Jaune-Quick-To-See-Smith

            I remember someone telling the art class (I think it was Erin or another student) about a Native American doing a performance about his ethnicity and this belief that Native Americans are a past in history. It’s sad that a large group of society think Native Americans as the invisible group or tourist attraction. I also remember a short story from Sherman Alexie. In part of his short story The Toughest Indian in the World, the main character picks up a hitchhiker which happens to be a Native American boxer, they stay at a hotel because of the weather (?) and upon entering the room they see a large painting of a band of renegade Indians losing a battle with the U.S. Calvary. The main character asks the hitchhiker “What tribe are they?” and the hitchhiker responds “All of them.” It’s funny that some contemporary artists portray Natives in a romantic mysterious sort of appearance. I think there should be a deeper meaning though than the warrior of the beautiful exotic native woman.  

Jaune Quick to see Smith, Trade(Gifts for Trading Land with White People)
1992, oil, mixed median on Canvas, 5’x14’2”

Jaune Quick-to-See has experienced this invisibility in the art world. Her artworks focus on identity of herself. In Trade(Gifts for Trading Land with White People), she uses mixed media on a large canvas. The canvas is a mixture of a collage with Native American newspaper clippings and oil paint loosely brushed onto to it. It has large patches of color reds, orange, and green juxtaposes in these large strokes giving it an appearance of a thick texture. The colors are placed in the negative spaces and in the middle is a painted canoe. From the picture, the canoe doesn’t seem to be in the foreground; the patches of colors remind me of a mist and cover parts of the canoe. Above the canvas, she hangs a clothesline which has a various objects hanging from it. Some of these objects are Native American artifacts such as belts and beaded jewelry mixed with sports memorabilia that have Native American names such as Washington Redskins and Atlanta Braves.

Jaune Quick to see Smith, Indian Hand, 1992,
 oil, mixed median and collage on Canvas, 72x72

Her conceptual image of an indigenous hand has the same qualities of Trade(Gifts for Trading Land with White People). This piece Indian Hand uses oil paints, mixed median and canvas. It is a fairly large like her previous work. She uses newspaper clippings exposing clippings that are the most important such as Landfill Reservation, Out of Control, Nation Prepares for Leaner Times and other various clippings. She cover the rest of this collage with oil paints similar to the previous one mentioned above.  She also allows the paint to drip leaving streaks and adding texture to the whole composition.   

She currently organizes exhibitions for Native American artists. Her works brings attention to the viewer of the life of an indigenous in the United States.