Edward Saidi Tingatinga

The Artwork of Edward Saidi Tingatinga

Born in 1932, Edward Saidi Tingatinga was a self-taught Tanzanian artist who developed a unique painting style that evolved into an urban traditional art form. Once established as an artist, he taught his style to many students, both local and foreign.

Edward Saidi Tingatinga was born in 1937 to a family of subsistence farmers at the small village of Mindu in southern Tanzania near the border of Mozambique. He left his village in 1957 and worked on a sisal plantation in the Tanga district. Tingatinga traveled in the latter part of 1957 to Dar-es-Salaam where he labored in construction jobs and as a gardener until 1961. He relocated to the Mikoroshoni district where he met and married his wife Agatha Mataka. After the birth of his son Daudi, Tingatinga became employed in 1968 as a ward attendant at the public Muhimbili Hospital.

Impressed by the number of tourists who purchased western-styled paintings from Zairian artists, Tingatinga began to paint in 1968 and soon developed his own particular style of colorful, crowded paintings of fantastic animals and dancing tribesmen, as well as scenes of village life. The paintings sold well and soon developed into a distinctly urban art form. Through the support of the National Arts of Tanzania (NAT), Tingatinga regularly sold his paintings and began to teach his technique to students.

The traditional Tinga Tinga style of painting most often depicted the native fauna and flora of Tanzania, rendered in both a naïve and surrealistic style on single-colored backgrounds. Due to their availability, masonite substrates and highly-saturated, brilliantly colored industrial paints were used to create the artwork. Current Tinga Tinga painters now paint a variety of subject themes on stretched muslim and canvas. Many of these artists still uphold the traditional use of bicycle enamel paints.

Edward Tingatinga, who had established himself as a successful artist, was shot in 1972 by police in a case of mistaken identity during the officers’ search for a gang of bank robbers. He died at the age of forty years on the way to the hospital. Six-year old Daudi Tingatinga and his younger sister Martina were left in the care of their mother, Agatha. Growing up in a state of poverty, neither sibling received any formal education. Edward Tingatinga’s fellow artists formed the Tinga Tinga Arts Cooperative in his honor; this cooperative later became a school for artists from Dar-es-Salaam and Zanzibar. The traditional art form of Tinga Tinga was passed onto Daudi and Martina by their uncle Salum Mussa, known as “Mzee Lumumba”, who had received his art education from their father.

Notes: The Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society website is located at: https://tingatinga.ch/en/about.php

An article entitled “Tinga Tinga: An African Tale” written by feature editor Kate Bystrova for the Commonwealth Secretariat’s independent magazine, “Global: The International Briefing”, can be located at: https://www.global-briefing.org/2014/09/tinga-tinga-an-african-tale/

The Tinga Tinga Arts Cooperative has a biographical article on Edward Saidi Tingatinga in its January 2022 edition located at: https://www.tingatingaart.com/blogs/articles/edward-saidi-tingatinga

Top Insert Image: Jesper Kirknaes, “Edward Saidi Tingatinga”, Date Unknown, Color Print, January 2022 Issue of Tinga Tinga Art

Second Insert Image: Edward Saidi Tingatinga, “Le Lion”, 1971, Oil on Masonite, 61 x 71.5 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image, Edward Saidi Tingatinga, Untitled, Enamel on Board, 61 x 61 cm, Private Collection

Bebe Backhouse-Oliver: “Take Me to the Ocean Where My Heart Once Drowned”

Photographers Unknown, Take Me to the Ocean Where My Heart Once Drowned

take me outside to the place we both knew so well
when i’d hold your hand while walking barefoot
even though the soil was littered with bindis
but i preferred the earth to know who i was
from the taste of my blood and the way it filled with grains of sand
than to have to speak my name in a language it could never understand
with a voice i was still discovering

take me to the mountain we would go to sit
and watch the stars fall past the edge of the earth
like they were always destined to do
let me think of the people i used to know when i was small
and remember the things i forgot about them
the pieces of gold that captured my heart into loving them
and the ways they hurt me that saw me quickly let them go

take me to the ocean where my heart once drowned
as people in barely-there swimsuits watched me stand
in waves that broke on the shoreline
as my bones shattered beneath the forceful hands of the sun
and all its reasons for keeping the world alive in a chorus of separate songs
let me dance in the sand one more time
while you take photographs of the footprints i leave behind
so i can remember their rhythm long after i’ve left them

take me to the tree outside the home where i grew up
and i’ll carve my name into its bark
beside the one i made at nine years old
i’ll climb its branches and stretch my arms out so
i’m taller than the leaves
and higher than the light that bleeds over them
i’ll feel the greatness of everything you’ve given me
the power of all i am
and i’ll know this to be a journey of infinite steps
that encase golden prayers in the face of a western wind
trusting i’ll be going home and knowing i’ll never be coming back

Bebe Backhouse-Oliver, the light that bleeds, more than these bones, 2023, Magabala Books, Broome, Australia

A descendant of the Bardi Jawi people of the Kimberley region of north-Western Australia, Bebe Backhouse-Oliver is a poet, writer, illustrator and leader of diverse community projects. His work embraces issues of love, loss, identity, sense of country, and both Aboriginal and gay existence. Oliver has for many years maintained his home in Naarm, the traditional Central Kulin Nation name for the specific area now known as Greater Melbourne.

In addition to studies in classical piano and composition, Bebe Oliver began writing at an early age,. His initial work was creative stories and, later, poetry and memoir-based journal-format stories. These written works served as an outlet for all the challenges he experienced as a young Aboriginal boy with a suppressed identity. Oliver’s first published work was a 2018 story he submitted for entry in author Anita Heiss’s biographical anthology entitled “Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia”.

Oliver relocated to Melbourne to study at the Victorian College of the Arts. After returning from a period of travel overseas, he became established as a producer and director of theater, festivals, and public art projects across Australia, New Zealand, France and Belgium. A leading designer of projects for diverse communities, Oliver is a co-chairperson of Melbourne’s biannual Blak & Bright First Nations Literary Festival; he is also a Board Director of the publishing house Magabala Books. Through his senior leadership positions, Oliver has fostered many opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to showcase their work, thus allowing Traditional Culture to publicly thrive.

In March of 2023, Magabala Books published “More Than These Bones”, Oliver’s debut collection of poems that details his journal through both heartbreak and self-discovery. Each poem is set in a different location and, often accompanied by a photograph or drawing, adds another dimension to his life story. Oliver’s writing is also featured in the anthology “Nangamay Mana Djurali”, a collection of voices from the Australian black queer community. Edited by Alison Whittaker and Steven Lindsay Ross, the anthology shows the diverse perspectives of life experienced by Aboriginal queer people in contemporary Australia.

Bebe Backhouse-Oliver’s website is located at: https://www.bebeoliver.com

Notes Magabala Books is Australia’s leading Indigenous publisher. Committed to nurturing the talent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytellers, the publishing house offers awards, creative grants and scholarships. Magabala Books also sponsors cultural projects including audio-visual installations, recordings of elders’ stories, and developing the book illustration skills of Kimberley Aboriginal artists. The Magabala Books website is located at: https://magabala.com.au

“Tadra / Buar (To Dream)”, a poem by Bebe Oliver and Fiji poet Daniel Sipeli, can be found, with a video recitation by Oliver, at the Red Room Poetry website: https://redroompoetry.org/poets/bebe-backhouse/tadra-buar-dream/

Feliciano Centurión

The Textile Art of Feliciano Centurión

Born in the city of San Ignacio, Misiones in March of 1962, Feliciano Centurión was a Paraguayan artist known for his painting and textile work that incorporated painting, knitting, crocheting and embroidering. He was raised in a matriarchal household where he was taught the traditional crafts normally associated with women’s work.

Feliciano Centurión’s family fled to Formosa, Argentina to escape the military dictatorship of Paraguayan President Alfredo Stroessner. He received his initial art education in the visual arts at Formosa’s Oscar R. Albertozzi School of Fine Arts. Centurión permanently relocated to Buenos Aires where he studied painting at the Ernesto de la Cárcova Superior School of Fine Arts and the Prilidiano Pueyrredón School of Fine Arts. He earned the National Professor and Superior Professor of Painting degrees.

Centurión incorporated ordinary household items into his artwork, such as blankets (frazadas), handkerchiefs, and pillowcases which he purchased at local street markets. His textile work followed the weaving traditions held by the indigenous Guaraní people of the interior regions of South America, particularly those of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. Centurión also integrated the technique of ñandutí, an intricate method of lace weaving that was traditionally taught from mother to daughter. His design motifs included images of both flora and fauna as well as diaristic texts.

After surviving the dictatorships in both Paraguay and Argentina, Feliciano Centurión thrived in Argentina after the collapse of the country’s authoritarian regime in 1983. He became associated with the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, a cultural center operated by the University of Buenos Aires, where he became acquainted with the work of other young artists. Centurión incorporated the kitsch references and queer aesthetics of these artists into his painting and embroidery work now being done on inexpensive, patterned blankets. Established as an artist, he participated in thirty-one solo exhibitions in Argentina and Paraguay between 1990 and 1996.

Diagnosed with HIV in 1992 at a time when no accessible treatments were available, Centurión began chronicling his declining health by weaving texts into increasingly smaller and more intricate fabrics. At a time when government policies and media reports stigmatized the virus and its victims, he expressed humanizing, sentimental notions of comfort and intimacy into his fabric work. Centurión’s works were composed of bright colors and animals, such as snails and crocodiles, remembered from his childhood. His blankets celebrated both his matriarchal upbringing and Paraguay heritage; he used his embroidered work to express his queer identity and elevate the status of textile art.

Feliciano Centurión had his first solo exhibition in 1982 at the Estimulo del Belles Artes in Asunción, Paraguay, and represented Paraguay at the fifth Havana Biennial in 1994. His final works, a series of embroidered pillows, were made while he was hospitalized. Centurión died on the seventh of November of 1996 at the age of thirty-four in Buenos Aires.

A retrospective of Centurión’s work was exhibited in 2018 at the 33rd São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. The Americas Society/Council of Americas (AS/COA) held the first solo exhibition of his work in the United States from February to November of 2020. Held at its Park Avenue gallery in New York City, this exhibition received the support of the WaldenGallery, Galeria Millan, and Cecilia Brunson Projects as well as the City of New York. Centurión’s work is included in the current 2024 exhibition, “The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art”, at London’s Barbican Art Gallery until the 26th of May.

Notes: The exhibition catalogue “Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo” from the Americas Society/Council of Americas’s 2020 exhibition, which contains the exhibited work and an extensive biography, can be located at: https://www.as-coa.org/sites/default/files/archive/FelicianoCenturionPocketBook.pdf

The Visual AIDS site has a tribute page to Centurión which contains a short biography and an online collection of over fifty images of his work: https://visualaids.org/artists/feliciano-centurion

Second Insert Image: Feliciano Centurión, “Flamencos”, circa 1990, Acrylic on Blanket, 42 x 53 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Feliciano Centurión, “Surubí”, 1992, Acrylic and Varnish on Blanket, 200 x 190 cm, Private Collection

Antoni Rząsa

The Artwork of Antoni Rząsa

Born in February of 1919 in Futoma, a village located at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, Antoni Rząsa was a Polish sculptor whose works were inspired by native folk art. He was born in an area where Catholic churches, having been erected since the sixteenth-century, were later surrounded by Orthodox temples. The art of creating both practical and spiritual objects from wood was a common and flourishing tradition in Poland’s Subcarpathian Voivodeship.

Attracted by the characteristics of wood and its carving, Rząsa carried on local tradition and began combining the religious experience with the folk art of the region. His work presented to the viewer an uncharacteristic understanding of faith, suffering and humor. Rzasa’s figures of weeping Marys and Crucified Christs captivated both priests and atheists with their gestures and openness to more than one interpretation. In addition to his iconic figures, Rząsa also created figures drawn from family experiences and a series of carved chairs and benches with elements of flora and fauna.

Antino Rząsa graduated from the High School of Fine Arts in Zakopane, a southern Polish town in the region of Podhale. In 1938, he studied at the city’s School of Wood Industry under Polish sculptor Antoni Kenar, who was reforming the educational system by placing an emphasis on traditional folk art and its connection to contemporary art. In his own work, Kenar combined elements of the Podhale region with influences from Cubism and Art Déco.

In 1939, Rząsa’s studies were suspended with the outbreak of World War II. He joined the local guerrilla group in 1940 within which he served as a messenger runner. During his war service, Rząsa received notice that his mother had died in 1941. He returned to Zakopane in 1948 and resumed his studies under the guidance of Antoni Kenar at the School of Wood Industry. Rząsa graduated in 1952, the same year his father died. Invited by Kenar to teach sculpture at the school, he taught and lectured there until 1973. During his tenure, the school was renamed the Antoni Kenar Art School Complex after Kenar’s death in 1959.

Antoni Rząsa created the majority of his work through the creation of multiple series revolving around themes both secular and religious. His first series was the “Days of War” which covered a two year period from 1956 to 1958. In 1960, Rząsa started the one-year “Saint Annes”cycle and also began a twelve-year cycle entitled “The Pietas”. The most prolific of his series was “The Cycle of Crosses” which include six cycles created over a period of thirteen years from 1962 to 1975.

Rząsa’s first group showing was the 1952 “Utility in Art” exhibition held in Zakopane. Other group exhibitions followed regularly In Berlin, Geneva, London, Warsaw, Shanghai and Beijing. In 1963, Rząsa had two solo exhibitions: the Artist and Viewer Gallery in Warsaw’s Łazienki Park and Kraków’s PAX Gallery. Other solo presentations included an exhibition at Warsaw’s Gallery of Sculpture in 1966, two shows in Zakopane in 1968 and 1973, and a 1972 solo exhibition in Chester, England. Polish directors Anna Micińska and Grzegorz Dubowski premiered their short 1973 biographical film “Portret Antoniego Rząsy (The Portrait of Antoni Rząsa)” at the Kraków Film Festival where they each were given a bronze award for their directorial work.

In 1974, Antoni Rząsa with his wife Halina and son Marcin began construction of a home and gallery on Bogdańskiego Street in Zakopane. The next year, he showed his new work at a solo exhibition in Kraków’s Gallery of Contemporary Art. In 1976, Rząsa began his last Cycle of Crosses entitled “The Women of Ravensbrück” in honor of the one hundred and thirty thousand, mostly female, prisoners at that concentration camp. In July of the same year, the newly opened Antoni Rząsa Gallery on Bogdańskiego Street had its first exhibition.

On the twenty-sixth of January in 1980, Antoni Rząsa died and was buried in the Cemetery for People of Merit at the Pęksowy Brzyzk Cemetery in Zakopane. He was survived by his son Marcin and wife Halina Rząsa, who died on the fourteenth of December in the same year. Rząsa’s work is included in the collections of the Polish Army Museum; the National Museums in Warsaw, Kraków, and Poznań; the Reconciliation Chapel of the Ark of the Lord Church in Kraków-Fieńczyce; and in private collections in the United States, Denmark, Belgium, France, Italy and the Vatican. The Antoni Rząsa Gallery is currently managed by Marcin Rząsa and family.

The Antoni Rząsa Gallery website contains images of Rząsa’s work, testimonials from his friends, and contact information. The site address is: https://antonirzasa.pl/en/

Top Insert Image: Krystyna Gorazdowska, “Antoni Rząsa”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Antoni Rząsa, “Thoughtful”, 1960, Wood, 67.5 x 29 x 21.5 cm.

Third Insert Image: Antoni Rząsa, “Pieta Tobruku”, 1960, Polychrome Wood, 121 x 81 x 45 cm

Bottom Insert Image: Antoni Rząsa, “Pieta Tobruku”, 1960, Reverse, Polychrome Wood, 121 x 81 x 45 cm

Johan Rudolf Bonnet

The Artwork of Johan Rudolf Bonnet

Born in March of 1895 in Amsterdam, Johan Rudolf Bonnet was a Dutch artist who immersed himself in the culture and landscape of the Indonesian province of Bali. Particularly interested in the subject of portraiture, he took great care that his subjects were represented to the highest classical standard. Bonnet was keenly aware the colonial Dutch East Indies’ indigenous populations faced a fragile future in the twentieth-century world.

In the 1920s, Bonnet traveled around Europe and spent a substantial amount of time in Italy, particularly Florence where he learned the art of fresco painting. Inspired by the work of the Italian Renaissance, he sought to capture the emotions and expressions of Balinese life as seen through European eyes that cared deeply for the richness of life the island offered. Bonnet’s body of work draws parallels with the art of Renaissance painter Michelangelo Buonarotti, whom he considered one of his greatest examples, not in the least because they were both trained as mural painters.

Rudolf Bonnet used his draftsman training to create works with a subtle palette and clean lines. His work showed both his keen observation as well as his deep respect for his subjects and their culture. Influenced by the Art Nouveau movement in the early twentieth-century; Bonnet was used to stylizing his model’s faces, often elongating them. Yet, they would never become caricatures; they would always remain dignified and autonomous. It was Bonnet’s way of emphasizing the beauty he perceived.

Born to descendants of a Dutch-Huguenot family, Johan Rudolf Bonnet attended Amsterdam’s State Academy of Fine Arts and its National Arts and Crafts School. In 1920, he traveled to Italy where he produced a collection of drawings depicting village scenes, local people and landscapes. Bonnet rented a studio for several months in Rome and, during his stay in the city, met Dutch painter and printmaker Wijnand Otto Jan Nieuwenkemp. As the first European artist to visit Bali, Nieuwenkemp persuaded Bonnet to explore that country which had so impressed him. Bonnet first traveled to North Africa; the paintings exhibited and sold on this trip enabled him to continue his voyage to Bali.

Rudolf Bonnet arrived in Balit in 1929 and met German artist Walter Spies and the Dutch musicologist Jaap Kunst. With Kunst, he made a trip to the Indonesian island of Nias, which lies off the western shore of Sumatra. Upon his return to Bali in 1930, Bonnet was invited to live in town of Ubud by Cokorda Gde Raka Sukawati, an elected member of the Volksraad, the People’s Council. In 1936, Bonnet, along with Walter Spies, Cokorda Sukawati, and painter and sculptor I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, formed the Pita Maha (Great Spirit, Guiding Inspiration) artist association to select artists whose work could be exhibited and sold throughout the Indies, the Netherlands, and the United States.

After the outbreak of the war in Europe, Bonnet remained free in Bali until 1942 when the Japanese invaders ordered him sent to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. He spent the remainder of the war inside internment camps in Bolong, Para-Para and Makassar. Walter Spies was arrested as a German national and was interred by the Dutch authorities in Bali as an enemy alien. In 1942, he and four hundred seventy-seven other German internees were deported by the Dutch to Ceylon. Their ship was bombed by Japanese planes; Spies and most of the other prisoners died at sea.

In 1947, Rudolf Bonnet returned to Bali where he built a house and studio in the Campaun area of southeastern Bali. Although the Dutch and Indonesian governments were in a period of worsening relations, he was able to reside in Bali due tohis relationship with President Sukarno, who had collected fourteen of Bonnet’s paintings. Bonnet founded the Golongan Pelukis Ubud (Ubud Painters’ Group) and created designs for Bali’s Museum Puri Lukisan, the Royal Museum of Paintings.

In 1957, Bonnet was expelled from Indonesia after he refused to finish President Sukarno’s portrait. He did not return to Bali until 1972, two years after Sukarno’s death. Upon his return, Bonnet assisted in the Royal Museum’s expansion and organized its opening exhibition. He died in Laren, Holland in April of 1978 after a long illness. Johan Rudolf Bonnet was cremated and the ashes brought to Bali. These ashes were combined with the ashes of his long-time friend Cokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, who had died in 1967, and were burnt together in a great cremation ceremony.

Rudolf Bonnet’s work is housed in many private collections and the collections of the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller in Amsterdam, the Neka Art Museum in Bali, and the Singer Museum in Laren, Holland. Founded in 1980 and supported by donations, the Rudolf Bonnet Foundation Netherlands supports Balinese artists and brings their work to the Netherlands for exhibitions.

Second Insert Image: Johan Rudolf Bonnet, “Self Portrait”, 1927, Pastel on Paper

Third Insert Image: Johan Rudolf Bonnet, “Male Torso”, Date Unknown, Color Pastels and Watercolor on Paper, 63.5 x 50 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Johan Rudolf Bonnet, “Self Portrait”, 1976 , Crayon and Pastel on Paper

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn

The Meditation Drawing Screenprints of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn

Born in London in October of 1881, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn was a Dutch spiritualist, theosophist, scholar and printmaker. Her father was Albertus Kapteyn, an engineer, inventor and the older brother of astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn. After working six years at the London site of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, he was appointed Director General in 1887. Olga Kapteyn’s mother was Truus Muysken, an activist in social renewal and women’s emancipation. Among her circle of friends were playwright George Bernard Shaw and Russian anarchist Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin.

Olga Kapteyn’s initial education was at the North London Collegiate School where she became close friends with Marie Stopes who became a leading plant paleobotanist and founder of Britain’s first birth control clinic. Near the turn of the century, the Kapteyn family moved to Zürich, Switzerland where Olga attended the School of Applied Arts. She continued her education with a major in Art History at the University of Zürich.

In 1909, Olga Kapteyn married Iwan Hermann Fröbe, a Croatian-Austrian conductor and flutist with Zürich’s opera orchestra; his conducting career took the couple first to Munich and later in 1910 to Berlin. At the outset of World War I, Olga and Iwan left Berlin and returned to Zürich. After the birth of twin daughters, tragedy struck the family; Iwan Fröbe perished in a September 1915 plane crash near the city of Vienna.

Five years later, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn traveled with her father to the Swiss village of Ascona, home to the Monte Verità Sanatorium. Albertus Kapteyn bought a nearby ancient farmhouse, the Casa Gabriella, which from 1920 onwards became Olga’s home. Fröbe-Kapteyn began to study Vedic philosophy, meditation and theosophy, a philosophical system which draws its teachings predominantly from Russian author and mystic Helena Blavatsky’s writings. Among her friends and influences at this time were Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, German poet Ludwig Derieth, and sinologist and theologian Richard Wilhelm whose translation of the “I Ching” is still regarded as one of the finest.

In 1928, Fröbe-Kapteyn built an informal research center near her home. Religion historian Rudolf Otto suggested a name derived from the ancient Greek for the center, Eranos, which translates as a banquet to which guests bring contributions. Carl Jung suggested its conference room serve as a symposium site for interdisciplinary discussion and research. The annual lecture program, Eranos Tagungen, began in August of 1933. A roster of intellecuals from various disciplines were invited to give lectures on a particular topic; these lectures were then published in the Eranos year book. To illustrate each symposium, Fröbe-Kapteyn devoted her time to finding images and symbols that would best illustrate the topic.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn’s research in archetypes took her to major libraries in Europe and America. These included, among others, the British Museum, the Vatican Library, New York City’s Morgan Library and Museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and Athen’s Archaeological Museum. Fröbe-Kapteyn created the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, ARAS, which housed photographs of works of art, ritual images, and artifacts of sacred traditions, as well as, world-wide contemporary art. She amassed a collection of over six-thousand works, many of which were later used to illustrate Carl Jung’s writings. Today the New York-based institution, now under the auspices of the C.G. Jung Foundation, contains more than seventeen thousand images which are currently available online.

Fröbe-Kapteyn was interested in iconography since her childhood, an interest developed as she watched her father create images from photographic film in the darkroom. After following a lengthly series of meticulously drawn experiments in geometric abstraction, she produced a series of elaborate screen-prints between 1927 and 1934. Those prints combined the high energy of the Futurist art movement with her intense study of archetypical signs and symbols. Fröbe-Kapteyn’s prints were directly influenced by the English theosophist Alice Bailey, whom she met in the late 1920s. Bailey had used art as a tool in psychotherapy; through the drawing process, subconscious messages would be placed on paper or canvas.

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn’s prints and paintings exhibit great precision in their geometric shapes. They include diagrams of intersecting circles, which serve as an impetus for meditation, as well as, cryptic symbols enhanced with gold leaf and obscure figurative work. Fröbe-Kapteyn used a limited color palette, predominated by blue, red, gold and black. The rigid geometry of the image is reinforced by the choice of mostly cold colors which are opposed by the color black, symbolic of shadow and death, and the color gold, symbolic of light and life. The actual number of the screen-print sets Fröbe-Kapteyn produced is unknown.

A Swiss resident for most of her life, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn passed away at her Casa Gabriella in 1962 at the age of eighty-one years. The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism is still an active organization today and continues its mission with a new generation of lecturers and researchers.

Notes: A fourteen piece set of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn’s Meditation Drawing Screenprints, produced in 1930, is housed in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicage. They are available for viewing at: https://www.artic.edu/collection?artist_ids=Olga%20Fröbe-Kapteyn

Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn’s Meditation Drawing Screenprints, available for sale, can also be found at the online site of Gerrish Fine Art located at: https://gerrishfineart.com/artist/olga-frobe-kapteyn/

The online site of the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism is located at: https://aras.org

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, Ascona”, 1933, Gelatin Silver Print, Fondazione Eranos Ascona

Second Insert Image: Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, “Reincarnation”, 1930, Screenprint, 49.7 x 36 cm Paper Size, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, “Swastika Meditation Drawing”, Screenprint with Gold Foil, Dimensions Unknown, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn and Guests”, 1958 Eranos Jungian Psychoanalysts’ Conference, Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland, Gelatin Silver Print, The Israeli Museum, Jerusalem

Fiona Hall

The Artwork of Fiona Hall

Born in Oatley, New South Wales in November of 1953, Fiona Margaret Hall is an Australian sculptor and photographer. Born to radio-physicist and astronomer Ruby Payne-Scott and telephone technician William Hall, she developed an early appreciation of nature during weekend walks in the Royal National Park. During her primary school years, Hall’s mother took her to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see the 1967 exhibition “Two Decades of American Painting” which heightened her exposure to the world of art.

Fiona Hall made the decision to pursue an art career and majored in painting at the East Sydney Technical School, now the National Art School, under John Firth-Smith, a Sydney abstract painter highly regarded for his Sydney Harbor scenes. Through her participation in Sydney’s early 1970s experimental art scene, Hall became interested in photography. As the college did not offer a major in photography, Firth-Smith initially mentored her in the subject. Hall later studied photography as a minor for her degree under printmaker and photographer George Schwarz; it was Schwarz who wrote and taught the first photography course at the National Art School.

In 1974 while still a student, Hall exhibited her photographic work as part of the “Thoughts and Images” group exhibition at the Ewing and George Paton Galleries, a central hub for experimental art in Australia during the 1970s and 1980s. Hall graduated in 1975 with her graduate exhibition solely based in photography. She relocated to London in January of 1976 and spent three months of that year visiting numerous art institutions in Europe. Upon her return to London, Fiona Hall began working with Peter Turner, the editor of the photography magazine “Creative Camera”.

While in London in 1977, Fiona Hall became an assistant to black and white landscape photographer Fay Goodwin and held her first solo photographic exhibition at the Creative Camera Gallery in London. Returning to Australia in 1978, she had her first Australian solo exhibition at the Church Street Photography Center in Melbourne. Hall relocated to the United States to study at New York’s Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester where she earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Photography in 1982.

Throughout the 1980s, Hall established a significant profile in the art world through her involvement in solo and group shows in Australia. In 1981 in Australia, she created “The Antipodean Suite”, a series of photographs of objects such as power cords and bananas. In the same year, five of her photographs were acquired for the public collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Beginning in 1983, Hall lectured in photography at Adelaide’s South Australian School of Art until her formal resignation in 2002. She received a commission in 1984 to document the new Parliament House of Australia and produced a portfolio of forty-four photographs depicting the new structure.

Beginning in the 1980s, Fiona Hall began to incorporate more sculptural works into her exhibitions. In 1984, she produced the series “Morality Dolls: The Seven Deadly Sins”, a group of seven cardboard marionettes constructed from photocopies of medical engravings. Hall’s “Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy” consisted of photographs of human figures made from painted and burnished aluminum cans. Starting in 1989, she produced a continuing series of work entitled “Paradisus Terestris” which used sardine tins to form botanical sculptures. These botanical forms sat on top of opened sardine cans which revealed human sexual parts corresponding to the attributes of the plants above. By the late 1990s, Hall had completely stopped her photographic work to focus on sculpture.

Since then, Hall has received numerous commissions for many public works. Among these are the 1998 “Fern Garden”, a twenty-square-meter permanent installation of landscape art at the National Gallery of Australia; the 1998 series “Cash Crop” at the Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens; the 2000 “A Folly for Mrs Macquarie” in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens; and a sculpture for the Chancellery Building of the University of South Australia.

Fiona Hall represented Australia in 2015 at the 56th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale with an installation work entitled “Wrong Way Time”. This work was created with the collaboration of the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, a social enterprise of the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council which provides a range of community, family, research and advocacy services. This exhibition focused on the themes of death, extinction and annihilation. Included in the installation was Hall’s “All the King’s Men”, a series of twenty sculptures constructed of shredded military uniforms knitted by the artist into twenty oversized heads adorned with teeth, bones and found objects. These hollow skeletal figures represented the many who have fallen, and would fall, in war and conflict.

Hall continues to exhibit her work at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney where she has exhibited since 1995. In 2013 she became an Officer in the general division of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the visual arts as a painter, sculptor, photographer and art educator.

Note: An interview between Fiona Hall and Anna Dickie on Hall’s “Wrong Way Time” exhibition can be found at the online art magazine “Ocula” located at: https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/fiona-hall/

A listing of Fiona Hall’s exhibitions and additional images of her “Paradisus Terestris” sculptures can be found at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery site located at: https://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/exhibition/paradisus-terestris/5ukxp

Second Insert Image: Fiona Hall, “Wrong Way Time”, 2015, Installation View, Australian Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale

Third Insert Image: Fiona Hall, “”Lair”, 2004, 15 cm / “Lesion”, 2004, 19 cm / “Rising Tide”, 2002, 15 cm, Musical Snow Domes, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Fiona Hall, “Wrong Way Time”, 2015, Installation View, Australian Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale

Bottom Insert Image: Fiona Hall, Untitled, 2015, Coal and Aluminum, 50 x 40 x 32 cm, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Carlos Mérida

Top Image: Carlos Mérida, “The Three Princesses”, 1955, Lacquer and Casein on Parchment on Laminated Wood, 41 z 32 cm, Saint Louis Art Museum

Bottom Image: Carlos Mérida, “Los Hechiceros (Sorcerers)”, 1958, Oil and Polytec on Panel, 70.2 x 109.9 cm, Private Collection

Born in Guatemala City in December of 1891, Carlos Mérida was a Guatemalan artist who was one of the first artists to fuse European modernism to Latin American themes. His heritage was of mixed Spanish and Maya-Quiché ancestry, a culture he promoted throughout his career. Although initially studying both art and music, Mérida, due to the partial loss of his hearing at age fifteen, concentrated his talents on his artwork, with a particular emphasis on painting.

Mérida entered Guatemala City’s Institute of Arts and Crafts, and later enrolled at the Institute of Science and Letters, where he became interested in the avant-garde movement. In 1910 at the age of nineteen, Mérida, with the help of Catalan artist, poet and writer Jaime Sabartés, organized his first solo exhibition at the offices of EL Economista, one of Guatemala City’s newspapers. Later in the same year, seeing little opportunity for an art career in Guatemala, he traveled to Europe where he settled in Paris, sought employment, and traveled the continent.

During his stay in Europe, Mérida became acquainted with many of Europe’s emerging artists, such as painters Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Amedeo Modigliani. He also met Latin American artists who were studying in Europe at that time, including Diego Rivera, Ángel Zárraga, and Gerardo Murillo Cornado. Mérida exhibited his work, primarily figurative and landscape, at the Independent Salon and the Biroux Gallery, both located in Paris.

Returning to Guatemala in 1914, Carlos Mérida developed an interest in the diversity of his country’s folklore and pre-Hispanic art, which he began to use as a theme for his work. He exhibited his new work in the following year at his second show in Guatemala, an exhibition that would mark the beginning of modern painting in Guatemala. In 1919, after staying five years in Guatemala, Mérida moved to Mexico City. Gaining recognition for both his easel and mural works, he had his first exhibition in Mexico in 1920 at the National School of Fine Arts and, in the same year, his first show in the United States at the Hispanic Society of New York. One of Mérida’s earliest projects in Mexico was working on the great 1922 mural at the National Preparatory School as an assistant to Diego Rivera, who introduced him to the politically driven Mexican Social-Realism movement.

In the late 1920s, Mérida returned to Europe, where his work underwent a shift inspired by the avant-garde works he encountered. Over the two decades from 1928 to 1948, Mérida had forty-five exhibitions in the United States, including New York’s 1922 Independent Artists Exhibition , and eighteen shows in Mexico, including the 1940 International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City.

Carlos Mérida is best known for his mural and canvas work, most of which was executed in Mexico. He also did engraving, theater set design, and mosaic work; however, his preference was towards works on canvas. Like his contemporary Rufino Tamayo, with whom he shared a 1930 exhibition at the Art Center of New York, Mérida generally did not paint large-scale narrative paintings, and was more interested in painting than politics. His work was not concerned with the representation of things, but rather a concept of them.

Mérida’s body of work shows a progression of experiments in form, color and techniques, with music and dance, two passions in Mérida’s life, influencing the work’s rhythmic flow. From 1907 to 1926, during the art world’s transition from Impressionism to Cubism, his early work in Europe was figurative, influenced by the works of Picasso and Modigliani. Mérida’s surrealistic phase began in the late 1920s and continued to the middle of the 1940s. At this time, he became one of Mexico’s first non-figurative painters with a series of works leaning towards abstractionism. From 1950 until his death, Mérida’s work is marked with a focus on geometric forms, particularly those found in indigenous cultures such as the Maya.

Carlos Mérida, convinced of a need to establish a natively American art form, felt it was important to emphasize his New World identity and culture. His work reflected on both Aztec and Maya cultures, including its folklore, and promoted its indigenous motifs. Mérida painted the indigenous people and landscapes of Mexico and Central America without the sentimental overtures of his predecessors. The discovery of the Bonampak ruins in 1946, with its temple frescoes, bas-reliefs, and burials, inspired him with new ideas which eventually led to his integrating painting and sculpture into architecture.

In 1932, Mérida, along with Carlos Orozco Romero, founded the dance school of the Secretaiat of Public Education which he oversaw for three years. His interest in dance led to designing stage sets and costumes for twenty-two performances from 1940 to 1979. He also documented one hundred and sixty-two examples of indigenous dance, including pre-Hispanic. Mérida’s first retrospective was in 1966, followed by one in 1981 and again in 1992. A man committed to promoting the handcrafts and folk art of Latin America, particularly those of Guatemala, Carlos Mérida died in Mexico City at the age of ninety-four on December 21st of 1985.

Carlos Mérida’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Brazil’s Museo de Arte Moderno in San Paolo, the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.

Top Insert Artwork: Carlos Mérida, Untitled, 1925-27, Lithograph, Images of Guatemala Series, 22.8 x 33 cm, San Antonio Museum of Art

Bottom Insert Artwork: Carlos Mérida, “El Ojo del Adivino (The Eye of the Fortune Teller)”, 1984, Oil on Canvas, 105.2 x 90.7 cm, Private Collection

Calendar: December 25

Year: Day to Day Men: December 25

Christmas Morning’s Present

The 25th of December in 1921 marks the last major Potlatch led by the Kwakwaka’wakw Chief Daniel Cranmer in British Columbia, Canada.

A potlatch is a gift-giving ceremonial feast by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific northwest coast of Canada and the United States. Among such cultures as the Heiltsuk, Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka’wakw and Coast Salish, it is traditionally their primary governmental institution, legislative body and economic system. The potlatch demonstrated a leader’s wealth and position through the giving away or destruction of wealth or valuable items.

The Potlatch focused on the reaffirmation of family, clan and international ties as well as the human connection to the spiritual world. It was also strict system of resource management, a time when coastal peoples negotiated and affirmed rights to and use of specific resources and territories. The recitation of oral histories and the honoring of the supernatural forces were an integral part of the ceremony; music, dances, singing, storytelling and speeches were also involved.

The Kwakwaka’wakw are one of the indigenous peoples residing on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their traditional territory encompassed northern Vancouver Island, the nearby smaller islands including the Discovery Islands, and the adjacent British Columbia mainland. The Kwakwaka’wakw are organized politically into thirteen First Nation bands, a basic unit of government with a council chaired by either an elected or hereditary chief.

Born April of 1885 in Knight Inlet, Chief Daniel Cranmer carried the Nimpkish (‘Namgis) hereditary name Pal’nakwala Wakas. He was at the center of one of the most significant Nimpkish cultural events of the early 20th century. Cranmer held a notable potlatch on Village Island (ʼMimkwa̱mlis) from December 21st to the 25th in 1921. It is significant as it was one of the largest public First Nations’ potlatches in defiance of the Indian Act legislation, Section 149, that prohibited an ill-defined collection of aboriginal ceremonies under the general description of potlatch.

Indian Agent W.M. Halliday presided over the trial held at the Albert Bay Day School, which for the duration of the trial also served as the jail. In April of 1922, the arrests and trial resulted in fifty-eight verdicts of which there were nine dismissals and 49 convictions. Twenty-six of those convicted were brought by boat to Vancouver and then to the Oakalla Prison in Bumaby; twenty-two of the convicted were sentenced to two months imprisonment and four received six months imprisonment.

Twenty-three of those convicted received suspended sentences after agreeing to turn over their ceremonial regalia to Indian Agent Halliday and promising to abandon potlatches. The confiscated ceremonial regalia came to be commonly known as the “Potlatch Collection”. These artifacts were dispersed to public cultural institutions in the United States, England, and Canada as well as private collectors. Efforts to repatriate the collection began in the late 1950s

The government of Canada had criminalized potlatches from 1885 to 1951. However, potlatches persisted underground despite the risk of governmental reprisals which included mandatory jail sentences of a least two months. Since the ceremony was decriminalized in 1951, the potlatch has made a resurgence in some communities. In many of the Indigenous nations, the potlatch is still the basis of Indigenous governance; most notable is the Haida Nation whose democracy is firmly rooted in potlatch law.

Note: The word “potlatch” is derived from the Chinook Wawa, a language which originated as a pidgin trade language in the Pacific Northwest. A mixture of the Chinook, French, English and other language systems, Chinook Wawa spread during the nineteenth-century through British Columbia, Alaska, Northern California, Idaho and Montana. Potlatch, meaning to give away or a gift, originated from the Nuu-chah-nulth word ‘paɬaˑč’, meaning to make a ceremonial gift in a potlatch.

A history of the Potlatch Collection can be found at the U’mista Cultural Center site located at: https://www.umista.ca/pages/collection-history

Calendar: March 16

Year: Day to Day Men; March 16

The Darkness of the Night

The sixteenth of March in 1621 marks the day Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore, made contact with the Pilgrims of the recently established Plymouth Colony, the first permanent English colony in New England.

Samoset was a sagamore, or subordinate chief, of an Eastern Abenaki tribe that resided in Maine. The Abenaki, ‘People of the Dawn Land’, are indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. The are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy of the five principal Eastern Algonquian Nations.

Samoset had learned some English from visiting an earlier settled fishing camp in the Gulf of Maine; English fishermen would fish cod off the coast of Mohegan Island. In March of 1621, Samoset was visiting Massasoit, the sachem or leader of the Wampanoag Confederacy. Massasoit’s people had been seriously weakened by a series of epidemics and were vulnerable to attacks by the Narragansetts, the most powerful tribe in the region when the English colonists arrived in 1620. Massasoit Sachem sought an alliance with the Plymouth colonists as a way to protect his people.

On Friday, the sixteenth of March in 1621, Samoset entered the settlement at Plymouth alone and greeted the colonists in English. He was the first indigenous person with whom the colonists could converse. Samoset told the colonists about the land, the sagamores, and his people’s strength and numbers. He was also acquainted with many of the captains and fishermen who visited the colony. Samoset and the colonists communicated and, in the evening, lodged at colonist Stephen Hopkin’s house.

The next morning, the Plymouth colonists gave Samoset a knife, bracelet and a ring before he left with a promise to return. On the twenty-second of March, Samoset returned with Tisquantum, commonly known as Squanto, the last known member of the Wampanoag Patuxet tribe. Squanto, who spoke a greater degree of English, arranged a meeting between the leaders of the colonists and Massasoit.

Massasoit forged critical personal and political ties with colonial leaders William Bradford, Stephen Hopkins, Edward Winslow, John Carver and Myles Standish, which grew from the peace treaty negotiated on the twenty-second of March in 1621. The alliance assured the neutrality of the Wampanoag Confederacy during the 1636 Pequot War.

Notes: In the fall of 1621, the Narragansetts sent a sheaf of arrows wrapped in a snakeskin to Plymouth Colony as a threatening challenge. Plymouth governor William Bradford sent the snakeskin back filled with gunpowder and bullets. The Narragansetts understood the message and did not attack them.

English Sea Captain Christopher Levett entertained Samoset and other tribal leaders in 1624 onboard his ship at harbor in Portland, Maine. Samoset is believed to have died circa 1653 in Pemaquid, Maine.

Calendar: February 16

Year: Day to Day Men: February 16

A Daydream Moment

The sixteenth of February in 1923 marks the opening of the sealed door to the burial chamber of the Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun. During his reign of ten years, Tutankhamun restored the traditional polytheistic form of the ancient Egyptian religion from the religious-political changes enacted by the former pharaoh Akhenaten.

Born in May of 1874, British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter was from an early age interested in Egyptian artifacts; he would often visit and draw illustrations of specimens in the collection owned by the Amherst family. Impressed by his skills, Lady Amherst made arrangements for seventeen year-old Carter to assist British Egyptologist Percy Newberry in an excavation at Middle Kingdom tombs on the Lower Nile River.

After training under Egyptologists Flinders Petrie and Édouard Naville, Carter was appointed in 1899 as Inspector of Monuments for Upper Egypt by the Egyptian Antiquities Service. Based at Luxor, he oversaw excavations at nearby Thebes and supervised American archaeologist Theodore Davis’s systematic exploration of the Valley of the Kings. During his service, Carter improved the protection and accessibility to existing excavations and developed a grid-block system for tomb searching.

In 1907, Carter began his employment with George Edward Herbert, 5th Lord of Carnarvon, a financial backer for Egyptian antiquities research. Lord Carnarvon received in 1914 the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings. Carter led a systematic search for any tombs that were missed in previous expeditions, including that of Tutankhamun. The search was halted during the years of the First World War and resumed in 1917. After five years with no major finds, Carnarvon became dissatisfied with the project; howver, after a discussion with Carter, he agreed to fund one more season of work in the Valley of the Kings.

On the fourth of November in 1922, a water boy discovered a buried flight of stairs cut into the bedrock. After partially digging out the steps, a mud-plastered doorway was found stamped with indistinct cartouches. Howard Carter had the staircase refilled and notified Lord Carnarvon of the find by telegram. On November twenty-third, Carnarvon arrived accompanied by his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert. The full extent of the stairway was cleared on the next day; it revealed Tutankhamun’s cartouche on the outer doorway. The doorway was removed and the corridor behind it was cleared of rubble.

With Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn and Carter’s assistant Arthur Callender present, Howard Carter opened a tiny breach in the door of the tomb and was able to see the many gold and ebony treasures within. Carter had in fact discovered the burial tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The site was secured until the morning of the twenty-seventh of November, at which time the tomb was officially opened in the presence of a member of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.

Tutankhamun’s tomb was virtually intact with all its furnishings and shrines, in spite of previous ancient break-ins. Two life-sized statues of Tutankhamun guarded the sealed doorway to the inner burial chamber. Assisted by staff members of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art which included archeologist Arthur Mace and photographer Harry Burton, Howard Carter over the next several months catalogued and preserved the contents of the chambers.

On the sixteenth of February in 1923, Howard Carter opened the sealed inner doorway and confirmed it led to a burial chamber that contained the sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. His tomb was considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. Carter’s meticulous assessing and cataloguing the thousands of objects in the tomb took nearly ten years; the final work was completed in February of 1932.

Despite the significance of the find, Howard Carter received no honors from the British government. In 1926, he received the Order of the Nile, third class, from Egypt’s King Fuad I. Carter was also award an honorary Doctor of Science from Yale University and a honorary membership in Madrid’s Real Academia de la Historia.

Calendar: January 31

Year: Day to Day Men: January 31

Stereoscopic Viewing

On January 31st in 1800, one of the earliest Native American literary writers, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, was born in Sault Ste. Marie located in the upper peninsula of the present state of Michigan. She was of Scottish-Irish and Ojibwe ancestry, born to John Johnston, a fur trader, and Ozhaguscodaywayquay, the daughter of Waubojeeg, a prominent Ojibwe war chief. Her parents were historically famous leaders in both the Ojibwe and Euro-American communities.

Jane Johnson Schoolcraft was fluent in the language and learned of both the English and Ojibwe cultures, which offered her a unique perspective for her creative work. She wrote poetry and traditional Ojibwe stores and translated many Ojibwe songs into English. Schoolcraft mostly wrote in English but published some poems in the Ojibwe language.

In her early twenties, Jane Johnston met Henry Schoolcraft, an American ethnologist and geographer who was conducting an expedition in the territory of present-day Michigan. They married in 1822 and began a relationship that proved significant for both of them. The marriage offered Jane a means to express her own literary talents; she also provided Henry insights on Ojibwe culture and language that aided his ethnological work.

Jane Schoolcraft’s poetry and translated Obijwe stories made noteworthy contributions to American literature. Her work is one of the earliest examples of Native American literature published in the United States. Schoolcraft’s influence is evident in many of the stories that Henry Schoolcraft collected; her translations and insights aided him in his later role as a government agent for Native Americans.

In 1826 and 1827, Schoolcraft’s writings were published in a handwritten magazine entitled “The Literary Voyager”, produced by Henry Schoolcraft. These issues were distributed widely to residents of Sault Ste. Marie as well as people in New York, Detroit and other cities. Her work also appeared in a six-volume study known as “Indian Tribes of the United States” that was commissioned in 1846 by the United States Congress.

In 1841, Henry and Jane Schoolcraft moved to New York City where Henry was employed by the state of New York to research Native American culture. After having suffered several illnesses, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft died at the age of forty-two in May of 1842 while visiting her married sister in Canada. She was buried at St. John’s Anglican Church in present-day Ancaster, Ontario. Schoolcraft is recognized as the first Native American literary writer, both as a woman and a poet, as well as the first to write out traditional Native American stories.

Notes: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s Ojibwe name was Bamewawagezhikaquay, the literary translation means “Woman of the Sound (that the stars make) Rushing Through the Sky”. Her writings began to attract interest in the 1990s as work by minority communities began to be more widely studied. In 2008, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft was inducted into the Michigan’s Women’s Hall of Fame.

Calendar: January 8

Year: Day to Day Men: January 8

Man on Deck

The eighth of January in 1877 marks the Battle of Wolf Mountain, known by the Northern Cheyenne as the Battle of Belly Butte, a confrontation between the United States Army and warriors from both the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. Occurring during the Great Sioux War of 1876, the battle was fought in southern Montana Territory near the Tongue River.

Following Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s defeat in the Battle of Little Bighorn, a large number of Army reinforcements were sent by the government into the Montana Territory. In autumn of 1876, a few bands of Sioux and Cheyenne tribes were returning to the reservations and agencies, now managed by the army instead of civilian contractors, to acquire food and annuity goods for the winter. These provisions had been promised to the tribes after the government demanded that they cede the Black Hills area to it.

By December, General Nelsen Miles had led a mixed force of infantry, artillery and calvary after Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull’s band and effectively defeated them. Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie defeated the Northern Cheyenne under Chief Morning Star after a destructive raid, known as the Dull Knife Fight, that left two hundred lodges destroyed, seven hundred livestock captured, and most of the Cheyenne forced to surrender. The surviving warriors trekked through snow and icy conditions to join the camp of Chief Crazy Horse in the Tongue River Valley.

Concerned about the approaching winter and the situation of the remaining Cheyenne band, Chief Crazy Horse decided to negotiate a peace with the army. However, a group of United States Army Crow scouts murdered Crazy Horse’s delegation. In retaliation, a series of small raids by the Cheyenne tried to draw out Colonel Nelson Miles’s troops from the Tongue River army post. In December of 1876, Miles led most of nine companies from the army post in pursuit of Crazy Horse at Tongue River Valley. On the seventh of January, Miles captured a few Northern Cheyennes and camped with a force of four hundred-thirty six men along the Tongue River. That night fresh snow fell and the temperatures dropped.

After early morning shots were fired. Colonel Miles set up a defensive perimeter along a ridge on the knoll later called Battle Butte. The defensive position had two pieces of artillery beside it and a clear line of fire in front. At seven in the morning, Crazy Horse and Cheyenne Chief Two Moon began a series of attacks. Due the the army’s firepower, the warriors had to regroup and attack several times; however, these attacks failed when Miles shifted his reserves. Miles’s Fifth Infantry units struggled to take the hills occupied by the warriors; despite the deep snow, the units secured seven of the hills, forcing the Sioux and Cheyenne to withdraw.

Although a draw in many aspects, the Battle of Wolf Mountain was a strategic victory for the U.S. Army as the Sioux and Cheyenne saw they were not safe from the army even in winter’s harsh conditions. Many members of the tribes returned to the reservations. By May of 1877, Chief Crazy Horse had led his surviving band to Camp Robinson to surrender.

Notes: Chief Crazy Horse was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band; his Lakota name was Tȟašúŋke Witkó, literal translation “His Horse is Crazy”. After his surrender, he resided in his village near the Red Cloud Agency, located by Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Crazy Horse had promised he would remain in peace with the army. Due to mistranslation by an Indian interpreter, the army felt that he was a threat and eventually arrested and placed in the guardhouse. Once inside, Crazy Horse attempted to escape and was stabbed with a bayonet by one of the guards. He was tended by the assistant post surgeon but died late on the night of September fifth in 1877. The identification of the guard remains questioned. Crazy Horse’s remains were handed over to his elderly parents; his final resting place remains unknown.

Chief Morning Star was a great chief of the Northern Cheyenne people and the headchief of the Notameohmésêhese band on the northern Great Plains. Known also as Chief Dull Knife, his Lakota Sioux name was Tȟamílapȟéšni. He died in 1883 and is interred at Lame Deer Cemetery on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in southeastern Montana.