Sachi Yanari-Rizzo, Curator of Prints & Drawings
Neal Ambrose-Smith is an artist who is not easily categorized. He is a painter, sculptor, printmaker, jeweler, photographer, musician, graphic designer, and educator. It isn’t surprising that he is in the arts; his mother is Jaune Quick-to-See Smith who was an influential artist and curator of groundbreaking exhibitions that brought attention to contemporary Indigenous artists. Ambrose-Smith reminisced that his mother was unable to afford childcare, so he attended her art classes when she was completing her bachelor’s degree. She encouraged him to pursue art and later they became collaborators.
Ambrose-Smith earned a B.A. in painting from University of Northern Colorado, Greeley in 1989 and an M.F.A. in printmaking from University of New Mexico, Albuquerque in 2009. He cites his mother, Rick Bartow, Philip Guston, Fritz Scholder, and Cy Twombly as influences on his art.
Ambrose-Smith characteristically layers diverse imagery, especially material drawn from pop culture of his youth: cartoons, comics, Mad Magazine, and TV shows from the 1970s. Star Trek and science fiction were a great escape from everyday life. In outer space people were not marginalized; everyone was expected to get along.
Batman appears in the right panel of Ambrose-Smith’s diptych, Serpent and the Bear King (2014) in the FWMoA’s collection. Although alluding to his childhood interest, the superhero serves as a meaningful comparison with Indigenous people. The artist stated, “Batman is a character that is already in identity crisis, so I thought this is great talking about a person that is in between two worlds or doesn’t know where they’re supposed to belong because…you’re on the reservation and reservation life is a certain way, and largely within matriarchal society and then you step out of that and you’re bombarded with white male dominated society…which is incredible. And it’s two distinctly different worlds…We struggle with that a lot, Native people.”
Next to Batman’s face is a text balloon written in bold face. While “POW!” is an iconic sound effect for superhero fighting, Ambrose-Smith morphs the onomatopoeia into “POW WOW,” a clever wordplay for an Indigenous social gathering. The artist enjoys using humor, which he refers to as “reservation medicine,” to connect with a large audience. When the laughter subsides, another message may emerge, allowing for further dialogue. Ambrose-Smith wrote in 2009, “Beyond entertaining my viewer and myself, my work strives to educate…I cannot separate myself from the society in which I live, therefore, I feel responsible for providing substance and truth in my work.”
Serpent and the Bear King contains many autobiographical elements. The right panel featuring the lighthearted dancing bear seems to relate to the artist. The two images of Batman along with the many close-ups of road runners and other birds are borrowed from his own work.
The left panel is dominated by Rabbit, frequently a trickster in his work and that of Quick-to-See Smith. This side references his mother, who explored environmental themes throughout her career. In the background there are molecular structures and large bees. The text in the lower left reads that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified clothianidin as highly toxic to honeybees but was approved for use in 2003. Neonicotinoids are commonly used as an insecticide on crops but affect a broader range of insects than the ones targeted. The text to the right mentions CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder referring to the phenomenon of large numbers of worker bees suddenly disappearing from the colony, causing the hive to die off. Neonicotinoids have been linked with CCD.
Ambrose-Smith who is a descendant of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana, grew up in the Southwest tales about Coyote, Raven, and Rabbit—all tricksters. Rabbit is again the focus of Event Horizon Has No Agenda (2015), but now has skeletal facial features, suggesting it is from his Bad Bunny series. The background is filled with repeated line drawings of a laughing man with rabbit or kangaroo ears, rising out of holes. It is reminiscent of the arcade game, Whac-A-Mole, in which the player uses a hammer to strike the moles that randomly pop up through holes in a board. One wonders who the real butt of this joke is.
Text also figures prominently in this print as Ambrose-Smith handwrote repeatedly, “this is the part of me”, with different endings. Using embossing, you can faintly read various sayings or truisms. Weighty phrases include, “rights without responsibility,” “render unto Caesar,” and “event horizon has no agenda.”
Making allusions to pop culture and art history, Dear Homemaker (2018) looks to include line art images of 1950s mothers on the phone and crawling on all fours, like Disney’s baby Mickey and Keith Haring’s Radiant Baby in the upper right. The mother is playing Cowboys and Indians with her son, who is dressed head to toe in cowboy attire with a hat, bandit scarf, boots and pistol. She wears a dress, but her costume is simply a feathered headdress.
Commenting on his use of headdresses, Ambrose-Smith remarked, “People have this stereotype or expectation that if you don’t have feathers in your work, then it’s not native. Or if there’s no pain or suffering or if there’s not an Indian that’s crying or something, it’s not native kind of thing. Sometimes I’ll throw a headdress in just for that reason. I’ll just stick a headdress on whoever…Everybody, headdresses for everybody! We’re all Indians here. Nobody’s left out.”
In Buck Dreamed of Sledding (2019) Coyote, the trickster, has long attenuated arms and presses his entire body over an iron. In 2009, Ambrose-Smith explained, “Most Native American stories mingle animals and people in humorous ways, probably because animals regularly commit random acts of humor. I have been using animals in my stories and work since I can remember. Sometimes animals narrate the story and sometimes they are actors in place of people.”
The composition closely resembles Pablo Picasso’s weary Woman Ironing (1904) in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. This is a famous work by the painter’s blue period. Ambrose-Smith, noted, “Pablo Picasso once said that amateurs borrow ideas, but a true artist steals.” Like a playful nod to Picasso’s melancholic painting period, blue floods down from the iron like a river or a sheet of ice for sledding.
Buck is the name of Ambrose-Smith’s Coyote in this print and shares the name of the dog in Jack London’s book Call of the Wild. Immersed in the drudgery of housework, Buck daydreams about the outdoors, perhaps akin to London’s Buck who responded to the call of the wild.
Make an appointment or stop by the Print & Drawing Study Center, Tuesday-Friday, 11am-3pm to see more of our works on paper!