UnEarth Her Excerpt

*Excerpt from Growing Thunder's IAIA BFA Senior Thesis

Indigenous women have used their art to navigate sociopolitical shifts for generations.  Incorporation of the women in my life was deeply important in my goal to truly highlight the lived experiences of Native American women artists. I’ve observed from researching that scholars often write about the art and methodology behind traditional women’s art forms without proper acknowledgement of the history and stories behind the art. Or without acknowledging that it’s, often, women that are behind most of the historical and anthropological art pieces that we see in institutional spaces. While the history of these art forms is a key aspect to this body of work, my intention in focusing mainly on portraiture, is to encourage audiences to look into the eyes of real women. To see them fully and to examine what it took to get to where they are now. Their successes are a result of innovation, grit, and survival in a white patriarchal society.

In an exhibition summary written in 1990 by Ralph T. Coe for Keeping Up Tradition: The Plains Indian Art of Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty, Coe, a good friend to Joyce, writes that her early years were laced with hardships. Poverty and disease were common in her life, having suffered from tuberculosis. Coe states that “Joyce never succumbed to frustration and rather drew an increasing strength in character from her growing interest in traditional crafts” (Coe, 3). Joyce went on to build her own legacy after winning the Best in Show award at her first ever Santa Fe Indian Market in 1985 and she continues to bead every day starting at 5:00 am. This hard work and devotion to practice is what created a long-lasting generational wealth of knowledge.