Installing "4 Artists Under 30"

By Chris Rossi, Associate Curator of Exhibitions

Fenimore Art Museum's Lower Level galleries boast some very high ceilings and a sweeping staircase that one could imagine making a grand entrance on. Recently we installed some exciting new artwork that took advantage of both features.

Leah explaining how her sculptures hang

Leah Shenandoah’s vividly painted stretched cloth sculptures float before and above the staircase, suspended from the slatted ceiling. Using this vertical space is a treat for us and provides an opportunity to create a new vantage point for our visitors and truly fill the space.

The sculptures are part of our 8th Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial exhibit titled “4 Artists Under 30.” The exhibit features work by Lauren Jimerson, Awenheeyoh Powless, Shenandoah and Natasha Smoke Santiago. Three of the women know each other from time spent studying and creating art at the Rochester Institute of Technology. You can see a shared sensibility between Shenandoah’s bright colors and the palette used by Powless in her danced canvases. Jimerson has captured schoolmate Shenandoah in pastels. Santiago is self-taught and expresses traditional techniques in a unique way.

These young artists “take their place as the latest installment of artists coming from the land of the Haudenosaunee – witnesses to the Indian Way of Life who seek visual expression for their time and place.”

The 8th Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial: Four Artists Under 30

By Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

We are getting ready for the 8th Contemporary Iroquois Art Biennial exhibition and this years’ theme, Four Artist Under 30, is promising to be an exciting exhibition of young talented women artists. It will open at Fenimore Art Museum on August 27th and be on view until December 31. As in previous years the show is organized and curated by Peter Jemison (Seneca). Peter is a well-known artist and the Director of Ganondagan Historic Site in Victor, NY.

Here, Peter describes the show:

This year the exhibit features the work of four young women from the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy; Lauren Jimerson, Seneca; Awenheeyoh Powless, Onondaga; Leah Shenandoah, Oneida; Natasha Smoke Santiago, Mohawk.

The artists are influenced by their heritage as Haudenosaunee but have sought unique ways to express their individual vision. Perhaps the most traditional in terms of media is Lauren (who is in her final year at Rochester Institute of Technology). She uses pastel on paper to create portraits including a self-portrait. 

 Crop Rot

Lauren Jimerson

Awenheeyoh is a recent graduate from the Rochester Institute of Technology and incorporates Iroquois music and traditional dance steps to create paintings with her feet on un-stretched canvas. In this process she listens to women’s dance songs through head phones and then steps in acrylic paint barefooted to apply it to the canvas using footsteps associated with Iroquois women’s dances.

Dance #4

Awenheeyoh Powless

Leah (M.A., Rochester Institute of Technology) has focused on three dimensional objects that are a cross between sculpture and painting. They are made of stretched fabric on a wire frame to which paint has been applied as a stain. They are exhibited hung from the gallery’s ceiling in a grouping. She is also a jeweler using copper and silver to create large necklaces.

Installation view of Leah Shenandoah's artwork

Natasha is a self-taught artist who has been actively exhibiting her art since she was a teenager. She casts the bellies of pregnant women then forms sculptural objects incorporating traditional Haudenosaunee craft techniques such as pottery making or basketmaking. The bellies are turned into pottery, or fancy baskets with materials resembling splints.

 Belly Basket

Natasha Smoke Santiago

They have each found their unique voice at a relatively young age and they extend the tradition of art making among the Haudenosaunee, combining art school training and traditional knowledge of their heritage, to produce a new form.

Past Iroquois Art Biennials have featured art by the master carver Stan Hill (Mohawk), sculptor Diane Shenandoah (Oneida), painter Peter Jemison, and ceramicist Peter Jones (Onondaga) among others. We are looking forward to this year’s installation with great anticipation. We hope to see you here at the museum August 27 - December 31st.

Another Installation of Another Show (with apologies to Cole Porter...)

By Chris Rossi, Associate Curator of Exhibitions

Another Installation of Another Show
(with apologies to Cole Porter, on the occasion of installing Fenimore Art Museum's exhibition, Art of the Native Americans: The Thaw Collection, at its second venue, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts)

Another install'in, another show
In Cooperstown, Cleveland, or Minneapolo’
A chance for museum folks to say hello!
Another install'in of another show.

Another installation you hope will be a blast
Will make your museum’s future and salute its past
Another venue where visitation will grow
Another install'in of another show.

For weeks, you plan and rehearse
Three weeks, and it couldn't be worse
One week, will it ever be right?
Then out of the hat it's that big first night

The press preview is about to start
You cross your fingers and hold your heart
It's curtain time and away we go -
Another install'in
Another installation of another show!

Celebrating the Thaw Collection at the MIA with teepees

By Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

The installation of Art of the Native Americans: The Thaw Collection is progressing well at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It is very exciting to see the space take shape. Yesterday’s highlight for me was to see Joe Horse Capture, the MIA’s Associate Curator, Department of African, Oceanic, and Native American Art, and a few of his staff raise two teepee's on the front lawn of the museum in preparation for the opening of our exhibition.

Today the third teepee is going up. They have already created quite a buzz. The teepees will be lit up at night so I will try to get some evening shots of them later on this week.

Installing the Thaw Collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

By Eva Fognell, Curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

On October 24th, the Fenimore Art Museum's traveling exhibition Art of the Native Americans: The Thaw Collection will open at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Yesterday, Associate Curator of Exhibitions, Chris Rossi, and I spent our first day at the museum and we got a good start on unpacking and installing the objects. It is so exciting to walk into another museum's prepared galleries and see their vision for the Collection in regards to layout and design.

The first picture, above, is from the Northwest Coast section of the exhibition, with our Potlatch Figure in the foreground.

The other gallery shot was taken while the crew was installing a large photomural depicting the Grand Canyon in the Southwest section of the exhibition.

When we went out for lunch I took the opportunity to take a picture of the entrance to the Target Galleries, where the exhibition is being installed.