley
This series is based on CMYK color—Cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (i.e. black). CMYK refers to color printing and process color.
Model: Hailey Wade
This work was created using a collage of photos of a snake pitcher originally created by Catawba potter Bill Harris.
This piece depicts the artist’s interpretation of a large, black snake swimming through the Catawba River. It serves as a symbolic representation on how we as people progress through lives and discover out identities through the human experience.
“One of the hallmark pieces of the gallery, this piece was conceptualized from the beginning of my residency. I wanted to create something that was loud, and brightly colored, and representative of our culture. We have an abstract representation of a black snake. But then you have what I have lovingly dubbed pebbles. The snake is depicted swimming over pebbles as if you are looking down into the river. You also have bubbles in each and down the hallway and they seem to be like leaking water to give a neat effect that we experimented with.
To me, this piece represents people going throughout their life. So, you swim over different pebbles; you have different combinations of good, bad, ugly, beautiful, and some of those things stick with you or reflect back to you. The color of yourself changes as you go along. Throughout the snake, the representation of the scales is abstract and changes from each one of the colors shown. I incorporated two seals into this piece. Both represent, going through life. One is representative of the pebbles and the river, and the other shows the flow of the river as a snake or many snakes might swim through it.”
Exhibit Staff:
- Brittany Taylor-Driggers, Assistant Professor of Art, Director of Campus Collections and Galleries
- Elisabeth Avelar, Special Projects Coordinator, Digital Exhibit Producer
- Alex Osborn, Contemporary Artist-in-Residence
Artwork produced during this residency is now part of USCL's Special Collections.
This project was supported by the University of South Carolina Office of the Vice President of Research's RISE Program - an annual Research Initiative for Summer Engagement grant.