Biography #1

"Navajo artist Tony Abeyta has worked in many media to create paintings using sand, layers of oil paints, encaustic wax and collage elements that include earth pigments, bronze and copper as well as gold leafing. However, this summer Abeyta will work with yet another media – charcoal and ink washes – to produce a drawing installation for his new exhibition Underworlderness. Abeyta plans to “abstractly render the Navajo underworld, draw the realm we live in today and draw our relationship to the cosmos.”

The exhibition will also differ from his usual work in that Abeyta will draw and paint directly on the gallery wall to render the large – as large as 10 feet high – work of art. While he is painting, Abeyta’s 17-year-old son Gabriel will document his work on video and then create a short film utilizing reverse time-lapsed footage to reduce as much as four to six hours of painting to three minutes of video. Gabriel Abeyta will also incorporate original music into the video. Once completed, the video will be shown on several monitors in the gallery.

Tony Abeyta has studied painting extensively, attending Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Art, Maryland Institute’s College of Art in Baltimore, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (for which he received a Ford Foundation Scholarship) and New York University. Most recently, Abeyta’s work was influenced by his travels to Europe, where he spent considerable time in Florence, Italy. While in Europe, he had the opportunity to see and study paintings by masters including large-scale works such as Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica."

In his early paintings, Abeyta used brilliant colors to depict magical journeys into Diné culture and Native spirituality. By 2002, his palette had changed to more subtle and somber earth tones. His black-and-white charcoal and ink drawings featured in Underworlderness are yet another provocative exploration by this creative artist. In the drawings and the mural, Abeyta will explore themes of plant life – seeds emerging from the ground – and abstractions of animals.""

http://heardeducation.org/abeyta/bio.html

Attack (dialogue poem)

I have sent for you here
Do you know what I intend?

No, I do not

What is it that you intend?

Black Bird, he holds in his hands

A destroyer

The white man left it unattended

It harms

It kills

We need more of the destroyers

To drive out the white man

What do you need of me?

You are to take your horse

Go into the white man's village

And lead an attack

Who will be my aides

In this attack?

Our men, to my left

They will follow you

You will lead

I will act on what you expect of me

I will act with pride

Go, get the destroyers

Without them

We will surely be overpowered

Excerpt #5

"The Indian children would come with half-braids, curiosity endless and essential. The children would come from throwing stones into water, from basketball and basketry, from the arms of their mothers and fathers, from the very beginning. This was the generation of HUD house, of car wreck and cancer, of commodity cheese and beef. These were the children who carried dreams in the back pockets of their blue jeans, pulled them out easily, traded back and forth."

Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Grove Press, 1993.
p. 142

Excerpt #4

"The old man shook his head. 'That is the trickery of the witchcraft,' he said. 'They want us to believe all evil resides with shite people. Then we will look no further to see what is really happening. They want us to separate ourselves from white people, to be ignorant and helpless as we watch our own destruction. But white people are only tools that the witchery manipulates; and I tell you, we can deal with white people, with their machines and their beliefs. We can because we invented white people; it was Indian witchery that made white people in the first place.'"

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin Group, 1977.
p. 122

Excerpt #3

"Spider Woman had told Sun Man how to win the storm clouds back from the Gambler so they would be free again to bring rain and snow to the people. He knew what white people thought about the stories. In school the science teacher had explained what superstition was, and then held the science textbook up for the class to see the true source of explanations. He had studied those books, and he had no reasons to believe the stories any more. The science books explained the causes and effects. But old Grandma always used to say, "Back in time immemorial, things were different, the animals could talk to human beings and many magical things still happened." He never lost the feeling he had in his chest when she spoke those words, as she did each time she told them stories; and he still felt it was true, despite all they had taught him in school--that long long ago things had been different, and human being could understand what the animals said, and once the Gambler had trapped the storm clouds on his mountaintop."

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin Group, 1977.
p. 87

Excerpt #2

"Junior Polatkin stole a rifle from the gun rack in Simon's pickup. Junior didn't know anything about caliber, but he knew the rifle was loaded because Simon had told him so. Junior strapped that rifle over his shoulder and climbed up the water tower that had been empty for most of his life. He looked down at his reservation, at the tops of HUD houses and the Trading Post. A crowd gathered below him and circled the base of the tower. He could hear the distant sirens of the Tribal Police cars and was amazed the cops were already on their way.

Junior unshouldered the rifle. He felt the smooth, cool wood of the stock, set the butt of the rifle against the metal grating of the floor, and placed his forehead against the mouth of the barrel...He flipped the safety off, held his thumb against the trigger, and felt the slight tension. Junior squeezed the trigger."

Alexie, Sherman. Reservation Blues. New York: Grove Press, 1995.
p. 247

List of References

Literature:

• Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
• Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie
• Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
• Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

Television:

• We Shall Remain

Movies:

• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
• Apocalypto
• Dances with Wolves
• The New World
• Smoke Signals

Actors:

• Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse (Dances with Wolves, Smiles A Lot)
• Q'Orianka Kilcher (The New World, Pocahontas,)
• Raoul Trujillo (Apocalypto, Zero Wolf; The New World, Tomocomo)
• Rudy Youngblood (Apocalypto, Jaguar Paw)
• Adam Beach (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Chester Lake; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dr. Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa))

Music:

• Small World by Robert Johnson
• Urban Indian Blues by Robert Johnson
• Big Mom by Robert Johnson
• Falling Down and Falling Apart by Robert Johnson
• My God Has Dark Skin by Robert Johnson
• Indian Boy Love Song by Robert Johnson
• Treaties by Robert Johnson
• Reservation Blues by Robert Johnson