South Dakota Art Museum News, Winter 1994

South Dakota State University Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange South Dakota Art Museum Newsletters and Publications Winter 1994 South Dakota Art Museum News, Winter 1994 South Dakota Art Museum Follow this and additional works at: https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/sdam_news s Ou th D a k Ota 111113111 �1i1111574 �)!ijiijl/ 5024111i�ffl 8l�1 21i511rI88ll 111111 useum News SPECIAL Volume 24, Number 1, Winter 1994 EXHIBITIONS A Century of Navajo Weaving: Selections from the Susan Morris Dejong Collection February2 -2 7, 1994 Weaving by Navajo women, a craft inextri Navajo rug, 1910, cably linked with Navajo culture in the 46"x54", from the Susan Morris Southwestern United States, is now univer Dejong collection sally recognized as an important art form of the Americas. Below: Frank Fools This exhibition traces the continuous Crow, Kyle, South Dakota, Sioux evolutiop .of Navajo weaving from 1870 to Medicine the present. It emphasizes the richness and Man/Shaman, by diversity of expression within the Navajo Robert Alan weaving tradition and the creativity of the Clayton "Quiet Pride" Navajo in adapting materials and design influences fromPueblo, Hispanic and Anglo-American sources. A Century of Navajo Weaving will fea- ture 29 wearing blankets, serapes, rugs, tapes "Who ,ar�.. tb tries and saddle blankets from DeJong's exten zens of solitude� sive collection. Dejong, an instructor in flute at is only capriciou Macalester College, the College of St. Catherine Cowboy, Carver. and Hamline University as well as a visiting per Doctor. Weaver. formerwith the Minnesota Orchestra, has been Smithy. Sheepshe collecting works by Navajo weavers for more Their lives are than twentyyears. stretched over a Highlights of the exhibition include 19th cen events as comm tury Chiefs wearing blankets and serapes, bril Births and fields to pla liantly colored "eye dazzlers", Yei motif pictorials pet pig, a new tru and historical and contemporary rugs represent their lives are full ing named regional styles such as "Two Grey any standard but Hills", "Ganado" and "Crystal". they've done unu A Centuryof Navajo Weaving was orga heroic, things. nized by Cherie Doyle Riesenberg at Macalester It pours from Galleries and curated by guest curator Martha The sheer dignity. Taylor, A color catalog accompanies the exhibi of mind, the i!�dc tion. openness to ;�tr self-reliance ands that is the core of Quiet Pride, Ageless Wisdom beyond cable:TV, of theA merican West lines and sometim 6-27 ordinary. Quiet Pride is about these people. It's power lines. A March reveals the more Photographer Robert Alan Clayton explains that a glimpse of rural, western Americana, eye to eye, and a way of honoring age, its beauty, and of antelope fryin his exhibition, Quiet Pride, " ... is a product of skillet. Air hea more than three years and over 40,000 miles the living of those dreams." smoke of travelled down the back roads and byways of Clayton says that each of the 45 selenium ticks. A fl everystate in the West, including Alaska, pho toned black-and-white prints " .. .is accompanied There are few r tographing and documenting the lives of older by a brief narrative which is a kernel of the indi shines. And in Americans. The remarkable faces I found along vidual's life, values and world view." A book by night there are a Clayton, also entitled Quiet Pride, Ageless know this forsur the way range from 5 7 to 114 years of age." 11 Wisdom of the American West, will be available ed in their eyes. "By their own account these folks have led Jeanne Hathaway, common lives. But in the very simplicity of their for purchase in the Museum Gift Shop. The book contains the photographs in the exhibition. excerpted from "d will to live free, in the purposefulness Pride, Agel earnsand in the risks they took which American. ned to them at all risky, lies the extra- SOUTH DAKOTA ARTIST: Robert Penn In the catalog for the exhibition "Vision of Hope" which was organized under the aus objects, Indians in urban settings, landscapes, Arts. It is time to recognize and celebrate this images which reference Native American leg pices orthe Akta Lakota Museum in 1990, excellent artist and to begin a serious, critical ends and beliefs are all rendered in contempo Robert Penn considers his role as a contempo assessment of his accomplishments and his rary style and media. "The important thing is 3 rary Native American artist: place in American Art." 11As a Native American living in modern not to draw limits for myself, but to continue Robert Penn's success as an artist has exploring new media and styles," he says. "If society J have a dual role as artist and inter come after years of hardship, frustration and a brush stroke doesn't give me the effect I'm preter, and have attempted with my paintings despair. He was born into a large family in seeking, I may go into the yard for a mis to use tontemporary forms to express cultural Omaha, Nebraska in 1947, to parents who shapen twig. Art is what forces me to were registered tribal members-his father themes. As an artist, it is my goal to expand 2 and explore new ways of expressing the duali grow ... my desire is just so strong." Omaha, his mother Rosebud Sioux. Due to tyof my world According to John Day, curator of the his mother's illness and other unfortunate cir throughJ:ny art, exhibition, cumstances, Penn's family was split up by translating into "Robert Penn Nebraska's state court system when he was modern terms Retrospective:" eight. Robert and his younger brother, Dana, the traditional "Over the past were sent to St. Augustine Boarding School on arts of my cu 1- twenty-five the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska. ture using mod years, Robert Although he had the opportunity to Penn has attend a number of high schools after graduat ern methods and materials . ).,-L. established ing from St. Augustine, Penn requested to be 1 himself as a sent to St. Francis Boarding School on the and propagatjng leading Rosebud Reservation because his mother was cultural arts by making them American a member of the tribe and had gone to school Indian artist, there. While art was not taught at St. Francis less separate not only in our and he was not encouraged to pursue his and mysterious region but interest in it, it was through the principal at St. to the non nationally. His Francis that he learned of Oscar Howe's sum Indian audi- ence.11 "... work is includ mer workshops at the University of South 11 ed in an Dakota for young Native American artists. He Abstraction impressive applied and was awarded a scholarship for the of symbots and number of summer of 1966. themes can re- public collec After successfully completing the work interpret and "Urban Indian Series No.4" 1973, by Robert Penn. Collection of the South shop, Penn entered the University of South integratethe Dakota Art Museum tions including Dakota in the fall of 1966 and became a work modern world those of the as seenfrom an Indian viewpoint without Smithsonian Institution and the Minneapolis study assistant for Howe. Lawrence Piersol, a collector of Penn's work, says, " ... I was in strict adherence to traditional artforms, and Institute of Arts. He has over a dozen solo exhibitions to his credit and his work has won Oscar Howe's studio at the University. While can transcend both worlds to become con prizes at the Colorado Indian Market and the Howe worked, he talked about Bob as a stu temporary modern art as well as a cultural Northern Plains Tribal Arts Exhibition. An dent. Howe volunteered that Bob was the statement. This is what I hope to accomplish experienced muralist, he has completed four most talented student he ever had. He said through my painting."1 commissions and has been recently awarded a Bob's sense of aesthetics was always right in Penn's paintings are vibrant, incredibly major mural commission for the Denver whatever he did."4 Penn worked with Howe alive expressions of self-a self which stands International Airport. In 1992, Robert Penn for five years "learning techniques, skills and betweefl two cultures and serves as guide and received the South Dakota Governor's Award 5 interpreter. Traditional Native American the importance of philosophical context". for Distinction in Creative Achievement in the For a sixteen-year period after his gradua- tion from USD, Penn experienced a series of RECENT ACQUISITIONS personal and professional upheavals. He was chairman of the Art Department at Sinte The objects listed here have recently been given to the South Dakota Art Museum. It is through he enerosity f donors like these that our collection continues to grow and become Gleska College, taught at several universities, � _ � � worked as a medical illustrator and as a a more s1grnf1cant repository for our cultural heritage. graphic designer. In 1986, with his health Four paintings �ave been received f�om the Louise (Mrs. E. C) Rhodes estate through her beginning to fail, Penn decided to make art daughter,_ Mary_ Louise Rhodes (Mrs. Patrick) Gorman. Three of the paintings are by Arthur full-time. Am1otte: "Girl at Play", 1967; "Blanket Girl No. 4", 1967, and; "In Meditation of the Universe"' In 1988, accompanied by his third wife, 1966. The fourth painting, a blonde young girl, is by Frances Cranmer Greenman of the former Altadena De la Cruz, he returned Minneapolis. Her parents, the Cranmers, were important early pioneers in Aberdeen. The girl to Vermillion certain of who he was and what in the painting is said to be a niece of he wanted to do.

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