Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract, by Philip J. Deloria. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 336 pages, 221 color illustrations, 2019. ISBN: 9780295745046, Paperback, $34.95. Mary Sully’s story is a saga of identity, from her signature artistic project — 134 iterations of what she called “personality prints” — to her name, which was actually Susan Deloria, to her ancestry, which gets complicated quickly. Indian and Anglo, it included tribal leaders and a military officer who slaughtered tribes. There is also a famous painter in her lineage and, not surprisingly, a lifelong struggle to find a place for herself.
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Review: Walks to the Paradise Garden
Walks to the Paradise Garden: A Lowdown Southern Odyssey, by Jonathan Williams, photos by Roger Manley & Guy Mendes. Institute 193, Lexington Kentucky and New York, 352 pages, 100 color images and 80 black and white , 2019. ISBN: 978-1732848207. Hardcover, $45. It’s a shame this book wasn’t published as intended in the 1990s. Not only would its author have still been alive, but so would most of the artists he encountered on his travels across the back roads of the South. Inspired by William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, Jonathan Williams, poet, publisher and lover of the vernacular, undertook a series of
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Rosehill: Many Hopes Lie Buried
Rosehill is the largest cemetery in Chicago, and one of the most beautiful. In part it’s the setting, with its ponds and mature trees. But it’s also a function of the many wealthy people buried there. One thing rich people are good for is leaving behind beautiful mausoleums and monuments. At first glance they can seem to represent an excess of egotism, but over time they become objects of beauty that justify the original hubris. Rosehill Highlights(Hundreds more below) Founded in 1859, the site was supposed to be call Roe’s Hill after the farmer who sold the city the land.
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Muffler People: The Last American Folk Art
Calling muffler people “the last American folk art” may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. If you accept a fairly rigorous definition of folk art, much of what is called folk — whether art, music, or craft — isn’t. That is, it’s not made by artists working from within a communal creative context, artists whose roots are in local or regional traditions more than in mass culture or eccentric visions. To say that Bob Dylan was never an actual folk singer or Howard Finster a folk artist does not diminish their talent or even their authenticity
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Hawaii’s Petroglyph Treasures
Like many mainlanders, I suspect, I always thought of Hawaii as beaches, surfers, tropical foliage, Diamond Head, and not much more. But it also is home to thousands and thousands of rock carvings, with exceptional concentrations cut into the lava on the Big Island. Their age isn’t known with certainty, but some could be close to a thousand years old, with the most recent being from the late 19th century. The petroglyphs’ meaning is uncertain. The accounts that have come down to scholars came via not-always reliable messengers (i.e., westerners who recorded what they think they were told by native
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Petroglyphs: The Puako Concentration of Carvings
The Puako site, which is only a few miles from Waikoloa, has nearly 4,000 documented petroglyphs, some likely to be at least 800 years old. There are some fantastic groupings of anthropomorphic figures here. Some carvings have been lost to construction and fire-fighting activities, and the whole site is set within a dense forest of invasive kiawe trees. Some of the surviving carvings have been damaged by human activities, in some cases vandalism, but also by being loved too much. Taking rubbings or making casts harms the petroglyphs. But the site is still a remarkably concentrated instance of human creative
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Petroglyphs: The Pu’u Loa Carvings
The Pu`u Loa petroglyph site is in a more-or-less middle-of-nowhere section of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It was a popular destination, however, over the hundreds of years when its 23,000+ carvings were being created, and it remains deservedly so today for visitors to the park. The site is especially rich in cupules, where umbilical cord stumps were placed to ensure health and long life for babies. It appears many family members made the trek to this location to perform that ritual. Much of the information on this and my other Hawaii pages is from the highly recommend Spirit of Place:
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Petroglyphs: Waikoloa Symbols
Hawaiian petroglyphs are rich in symbols, with a tremendous concentration at Waikoloa. Circles predominate, some in conjunction with cupules, some concentric, and some stopping short of completion. One theory holds that circles recorded a circumambulation of the island, with multiple circles indicating the number of people in the group. But the certainty of that account seems a bit shaky. More dependable, it seems, is the narrative of cupules being the repository for umbilical cords. Much of the information on this and my other Hawaii pages is from the highly recommend Spirit of Place: Petroglyphs of Hawaii, by Georgia Lee and
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Petroglyphs: Waikoloa Vistas
The field of petroglyphs at Waikoloa is a survivor of intense development all around it — resorts, condos, golf courses, shopping malls, and more. The vistas remain impressive, however. Much of the information on this and my other Hawaii pages is from the highly recommend Spirit of Place: Petroglyphs of Hawaii, by Georgia Lee and Edward Stasack. It seems to be the most authoritative account of what we know about the carvings, and the difficulties of knowing what we know. The extensive data it lays out reflects an impressive amount of research, and the authors also appreciate the aesthetic impact
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Petroglyphs: The Words At Waikoloa
Within decades of the first known contact with Europeans, in 1778, the Hawaiian language gained letters. For a brief period while petroglyphs were still a living art, letters, words, and sometimes dates were added to the great aggregation of carvings at Waikoloa. Much of the information on this and my other Hawaii pages is from the highly recommend Spirit of Place: Petroglyphs of Hawaii, by Georgia Lee and Edward Stasack. It seems to be the most authoritative account of what we know about the carvings, and the difficulties of knowing what we know. The extensive data it lays out reflects
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