IAIA Rocks the Sixties

Billy Warsoldier today






IAIA Students in Sixties Real Originators of Contemporary American Indian Art Movement

This morning, read this message from Monica Charles on alt . native

“I talked with Billy WS a few weeks ago. Really good people. That's my

old school. [IAIA] Arlo went there too btw.

I'm glad you're busy. I have another play

and I'm working on another. Yes Kevin is alumni. So is Alfie Youngman,

and Billy War Soldier, Danny Long Soldier and Don Montileaux. Billy

did a painting that was five sided. You had to crawl inside, the

painting surrounded you. It was amazing. I love my home but I miss the

old Santa Fe days. I miss being around and talking with other artists.

We were very young but it was exciting times and deep conversations.

Bob Robideau is alumni too although he went much later. The only

theatre there was a small one.”

Spoke to Billy Warsoldier last week while we were one the road in Cali.

I showed Billy's five sided painting in the IAIA Rocks the Sixites ehibit at the IAIA Museum in 2001. It is a great piece.

We recreated Billy and TC's easels and drafting table in the old IAIA painting studio in the museum. Woody (Linda) Cywink was my exhibition designer and she, Marita Hinds and I scoured through the storage sheds at the SF Indian School to retrieve desks, furniture and other props to recreate the ambiance of those early days at IA.

When curating that exhibit in 2000 and 2001, I spoke nearly daily with Billy, Alfred Youngman and BJ Goodluck and interviewed Kevin Red Star,

Don Montileaux and many other students and teachers at IA back in the early and late sixties who originated the ndn painting

revolution. Though I'd known many of the artists since the mid-seventies, it was great to reconnect with them and hear first hand

their recollections and stories from those exciting days.

The museum director at the time promised to bring the IAIA Alum from the Sixties back to Santa Fe to speak at a seminar and to have a reunion, but she renegged and instead honored Fritz Scholder by naming a gallery after him and featuring him at the IAIA Annual Indian Market Banquet. The artists were furious since they believe that Fritz stole credit for the new ndn painting style generated at IAIA, when it was their ideas he stole, even stealing an actual painting Billy WS did, finishing it and claiming it for his own.

My exhibit "IAIA Rocks the Sixties" documented that it was the students, particularly, Billy Warsoldier Soza, T.C. Cannon, Alfred Youngman and Kevin Red Star who began the contemporary painting movement that revolutionalized ndn painting. But the IAIA Museum director refused to print a catalog and denied a request from Alfred Youngman and George Longfish to travel the exhibit at no cost to IAIA for exhibition at the CN Gorman Museum in Davis, California. The museum director also refused to consider a request to facilitate the exhibition being shown at the Tate Contemporary in London. It was unfortunate because I designed the exhibit to give IAIA a platform to recognize the importance of this art to raise money to restore the historic paintings. If IAIA Rocks the Sixties had toured as a traveling exhibit it could have done much to increase awareness and respect for American Indian Art worldwide.

Although the important contributions to ndn art by IAIA students of the late sixties and early seventies is a well-known fact in our community, there is a continued effort to obscure the truth and to continue to credit Fritz Scholder for the innovations and ideas he stole from his students. One student from the Northwest Coast told me that whenever Fritz would go through the studios, she and other students would rush to hide their paintings so he couldn't steal their ideas. She regretted that one day she missed hiding her painting of a dog and saw the image show up in Scholder's paintings soon afterward.

In his essay in Creativity is our Tradition for the opening of the IAIA Museum at the former federal building at Cathedral Place, Rick Hill, then IAIA Museum Director, credited the innovative ideas of the Contemporary Indian Art Movement to the students. In the interim, the money Scholder and his estate have donated to IAIA influenced the institute to obscure the truth.

Last December, we were driving back from Window Rock past the Rte 66 Casino and I got a call from Billy Warsoldier. Good news, Billy told us, NMAI has acknowledged in the exhibit text for the Fritz Scholder exhibit that it was the students Billy Warsoldier Soza, T.C. Cannon and Alfred Youngman who inspired the revolutionary painting style of the Contemporary Indian Art Movement. Hopefully, Billy and Alfred and the other IAIA students will finally get the credit and interest in their art they have so long deserved.

I kept the exhibit catalog text I wrote for IAIA Rocks the Sixties and plan on publishing it online soon. It tells the real story of the ndn painting revolution at IA in the words of the students who were there. Look for it here on my One Earth Blog in the next few months.

By Charleen Touchette – April 23, 2009

www.OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com