Art: Birch bark & skateboards

American Indian skateboards? Why not. Time didn't end when the buffalo stopped roaming and the treaty ink dried. The first people of Minnesota live on, holding on to traditional ways but adapting to modern urban life.

So there hangs Bobby Wilson's skateboard sculpture in the midst of "Mni Sota: Reflections of Time and Place," a handsome show of contemporary American Indian art on view through Dec. 16 at All My Relations Gallery in south Minneapolis. The show features about 50 pieces of bead and quill work, birch-bark wall sculpture and artifacts, paintings, bandolier bags, shawls and other art. While well grounded in native heritage, the objects are executed with contemporary flair and sophistication.

All 17 artists are enrolled tribal members rooted in or residents of Minnesota, a name derived from the Dakota words "mni sota," which loosely translates as "clouds reflecting in water." That link to place is an important foundation for the show, which is the first to be conceived and organized by the 10-month-old gallery, which aims to be the leading showplace for native arts in the Upper Midwest.

The show's mix of traditional and contemporary materials -- brain-tanned moose hide and Italian silk -- may surprise, but they're not unusual, said Dyani Reynolds-White Hawk, the exhibition's curator. For native people, traditions are embedded in stories and culture, not in the materials used to express those ideas.

"Every time new material was introduced it became part of the tradition, so when beads were incorporated that was a contemporary move," she said.

Now, of course, fine beadwork is a hallmark of American Indian art -- as in an intricately beaded bandolier bag by Cecile Taylor, a Spirit Lake Dakota affiliated with the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe. The pretty floral patterns she incorporates are centuries old and probably influenced by Euro-American embroidery designs, but Taylor gave a sassy new 3-D dimension to her flowers, which protrude from a velvet background and are outlined with neon-colored beads.

An amazing buckskin jacket by Joe Savage has a 19th-century cut complete with fringes, beaded shoulder panels and delicately embroidered cuffs. And birch-bark "chews" by Denise Lajimodiere are the show's most unusual and mystifying items, little designs she nips into paper-thin sheets of folded bark using her eye-teeth.

And then there are Wilson's skateboards. A Minneapolis native, Wilson grew up with graffiti and became a muralist and skateboarder. Titled "Synthetic by Nature," his wall sculpture is a fan-shaped headdress of five skateboard decks on which he has painted colorful geometric designs that echo Euro-American quilt patterns and suggest American Indian motifs found on teepees or in bead work. With its smart designs and pop format, Wilson's skateboard sculpture is a fully contemporary fusion of Indian tradition and modernity.

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