Jacobson House to display works by calendar's artists

By John Brandenburg

Published: November 23, 2007

NORMAN — A show by 13 artists whose work is included in the eighth annual Native American Art Calendar, will be offered from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Dec. 8 and noon to 5 p.m. Dec. 9 at the Jacobson House Native Art Center.

Images on view will be samples of the artists' work, not necessarily original images from the calendar, many of which have been sold. Copies of the calendar will be available for $14.99, and artists will be available to sign them.

The signing benefits the Jacobson House, according to a spokesman for Native American Art Calendar Inc.

Images in the calendar range from the detailed and realistic to the symbolic, from the impressionistic to the abstract and stylized.

Seminole-Shawnee artist Benjamin Harjo Jr. depicts "Sam and Ella” as abstract, whimsical figures, reduced to stripes, polka dots and decorative flourishes in his acrylic for July.

Cheyenne-Arapaho artist Gordon Yellowman Sr. portrays a rider with a "Sharp Nose” herding three other horses, standing out against a white background, in a watercolor done in a flat, ledger book or hide painting style.

More purely symbolic is the approach of Yuchi-Creek artist Richard Whitman, who turns the sun's rays into tepees in "Stronghold of the Sun.”

Southern Cheyenne artist Merlin Little Thunder combines realistic detail with fanciful storytelling elements in his cover acrylic of a young woman crossing a river, helped by wild animals carrying parfleches for her.

A chief controls two of his "Many Horses” in a realistic oil painting by Wayne Cooper, and a tough-looking, frontally posed warrior named "Three Coup” seems immovable in an oil work by Pawnee artist Charles Chapman.

Butterflies in the background become emblematic of a deceased young daughter of Sequoyah in an acrylic by Troy Anderson, and "Grandma Makes It Better” with encircling arms in an acrylic by Dorothy Sullivan.

Norma Howard supplies a watercolor of a "Choctaw Woman in the Bayou” with a basket on her back, and Harvey Pratt suggests the intensity of an attempt to heal a sick man with "bear medicine” in an acrylic.

Varied and intriguing, the artwork in the calendar is well worth examining, for those who appreciate American Indian art.

— John Brandenburg

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