A Vision Defined

Nov. 3 – Dec. 1
Opening Reception: Nov. 3, 6-9pm

A year ago, Whole Foods Market opened to much hoopla and artist Matthew Kirk’s work was selected to add some “local flavor” to the sprawling food emporium. The installation of his work, arranged by Hotcakes Gallery proprietor Mike Brenner, went off without a hitch. It was removed shortly thereafter. Whole Foods explained “it didn’t fit Whole Foods’ Corporate image.”

However, it is a good match for Hotcakes, a gallery at 3379 N. Pierce St. in Riverwest, known for innovative and quality exhibits. Kirk’s solo event, his second at this venue, opens with a reception on Saturday, November 3, and runs through December l. In his artist statement for hotcakesgallery.com, he says he “makes pictures to convey the sense of loss and aimlessness that I feel from growing up in a society that has only one vision, and one place, for what an American Indian is, or should be.” His biography notes he was born in Arizona on a Navajo Indian reservation.

But need we feel sentimental about that?

Painting a Hat, 1914. Edward Curtis.

I’ve seen the paintings and prints of Karl Bodmer and George Catlin, and nostalgic photographs by Edward Curtis, and though they depict American Indians, the makers of the art are non-Indians on what smacks of a sentimental journey. However, the images are gorgeous and are important in the history of art making.

In the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Bradley Collection, there used to be (and I hope there still is), a painting (Untitled, 1976) by Fritz Scholder, the first artist to paint American Indians surrounded by flags, beer cans and cats – a big leap from the formal portraits produced by Curtis in the early twentieth century. Scholder’s work intrigued me, not because he was an American Indian, or because his painting depicts an American Indian. What intrigued me was his bold palette and broad painterly strokes, so typical of the unfettered art world of the ’70s.

Indian in the Snow, 1972. Fritz Scholder.

A few years ago, I saw the paintings of Shonto Begay at the Phoenix Art Museum. His website identifies him as a Navajo artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California College of Arts and Crafts, practicing since 1983. I emailed him about the Hotcakes exhibit and asked for permission to use one of his images. He replied thusly:

“I have no problem helping a fellow Navajo showing far from home or anywhere … It is an interesting situation being a Native visual artist, and how we view ourselves. Marginalized and anthro material even in our most creative and free expression. Anyway, Curio or not, we love what we do and hope to continue.”

“Curio. Marginalized and anthro material.” Kirk and Begay have never met, but it sounds like they share similar thoughts about “loss and aimlessness.” Kirk’s artist statement expands on this by saying it comes from “growing up in a society that has only one vision, and one place, for what an American Indian is, or should be.”

A week prior to the opening of the Hotcakes exhibit, Kirk emailed me from Brooklyn, New York, where he has lived for the past year. To my surprise, he mentioned that one of his influences was a Fritz Scholder painting of an Indian eating an ice-cream cone. “It was the first time I recognized a more modern ‘feel’ in what I thought to be a market for more traditional outlets.”

Kirk hopes his work will speak for itself, but admits that “Being a Navajo is a part of what I draw … though it is still a big mystery to me. I make sense of the bits and pieces I was given when I was little.” He moved with his mother from the reservation to Racine when he was two or three, and later attended high school there. “I had a classmate who actually believed that Indians didn’t need money because they still traded and lived off the land,” he says. “I always knew that the other kids knew I was the ‘Indian.’ I mean, in a school of kids, to be the only one … I noticed that.”

So has Kirk fallen into the trap of sentimentalizing his childhood? I don’t think so. “If I ever lost out on anything, I’m sure my race had nothing to do with it,” he says.

Being Open, Matthew Kirk.