Autry Museum of Western Heritage

Roseta Santiago 

Return to the Indian Building

oil on linen

24 x 30 in.

Masters of The American West

2015

Please click on the Artists' names to take you to their website.

All photos were taken with my iPhone so they are not print quality.

Here's some majestic spiritual, Native American Flute music f

rom R. Carlos Nakai - Kokopelli Wind

John Coleman

Honeymoon at Crow Fair

Bronze

(Marjorie and Frank Sands Patron' Choice Award, and The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation Award for Sculpture.)

From the website:

"The Autry’s Masters of the American West Fine Art Exhibition and Sale is considered the country’s premier Western art show. Each year, more than 75 nationally recognized, contemporary Western artists challenge themselves to create and exhibit their very best work. Stylistically and thematically diverse, their works represent the extraordinary range of subject matter that contemporary, historic, and mythic Western experiences inspire."

My parents looking at a painting by Z.S. Liang, called Solicitation for Leadership  (95,000 and it, like most all the others on this post, was sold.)

Even with it being all figurative work (realism, non abstract etc) there was quite a variety, and all of the pieces are for sale. Most of the work had been sold by the time we all met there for my grandma's birthday. She was so excited to go see the show and I hadn't gone for a couple of years.

Z.S. Liang
Keeper of the Thunder Medicine Pipe
Oil on linen canvas
48 x 28 in.

This following piece was so beautiful, especially in person. Beautiful light!! My favorite of the show.

George Hallmark
The Prayer
oil on linen
24 x 20 in.

For landscapes, these following smaller pieces were just jewels! So beautiful! I want to look at more work by this artist. I wonder if he teaches workshop. I mean, seriously.

Cyrus Afsary
After the Rain
oil on linen
16 x20 in.

Cyrus Afsary
Reflection
oil on linen
18 x 24 in.

Really loved this piece below, as well. Large and very abstract the way he did the composition. Beautiful work.

Len Chmiel
Geological Illusions
oil
38 x 39 in.

George Carlson
Witness of Time
oil on linen
42 x 42 in.
(Ross and Billie McKnight Artist' Choice Award, and Masters of the American West Purchase Award)

This piece above won all sorts of awards. The light was wonderful and the texture was so cool, so I'm posting a detail of it, underneath.

Here is an interview with the artist ...

John Coleman
In the Shadow of Ancestors
oil on canvas
50 x 34 in.
(Same artist that did the large bronze sculpture, second photo from the top. Love the way he paints skin and the shadow of the fringe or her knee was amazing.)

William Acheff

Quiet Steps

oil 

5 x 10 in.

(So detailed and lovely! This was a treasure of a painting!)

Interview with the artist above. Great after 2:00 especially.

Calvin Liang
Sunset Sailing in Newport Beach
oil on canvas
18 x 24 in.
(My mom was freaking out over this. She's a painter too.)

From Calvin Liang Workshop

This following portrait is a small piece by Mian Situ. He usually has my favorite pieces in the show. They are always stunning. You should really check him out online. You will be blown away.

Mian Situ
The Blue Scarf
oil on canvas
12 x 9 in.

This is a slideshow of his work. :)

Here is Mian Situ interviewed ...

Jeremy Lipking (below) is an artist whose work I have been following for years. A friend of mine and I went to a show 10 or 15 years ago, I think in West Hollywood. I can't remember, but the first work I saw was a beautiful nude in the woods, painted so gorgeously with these luscious strokes of oil paint that reminded me of John Singer Sargent.

Jeremy Lipking
Walk Through Painted Deserts
oil on linen

The next one is by Lipking, as well. Explore his work here when you get the chance.

Jeremy Lipking
Young Girl in Profile
oil on linen
20 x 16 in.

Jeremy Lipking
Riders Under Vermilion Cliffs
oil on linen
8 x 10 in.

Below, another great exhibition. After seeing the little moccasins in one of the paintings above, it got my wheels turning about subject matter. (I have Iroquois on my dad's side.)

I put a piece of myself, my family, and my ancestors 
in every piece I make.

I want everyone to see and feel how my people would have lived 
hundreds of years ago, 
for each piece I make is done the old way.

~Glenda McKay

Sioux-Métis frock coat

1850-1875

Deerskin, cotton, wool, glass beads, quills, silk ribbon, sinew

Collection of John and Marva Wamock

Métis pants with attached half-leggings

1860

Buckskin, cotton velvet metal, silk thread

Gift of Mrs. Camilla Chandler Frost

Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection

The symbol projected on the floor, below, is symbolic of the Native North American worldview. The equal-armed cross represents the four cardinal directions and the three layers of the universe, encircled by the life-giving sun.

I screwed up on the info for the beautiful Moccasins below. They are either Tahltan before 1938 (Matilda Reid) or Kutchin from 1951 (Katherine Peter.) Sorry!

Kiowa cradleboard
late 1800s
Wood, hide, cotton, glass beads, brass, rawhide, sinew, pigment
Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University

Blackfoot gauntlets
Circa 1900-1915
Hide, glass beads
James R. Parks Collection

Dakota Shoulder puch
1850s
skin, flannel, ribbon, glass beads
Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection

Delaware bandolier bag
circa 1860
Cotton cloth, silk ribbon, wool yarn, glass beads.
"The Delaware artist who made this bag had already been forcibly relocated to a reservation in Indian Territory. Despite being made after removal, the bag's traditional Delaware essence remains.
Collection of John and Marva Warnock.

Grandmother used to bead medicine flowers 
onto their homemade items such as moccasins and bags 
because white people, especially missionaries, 
disapproved of Mdewakanton women using medicines.

~Delores Bluestone

The Plateau

Nez Perce or Yakama cradleboard

circa 1890

Buckskin, glass beads, brass beads, wool cloth, wood

Lee and lois Miner

Bag

1995

Maynard White Owl Lavandour

Cayuse/Nez Perce

Moose hide, glass beads

On load courtesy of Tamastslikt Culteral Institute 

My teachers are the beadwork's of the past.

I am inspired by the forms, colors, and textures of the world around me.

~Katrina Mitten

 

My Grandma Beverly and I on her 93rd birthday!

For more information, check out the Autry Museum Website.

Blessings and light!

Up to Ventura ...

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends

lives in my heart,

I shall say that life is good.

~Helen Keller

Back in March, my friend Carol came to town! Well, not to L.A. but to Ventura. We met in preschool and were in each others classes (and lives) almost every year of primary school, then went to Junior High and High School together.

She moved away during college and never moved back! She lives in Washington State, which is beautiful of course, but we miss her in Southern California! I hadn't seen her for 13 years.

A group of us made a plan to meet on the pier, in Ventura. The site of many a memory!

Other than a few months after living in Thailand, in 1988, I haven't lived in Ventura either since High School. 

Anyway, a lot of music sends me into full sense memory mode, back to Ventura. This is  especially true of 80s music. I love the original Peter Gabriel version of this song, but I thought I'd share Sara's cover. :)

I headed North to Camarillo, to drive the rest of the way with Caroline. (Who I met in 4th grade!)

From her home in Camarillo ...

Ventura ...

The best mirror is an old friend.

~Peter Nivio Zarlenga

Be true to your work,

your word,

and your friends.

~Henry David Thoreau

Each friend represents a world in us,

a world not born until they arrive,

and it is only by this meeting 

that a new world is born.

~Anais Nin

Ah, how good it feels!

The hand of an old friend.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's not Ventura that I ever miss and it hasn't felt like home in ... decades. But, what does feel like home, is being with old friends. (And these are some of the oldest! ;)

Hearing Carol's voice, it's hard to explain, but I know her voice as well as any family member or anyone I see in my current life. It sounds like memories and childhood, and high school and ... love. It was one of those moments where all the years disappear. The same old souls, just hanging out.

I love that.

Todd, Julie, Cassy, Danna, Caroline, Carol, Buckley, and me.

For more Ventura posts ... click  here   here   here and  here 

Actually there are more but ... ;)

Close friends are truly life's treasures.

Sometimes they know us better

than we know ourselves.

With gentle honest,

they are there to guide and support us,

to share our laughter and our tears.

Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.

~Vincent van Gogh 

Space Shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center and NASA Wake Up Calls

... Finally the sun disappears altogether

and then the moon,

shining still more brightly,

proudly ascend the throne of the sun.

I greet you, Madam,

the stars seem to say.

~Anais Nin

California Science Center

After visiting my grandma, in Whittier, and doing our night out in Hollywood at the El Capitan Theater, we got up the next morning and headed to the California Science Center. 

There is so much to see at the Science Center, but our main objective was to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour!

But first a little history and context ...

Ben in front of the Apollo-Soyuz Command Module.

Click here for more info on Apollo and its 1975  mission.

Not much room in there for 3 astronauts! These modules carried those guys from the Earth to lunar orbit ...

Just a few days after visiting the Science Center there was a story on the radio about NASA's Space Shuttle wake up calls. It was interesting and moving hearing how songs are decided on, to start their day. The first ever wake up call was apparently "Hello Dolly." 

Often, the songs are picked by the family members of the astronauts. I started getting weepy hearing about a song picked for Columbia's last mission, when the crew members were killed on re-entry. One of their songs was Amazing Grace, on the bagpipes.

Some songs have been used more than once, like Elton John's "Rocket Man" and Louis Armstrong's 

"What a Wonderful World."

Here is the radio podcast of the great interview about NASA Wake up calls I listened to on PRI ...

Another song used for a NASA wake up call, was from Michael Stipe of R.E.M. ...

Above and below is the Mercury Redstone 2 capsule. This is the actual capsule in which they sent up the four year old chimp, Ham! Not very much room in there, but apparently it was a short flight. 16 minutes, 39 seconds. Click here for more about the mission.

How cool is this 1960 space suit?! I think Michael Jackson must have taken notes! It's on loan from the Smithsonian.

Now, this is the astronaut of my childhood! (Also on loan from the Smithsonian!)

Penny and Ben, below, checking out the spacecrafts ...

Pioneer 10 is the big blue one, at the bottom of the following photo. (A model)

It was launched in March of 1972, and was the first to cross the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. At the time, no one was sure a spacecraft could survive the trip. It took the first close-up data and images Jupiter and it was the first spacecraft to leave our solar system! In 2001 it was more than 7 billion miles from the sun!

My brain just won't wrap it's way around those numbers!

To read more about Pioneer 10, which sent it's last signal to NASA in January of 2003, click here.

 

The little round silver one, in the right of the photo below is a full scale model of Sputnik. 22 inches in diameter. Little huh? The 22 inches that launched the space race! For more on that, click here.

I know nothing with any certainty,

but the sight of the stars

make me dream.

~Vincent van Gogh

Space Shuttle Endeavour Exhitibiton 

Ever wonder where astronauts "do their business?"

Endeavour was built to replace the challenger and first launched in 1992. It made 25 successful missions and below Penny and Ben are checking out the wall of missions, with photos of the astronauts who took them.

Endeavour

Samuel Oshin Pavillion 

From underneath the shuttle ... each individual tile has information!

I remember when they brought the space shuttle back to LA, piggy backed on a 747. I was pulling out of my garage and looked up. Let me tell you, it was a sight to behold! 

I didn't think I would see it because I'd heard about the flight path on the news, but what do you know? ... a perfect and seemingly close up view from my driver's side window, my mouth hanging open. It was flying low and the whole thing looked enormous!

The shots in the following video get more interesting at about 3:50, going by Dodger's Stadium, then downtown and the Coliseum.  After 7:15 minutes Univeral Studios then the Hollywood Hills.

My friend who teaches at an elementary school, said all the kids were out on the field waiting and so exited when they saw it go over!

Getting it from LAX and through town, to the Science Center, was no small feet and was all over the news! Here is a time lapse of the its journey through town, past shops, apartments and throngs of onlookers!

Some concept models of how it could be eventually be displayed.

This Chamber in the science center blows hurricane force winds. I think it went up to 80!

 And of course, we had to get a photo of Benjamin with Endeavour!

The Science Center is next to U.S.C., and not far from Downtown Los Angeles, so we decided to do lunch in Little Tokyo!

 

For more on the Endeavour, click here.

If you want to see the Space Shuttle in action, this is an edited piece from NASA, of shots from Endeavour's last mission.

One more musical gem, played for many an astronaut on many a mission ... 

Live in 1972

I loved the stars too fondly

to be fearful of the night.

~Galileo

Blessings and light!