2013 63rd Symposium and Exhibition 2013 at LeMoyne Center

LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts

LeMoyne Center for Visual Arts
125 North Gadsden Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32301

Juror: Jaune (Quick-to-See) Smith

Born in 1940 on the Flathead Reservation in Montana to Flathead Salish, French-Cree, and Shoshone parents, Quick-to-See Smith became an artist while in her 30s and was earning a living as a painter before she completed her master of fine arts degree at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.  By the mid-1970s, she had founded artists groups, curated exhibitions, and organized grassroots protests to express concern for the land and its Native people.  She has developed a distinctive modernist style over the past 35 years, in a variety of techniques, Quick-to-See Smith has received international critical acclaim through more than 75 solo exhibitions and numerous international shows.

In the early 1980s Quick-to-See Smith began to create paintings that address the complexities of Native American identity, both on the personal level and as a communal experience. Since 1990, many of her works have drawn attention to specific issues affecting this community, including preservation of the environment, racial and gender stereotyping, and problems of alcoholism.

Smith’s politically-loaded subject matter ranges from cowboys and Indians to McDonald’s and consumerism, reservation life, and war. According to Quick-to-See Smith, “Everything in America is for sale including land, water, air and elections”  That’s why she includes money signs in her paintings as did Andy Warhol, but she adds other iconic forms such as ancient petroglyph’s in her works to reflect both Western and Native cultures.