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EFFIGY MOUND
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2007
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Sand Bar Willow and Ceramic.
Pottery by Nate and Hallie Evans of Allamakee Woodfire Pottery.
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In October 2004, Phil Johnson flew out from California and we took a four-day canoe trip on the Mississippi River from Harpers Ferry to Guttenberg, Iowa. This section of the river passes through Effigy Mounds National Monument. This phenomenal site is perched upon the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in the geologically significant Driftless Area. The monument was established to preserve a network of burial mounds from the Late Woodland Culture that dates sometime between 300-1,200 AD. I had explored the monument many times. Yet the sense of discovery was accentuated when accessing it from the river by canoe. Phil and I hiked in to the Marching Bear Group in the south unit and then paddled down river and through Johnson Slough to the Sny-Magill unit.
Walking among these grass covered earth mounds, I am aware that I am in a graveyard. It is understood that the mounds, many in effigy of bears and birds, possess human remains. Earlier Hopewell sites also exist at Effigy Mounds and are more likely to possess material artifacts such as pottery and pipestone.
It was during my canoe trip with Phil that I first imagined and sketched the idea for this sculptural ghost of a bear shaped mound. I visualized a mound that we can see through and into. I knew I could accomplish this with a lashed construction of Sand Bar Willow not unlike that utilized in the indigenous wigwam architecture of the region. Exposed inside the mound are replicas of prehistoric pottery. This was the primary material artifact left behind by Pre-Columbian Iowans. I commissioned Nate and Hallie Evans of Allamakee Woodfire Pottery to produce the facsimiles of these artifacts. These vessels become a surrogate for the human remains that are in the earth mounds.
Whether I encounter effigy mounds, petroglyphs at Lava Beds, or stone foundations in Maui, I am always thrilled and enchanted by the evidence of prehistoric humans. This feeling is atmospheric and kinesthetic and not without a personal longing. My ancestor George Ickes settled in Shelby County, Iowa in 1875. Like some descendants of early settlers, I have a family story of a great-great grandmother of Native heritage. My dad made a big deal of this when I was a child. This is an admittedly thin lineage. I have seen a tiny black and white photograph in an old shoe box. I have no name and no record of tribal enrollment and any possibility of learning was scattered in the wind with the remnants of my dad's family.
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ADDENDUM
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SOVEREIGNTY of CONTENT
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This is a modified version of my artist statement for the 2020 Sierra Arts Foundation exhibit. It responds to the rapidly evolving dynamic in our cultural landscape and addresses the themes in this work and others.
In this second decade of the 21st Century, our socio-political moment compels me to reflect on something that concerns and implicates me as an artist. Rather than shy away from it, this is a good opportunity to address it openly. We in the arts are having an important conversation on cultural appropriation. This is the use of content from outside our own heritage, especially in a manner that may be insensitive. With the artist Sam Durant's scaffold at the Walker Art Center and Jeanine Cummins' novel American Dirt, the arts community is struggling to determine the boundaries of the sovereignty of content with all of the seriousness and respect that it deserves. There are elements in my past work that put me on the threshold of that territory and I admit to my own uncertainty.
I think the threshold for tension is where we make presumptions about histories, mores or motivations of others that we do not understand. And many symbols are so deeply imbedded in the ancestral memory of a culture that they should rightfully be reserved for their inheritors.
This becomes complicated in an increasingly multi-cultural, global society. Personally, I have the Elizabeth Warren problem. Like some descendants of early mid-western settlers, my family has a story and seen a single old photo of a distant Native American ancestor. I am having a serious moment of reflection and listening as enrolled tribal spokes-persons define the difference between bloodline and community. Other than this very thin ancestry, I am unmistakably Northern European, which has its own rich and complicated cultural heritage. Add to this the sometimes messy aspirations of being born an American.
I do not believe that all outside cultural content is completely off limits. Artists have long striven to inhabit a realm of pathos and compassion. The human drama stirs our imaginations to not only think deeply but also feel deeply. Yet, in this heightened environment, it is not always going to be easy to determine where a narrative falls on the spectrum between empathy and sovereignty.
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