The 81-year-old artist is still creating ingenious and cut pieces that juxtapose the symbols of the American empire with those of local culture.

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She said that as a child who grew up on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith "is like a magnet", constantly acquiring any information that might help her understand the world. This is not an easy-to-understand world: she was born in 1940 and had "a dystopian childhood." She recently told me at her home near Albuquerque, New Mexico that her father was a horse businessman and her mother was in her Leaving the artist at the age of two, now 81 years old, she worked in the fields with Filipino immigrants and Japanese Americans who had just been released from the concentration camp in the early years. Every winter she cuts rhubarb in a tar paper shed, picks strawberries and raspberries in spring, and harvests the four seasons in autumn. bean.

When she was 7 years old, Smith began to hide in trees and read anything she could borrow from mobile books that occasionally traveled through town. This is an escape from her work, but it does not always escape the painful reality of ongoing genocide in the United States. "Steinbeck's story tells me what will happen when I grow up," she told me. "Knowing what I will face in the future, I even thought about suicide when I was a teenager. This is very common for indigenous people... We are lost people, just caught."

Instead, she found creative and keen ways to criticize how power and hegemony work on canvas, using materials ranging from charcoal and acrylic paint to newspaper prints and other textual elements. But first, she had to go through the door that was closed to her. The white janitor tried his best to stop her. In high school, a counselor suggested that vocational courses be offered because, he said, “Indians don’t go to college. "Then, after Smith did this, first at Olympic College in Washington, and then at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, she was discouraged from applying for the MFA program at the University of New Mexico. "In the art department, they said,'Indians go to art education, you can't go to art,'" she told me. "Because Indians make handicrafts." Smith wasn't moved by the frustration she had heard, and went to class anyway, and eventually spent four years accumulating credits. In the process, she met other American Indian artists, such as Emmi Whitehorse and Ed Singer, and formed the Gray Canyon artist group.

In contrast, the art world is more accepting of Smith's ambitions. In 1979, after the painter Susan Creel purchased some of her works and arranged for Smith and Jill Coenbury to meet, she joined the Kornblee Gallery in New York. The following year, after her first solo exhibition in Kornblee received media attention from American Art and Country Voice, Smith left the University of New Mexico and received a master's degree in visual arts. The three abstract pastels, charcoal and graphite pencils she created during this period are painted on paper and are now in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Even if there is no extensive use of text to define most of Smith's works, they are reminiscent of Kandinsky's freedom on the American plains, betraying the highly evolved style and worldview.

In the next few decades, Smith held more exhibitions and continued to hone and use her unique visual language. This language is full of pop art and often places symbols of American empire and indigenous life. Together to achieve amazing results. For example, "Spam" (1995) hinted at a food tradition lost over the centuries by drawing a simple outline of a buffalo on a canvas collaged with newspaper clippings, and the title of the work is spelled out under its hooves. "The Gift of Land Trading with White People" (1992) uses the same canvas covered with newspapers and engraved with images of canoes. Hanging above the canvas is a series of sports memorabilia (baseball caps, bumper stickers) from real sports teams with Native American names or mascots. In "State Names" (2000), the color map of the United States seems to ooze dripping paint, concealing the names of a few states and territories that do not originate from indigenous sources.

Smith’s new work "The Localization of the Map of the American Colonies", 12 large-scale mixed media paintings constitute most of the content of the "Woman in the Landscape", currently on display at the Gas Green South Gallery in New York, is a continuation of her for decades. Map of interest. On these canvases is a different rendering of a map of the United States, rich in color, and pasted with text and other collage elements, highlighting the disorientation of the person who stole your map from you and handed it to you. "For me, the map is not an empty form, it is not a symbol of this incredible country," the artist told me. "It's not just an empty idea, it's real. It's about real land-stolen land, contaminated land." When she checked the map, she would see many bookings she had visited and Many people I met on these bookings. She saw bloodshed and oil pipelines; she saw the climate disaster brought about by resource plunder. At the same time, she saw the miracle of our continued existence as American Indians.

"I think I am a miracle, and whenever I talk to an audience, I say that," Smith said. "I told them:'I am a miracle, and any native here is a miracle.' I say to you, Joshua-the fact that you are talking to me here is a miracle." Below is her to T Answers to the artist questionnaire.

What is your day like? What is your work plan?

It includes a lot of administrative work, such as answering requests for letters of recommendation from young indigenous people, and dealing with museum questions. These questions are still being written and asked such as "Do you know any Native American artists?" Although there are always six in the news. In this book, I am working for [For Thames & Hudson], I hope to feature 250 contemporary indigenous people, and I can easily double that number. So that is part of my day. Then the other part is working in my studio or doing things with my granddaughter.

What is your studio like?

One wall is full of supplies I have collected over the years, because [artist] Fritz Scholder once told me, "Never run out of paint, never run out of canvas." So I always order more than I need. thing. There is a large library in the next room. I have many books because I have cherished them since I was a kid. Then there is always a lot of work in progress here.

Can you tell me the benefits of having a library next to your studio?

Because I am a chameleon in a sense, I will think when I draw a picture, "Oh, I need to take out my plateau pictograph book", and then I will go through my library and take out my What is needed. Before I started to paint my mother Earth image here, I took out a dozen books, "Women in the Landscape" (2021). I will check the information, then go to work, organize it all, and then use it to make my own things.

When you start a new work, where do you start?

I often start with an idea, a very general idea, such as a map. I have made maps before, but they are always horizontal, just like maps usually do. This is my plan, these maps are here, behind me, but then I stood up and let them get out of the way, I saw how it really changed the shape of the map-it became an organic thing, like beef one side. This is a bit creepy. Then I thought about that and what else I could do with that map, and thought that maybe I could add some bead designs or other things to it. So I did a little bit and it scared me, so I stopped to do some other things, then went back to it and thought, "Yes, it's really kind of weird." When I do something like this, I have to grow .

How do you know when it is finished?

Generally speaking, I will send it to a place I think it can be done, and then I will wait for a while before leaving. You know, it's like when you are writing something, you put it on hold for a while and then come back, and suddenly, you can see all the things you need to fix. At that time you were pretty sure it might be okay. Then, of course, I have my son, Neil Ambrose-Smith, who is an amazing artist, and I will call him and invite him to come and have a look.

What was the first work you sold? How much do you sell?

I think it is a kind of pastel, as early as the early 70s, the price is about 45 US dollars.

How many assistants do you have?

not any. I mean, my son is generous and kind, and he is helping me make this butterfly mask because he is an amazing manufacturer. But he is an artist himself, not an assistant. So I didn't, but I wish I did. However, I am very lucky. A few times I have someone come to help me organize things because I tend to be chaotic. If I get into a desperate situation and have to show someone the studio, my son will come and help me organize things.

What music do you play when you are doing art?

It's usually quiet here, but I like local flute music. I like Spanish guitar. I like Bach very much. These are my top choices.

Are there any meals you eat repeatedly while you work?

I have eaten a lot of beans and rice. I am a vegetarian, so I eat a lot of salads, and my granddaughter will eat with me.

When did you first feel that you were a professional artist?

For a long time, I didn't think I was worthy of this title, even after I sold the work. I don't know where it is going. I now know from teaching that white students are full of agency rights and say that they are artists, they are going to New York, and they are going to galleries. I was surprised by this because I can tell you that when I went through that journey, I never thought these things would happen. I just found them by accident and wondered, "How did I get here? If someone finds that I really don't deserve this, they will tell others."

When I served on the board of the University Art Association, I was the first local to do so. I’m the first local to do a lot of things, and every time I think, “How did I get here?” I still remember people talking about their parents taking them to Europe during the summer vacation. At the same time, I He didn't enter the museum until he was more than 20 years old.

How often do you talk to other artists?

I talk to my son every other day or every few days. Many times, if I am lonely, I will call him just to talk about art. If I can do something that we can't do because of Covid, I have some local girlfriends in Santa Fe who are about my age: Linda Lomahaftewa, Hopi and Choctaw, and Karita Coffey. They are my friends for 40 years. I like to get together with them to talk about Indian politics and indigenous art.

What is your worst habit?

I quit drinking in the late 70s because many of my family members died of it. Then I continued to smoke, but gave up in the mid-90s. These are indeed my worst habits, but I have been trying to improve myself.

What are you reading?

Joan Didion. There may be eight local writers on my bedside table, such as Heid Erdrich, Louise Erdrich, and a man named Hobson. I must have four Joy Harjo books there too, because I like her poems. But I am reading the biographies of some writers and they said that Joan Didion had the greatest influence on them, so I got "Lazy Bethlehem" (1968), and I'm half done.

What do you like the most about other people's work?

I like Philip Guston's storytelling and paintings. The reason I am attracted to his work is because it tells the story of the Jews and how they escaped the Holocaust. This story resonated with me. Then there was James Ensor, who created all these political paintings. He had a retrospective in New York, and I flew to New York just to see it. I stayed in the museum all day, studying his works, and then flew home at midnight. Goya is another one, especially his work on war. His "Los Caprichos" (published in 1799) is amazing.

What is the strangest thing in your studio?

I have a sculpture here, which actually influenced several paintings or sketches I completed. This is a Mexican sculpture I found in a second-hand store in Albuquerque’s Old Town. It has no base, so I just put a small piece of wood under my feet. It may not actually come from Mexico, it may come from here. There is no name on it. But it tells me-about oppression, imperialism, hegemony.

This interview has been edited and condensed.