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We have friendships for many different reasons. 

And for many of us, this has little to do with reducing our relationships to likes and followers. We are looking for…more.

I have terrific women friends. Wise, wonderful, and fun (for the most part).

And I have James. His most admirable quality is that he is without pretense.“What’s on your mind, darling?,” he’ll say, flashing a smile, which I believe is the most generous way to begin a conversation, before lowering his gaze as if he’s about to hear one of life’s sacred secrets.

Or, you know, whatever is bothering me.

“You have to keep a bit of mystery to yourself.” We were talking about how drunk everyone is on selfies “in the same way the Russians guzzled the vodka,” he said, “and look what happened to them.”

There are few conversations in life when, regardless of the subject matter, when it’s as if all your thoughts and emotions are aligned with all of your friend’s thoughts and emotions. Our whole conversation reminded me of the day I was waiting in line at Whole Foods and chatting with the guy behind me. We were talking fruit in season, that kind of thing, except he kept looking at his phone.

I tried to overlook it, be cool, be current, but it always feels like being put on hold. Even now I think of him talking and scrolling at the same time, and I see a gutless way to communicate. I wanted to shout we do exist without our phones.

Because we do. We really do. WE are the real thing. And these days it seems like most of us are missing it.

I came right out and asked him what is so important that he has to be in on it even as he lays produce on the conveyor belt. It was one of those ridiculous things I hear myself say sometimes, knowing I’m being brash, but I say it anyway.

And that’s when his girlfriend (wife?) jumped in, “This is just how it is now.”

As if I knew nothing. At any rate, she reminded me that since I do have more years behind me, I’ve attained more success, too, more independence. So I can enjoy a little harmless chitchat, and, okay, a little harmless flirting, without checking in. My flesh may be softer but my attitude is firm: If I’ve learned one thing, it’s how one shared idea, opinion, or observation can lift us out of ourselves and make everything around us seem more, dare I use the word, connected.

And, yes, I may very well be hoping for a miracle. But if you are shopping at Whole Foods you are certainly paying enough for a miracle.

So I say thank goodness for James, who is one of the most successful business men I know, yet he still knows how to leave his phone off for however long it takes. Life may be going on at a hectic pace around the two of us, but he’d never let something as expansive and beneficial as our friendship be dwarfed by something small and addicting as a phone.

Oh, I am thrilled to know James is free to take a walk later. He will pick the route and I will take his arm.

And we will talk.

Mary Lou Sanelli

Mary Lou Sanelli’s Write of Way has been a part of Art Access since 2004. For more information about her and her work, visit www.marylousanelli.com.

Believe You Me

Old-timers in the Depression when they were young

never thought things would get so bad so quick

wondered how they could go so far wrong

rambled around tried a little of everything

built a hutch to raise rabbits to sell till

they got sick eating rabbit couldn’t sell a one

tried keeping chickens in the cellar a night or two

then they stole a little rusty chickenwire

to fence them in around their old dead car

they thought would never start again until

they got evicted with those hens smell and all

drove off one winter night with the windows down

. . . 

As For Today

Doing the same things over

in season a farm life goes by

a certain order an expectancy

mowing hay to rake and turn

several cloudy days to dry

pulling a wet calf into lamplight

that now with the start of her

too late to go back to bed

too stirred for radio news

slow boiling water for coffee

as for today raking leaves

out from under the slow dying

maple that could be felled

cut and stacked but not yet

that even so might spring back

. . .

With the Farm Gone

What’s left but this oasis this

cluster of sheds and outbuildings

surrounding house and barn once

hard to build uneasy letting go

the home now they’re thinking of

jacking off its foundation onto

a trailer to tow away park on a lot

the barn to maybe pull apart

to label stack and sell out-of-state

to someone to put up with fields

that still reach away forever with

cows so it looks halfway right

and here with fencerows torn up

scraped away now all one field

plumbed and wired subdivided for

new owners what they like to call

Sherwood Acres A Leisure Development

with the woodlot already logged off

to make the down payment on

each new home’s cathedral ceiling

set smack in the center of

its one acre lot landscaped by

a bulldozer that’s carved undulations

along a winding deadend drive

that flattened the outhouse and filled it

and the well with handmade rubble

a stone fence picked out of fields a little

every spring to let the plow ease by

Paul Hunter

Paul Hunter is a Seattle poet and fiction writer who works on farming articles and reviews for Small Farmers Journal. He recently published, Clownery, a book of autobiographical prose poems.

“Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India”

Seattle welcomes from Jodhpur, the capital of colorful Rajasthan, the largest collection of objects from a royal kingdom ever to leave India! “Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India,” on loan from The Mehrangarh Museum Trust, fills the fourth floor special exhibition galleries of the Seattle Art Museum. But it starts with an immersive wedding installation on the third floor!

The installation, based on a royal wedding procession of the “homecoming” of the bride, includes an elephant mannequin with a gilded ‘howdah’ and elaborate adornments, as well as horse mannequins with full regalia and jewelry. The bride would be hidden from view in a curtained palanquin. Video projections present the procession of the 2010 marriage of Yuvrain Gayatri kumari Pal from the former royal family of Askot in the Himalayan foothills to Yuvraj Shivraj Singh son of the current Majarajah. A wall of famous “paag” or turbans contain many layers of symbolism and make the most of the double height gallery.  

The current Maharajah His Highness GajSingh II ascended to the throne at the age of 4. Adapting to many changes in the status of the former Princely States, he has succeeded in reinventing his role as a private citizen.  Reflecting his ability to innovate while honoring tradition, one major theme of this exhibition is “tradition and continuity.” The royal homecoming procession is one example of that. 

At the entrance to the fourth floor gallery stunning photographs present the landscape in Marwar-Jodhpur as well as the history of the Rathores who ruled from the 13th to the mid 20th century. In the same gallery a dramatic gilded palanquin evokes royal processions and a large cradle for Krishna makes a reference to spiritual loyalties. 

As we enter the “The Rathores of Marwar” paintings depict the descent of the Rathore kings from the Hindu god Rama as well as worship of the Goddess Devi and many portraits of the Maharajas. 

“Conquest and Alliance: The Rathores and the Mughals” presents the long relationship with the Mughals both in battle and in court, through intermarriage and cultural exchanges. For example, the builder of the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan, is the son of the marriage of Akbar’s son and a Rajput princess. In this gallery a full scale 17th century Indian court tent Lal Dera fills the space, alongside references to military weapons and other objects exchanged or altered by the many years of serving in Mughal campaigns all over India. 

The wedding installation links to the theme of the “Zenana: Cross Cultural Encounters” the role of women as bearers of culture. Far from simply being enclosed in the “Zenana” or women’s quarters, royal women brought new cultural traditions when they married into the Jodhpur court. The Zenana here features a full pavilion, as well as textiles, jewels, and dresses and invokes the musicians, dancers, and artists who lived or visited the women of the court. A personal shrine to Krishna made of silver includes a small statue of the deity: it was the focus of a daily ritual.   

The “Durbar: Rathore Court” marks the era after 1707 when the Rathores were liberated from Mughal control as the Mughals weakened. Many artists came to Jodhpur from the Mughal Courts leading to a flowering of creativity in painting, textiles, tents, arms, and jewelry.   

In a sequence of alcoves, a selection of devotional paintings introduces Krishna and his familiar frolics with gopis, but don’t miss in this gallery the trademark watercolor of the exhibition, “Shiva on his Vimana” (aircraft!—a huge bird). 

The last section of the exhibition “The Raj” presents the final diplomatic and cultural exchange of the princely court, with the British Empire. All of the princely states worked with the Raj, rather than resisting it. We see this most obviously in the portraits and photographs of the Maharajahs of this era, with dress and jewelry that bring together traditions from India and Great Britain. 

Also showing cultural exchange is the Umaid Bahwan palace where the family now lives, designed in the 1920s by Henry Lanchester, an English architect, who combined Art Deco and Indian motifs. A large part of the palace today is a hotel, another innovation of the current Maharajah. He has been a major catalyst for tourism in Jodhpur by renovating the Mehrangarh Museum, not to mention sending this exhibition to the United States (it is making only three stops). 

“Peacock in the Desert” is a perfect title for the exhibition. The exhibition, like India itself, is full of elaborate objects, stunning color, and fascinating history. To expand our experience, the museum has organized a film series, a Diwali family festival, presentations on South Indian court dance and saris, and a program on the “Songs of Rajasthan.” Check the museum website for more details.

Susan Noyes Platt

Susan Noyes Platt writes a blog www.artandpoliticsnow.com and for local, national, and international publications. “Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India,” is on view until January 21 at Seattle Art Museum, located at 1300 First Avenue in Seattle, Washington, Friday through Wednesday from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. and Thursday from 10 A.M. to 9 P.M. For more information, visit www.seattleartmuseum.org.

Impossible

Last week, I arrived in Port Angeles to teach a choreography class. I’ve known the director since she struggled with the idea of opening a studio. Her dance journey has been like witnessing a beautiful becoming.

It’s been a long drive from Seattle. I’m eager to stretch, but I’m so taken by what happens next it literally stops me in my tracks. A little boy watches his sister’s ballet class as intently as someone viewing their own version of joy. He copies every move the girls make. I know his excitement, his readiness, as well as I know my own.  

His mother is lost in her phone. So I tell the boy that I hope he takes class, too. This prompts a sudden lift of mom’s chin. I say what I am thinking anyway, “Boys make wonderful ballet dancers!”  

“Not in Port Angeles,” she said, as if ballet isn’t something her son should get too close to. The boy looked at me, at his mother, back at me. He jammed his fist into the palm of his hand. It was like watching a leaf wilt on the vine.

I’ve grown used to arriving in studios where I can feel as if every move I make is not just visible to the parents but spotlighted. But even so, I know—and knew then—that I had to say something more. It wasn’t an overwhelming feeling, more like a ripple in a larger pool of ripples. But I could not have predicted what was about to come out of my mouth.“You are a natural born dancer!” 

The boy smiled happily, if tentatively, stopping for a quick look at his mom who seemed a little stunned. The truth is that all children are natural born dancers. It’s only later that we learn to suppress the desire to move to the music we hear. 

I know what it means to simply accept what I am called upon to do: teach a good class. And I do this. But I suppose what happened that day is that the belief that only girls should take ballet leaned a little too far in. Until a huge part of me screamed, “Don’t say that! Dancing is for everyone!” 

I would not have put it like this, of course, but I had a deep sense that this bias would help shape this boy’s future.

There is a magic inherent in a dance studio, in being surrounded by people who look like they’ve found what makes them feel most alive. I think this is what the boy wanted for himself, to move enjoyably through space. But I suspect he may have to learn to do it in other ways, most likely on the ball field. 

And I cannot know if playing ball will make him as happy as dancing seemed to make him. Any more that I can know why his mother was so offended by it.

But if I let myself remember what must have been happening in this little boy’s mind to make him look so happy, I suspect I found his mother’s response asked of me something that I found impossible to give—silence.

Mary Lou Sanelli

Sanelli, a writer and speaker, lives in Seattle. She is a regular contributor to Dance Teacher magazine. Her latest book is A Woman Writing. For more information about her and her work, visit www.marylousanelli.com.

duck, tree, reflection

the cold shimmer

of winter

a glass window

in which

the shadows

of a tree

trembles

a lattice of shadow

in which a duck

must see

her own reflection

as she moves

her feet

under this web

of water

Alan Chong Lau

Alan Chong Lau is a poet and painter exhibiting his art locally at ArtXchange Gallery in Seattle, Washington.

RYAN! Feddersen reaches out both geographically and conceptually for the intriguing show “In Red Ink” at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner. She breaks down boundaries of media, chronology, and above all clichés. 

John Feodorov’s “Dance of the Colonizers,” made up of clips taken from the 1949 film, “On the Town,” exposes the racism of Hollywood as sailors team up with “girls” at the Museum of Natural History in New York City to mimic “savages. Caricature of caricature frequently appears in this exhibition. Andrea Carlson whose affiliation is the central Canadian and East Coast Anishaabeg/Algonquin, sends up the absurd cowboy and Indian stereotypes of dramatically leaping horses and men. Her style of pseudo cartoon, with heavy outlines and brilliant color, underscores her parody of popular culture.  

Natalie Ball literally cuts up clichés in her large collaged art work that include river rocks, crow feathers, wool, and lodge pines, an intentional use of traditional Indigenous materials, along with European style painting, charcoal and oil stick on canvas. The central figure appears to be an “Indian” collaged and sewn together from mismatched pieces. It has the expressionist directness of a work by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Also collage-like and humorous, but entirely painted, is the series of works by Ka’ila Farrell-Smith (from the same tribal affiliation as Natalie Ball, Modoc, Klamath) with her three large “bundle” paintings painted on plastic exhibitionbanners. The term “bundle” is applied to various entities “Time,” “Chief,” and “IAIA Students.” IAIA stands for Institute of Indian Arts in Santa Fe, a renowned Indian Art School. A bundle of sticks appears below them, amusingly transposed as the group of students who themselves echo, in their clothes, a mix of the contemporary and traditional.

Northwest artists Tanis S’eilten and Joe Feddersen both provide humor with less caricature and more politics, S’eilten by her crazy medium in “Totem and Tabu,” a Freudian book title, with pink shoes, pink suitcase, and neon referring to the stereotype of Native sexuality. She inserts the rip off of Native cultures with an old postcard of the stolen totem pole that came to Pioneer Square as a literal totem. Joe Feddersen’s show stopper, “Charmed,” a wall of symbols cast in glass, gives us a delightful mix up of high tension wire towers, petroglyphs, “teepees” and various other “symbols” that can be read as either caricatures or real objects. 

On a serious note, John Feodorov’s second group of works reinterpret both media and content. Weaver Tyra Preston created special plain white Navajo rugs for him on which he painted with some trepidation given the rugs’ powerful importance as metaphor of land and culture. The four “Desecrations,” refer to pollution on the land: a coal plant, pipe lines, a yellow radiation house and fracking cracks in the earth.

Other serious works include the photographs of Matika Wilbur that document contemporary tribal members in a long running project. Amy Maleuf (Metis, another Canadian affiliation), whose” Iamthe caribou/the caribouisme” offers two small braids of caribou and her own hair that refer to the reciprocity of humans and animals. With the dramatic summer of Tahlequah holding her dead baby Orca for 17 days, we are all painfully aware of the threats of extinction to Orcas and other animals. In the medium of glazed ceramic Erin Genia addresses toxic oil leaks in “Facing/Not Facing: Toxic Devastation from Oil.”

RYAN! Feddersen herself has a rye sense of humor, an impatience with historical stereotypes, a deep commitment to redefining what we mean by contemporary Indigenous art, and a generous spirit that reaches out into the community. Her show reflects these qualities. Curated in collaboration with Chloe Dye Sherpe of the Museum, it gives us a refreshing new point of view, while also making us think about the history of indigenous misrepresentations. 

We are so fortunate to have contemporary Native artists who speak to both their heritage and to our contemporary world about the state of the earth and the colonialism that has led us to where we are now. Humor traditionally masks politics and urgency. “In Red Ink,” a term that can mean emergency, editing out, deficits, and highlighting, all at once, gives us a chance to understand where we are now and where we can go, with the guidance of these creative artists.

Speaking of that creativity, look out for “yəhaw̓,” an exhibition of 200 indigenous artists sponsored by the Office of Arts and Culture and the Na’ah Illahee Fund, opening at King Street Station in January 2019.

Susan Noyes Platt

Susan Noyes Platt writes a blog www.artandpoliticsnow.com and for local, national, and international publications.

The Museum of Northwest Art located at 121 First Street in La Conner, Washington, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., and Sunday through Monday from 12 to 5 P.M. For more information, visit www.monamuseum.org

We all think we know the photographs of Edward Curtis from a handful of frequently reproduced images that offer us romanticized, nostalgic views of Native Americans from the turn of the twentieth century, a time when Native peoples were thought to be vanishing. Curtis set out to preserve their traditional way of life, when it was already almost destroyed by assimilation efforts by the US government.

This summer, on the 150th anniversary of Curtis’s birthday, the Seattle Art Museum along with many nearby museums and cultural centers, is reexamining his work, his legacy, and his relationship to contemporary native culture and art.

At the entrance of “Double Exposure” at the Seattle Art Museum, a voice in Lutshootseed and English welcomes us, as we are immersed in the stunning installation by Marianne Nicholson. Two back to back glass panels, etched with native imagery, and a light inserted between them, cast shadows on the floor. Ḱanḱagawi (The Seam of Heaven), metaphorically presents the Columbia River, in its beauty and disruptions. The name means “sewn together.” The two pieces of glass suggest the breaks caused by dams and borders, while the light and shadows offer possible healing as the treaty between Canada and US comes up for renegotiation. 

“Double Exposure” features 150 historical images by Curtis, a selection from various chapters of The North American Indian, created between 1907 and 1930. The book is available online at http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu and well worth reading even a short excerpt from the detailed information that originally accompanied the photographs.

Curtis created 40,000 photographs of more than 80 tribes, but they were meant to be seen in the context of tribal history, customs and much more. His accomplishment is staggering. His assistants also made 10,000 wax cylinder audio recordings of music, a few of which we can hear in the exhibition. We also can watch his pioneering film from 1914(!) “In the Land of the Headhunters” starring Naida as the bride. Her descendant holds the Curtis photograph in Will Wilson’s tintype.

The stunning photogravure images, created on copper plates, glow on the wall. We revel in Curtis’s eye for composition, and his technical facility with a complex photographic process. Curator Barbara Brotherton offers detailed and nuanced labels. In some cases these images are posed works that followed Curtis’s romantic perspective, in others they document historical practices that had mainly been passed on through oral traditions.

For more immersion into Curtis’s technical prowess, Flury & Co, our local Curtis specialists offers “Edward Curtis Photographs in Copper” (On view through September 30) featuring 30 copper plates, never before displayed, from the original North American Indian publication. Flury & Co is a like a small museum in itself. The family have rights to the sale of Curtis prints and plates, memorabilia and manuscripts, acquired directly from the artists descendants living in Seattle.

In “Double Exposure,” we also can experience native commentary on Curtis. First, there is a new way to insert videos into an exhibition, the app “Layar.” As we scan a Curtis photograph of a canoe race, a video appears with an interview with a 16 year old youth who participates in contemporary canoe journeys. He speaks vividly of the endurance required to paddle a canoe as a team for 10 hours straight.

This dramatically layering of the Curtis photograph with contemporary interviews by native speakers makes a dynamic intersection of past and present. Will Wilson’s large tintypes come alive as we scan them and hear from the contemporary person photographed, a poet, a state politician, an artist, a filmmaker, a drummer, a dancer. Tracy Rector’s experimental films record contemporary natives speaking of the threat of environmental contamination as well as the preservation of rituals and traditional practices.

The exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum is one part of “Beyond the Frame:  Being Native” a collaboration of 20 native groups and cultural institutions reexamining Curtis in a contemporary context. Just up the street from the Seattle Art Museum, the Seattle Public Library offers “Protecting the x əlč: Indigenous Stewardship of the Salish Sea” (On view through August 15). It has two parts; the first room emphasizes Curtis’s photographs of traditional practices such as fishing and harvesting (including historical artifacts); the second room presents contemporary life as in the flourishing canoe journeys, the success of the dam removal on the Elwha River, and contemporary resistance to industries, such as the Lummi defeat of a coal terminal on Cherry Point. Concluding the exhibition is a video with Brian Cladoosby president of the National Congress of American Indians and Chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, speaking about their pioneering plans to resist the effects of climate change.

For a complete list of the exhibits and events affiliated with “Beyond the Frame:  Being Native” as well as information on contemporary native life see the website. https://www.beyondtheframe.org. Look out in particular for the exhibition of 20 contemporary native artists, curated by RYAN! Feddersen with Chloe Dye Sherpe, “In Red Ink,” at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Connor that opens on July 7. Also don’t miss RYAN! Feddersen’s amusing installation at the end of “Double Exposure” in which we take on the role of “post-human” types such as “Humans of the Glass Offices” and “Vanishing Human Types: People of the Outdoors,” echoing Curtis view of natives as the “vanishing race.” It’s online at http://posthumanarchive.site.seattleartmuseum.org.

We are fortunate here in the Northwest to have a vibrant contemporary native art and cultural flowering that is gaining increasing visibility throughout our region thanks to the collaboration of traditional institutions with committed and articulate tribal groups in Washington, Oregon, and Canada.

Susan Noyes Platt

Susan Noyes Platt writes a blog www.artandpoliticsnow.com and for local, national, and international publications.

Seattle Art Museum

1300 First Avenue, Seattle, Washington

Flury & Co

322 First Avenue S., Seattle, Washington

Museum of Northwest Art

121 N 1st Street, La Conner, Washington