Conversation with Artist Rose B. Simpson

"I am realizing that everything that happened, happens, or will happen to me is my manifestation. Instead of feeling like a victim to my predicament, I actively take the initiative to become aware of it, and have the “tools” to deal with whatever comes my way, mostly because I am paying attention. When I pay close enough attention, I realize that I have what I need to deal with even the scariest and most intimidating of circumstances. These tools are not weapons, they are energy- represented in the piece by objects that have been made with intention, actively energized, and placed with vigilance." -Rose B. Simpson

Here is the conversation with Rose B. Simpson:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE and download this episode

Music featured on this episode:

• "Truth Be Told" 2007, Rose B. Simpson with The Wake Singers

• "Falling Forward" 2007, Rose B. Simpson with the Wake Singers, Lyrics by Cannupa Hanska Luger

• "Dim Light" 2006, Rose B. Simpson with Chocolate Helicopter

• "Mama" 2002, Rose B. Simpson with Ground Control, recorded by Taivas Degroff

• "If you give me time" Rose B. Simpson with Garbage Pail Kidz, 2003 

• "Movin' Thru" Rose B. Simpson with Mystic Vision, rec. by John Bento, 2006

• "Eddy St." Rose B. Simpson 2010

• "Lines" Rose B. Simpson with Juan Cruz, 2006

More about the artist:

Forgiveness. Rose B. Simpson

Rose B. Simpson was born in Santa Fe, NM, and raised among an extended family of artists in Santa Fe and Santa Clara Pueblo. Her mother; Roxanne Swentzell, a known ceramic sculptor within the Indigenous art world, and her father; Patrick Simpson, a contemporary artist in wood and metal introduced her to the art world at a young age. 

Of both Indigenous and Anglo descent, with art and philosophy primary in both families, she has pursued the pure expression of truth through many forms of art including sculpture, printmaking, drawing, creative writing, music, dance and most recently auto mechnics and paint. Her work often signifies the constant struggle between the two worlds that most modern Indigenous peoples survive through; traditional and the colonist perspective/assimilation. 

Learn more about the work of Rose on here website: www.rosebsimpson.com

"Maria". By Rose B. Simpson. Photo by Kate Russell

Adam. By Rose B. Simpson 2015

Conversation with Artist Chris Pappan

Chris Pappan is a Chicago based artist of Kaw, Osage, Cheyenne River Sioux heritage, and a self described Native American Lowbrow artist. Currently his artwork is based on American Indian ledger drawings of the mid to late 19th Century with his own 21st Century twist.  Chris has lived in Chicago for the past 20 yrs with his wife Debra Yepa-Pappan, and their daughter Ji Hae.  

Here is the conversation with Chris Pappan:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE and download this episode

More about the artist:

Artist Statement of Chris Pappan

Chris Pappan recently returned from the United Kingdom where he and his wife Debra Yepa-Pappan exhibited their work to a receptive audience in the city of Bristol with support from Dr.Max Carocci of the British museum. Pappan was also the featured artist on the cover of the July/August 2014 issue of Native Peoples Magazine (and the cover of the Santa Fe Indian Market version along with his family). 
Last year, Pappan was invited to Australia as one of 4 artists chosen for the Landmarks Fellowship project with the world renowned Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque NM.  The fellowship consisted of an arts and cultural exchange with the Yngul people of Northen Australia, and creating lithographs at the Tamarind Institute. Chris is also the winner of the prestigious Discovery Fellowship from the Southwestern Association of Indian Artists (SWAIA) in 2011 and the Heard Muesum’s Best of Class (Paintings, Drawings,) and Best of Division (drawing) at the 52nd Annual Indian Market 2010. Chris’ work is in the collections of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.; The James T. Bialic Native American art collection at the Fred jones Jr. museum of Art in Norman Oklahoma; The North America Native Museum in Zurich Switzerland; The Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence Kansas; The Schingoethe Center for Native Studies in Aurora Illinois and private collections around the world.  

Conversation with Artist Douglas Miles

"Native people are often looked at as anthropology or ethnography, but we're not artifacts we're real people." - Douglas Miles

Douglas Miles: Artist, activist and creator of Apache Skateboards. Photo Credit: Eriberto Oriol

Artist and founder of Apache Skateboards Douglas Miles is San Carlos Apache, Akimel O'Odham, and White Mountain Apache from the San Carlos Apache reservation. As an indigenous visionary, Douglas Miles is one of those rare and important figures who continues to reside one step ahead of the main stream Native American art world. Miles tells his experiences through an array of mediums including graphic design, photography, spray paint, stencil, fashion, found objects, community organization and whatever else he can use to speak truth about his experience. The imagery of Douglas Miles invites the viewer into an iconic conversation of progression regarding indigenous existence. Miles creates a new set of rules and then breaks them down, never compromising for the status quo, and always inviting a necessary representation to the current understanding of what it means to be Native American. His career is a poem written to all who have come before him and to all who will come after. 

Here is the conversation with Douglas Miles:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE and download this episode

More about the Artist:

"Douglas Miles is an Akimel O’odham /Apache artist living on the San Carlos reservation in eastern Arizona. Melding a graphic-cum-graffiti sensibility, Miles’s timely cultural aesthetic captures the spontaneity of urbanity, much like the esoteric works of Jean Michel Basquiat, whose New York City poetic street tags under his pseudonym (SAMO) and Haitian-inspired iconography broke new ground in the contemporary art scene of the 1980s. Miles’s work can be compared also to the profundity of England’s Bansky, whose recent strategically-placed international tagging interventions heighten our collective contemporary consciousness through satirical, political and social commentaries on war, poverty, violence and modernity. Miles completes this trinity of street-inspired artists by confronting us with his own savvy, hard-ass and hard-hitting cultural stance that is not only unconventional—challenging, unsettling and raw in its positioning—but also seductive and visually luring through his reuse and re-contextualization of Native American subject matter and historical imagery. Miles’s approach codifies Native American presences in mainstream culture by creating an aesthetic sensibility through skateboard culture, thus strengthening and instilling cultural pride and tribal consciousness. Apache Skateboards is a moniker created by Miles to further his artistic investigations and expand his collective philosophy of outreach by providing the impetus for collaborations with other young and talented creators interested in skateboard culture and integrated as Apache Skateboard Native Agents Team. Miles’s collaboration has expanded his outreach into a multiplicity of genres including film, still photography, public murals, digital works, skate-park design, shoes, clothing and conference and speaking engagements." -Written by Barry Ace for The Museum of Contemporary Native Art

Follow the work of Douglas Miles and Apache Skateboards

Photo: Christopher Boats OShana

Conversation with DJ 13Pieces - Justin Ray

This Episode marks our One Year Anniversary!

Art Beat Conversations will now be known as Broken Boxes. 

Thank you to all the artists and subscribers for the immense positive response for this project! 

In this episode we come full circle and hear the journey of the DJ in a conversation with DJ 13 PIECES aka Justin Ray. Just as in the very first story featuring DJ INTI, we will dive again into the obsessive world of the DJ, the collector and sharer of music, and learn more about what it takes to be a DJ in todays digital world.  Justin Ray bought his first DJ mixer in the early nineties. Ten years later, Justin created the DJ persona 13pieces. A decade after that, 13pieces created DJ Chopper. They currently live in Santa Fe, NM creating through DJ Culture, Photography, Writing and Graphic Design.

Here is the conversation with Justin Ray:
 

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE and download this episode

Music featured on this episode by: Boards of Canada, Georgio, Blackalicious, Kool DJ E.Q., Moondog, Rob Swift, J Trick, Cut Chemist, Shark Siren, DJ Shadow. End track: ALPHAWOLFSOUP mixed by 13 PIECES 

Stay connected to Justin Ray and hear his selections:

soundcloud.com/13pieces

mixcloud.com/13pieces

13pieces.wordpress.com

13pieces.blogspot.com

quietreign.tumblr.com

bwenno.wordpress.com

facebook.com/thirteenpieces

Conversation with Artist Nicholas Galanin

What Have We Become? Vol. 5. NIcholas Galanin. Paper: 1000 pages containing text from Under Mount Saint Elias. 2006

"Culture cannot be contained as it unfolds. My art enters this stream at many different points, looking backwards, looking forwards, generating its own sound and motion. I am inspired by generations of Tlingit & Unangax̂ creativity and contribute to this wealthy conversation through active curiosity. There is no room in this exploration for the tired prescriptions of the "Indian Art World" and its institutions. Through creating I assert my freedom." -Nicholas Galanin

 

 

Here is the conversation with the Nicholas Galanin:

Subscribe to Art Beat Conversations on iTunes HERE and download this episode

Music featured on this episode from the latest Silver Jackson album; Starry Skies Opened Eyes. 
 

More about the artist:

Rumination 3
C Print. 2012. Edition of 10. Photographed by Larry Mcneil

Born in Sitka, Alaska, Nicholas Galanin has struck an intriguing balance between his origins and the course of his practice. Having trained extensively in ‘traditional’ as well as ‘contemporary’ approaches to art, he pursues them both in parallel paths. His stunning bodies of work simultaneously preserve his culture and explore new perceptual territory. Galanin studied at the London Guildhall University, where he received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts with honors in Jewelry Design and Silversmithing and at Massey University in New Zealand earning a Master’s degree in Indigenous Visual Arts. Valuing his culture as highly as his individuality, Galanin has created an unusual path for himself. He deftly navigates “the politics of cultural representation”, as he balances both ends of the aesthetic spectrum. With a fiercely independent spirit, Galanin has found the best of both worlds and has given them back to his audience in stunning form. He is also renowned for his musical performances and production as Indian Nick and with Silver Jackson, and is co-founder of Homeskillet Records and Homeskillet Fest, an annual summer music festival in his hometown, Sitka, Alaska.

The American Dream Is Alie And Well. Nicholas Galanin. US Flag, felt, .50 Cal Ammunition, Foam, Gold Leaf, Plastic. 2012

Things Are Looking Native, Native's Looking Whiter. Nicholas Galanin. Giclée. 2012

I Think it Goes Like This. Nicholas Galanin. Wood, Paint. 2012

Modicum. Leonard Getinthecar (Nicholas Galanin & Jerrod Galanin). Disposable coffee cups, riot gear, mannequin, names of non-white people killed extra-judicially by law enforcement officers in the United States, paint. 2014

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Inert. Nicholas Galanin. Wolf, felt. 2009

www.galan.in
www.silverjackson.com
www.homeskilletfest.com

"I'd like to give a shout out to everyone consciously working towards making this world a better place for us all, to my family & children and to the Black Constellation" -Nicholas Galanin