Colleen Cutschall: A Lakota Artist's View of Time, Space, and Contact
by Richard Pearce, author of Women and Ledger Art: Four Contemporary Women Artists, published by the University of Arizona Press, 2013.
Besides being a well-known artist, Colleen Cutschall is a Professor Emerita, now retired from Brandon University in Manitoba. Her “lineage goes back to the Crazy Horse and Black Elk tiospaye, or extended family.” These two historic figures, she tells us, have played prominent roles in her life “as well as of the whole life of the Oglala people” because of their concern for maintaining and perpetuating the traditions that provide their identity as a people. Cutschall retains their concern in her restless search for knowledge, new perspectives, and mediums.
The text below is by Colleen Cutschall.
Androgynous Landscape
Acrylic on canvas, 120.0 cm x 240.0 cm, 1996.
Winnipeg Art Gallery, published in catalog, House Made of Stars, 1996.
From large scale images on the Plains, such as petroforms and earthworks, to things like the Nazca lines in Peru and images inscribed by human pilgrimage, messages are sent to someone or something and made visible from above. Often such sites are electrically magnetic or some other magnetic anomaly that acts as a conduit for high vibrational energy. The entire Black Hills are formed of high energy conduits found in granite and quartz that enhance the vibrational energy created in pilgrimage and ceremonies. One such ceremony was carried out in the Black Hills at known sacred sites where the people's pilgrimage to these sites inscribes a buffalo skull and where the actual skulls are used as an altar. The painting also reminds us that this is where our relatives the Pte Oyate, the buffalo nation, will be coming.
Also see Colleen Cutschall: Recovering the "New" World
For other sites on Native women artists see:
Sharron Ahtone Harjo: Kiowa Ledger Artist
Dolores Purdy's Ledger Art: Colors that Sing
Storied Beads: The Art of Teri Greeves
For sites on native male artists see:
A Tribute to George Flett, Spokane Ledger Artist, 1947-2013
Blue Blood
Acrylic on canvas, 4' x 4', 1987, Published in catalog, Voice in the Blood, 1990, Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba.
In Lakota creation mythology the great spirits, mostly planets and elements, emerged from a blue blood clot, and they are responsible for the creation of the cosmos and all that live in it. Blood and sacrifice are central to the Lakota ethos and at the heart of community ceremony in the form of the Sundance in which supplicants literally sacrifice their blood for an annual world renewal. The collective memory of this myth clearly points to the substance of blood as our source of origin and renewal, our DNA. The colour of this blood and its clotting may point to cosmic gas explosions or to the birth of stars. It could also point to some aspect of what is called junk DNA, the unknown 95% of DNA that is not used for reproduction.
The Pregnant Grandfather
Acrylic, 4' x 4,' 1988, (121.92 cm x 121.92 cm).
Published by Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, in catalog Voice in the Blood, 1990.
Now in collection of Manitoba Arts Council Foundation.
The Lakota trace their ancestry to great beings called the Tob Tob Kin and refer to the primordial parents in kinship terms: the earth Mother, the sky, Father, and their spirits, Grandmother and Grandfather. Before time, they created the Pte Oyate, our first form, and we lived among the great spirits and served them. This relationship is expressed in the central Lakota prayer, Mitakuye Oyasin, "we are all relatives" or "we are all related.” This personal and familial contact was of oneness with all spirit. From this perspective no other form of spirit can be other or foreign or alien.
The painting of the Pregnant Grandfather expresses the cohesiveness and order of the creation of life on earth, starting with the primordial waters from which stone or mineral, earth, plants, and animals evolve. Human kind, shown in the form of a blue spirit, was the last in this order of creation and in the painting has not yet emerged and still dwells in the underworld of spirit.
("[This] painting was my attempt at describing Indian time. I actually wrote a definition of Indian time. The title came as a result of a passage in Black Elk Speaks when he is taken to the great council of grandfathers. In his vision one of the powers that seems more human or female becomes his vehicle for seeing time on earth and of the Lakota. I saw it as an androgynous avatar/grandfather. The little blue guy at the centre is Tokahe, the first one on top is the first shaman holding the nation's hoop and the flowering stick. It is about the order of creation: mineral or stone first, plants, then animals. Humans are last and depend on all the others for life. It is based on the idea of the yoke of a woman's dress spread out flat. Yes there is pink in it but the earth is copper. In the series where one see's copper it always refers to the earth. As a painting it shows the earth in development with the plants and animals already here and the man has not come to the top yet. It is a centre of the world motif, the earth's naval. Next to Spirit Warriors this is my most published work.")
The Birth of Wicassa
Acrylic on canvas, 101.60 cm x 182.88 cm, 1990.
Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, published in catalog, Voice in the Blood, 1990. Now in the President's Collection, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan.
When the Pte Oyate do come to the top of the earth, we emerge from the earth with Tokahe, the first man on top and also the first shaman. We make first contact with all the differentiated forms of life among the waters, the plants, the insects and animals and the winged nations. We no longer have direct contact with the great spirits and can only contact them through dreams, visions, and the animal and plant world. Because of this we were called Ikce Wicasa, plain, common, wild people. We became disconnected from the world of spirit and knowledge. Only through observation and experience did we gain scientific knowledge of other life forms. Even without microscopes the Lakota understood germ theory and that waters could be polluted with miniwatukala.
The Third Time, Part 1
Acrylic on canvas, 121.92 cm x 121.92 cm, 1989.
Published by the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in catalog, Voice in the Blood, 1990.
Now in permanent collection of Collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan.
A world of illusions came to be represented by some offspring of the great spirits such as Iktomi the spider/shape shifter and Double Face Woman, a human woman, who mated with a great spirit being, the Wind, and whose sons had to prove their worthiness to the council of great spirits to gain their own spirit powers.
She is Walking in a Sacred Manner
Acrylic on canvas, 101.60 cm x 182.88 cm, 1990. Published in catalog, Voice in the Blood, 1990.
Now in the Collection of Indian and Northern Affairs, Ottawa, Ontario.
They are aided by the daughter of the sky, Whoope, who arrives as a falling star and has the form of a beautiful human-like woman. This woman later appears to the people and brings them a gift from their relatives in the spirit world, the Pte Oyate. That gift is the pipe. It is not a high-tech instrument of communication but it is an effective one when used properly. It allows for direct communication with the spirit world from where knowledge comes. Repetition of the acts of great spirits is the essence of Lakota ceremonies. Whoope, or White Buffalo Calf Woman, also gives the people the Sundance ceremony, both a healing rite and world renewal ceremony. With the pipe and this form of direct contact, the people become Lakota.
Part I
In the 1980’s, I worked on a series of paintings that was meant to illustrate the Lakota creation myth and our emergence from the spirit world to the top of the earth and our survival on this planet through the establishment of our shamanic traditions. That series was called Voice in the Blood. It was painted from a cultural/spiritual perspective about sacred time drawn from both research and experience. In the 1990’s this series was followed by another group of works in paintings and installations, House Made of Stars, that focused on sacred space, again with a cultural and spiritual perspective. Having focused on these ideals I later found myself reviewing the work and the knowledge they represented through a different lens, a scientific questioning that led to different possibilities and interpretations. What follows is an attempt to combine the different tracks of investigation and to consider the nature of contact. These investigations pre-date the history channel’s Ancient Aliens but also converged with those theories before they became widely popular.
Voice in the Blood
Acrylic on canvas, 101.60 cm x 182.88 cm, 1990.
Published in catalog, Voice in the Blood, by Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba.
Now in Collection of Manitoba Government.
When the people receive the pipe they become Lakota, a people of the pipe and medicine wheel. The pipe can be used individually or collectively for direct contact with the spirit world or to gain important knowledge. The reciprocal gift of the pipe is the sacrifice of our own blood, an act of sincerity and remembrance.
