A short film produced for my grad art history course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASkJO1iHgLk 

Independent project

Jonathan Sanchez

Puzzle Pieces (An investigation of Yavapai history the lessons one tribe can teach us about the importance of place, identity, cultural and political resistance, and above all survival.)

Its a brisk day I enter a tiny cafeteria on the edge of a bingo hall. An elderly chain smoking woman drags an oxygen tank as she enters the hall pondering the illuminated menu in front of her like a deer in headlights. I order green chili and fry bread and receive it placed in a to go box. A subtle thing happens between receiving the only Native food on the menu and placing the order. I am sized up judged and it is assumed I must work at the resort or bingo hall. Everyone around orders Anglo food Kosher dogs, club sandwiches, and hamburgers. If I'm an Indian employee, am I not supposed to eat in the hall with everyone I would go to break a area. Everyone gets their meager portions on bright orange trays but certainly normal picnic style plates. I am given neither. Am I being asked to leave? Is it the Native food that causes all of this? It may seem silly but it is a good example of the way so many little cultural moments are exchanged on all reservations. I am given a righteous heaping portion of the finest green chili and hubcap size fry I have ever encountered so this isn't racial mistreatment this is a subtle favor. So I am mestizo or somewhere back there I am Indian. I'll take it prejudice or not as I wipe the sweat from my forehead and devour the molten material.

Racial ambiguity can be troubling to some but it is something I have learned to embrace. While in Colombia at the slave port of Cartegena and old man there once explained his Caribbean world view. „When I give from heart am kind I am African, when I am clever I am Indian, and when I am greedy or bad I am Spanish.“ This sort of accepting of the odd fact that most Africans, Asians and Native Americans live on their Native soil and the peculiar European has found the need to travel to other lands and live there too is telling (Mann, xxiv). The old man has also made peace with the amalgamation that many of us are. By my families account I am Roma, Jewish, Spanish and Native American. According to a couple of DNA tests I can only verify one of these claims. So how does one form an identity based on percentages, family folk tales, and half truths? Yes north African folks are present in Spain but they aren't really European so am I truly Spanish (in the Latin sense stemming from Roman origins) no. But neither are the Basque or Galetian folks that live on the land mass named Spain. On both sides of the family there is evidence that I am in fact Native American but it didn't show up in the DNA (in truth there was a region marked unknown a deeper clade test might show Indian genes, then again maybe not).

I too have been addressed as a black person often, culturally share plenty with African Americans. I will play music and have someone after give me a soul hand shake and a knowing that was a good show my brother address. I then pass into the nether world of the African diaspora of all kinds of shades of black, brown and high yellow.

Now back to the reservation they were not wrong to assume I am Indian because supposedly I am. And what of the fact that I have sought out black history African culture, Native American history and archaeology for my whole life as if somewhere inside of me I always knew the truth of these things.

On a surface level purely my father looks a bit like James Earl Jones. We bare a Hispanic family name but as is the case of many Caribbean folks we show some Africa in our features.People the world over despise the implication that they are of mixed origins as my grandfather was once classified on a census record as mulatto, literally a mule or non-viable offspring. I have been called this often either jokingly or with a mean spirit (while living Europe I was called much worse).

Now here is where it gets really sticky, my father would never settle for being called black considered black or in anyway identify with African American culture. A friend of mine could be my fathers lost twin, and he teaches African folk tales at ASU. Here you have two folks that to all the world could be twins. Yet one raised in an African American community identifies with that culture. The other the son of Puerto Rican immigrants strives to get out of Brooklyn and to be as white as possible. Ashamed of relatives that speak with a Spanish accent, enamored with Hollywood movies and the Beatles, he grows up creating his own unique identity. In the process mulatto is never again seen in a census record, and the subsequent children he produces with a much whiter appearing woman are even further away from their African origins.

All of this is very personal and brought up in the wrong way if at all could be troubling at best fightin' words at worst. Looking into other peoples cultures is even more dangerous, which finally brings us to the Yavapai.

A Brief History of the Yavapai

The Pai people are a group that includes the Hualapai, Havasupai, and Yavapai. The estimates are that the Pai people once inhabitated some ten million acres (Heard Museum). The Yavapai once mistaken for Apache were deemed hostile and warlike and subsequently hunted and killed. They do share much linguistically with Apaches and are of the Athabascan language family (Basso, xiv).

In 1857 when gold was discovered in Arizona the Yavapai were suddenly in the way of gold fever. Eventually they would be removed from their lands forced to endure long marches laden with rape, murder and starvation (River of Time Museum).

Various nearly eradicated groups were ingested by larger groups while they lived in exile for twenty-five years and again when returned to their ancestral homes in 1900. Placed on three separate reservations by executive order they found themselves on hundreds of acres and numbering in the hundreds and for rest of time known as the Fort McDowell Indians.

1934 saw the establishment of a self-governing tribal system for each of the three groups under the Indian Reorganization Act, which most importantly preserved a few rights including legal claim to water (Murphy, 12).

In the 1970's the Phoenix area became one of the fastest growing in the nation a new type of gold was being mined, sunlight. Promising year round warm weather and cheap land developers were on the march, all of their efforts dependent upon water (River of Time Museum).

In the 1980's about 600 hundred Fort McDowell Indians lived at the long abandoned fort and surrounding land (Weber, 6).

A spirit of activism existed within the tribe having produced the first male Native American doctor, having participated in code activities in the second world war, returning soldiers pushed to gain the right to vote for Arizona tribes, they had fought legal battles in the past (Heard Museum). As the specter of the Orme dam project materialized in the early 80's put forward to provide water and power for bustling Phoenix and countless prefab communities surrounding, the Yavapai once again marched to Washington (Weber, 6).

Hiawatha Hood returned from Chicago to spend the rest of his days on his ancestral land only to hear that it would soon be flooded and the few remaining on it would be paid some to relocate. Remembering past Yavapai legal fights he rallied the elders and took the case to Washington. Local newspapers championed the small tribe and its struggle presenting their perspective and keeping the story alive for several years (Weber, 6). Despite the Bush administrations coming down on the side of the dam developers the dam was stopped making Hiawatha an elderly hero.

The victory has allowed the Ft. Mcdowell Yavapai to remain in the area first of all, develop businesses the above mentioned bingo hall, but also construction companies, a resort and golf course and other small businesses. Along the way they host several festivals a rodeo (to commemorate the dam victory) and other cultural events. The population of the tribe has grown steadily and now is mostly young people (Yavapai Nation Website).

Puzzle Pieces (Joining the Puzzle Pieces of Culture History and Identity)

The project I have begun with the Gangplank community center and the Yavapai Youth Council entitled Puzzle Pieces will be a small exhibit, with talk, blog, press, and illustrations that provide the broad outline and intent of the exhibit and project. A short video summing up the project with slide images of the making of the events, the participants and their work. Several text panels with illustrations of museum quality along with illustrations also mounted by museum standards, will intiate locals into the rich history of the Yavapai. Working with Yavapai youth and the Youth Council several students will become involved and add their voices, ideas, and images to the project. As more students present their work and add it profiles will be created on a blog, where their ideas and images will be shared. Ideally a sort of yin and yang approach will be achieved the museum style items will be balanced by the current additions, as if to say here is the past and now lets journey into the present and future.

The most exciting thing about it is that I have no idea what they will bring to the project maybe they will want to take it in an entirely different direction which I am open to. Further, I know the history from the Heard Museum and newspaper articles but how do these figures and events resonate in the youth of the tribe?

I recently wrote a song entitled Puzzle Pieces, which addresses the idea that we kind of are trying to fit in a place, fit in our family, fit within our society and now as we become increasingly global citizens, in the larger global village. Some times you are searching for the pieces other times they fall in place. Looking at one society that has endured near genocide, still faces misunderstanding, bigotry, and health problems, I hope we can all learn something about ourselves. I will use the song as a sort of theme for the exhibit and short film I will produce inconjunction with the project.

As an added experiment of the theories of visual culture I am trying to avoid the use of the words art and artists as much as possible. I sincerely want to avoid steering the participants toward work that they think will meet with my approval but is honest and documentary. My larger hope is that the participants will notice (if they haven't already) that they have tremendous history and therefore power through that history and they need only learn to wield it through our current technology. Community centers such as the Gangplank but also webbased forums can give anyone a voice a platform or a chance to express themselves. It is my goal to help facilitate the process.

In this way I hope to bring the many ideas and concepts I have been exposed to in this class into the project.

Hiawatha Hood in an article entitled Hiawatha Comes Home, as an old man staring down Washington and Arizona developers when asked was most concerned about the state of Yavapai youth. „the young people ..It seems they don't care.“ Hopefully we can honor Hiawatha's memory, bravery, tenacity and prove him wrong by encouraging a few Yavapai youth to care (Weber, 8).

Bibliograghy

The Heard Museum Phoenix Arizona (archives and displays)

The River of Time Museum, Fountain Hills Arizona.

The Arizona Republic-several articles related to recent Yavapai history.

Hawley C. (1990, Nov. 2^nd ) Newspaper article, The Arizona Republic-a history of Yavapai water disputes and the final settlement in favor of the tribe. (call # ZP2A: E78.A7 075 1998 Library Use)

Johnson, A. (1986, April, 11^th) Newspaper article, The Arizona Republic-a brief history of Yavapai activism including the battle to stop the Orme dam. (call # ZP2A: E78.A7 075 1998 Library Use)

Murphy, M. ( 1990, July, 7^th) Newspaper article, Phoenix Gazette-an article related to the Orme Dam project (call # ZP2A: E78.A7 075 1998 Library Use) Archives at the Heard Museum Library.

Mann, C. (2011) 1493, Vintage Books.

Basso, K. (1990) Western Apache Language and Culture (Essays in Linguistic Anthropology), Universtiy of Arizona Press Tuscon Arizona.

Yavapai Nation Website

http://fortmcdowelldestination.com/yavapai-nation.html

http://www.ftmcdowell.org/

Play the Culture

The following is an assignment for the UF grad program in art education.

course 6641 Contemporary Issues in Art Education!

Lesson plan for Visual Culture Discussion Forum

Since I present my educational programs in a museum environment my lesson is geared toward the use of the MIM collection. Focusing on the guitar gallery and the adjacent museum orientation gallery.

Guitar gallery MIM

Orientation gallery MIM.

A Little background.

Guests enter the museum obtain their wireless headset system. They can watch a six minute film about the museum near the orientation gallery which focuses on the artistry of instrument making. In the middle between the theater, and the main museum galleries is a u-shaped room depicting the whole history of the guitar. From the oldest known guitar to a modern heavy metal doubleneck electric a guest can see the full evolution of the instrument. In the adjacent room sitars, ouds, and erhu are examples of near guitar Asian cousins of the European instrument.

Cross cultural Aspects

The opportunity to talk about cultural transmission the way instruments traveled the Silk Road into the far east made it to America is unique chance to discuss ways in which the world is connected historically through musical instruments.

Visual Culture themes

Instruments are handmade or manufactured functional works of design. Often inlayed with precious stone, polished shell, or metal they are fanciful works that can be used as well as viewed. The museum with so many instruments hanging on walls and simply viewed promotes the idea that someone dreamt the things up brought them to life.

The plan

A busload of kids arrives they are broken into groups some take the standard tour some go to the theater to watch the orientation film and the final group comes to me at the orientation gallery. Addressing some of the near guitar instruments and the hand crafted quality of them, that they come from far off countries, how the influenced the guitar and focusing on the visual elements the design aspects of the instruments, a foundation for the program is presented. Moving into the guitar gallery familiar electric guitars are seen a humorous display case exhibiting an air guitar and some very old instruments are visible. In keeping with the ideas of visual culture items that are contemporary and in truth the kids might even have at home are contrasted with the old court instruments of the Renaissance and the folk instruments of the Appalachia.

What do the instruments say?

After presenting some history behind the instruments a discussion is opened up. First about the visual elements why are they pretty or ugly how are they appealing or boring. What does that mean? The court instruments are incredibly fancy the old Spanish village instruments simple plain, opening a chance to discuss class and the stratification society historically.

What do these instruments symbolize? Prestige, homespun entertainment, race, gender?

Moving to the electric guitars a conversation is presented over the fight between Gibson guitars versus Fender. Using printed visual aids the contrasting ad campaigns are presented (a surfer with a playing Fender while riding a wave vs a concert hall with Les Paul in a tuxedo playing a gold gilded instrument). Again how are things marketed? What does a gold plated instrument mean vs a plain beat up Fender?

Modifications are everything.

Finally a beautifully hand painted instrument is presented to state that a guitar can be a canvas.

visit the MIM website and find out how you can get involved and support this new national treasure.

www.themim.org 

A Discussion of Visual Culture

Jonathan Sanchez
Date Jan 23 2013
   A Discussion of Visual Culture Theory. All three writters agree that the basic premise of viusal culture theory is that there is a need to create a multi-disciplinary approach to education at large and art history in specific. Tavin makes the case that art history can benefit greatly from cultural studies (Tavin, 199) and has listed some thrity disciplines that he argues should be incorporated into the sphere of visual culture. Julie C. Van Camp in her critical look at the visual culture movement, seems to warn of the rise of a potential new dogma (Van Camp, 34). "Still further, the term "interdisciplinarity" can simply suggest ways of expanding our methodologies in a variety of disciplines without staking a claim that only particular notions of interdisciplinarity are acceptable" (Van Camp, 34). Van Camps mild endorsement of visual culture theory comes in the form of a question, "Can our understanding of visual culture be used to enchance our undertanding of what we traditionally termed or deemed as art?" (Vaan Camp, 34). 

   Tavin seems to burn with the fire of a zealot lighting a torch to the whole art academy and Eisner rests somewhere between Van Camp and Tavin, when he simply states, "Justification improves overall performance," (Eisner, 7). Pluralism pushes in one direction and standardized testing in another a pedullum swing that leaves art educators grasping.

    Perhaps the strongest points that all agree on are the following; art is no island, visual experiences are profound and far reaching, the everyday in the classroom breaks down the barrier of high art. Art is no island. In short transdisciplinary approaches inspired by visual culture theory, can only help to bring context and a socialogical component into the art classroom.
    Visual experiences are profound and far reaching even if they happen in a football stadium.The "medium is the message," to see someone's name in lights is thrilling weather we know why or not (Mcluhan 1). It is that visual experiences reach us on a primal level like moths drawn to a flame. By saying that some experiences are high art and others not worth mentioning we close off a vast current of inspiration, and limit are realm of intellectual meandering. As Tavin states, "By inculcating students to existing cultural hierachies, the canon of high art is maintained as unproblematic," (Tavin, 197).

   Finally, bringing the current and the everyday into the classroom will not only help students relate it will address issues of whose culture are we making? Are we to simply repeat what has been done as a kind of art mantra or are we as May said active change agents (May, 146).

Problems with a visual culture approach

 1. Visual culture does not seem to have an overarching or concrete quintessence all of the authors seem to allude to this as a point of confusion. 
2. It is perhaps too far reaching it would be as if arguing, why do we need geology and biology why not talk about them as the same thing? We break things into categories in order to make sense of them. 
3. How do we talk about art or visual culture if all terms are deemed antiquated and culturally loaded? "Visual culture seems to have rejected not only formalism but also almost any other way of appreciating and understanding art objects themselves." (Van Camp, 35) She seems to warn of throwing out the baby with the bath water, suggests that we should be slow to throw all of our ideas out in favor of the new Zeitgeist. 
4. Funding to create a whole new department for visual culture studies would be costly.

Terms 
   Interdisciplinary is addressed in all three papers and is a tenet of visual culture and can be defined as a paradigm shift that allows for other studies to be incorporated into art studies.  Context or contextualization the process of placing art into a historic or social sphere.

Critcal Response/Application/Personal Reflection/ Assignment Souvenirs                         Rose Bean Simpson from Santa Clara Pueblo uses found objects, traditional and non-traditional media to create often haunting and introspective works. Her creations exist somewhere between the ancient world of Santa Clara Pueblo (first inhabited around 1300) and the modern world of nearby Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

   In contrast, Rose Roxanne Swentzell also from Santa Clara uses traditional images and themes. Her works do not at first glance appear to often vary little from museum artifacts of her ancestors. Under closer examination it is revealed that in fact she has used the traditional art forms to express everyday modern ideas.

   Open a discussion with students about how important a sense of place, your personal history, and that of your ancestors, and what are art materials? Using these three themes, three different ideas present in visual culture theory are presented. 
First, your home, your environment personally shapes your experience be it a seven hundred year old Pueblo or a modern suburban home. This theme addresses ideas of what visual experiences surround us daily, mesas, chilis and katsina, or shopping malls, SUVs and Ipads. 

   Second, Pueblo folks often live with their ancestors in items, in the walls of their sacred spaces, and symbolically. How important are our ancestors in mainstream America? Do we have a sense of history? If not how do we relate to our present surrounding friends and family? 

    Both artists are from the same unique culture, trained in western eurocentric schools, but choose to express their identities very differently. Rose leans toward contemporary art but still uses Pueblo themes and Roxanne bends and pushes traditional themes and icons to make them lifelike and fill them with a sense of the everyday and universal. Start out with images that orignate within the culture and everyday experience of students rather than imposing too quickly academic constraints on what counts as legitimate art. (Tavin 206) Simpson uses items that she has had contact with, a connection to sorts of souvenirs of her daily life. Students would be given the assignment to bring in three tiny items from their daily life symbolizing past, present and the future. They are then charged with combining them into an original work.


References;
Tavin, K. (2004). Wrestling with angels, searching for ghosts: Toward a critical pedagogy of visual culture. Studies in Art Education, 44(3), 197-213.
Eisner, E. (2001). Should we create new aims for art education? Art Education, 54(5), 6-10.
Van Camp, J. C. (2004). Visual culture and aesthetics: Everything old is new again. . . . Or is It? Arts Education Policy Review, 106(1), 33-37.
May. W. (1994). The tie that binds: Reconstructing ourselves in institutional contexts. Studies in Art Education, 35(3), 135-148.

Marshall McLuhan,(1964) “The Medium is the Message” From Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet, 1964): 23-35, 63-7

Tower Gallery Website http://www.roxanneswentzell.net/r_swentzell Tower Gallery 78 Cities of Gold Road Santa Fe NM

Website Contemporary Native American Artists http://contemporarynativeartists.tumblr.com/post/39391980928/rose-bean-simpson-santa-clara-pueblo

Wendy Red Star Adjunct Professor Department of Art Portland State University

Portrait Jonathan Sanchez

Jonathan Sanchez
Artist, musician, field archaeologist, museum worker and educator

BA in Physical Anthropology,

BA in Fine Art Studies

Collections Technician and museum educator, Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, AZ, USA

Museum worker general, Museum of Cultures Basel, CH

Museum worker general, Museum Liner, Appenzell, CH

Museum worker general, Kunsthalle Ziegelhütte, Appenzell, CH

Museum Educator, Western Museum of Mining and Industry Colorado Springs, CO, USA

Field archaeologist, UCCS, Colorado Springs, CO, USA

Field archaeologist, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM, USA

Collections technician, Nature and Science Museum, Denver, CO, USA

Collections technician, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, Colorado Springs, CO, USA

Paintings (traditional artwork)

http://www.sanchezartwerk.com/jonathansanchez/newestworks.html

As an artist I have been able to exhibit in seven countries, sell many works, and be involved with both gallery and museum exhibits. I currently display works throughout the Southwest of the US having returned from extended stays in Switzerland and Italy.

Music projects (performer, photographer, songwriter, and producer)

http://www.sanchezartwerk.com/theupperstrata.html

Music has been a vital portion of my life experience since church choirs as a child through recording, writing, and producing CD releases. I have been able to live from music and perform countless shows in several countries.

As an Educator

My latest adventure has been a journey into the world of education. Having worked for several museum education departments I have decided to focus on art education through a mostly online graduate program. It is my hope that I will be able to use what I learn through the program to enrich the museum programs I present through the Musical Instrument Museum and other institutions. Below are photos of the Delta Blues themed Museum Encounter I present for MIM.

Slides or bottlenecks of various materials and sizes with a voodoo hang.  

Demonstration of resonator guitars.                                                                                              

 

Research Interests

Museum education

Art therapy

Art in the penal system

Multicultural studies

Creative - Research Biography

My most recent research and application of research has been related to music ethnocology. Trying to trace the rooots of Delta and Piedmont blues of the 20's and 30's back to West Africa. Along the way trying to relate the multicultural aspects of the Blues (from Celtic to Spanish influences) to the overall history of the genre. The goal of this research was to add a historic and cultural component to a lively and entertaining musical presentation. Being that the event was to take place at a musical instrument museum a look at the many stringed instruments and musical traditions of West Africa was needed. Through the process of weaving very ancient and current ideas together a profound respect and reverence for the multifaceted and living musical genre of the blues was instilled and hopefully conveyed through the program. 

The Islington Contemporary Art & Design Fair

The Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair (3 - 5 october 2008) came and went and we had a great time in London. The show was well done with a wide range of works from realistic to total abstraction. We also managed to take in quite a lot of sights around ever fantastic London (Tower of London, Westminster, Tate Modern etc).

About the show itself: it was housed in a large old brick building in north east London. There was a bohemian café, a court yard used for art bazaars and fairs, and two floors used for the Islington Art Fair. Jonathan was on the second floor in the very middle of the show. It became apparent that Candid arts is involved with all sorts of things and very active for which they should be commended. Having sold two paintings and staring out at a huge crowd at the opening combined to make us feel, that we had done the right thing to try out London.

The artists

First off there were about 55 artists mostly from London with a few international visiting exhibitors. That said it should be noted that there are folks from all over the place that live within London as it has grown to be a very multicultural international city. Added to the ranks of the Brits were a Danish, Finnish, Indian, Italian, Cuban, Russian, and two artists from Bangladesh. As an American living in Switzerland, Jonathan was an oddity but not that out of place. 

The work 

Like the vast range of ages personalities and nationalities the skill level and style of the art was likewise varied.  There were nightmarish, surreal, cartoonish, commercial, sappy, aggressive, half baked and masterful works at the show. Some of the artists created stuff that simply blew me away others were clearly still trying to gather their skills or find their style. Overall, I think the show was good and there was little that smacked of blatant hobby or commercial art.