Tonight! – Mixing Mud – Claying Around Vernacular Pueblo Architectures of the Southwest

Mixing Mud: Claying Around Vernacular Pueblo Architectures of the Southwest

Mixing Mud: Claying Around Vernacular Pueblo Architectures of the Southwest featuring Garron Yepa (Towa, Diné) and Dr. Porter Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo)

“Mixing Mud” is a presentation on the ontology of Indigenous design and architecture of the Pueblo Tribes of the southwest.

Dr. Porter Swentzell, Ph.D., is from Santa Clara Pueblo, where he grew up participating in traditional life in his community and developed an interest in language and cultural preservation. He is the Associate Academic Dean, and Chair of Indigenous Liberal Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Porter is a Regent for Northern New Mexico College and serves on several non-profit boards. He holds a PhD in Justice Studies from Arizona State University, a MA from Western New Mexico University, and a BA from Northern New Mexico College. Porter lives at Santa Clara Pueblo along with his wife and three children where he enjoys weaving traditional Pueblo sash belts in his free time.

Garron Yepa is Dine and Towa, born & raised in Albuquerque, NM. Currently residing and working in Santa Fe, Garron is an architectural associate with over 10 years of experience. He has worked on a wide range of projects including affordable housing, commercial interiors, hospitality, and preservation. He believes in culturally relevant design that is rooted in community. Garron is a board member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AICAE), & continues to promote increasing Native enrollment in architecture, planning, & preservation programs.

Additional Resources:
· Dwellings: the Vernacular House Worldwide: https://amzn.to/3l6rNwq
· The Plazas of New Mexico: https://amzn.to/377V98x
· Native American Architecture: https://amzn.to/39beYhY
· Building Without Architects: https://amzn.to/39o00VI
· The Myth of Santa Fe: https://unmpress.com/books/myth-santa-fe/9780826317469
· Our Voices, Indigeneity and Architecture: https://www.oroeditions.com/product/our-voices/

Dec 16, 2020 06:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register HERE.

Jeannie Mah live chat this Thursday!

Jeannie Mah will be doing a live chat with Curator Tak Pham during the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s Virtual Opening of HUMAN CAPITAL on Thursday Dec 17 at 7 pm. Join us on the MacKenzie’s Facebook or YouTube accounts!
TRAIN: les ARRIVÉes is an imaginary train journey through history, across Saskatchewan. With family photos of my dad and me at the Willingdon Grocery in Regina, my swimmer pal Lily Tingley’s family at the Broadway Café in Yorkton, and the almost deserted village of Consul, where my father, at age 14, went to school for one year, we traverse Saskatchewan from west to east.
The passenger train, which once connected us from coast to coast, from town to town, from city to beach, has almost vanished, and the labour and lives lost in the construction of the railway seem to have been sacrificed for nothing. From the Last Spike of 1886 to the demise of the passenger train in 1990, we were unable to maintain our national dream for more than 104 years, despite the human cost of the construction of the railway and our nation.
While the video is a delicate present, and the porcelain journey across Saskatchewan is a faded recent “past-present”, the persistent arrival of the train is in contrast to the still images frozen on porcelain, witnesses to the slow disappearance of lives once lived, and the changes to cities and villages, and to lost modes of transportation. Lives remembered, lives sacrificed, lives forgotten.
Travelling towards infinity is at once a moment of departure always in movement towards arrival, just as immigration is a movement between home and away. This continual arrival and departure of presence and memory, of a “coming and going” within the exhibition space, forms the inner cinema of our lives, because of the persistence of memory and vision, of culture and landscape.
Human Capital: MacKenzie Art Gallery. Regina. Dec 17th to April 18th.
TRAIN: les ARRIVÉes was a 2013 solo exhibition at the Godfrey Dean Gallery in Yorkton, initiated by director Don Stein (who I thank for the train video!), reconfigured for this exhibition space.
Find out more HERE.

call for entry: Small Favors 2021

About the Exhibition

Small Favors engages artists’ creativity in new and exciting ways with the challenge of making pieces on a very small scale. For some artists, the work they create is similar to what they normally make, but at a reduced scale. Others use it as an opportunity to break away from what they create in their daily studio practice. The works exhibited are incredibly varied in material, form, and aesthetics. Though small in scale the artworks created for this exhibition are huge in impact.

Exhibition Dates: March 5, 2021 – May 9, 2021.

Preview Reception: Thursday, March 5, 6-7pm

Guest Juror – Kensuke Yamada

All you need to apply can be found HERE.

Also make sure not to miss:

JOIN US
on Thursday at noon in conversation with ceramic artist Kensuke Yamada, a former Resident Artist and our Guest Juror for Small Favors 2021, opening March 5 at The Clay Studio.

JOIN THE ZOOM  •  THURSDAY, DEC 17  •  NOON (EST)

virtual workshop with George Rodriguez!

Through the depiction of guardian figures, tomb sculptures and shrines, I depict my community current and forthcoming. Join me in the creation of a new figure. It might be human, it might be animal, it might be magic. Working from drawings, I’ll use basic slab and modeling techniques to make and assemble a two foot sculpture. The head will be made and altered from a press mold and the body decorated with sprigs. I will also briefly discuss finishing techniques. BIPOC and need-based scholarships available; please email [email protected] for details.

Born and raised in the border city of El Paso, TX, George Rodriguez creates humorous decorative ceramic sculpture addressing his identity and community. Brought up by his mother and four older sisters, George quietly observed the love and hard work needed to maintain his family and community. His art began to manifest as search for his individualized voice and propelled him to infuse journal like representational sculpture with humor and sweetness. George received a BFA in ceramics from the University of Texas El Paso then went on to receive an MFA from the University of Washington.  His world curiosity grew as a recipient of a Bonderman Travel Fellowship where he traveled the world through most of 2010. His work can be found in the permanent collection of the National Mexican Museum of Art in Chicago and the Hallie Ford Museum in Salem, OR.  George is represented by Foster/White Gallery in Seattle, WA and is the Artist in Residence at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia.

Jan 16-Jan 16 | 1:00 PM-3:00 PM
Saturday Afternoon
Instructor: George Rodriguez
$ 25.00 Members: | $ 30.00 Non-Members
Skill Level: All Levels
Technique: Workshops for Artists
Age: Adult

Register HERE.