Susan Hudson the Navajo "Ledger Quilter"

         I met Susan Hudson during this past Indian Art Market at the Museum of the American Indian in New York City.  I was a volunteer assigned to registration and payment collection for the preview party.  I needed a little caffeine before the event so I went into the room where all of the artists had been eating.  There I met Susan, she had been finishing up and getting ready to leave. Susan was super friendly and I'm pretty chatty myself so we instantly started talking.  I asked her what medium she worked in?  She said she was the Ledger Quilter.  Ledger Quilter?  I had just been writing a paper about ledger book drawings of the Plains Indians so I was very familiar with the drawings, but quilts?

      Later when I had a moment I went in to look at the different arts and crafts for sale.  I promptly went over to Susan's table in the back of the gallery for an explanation of her craft.  I asked her why ledger quilting?  She said that she is Navajo and knows that the ledger drawings were of the Plains but she had to get creative in the competitive world of native arts.  Hudson came up with the clever idea to combine motifs common in ledger art with her own creative ideas.  Her ledger quilts are two-fold; one they are a dedication to the art of the Plains, two, they are a remembrance of her own ancestors, many of whom perished during The Long Walk.  Their names are listed down the length of the quilt.       

        Below are a couple pictures of Susan and myself with her award winning quilt Stars Among Shunkaa Wakan which translates to holy dogs.  "Holy dogs" is a term that refers to horses.  

Indian Art Market 

December 2013, NYC

Stars Among the Shunkaa Wakan

Shunkaa Wakan means "holy dogs," and refers to horses

Examples of Ledger Book Drawings of the Plains Indians

Julian Scott (Kiowa), Ledger Artist

"Kiowa Couples," 1880

Collection Mr. and Mrs. Charles Diker

"Cheyenne warrior engaging enemies," by Black Horse (Northern Cheyenne)

 The Black Horse Ledger, 1879-1885

“Alternative Accounts” Exhibition UC San Diego

Susan Hudson and her ledger quilts

Indian Country
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/07/12/navajo-quilt-maker-susan-hudson-pays-tribute-plains-ledger-art-122698

Cowboys & Indians
http://www.cowboysindians.com/Cowboys-Indians/June-2012/Best-Of-The-West-2012-Suzanne-Hudsons-Ledger-Quilt/

George Morrison (Anishinaabe-Chippewa/Ojibwe 1919-2000) Modernist Painter and Sculptor

"My art is my religion.  I've tried to unravel the fabric of my life and how it relates to my work.  Certain Indian values are inherent--an inner connection with the people and all living things, a sense of being in tune with the natural phenomena, a consciousness of sea and sky, space and light, the enigma of the horizon the color of the wind."  

                        -George Morrison in Jane Katz This Song Remembers: Self-Portraits of Native Americans in the Arts.

George Morrison

Structures Against the Sky, n.d.

Gouache and ink on paper

18 x 24 in.

Black and White Patterned Forms, 1952

Ink on paper

10 3/4 x 8 3/8 in.

Collection Minnesota Museum of Art

(a portion of) New England Landscape II, 1967

Wood collage

Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Spirit Path, New Day, Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape, 1990
acrylic and pastel on paper
22 1/2 x 30 1/8 in.
Collection Minnesota Museum of Art

Anishinaabe, an autonym, is the name by which a group refers to itself.  Chippewa, Ojibwe and Odawa peoples fall under the Anishinaabe culture group and live in five primary geographic regions in the Northern United States and portions of Canada.  As with many other connected native tribes, language is the common denominator.  The Anishinaabe people speak various dialects that have roots in the Algonquin language family.  Today the Anishinaabe are the second largest tribe in North America.

Other Anishinaabe Artists

David Bradley (1954-)

American Indian Gothic, 1983

Color lithograph on paper

30 1/8 x 22 1/4

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Chippewa, 1840

maker unknown

wood, deer hide, pigment

Collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts

Anishinaabe House

1895-1910

birch bark, porcupine quill, dye

28 x 20 x 22 cm

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

Agnes Bird

Chippewa Woman Stripping Birch Bark

n.d.

The current retrospective at the National Museum of the American Indian, New York, is on view through February 23, 2014.  The exhibition  is comprised of 80 works that include painting, drawing, print and sculpture.  Modern Spirit: The Art of George Morrison is organized by the Minnesota Museum of American Art and Arts Midwest, with the Plains Art Museum.

On February 20th at 6:00 p.m. W. Jackson Rushing III, curator of Modern Spirit: The Art of George Morrison will be discussing the exhibition and the work of Morrison.  I recently reached out to Dr. Rushing for information about his upcoming lecture, he kindly sent me an overview...   

"Join us for an illustrated lecture that documents, celebrates, and investigates the artistic achievement of George Morrison, the distinguished and beloved Chippewa modernist (1919-2000) whose artwork is

held in numerous public and private collections. Morrison's journey from impoverished rural origin to international acclaim is a remarkable American story about regionalism, expatriation, urbanity, and homecoming, in which the significance of place is embedded in drawings, paintings, collages, prints, and sculptures.

Often inspired by land, water, and sky, Morrison mixed abstraction with representation to produce sensuous works of art that explore form, color, and texture. His award-winning wood collages and monumental totems were remarkable contributions to American modernism and have much to offer viewers in the 21st century."

-W. Jackson Rushing III

W. Jackson Rushing III is an Adkins Presidential Professor of Art History and Mary Lou Milner Carver Chair in Native American Art. He was educated at the University of Texas at Austin and served previously as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in Arts and Humanities at UT-Dallas. He works in several intersecting areas: Native American art; modern and contemporary art; Southwest modernism; theory, criticism, and methodology; museum studies; and post-colonialism and visual culture. His teaching and scholarship explore the interstitial zone between (Native) American studies, anthropology, and art history. For more than twenty years now he has pursued a duality—Native-inspired modernist primitivism and indigenous modernism in the United States and Canada.