Meet the Artist: Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
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An interview with the artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Jaune Quick-To-See Smith grew up on the Flathead Reservation in Montana and traveled around the Pacific Northwest and California with her father, who was a horse trader. Smith decided she wanted to be an artist after watching a film on the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She painted a goatee on her face with axle grease and borrowed a neighbor's beret so she could be photographed posing as the famous artist. In 1958, Smith enrolled at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington. She had to take many breaks from college in order to earn money, however, and didn't earn her degree until 1976. She moved to Albuquerque, where she studied at the University of New Mexico and founded the Grey Canyon group of contemporary Native American artists. (Postmodern Messenger, Exhibition Catalogue, 2004)
You know, sometimes just doing charcoal drawings just for the sake of just moving my hand and not really thinking about a subject or a topic. So I make drawings that have seed pods and petroglyphs, things that I've seen in my travels, and it's sort of a meditative process.
In high school I decided that I did, yes, want to go to college and take art. At the end of the year, the professor called me into his office and said, “You can draw better than the men, but I have to tell you, you need to go into another field because,” he said, "you'll never be able to be an artist. Women are not artists."
I like to use maps because maps can tell stories. What I did with this particular map is to erase all European presence. I eliminated every state that has a European name, and I kept only the states that have Native American names because the whole place was ours until the invasion came, the great invasion.
Part of what I do in my work is using my work as a platform for my beliefs. Can I tell a story? Can I make it a good story? Can I add some humor to it? Can I get your attention? Those are all things that I try to do with my artwork. It's not always successful, but it's important to speak up when you believe in something so strongly, and I passionately believe in the life that I live. I think that my work will probably go on being political in some way.