JUST DIRECT YOUR FEET

Alvin Ailey Dancer, stoneware sculpture by kayti sweetland rasmussen

Dancing has always been a part of my life, from childhood when a fond grandma hoped my tap shoes would lead to fame and family fortune. It’s obvious that never happened, but I kept dancing anyway.

I heard of a Modern Dance class starting in the City when my children were small and I needed exercise. Any new mother can interpret that to mean, “Shape up!” The instructor floated into the room and I felt myself sinking into my body and thinking there was no hope for me. A gorgeous African-American, she was about 5’10” with extremely short hair and a body to make an artist dream of painting her. I knew immediately that if I were to come back some day as African-American, I would look like her plus with large earrings. She put us through all sorts of strenuous stretches and odd positions until my bones felt they could never have been meant to go there. But I kept dancing anyway.

Last week we went to a friend’s 90th birthday party. About twenty years ago we joined a dance group in town which performed at schools, old age homes and any place anyone would have us. Once while practicing, we asked my Dad for his opinion, his answer “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” In our initial public performance, our husbands embarrassed us by clapping and cheering loudly in the audience. But we kept dancing anyway.

We are second and third from the right in the chorus line. I don’t know if the others are still dancing.

I was impressed by her ability to “get things done” while her husband was on a business trip. They had discussed and he had disregarded the case for new carpeting, but once when he returned after a week away, he had to agree that the new carpet looked much better than the old.

I met this lady about 55 years ago when I interrupted her gardening by inquiring if she were the mother of a little girl with the same name as one of mine. We then discovered that our husbands had gone all through school together. In was enough to ensure a long friendship. And we’re still dancing in our own way.

TWO PATHS

“You shall walk two paths…yours and that of the White Man. Pick up those things from the White Man’s path that you can use.” Wise words from Sitting Bull.

Stories are the core of Northwest Indian culture and education, and have been for at least 8,00 years. Emmett Oliver’s story is of one Northwest Indian who was poor, dropped out of school, returned, got two college degrees, and revolutionized Indian education in his native state.

Like many American Indians, Emmett Oliver grew up off the reservation. His unique personal experience combines the best of two cultures and has contributed to each. He has truly followed two paths.

“She came more than a thousand miles and a lifetime of years for the event. Her eyes found her youngest son, handsome and proud in his cap and gown.” These are the opening words of the book “Two Paths”, commissioned by Emmett and written by his friend Ben Smith. Emmett paid for the publication of the books and then gave them away to all Indian schools in Washington State, as an example of what successes could be achieved by education.

After a college sports career, someone suggested that Emmett might consider becoming a teacher. What followed was a lifetime of teaching and counseling both high school and college students, and in encouraging children from Northwest Indian communities to pursue their education.

After the second World War, Emmett returned as a Coast Guard Commander. Handsome, dignified and charismatic, he resumed teaching with his wife Georgia. They both came as educators to California, where we became friends more than 55 years ago. They were my introduction to Indian America.

Tall Ship “The Danmark” training ship for Coast Guard during War

In November, 1969, Indian tribes occupied Alcatraz Island and its abandoned Federal prison in San Francisco Bay. One of the leaders of that movement was Emmett Oliver. He was Chair of BANAC (Bay Area Native American Committee.) the organization that spearheaded the takeover which lasted 19 months. The takeover was a reminder to many (including Emmett’s son, Marvin) of their Indian heritage.

The takeover led to Emmett’s attendance at the National Indian Education Conference in Minneapolis with a large number of prominent Indian educators, where Emmett was encouraged to return to his involvement in Indian education. This led to directing the Indian student programs at UCLA. His mother’s drive for her children to be educated had re-emerged and in that moment his whole life came into focus. He would devote the rest of his life to Indian education.

In the summer of 1970 Emmett joined the Division of Minority Affairs of the University of Washington to head the Indian Student division. His first task was to recruit and counsel Indian students.

At that time, Washington boasted a full-blood Cherokee role model named Sonny Sixkiller, who was their star quarterback. Our daughter was then a student at the University, and a friend of Sonny.

Sonny Sixkiller at the University of Washington

Working with the BIA offices who handled funding, Emmett invited outstanding Indian students from their high schools on weekends when home games were planned. They toured various Departments in which they expressed interest after which they went to the football game. Emmett said “The plan worked in interesting students to go to college. If not to Washington, then to some other college.”

Emmett’s effectiveness brought him to the attention of the Department of Education for the State of Washington and he was hired as the first Supervisor of Indian Education for the State. This gave him a greater opportunity to work more closely with the Indian communities.

“I believed that parent involvement in education at the elementary and secondary level must be increased, and I knew first hand the peril of dropping out, the limitations of purely vocational training, and the need for solid educational grounding if Indians were ever going to be able to attend college and assume positions of leadership in society.”

The first great “Paddle To Seattle” in 1989 that Emmett conceived and coordinated was the Native American contribution to the Washington State Centennial. It was a celebration of Indian culture, and through the annual canoe races, it has culminated in well over 100 canoes from various Northwest tribes participating each year.

Emmett’s daughter, Marylin has been heavily involved in the races, working tirelessly with participants all over the State. She is currently a Seattle Delegate to the City of Perugia, Italy. Emmett’s son, Marvin, is a Professor of Indian Art at the University of Washington and at the University of Alaska and an artist whose massive sculptures can be seen in many places around the world.

“Spirit of the Future” Public sculpture by Marvin Oliver, in Perugia, Italy.

“Mystical Journey” at Seattle’s Children’s Hospital, 26’Steel and Glass suspended sculpture by Marvin Oliver

Emmett’s is a spirit venture, drawing on the past and enlightening the future. His innermost being believes you cannot teach someone you do not love.

Emmett Oliver at 101, with two of his granddaughters at end of 2014 Paddle to Seattle

CATERWAULING

‘Caterwauling” Painting by Louis Wain
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Does anyone know what goes on behind the enigmatic, mysterious eyes of the family cat? Are they waiting there simply to be admired, or is there a deeper purpose to their somnolence? Is their frequent habit of clawing your lap while otherwise giving the appearance of restful contemplation a signal of ulterior motives?

There are definitely “cat people” and “dog people”, though there are many who find both an added element to their households. I have one friend who finds room in her heart and in her home for 5 cats and a bulldog. The old fallacy that the species are incompatible is untrue. My father used to laugh at that idea when I sobbed that the dog would cause harm to a new cat. He was proved right when the cat took a hearty swipe at the curious dog’s nose, and let him know that that degree of intimacy was not allowed. Later in life we had several pair who comfortably shared the same bed throughout their lives, much like old married couples. A recent incident on local TV showed a cat attacking and driving away a dog who had assaulted a child. So much for the fallacy that the two species are enemies.

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Born in 1860, artist Louis Wain, obsessed with cats, ‘invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world.’ So said H. G. Wells in 1925 when describing the phenomenon of a cat artist who had become a household name over the previous 40 years. Louis Wain’s cats, dressed as humans in the fashion of the day while having fun; were depicted at restaurants and tea parties, at the Races or at the seaside, celebrating Christmas and birthdays, and disporting themselves at games of tennis, cricket and football. Succeeding generations recognize in them the energetic desire of a society at leisure. Wain’s world was funny, edgy and animated–a whole cat world.

His working life spans the great age of the postcard and the prolific dissemination of his art in this way made him one of the most prevalent and recognisable artists of the early twentieth century. Between 1900 and 1940, 75 different publishers produced over 1100 of his images in postcard form. This was an era when the inexpensive postcard frequently took the place of a letter, and the humorous cat depictions were in great demand.

His post World War I financial difficulties may have contributed to a rapid decline into schizophrenia as Wain became isolated, impecunious and unmanageable. In 1924, he was certified insane and admitted to Springfield Hospital. Briefly forgotten, he was discovered in this paupers asylum a year later and, following a public appeal involving many artists and writers, and the intervention of the Prime Minister himself who recognized his genius, he was transferred to two or three successively more pleasant hospitals, where he lived on until 1939, painting ceaselessly and recreating a new and ever more colorful cat world, which became more frenzied and colorful as his condition worsened.

His later work reveals his schizophrenic illness: highly colored cats at times become frenzied, sometimes showing anger, while sometimes in the background are curious recreations of his asylum buildings.

As time went by, Louis Wain’s cats lost their carefree, happy eyes, and became a vehicle to convey his deteriorating sanity. As another, somewhat famous artist said “There are people who love nature even though they are cracked and ill, those people are the painters.” Vincent Van Gogh. But art should be judged merely by its aesthetics and not by conjecturing about the mental condition of the artist. The pleasures of an ice cream cone aren’t enhanced by enquiring about its recipe.

Louis Wains art became pure brilliant design and don’t require an explanation or any need to place them into a familiar world.

DON’T CALL THEM DUMMIES

Have you ever tried to slip a long silk stocking onto the unwieldy plastic leg of a department store mannequin? Take it from me it isn’t easy.

Straight out of my high school art class, I was hired by the local department store in my hometown of Alameda to not only hand paint the signs which advertised the clearance and sale items. From there it was an easy jump to being the resident window dresser.

The mannequin’s view from the inside of the window is of course quite different from yours looking inward. Their job is to show off the clothing, and do it in such an appealing manner that the passing “window shoppers” can’t bear to stand outside another minute without that particular outfit. It is a proven fact that mannequins are a spur to helping customers buy more clothes.

These are stressful times to be a mannequin. She’s under pressure to do it all—she needs to show off the latest beach wear, be more athletic, glamorous, businesslike, and even ready to rope a calf. Fortunately today’s mannequins come ready to be rearranged into more believable positions. Arms and legs are detachable, head and neck positions can be screwed into different positions.

For decades store mannequins were eerily headless, then bald and featureless. Now certain companies have magnetic lips, eyelashes and nails which are changeable to reflect the latest in makeup colors.

An artist friend working freelance, used to draw the figures for the newspapers for a number of years. The earliest use of mannequins in a retail setting dates back to the 1800’s with some being made of papier mache, wicker or having wax heads and glass eyes. Their use climbed with the rise of store windows in the 1900’s. In the late 1940’s more durable fiberglass began to replace plastic and allowed for more realistic features.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s faceless and headless mannequins became more prevalent. They didn’t require professional makeup artists and hairdressers. One factor was cost; mannequins sell for $750 to $900 each, and even an average size store is now using them throughout the stores various departments. A large store like Nordstrom may use 2,000 mannequins throughout the store. Clothing today doesn’t have much hanger appeal; you need a body inside to give it shape and show off the cut. Even a table full of folded colorful sweaters benefits from having a mannequin wearing an outfit featuring one of the sweaters.

My life as a window dresser picked up again later in life with a successful display business begun with one other woman. The lure of the shop window has never left me, and today I sometimes become more entranced with how the window is displayed than with the merchandise inside it! The holiday windows were by far the most fun and creative. Macy’s in San Francisco, in conjunction with the animal shelters, for several years showed puppies and kittens for adoption in the windows. Remember that the window display, whatever it may be, just gets people into the store. After that they’re on their own!

THESE BOOTS NOT MADE FOR WALKING

“Dressed In Her Best” oil painting by KSR

On a cold rainy day some years ago, we sat with our daughter in a charming small Mexican restaurant in Malibu, Ca. Malibu is notable for Pepperdine University and the Colony, which is a collection of homes on the expensive sand of the Pacific Ocean where many luminous or formerly luminous movie stars dwell. Sorry, but those who are star-struck or who merely wish to dip a quick toe in the ocean are prohibited.
They say that one of Johnny Carson’s prospective wives walked in front of his house a number of times until she was noticed. You see what persistence can bring?

On the particular day we were dining, my eyes were attracted to a pair of boots on a man who had just entered the restaurant. I did not look further than his legs which were bare. He was wearing a short raincoat over a pair of shorts even though it was raining. They were great boots and I remember that I had seen them on someone on TV awhile back. I guess I was staring at the boots, wondering how I could find a pair, when my daughter told me to stop staring; it was Larry Hagman!

It was the end of football season, and the USC-UCLA game was on the large TV in the back of the restaurant, so Dr. Advice went over to watch it. Our daughter assumed that he was on his way to talk to Larry Hagman and was horrified. “Oh no, he’s NOT going to talk to him is he?” Let it be known that though my husband is an energetic conversationalist, he would never be so crass as to purposely engage a local movie star in anything more than a nod of the head.

However, Mr. Hagman had chosen to watch the football game at the same time, and the two men had a grand conversation, mostly about their mutual love of fishing. His wife was also an artist and had painted fish scenes all over the plastic raincoat he had purchased at L.L.Bean. When he found that I was an artist, he came and insisted that we join him and his family and discuss my furnishing my husband with the same raincoat.

I found out that his very attractive boots were UGG boots which I had not heard of 15 years ago. The men traded good fishing spots, Dr. Advice sent him ajar of our fine smoked salmon, and we returned to our daughter and our lunch. Who said you shouldn’t speak to local celebrities?

INNER FIRE

I first saw Allan Hauser’s art when I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the first time in 1966. I saw then that what I did and what I was teaching was only a first step toward the sculpture I wanted to make. Allan’s iconic style, avoiding unnecessary iconography, filled me with a great sense of peace. His Native American mothers holding their children were not just literal pictures of people, but solid mass forms filled with life which invited you to touch them. I had been working for years, but for the first time, I realized that everything is simply “forms” with a certain solidity, not just sculpture. Our eye does not take in everything which is there; in painting a tree we don’t paint each leaf, or each hair on a head, rather we try to convey the feeling of the entire form. So what Allan taught me throughout that summer, was how to “feel” a sculpture, and how to convey that feeling in the finished piece.

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Born in Oklahoma in 1914, Allan Hauser was the first member of his family from the Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache to be born outside captivity since Geronimo’s 1886 surrender after the tribe’s imprisonment by the United States. His father, Sam Haozous, was the grand-nephew of Geronimo, and served as his translator after the release.

Allan went to study at the Santa Fe Indian School in 1934, where he first formed his distinctive style in both painting and sculpture. It was there he met and married his wife Anna Maria Gallegos, and they were married for fifty-five years. They moved to Los Angeles in the second World War and he worked at the shipyards there. Through friends at the Pasadena Art Institute, he became familiar with the art of Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, and Henry Moore, as well as Barbara Hepworth, from whom he learned the importance of open spaces within the sculpture. When Allan explained Hepworth’s monumental pieces to me, he stressed the importance of letting your mind supply what was missing in the void.

In my own study of Japanese art and floral arranging, that “absence of the unimportant” gave meaning to the piece which would not have been there with too much explanation. In the case of floral arrangements, it would be too many flowers.

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Allan Joined the faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe in 1962. It was there I met him in the summer of 1966, when I went with my Isleta-Laguna friend Georgia Abeita Oliver. He was a soft-spoken and generous man who graciously gave his knowledge and advice to a visiting stranger and fellow art teacher. There was no indication that this self-effacing man was one of the most renowned Native American artists in the 20th century.

When he died at the age of 80, he left behind thousands of paintings and drawings as well as his amazing public sculptures as a visual lexicon.

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“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” Albert Schweitzer

“Apache Man” white carrara marble Allan Hauser

ALL THAT JAZZ

Jazz is a musical style first seen at the beginning of the 20th century. Born from a mix of European and African music it is a restless mix of improvisation, syncopation and blue notes. It is spontaneous and mirrors the vitality of the performer who never plays the same composition twice.

A visual artist never develops a subject twice the same way for similar reasons. A lovely landscape or still-life can be painted hundreds of times and be different each time. Even a portrait will never be the same again. Certainly the light will never be quite the same, but the intensity or desire of the artist will not be the same either.

The most satisfying works in music or art need the concentration and love of the artist.

“Jazz Nights” Oil painting by kayti sweetland rasmussen

The inspiration for any form of art frequently comes unbidden, and results in something entirely different from the original thought. The painting above came about from remembering the little “band” my grandsons and I formed after I taught them to play guitar. Strangely enough, there isn’t a guitar in the painting! It’s original title was “Bammie and the Boys” which was a little “too cutesey” for comfort!

“A Tip of the Hat” watercolor painting by kayti sweetland rasmussen

This painting popped onto paper after a Christmas shopping trip to Harrod’s in London, where I bought a derby for Dr. Advice. It looked very nice on Julianne!

WHAT IS ART?

What is art? Like a poem that pushes the boundaries of language to say what is somehow beyond saying, art can both express an esthetic vision and articulate previously silent or unheard voices. It can profoundly change the way we view and think about our world and reflect afresh what we have seen too often or too closely to be aware of.

As Keith Hering said “Art lives through the imagination of the people who are seeing it. Without that contact, there is no art.

Renascence—-w/c by kayti sweetland rasmussen

Fly Me To The Moon—-w/c by kayti sweetland rasmussen

I have done many portraits, and a portrait is a just a picture of a person. Not necessarily art, but perhaps now and then there may be a stroke of genius in execution.

A famous artist was asked when introduced to someone “Are you an artist?” He answered “Sometimes.” And sometimes with luck, we all are.

MESSY PIANO TEACHER

A piano teacher lived next door to us in Southern California when I was a freshman in high school.  The only reason I remember her is that my grandmother told me that she was an artist, and that all artists are messy housekeepers.  She pops into my head occasionally when I clean house.  I don’t think my grandmother ever set foot in her house, but she was absolutely sure her house was a mess because when she spent so much time playing the piano she couldn’t possibly be cleaning her house.

Well, I am and always have been an artist, and the health department has never called an impromptu inspection.  My mother-in-law lived just around the corner for many years, and she never complained either.

The nicest thing about the piano teacher was her two daughters, who being 2 or 3 years older, knew the latest hairstyles as well as being able to teach me the two-step.  Now I had taken dancing lessons for most of my childhood, but this was a whole new method.  We sent for diagrams from Arthur Murray, set them on the floor and followed the colored footsteps.  It was great, but there was no one to dance with, and we never went anywhere you could practice, so we just had Arthur Murray in my bedroom.

This was the period when I discovered boys.  Oh I knew about them of course, and had even had a boyfriend in kindergarten, but this was the year someone actually came to call on me.  He didn’t really come to see me, but I just happened to be climbing the old fig tree in our alley, and this is the way he rode his bike on his way home from school.  We would just stand talk, he would scuff the dirt with his toe, and I would pick a fig now and then for him.  Not an especially hot romance.  But then a boy actually came to the front door and my mother let him in!  What do you do now? I thought.  So we made fudge.  I’ve made a ton of fudge since then, but none so nervewracking.

Occasionally I mowed the front lawn in order to catch a glimpse of the boy across the street.  He was a senior, and a football player.  His nickname was “Shifty-hips” Parton, which was a moniker to be reckoned with.  I wore glasses, and one day he spoke to me and insulted me by telling me I ‘looked intelligent’.  From then on, I tried to never wear my glasses.

And oh yes, the messy piano teacher tried to teach me to play the piano, but it was too late.  I had discovered boys.

 

LITTLE RUNNING DEER

Little Running Deer sculpture KSR