Wendy Red Star at the Newark Museum

     Wendy Red Star’s works, “Scratch on the Earth”, are about her Crow Indian heritage and her tribe of people which includes her ancestral past and her present. She presents the Crow tribes past in portraiture, altered portraiture, video and voice production. Not only do the portraits speak with written voice, she describes the people’s importance in their own cultures and their important aspects of their heritage through these written voices. She does this with written text above, below and beside the pictures marked with red ink. Wendy gives these women  and their men in these pictures their voice and the importance on how women were regarded equally  as important as the men they married and lived with. This narrative was definitely about Identity as we have been reading in our class assignments. 

There are recordings of Indian tribe members while chanting, each one documented with a number. She knew the Crow people could not speak how they were important in their culture identity at the time the pictures were taken during the crow’s 1880 struggles to negotiate and preserve the boundaries of their land and culture. These displays are a recording of marked importance on how her people suffered loss of land, territory and the changes of her people. Also, how the newer generations keep traditions of the past alive through  there still, usage of sweat lodge tipis. The sweat lodge there in the museum display (which when entered flash scenes of the Montana landscape at a 360-degree angle) brings together the crow’s mythology related to the Montana landscape. And the beautiful family, star quilts, signify the tribal families today through tribal color and family portraiture. These quilts are assuring and preserving family heritage for future generations to come. An account of family homes with their current sweat lodges in back show proof history is very much alive in Crow’s documented present. The tribal costume with vibrant ceremonial colors is on display also. Tradition of dancing with these costumes goes back  in time when ceremonies presented a special event such as a successful hunt or a celebration of some sort. Other costumes with elk teeth( a sign of wealth or prosperity) are on display as well.

Skywriters and Constellations by Kombui Olujimi’s Wayward North Project

       I would have to say the film was over my head when I viewed it, literally speaking. I saw things in it that reminded me of the Constellations of the sky . There was definitely a narrative in the story of time and space. The movie in the planetarium was somewhat spacey. Someone offering someone candy, at first, they wouldn’t take it, then did. The full dome video represented space in time of various events, very mythical, in your mind type of things, things you might question, think about. The film itself was visually surreal like. People’s ghost like images materialize and then faded, then an outline of someone appears. The woman narrating it had a calm soothing voice that almost made one sleepy when she talked. I wondered if I was a pot smoker, I’m not, I might have enjoyed it more. That’s not to say I didn’t, I did in fact. It was just very out there. Very innovative.

I found the lithographic prints really intriguing . They are based on science and mythology book he wrote in 2010. It went from month to month and a narrative was written below each interpretation he lithographed ,that was a circle with mythical pictures inside of them. Again ,the pictures were somewhat surreal in nature and each image varied greatly. They reminded me  of films of fish deep in the ocean that are transparent and see through. Some looked like slow-motion transparent birds being photographed in flight.  There were depictions of people as well. Each image that was encircled represented a month.

     The story of each lithograph was a long going narrative about Ms. Catherine , Naliah, shape shifting, observatory houses etc. and was just the kind of mythical narrative a child might enjoy of a certain age but the pictures were very new age and beautiful. It was a culmination of science and mythology.