SEATTLE — Stop in front of one of Jaune Quick-To-See Smith's memory maps at Seattle Art Museum and you'd better plan to spend some time. Each work, a portrait of America through her unique lens, is dense with messages, humor and provocation.
"One time I had a board member at a museum say I really like your painting but I hate your messages. At first it was an affront to me and then I thought about it. If I was so provocative that I annoyed him, maybe I got him to think about something," Smith said.
A citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Smith was born on the Flathead Reservation in Montana and spent much of her childhood in Western Washington, living on both the Muckleshoot and Nisqually reservations and attending school in Kent, Puyallup and Seattle.
"I worked from the age of 8 as a field hand for the Nisei when they came back from the internment camps," Smith remembered. "And then I worked in canneries."
Among the 130 works at the retrospective hangs a painting based on a childhood memory.
"There's a drawing of the grandfather trees at Nisqually and how little our cabin looked in comparison to these trees," Smith said.
Around the corner there's another painting featuring the Chief Seattle quote "Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the inhabitants of the Earth."
Canoes show up frequently. Iconic animals like horses and buffalo can be seen. An American flag with loudspeakers that look like Mickey Mouse's ears. And as you get closer, you see headlines, advertisements and images of Native Americans.
"We're here," Smith said. "We're still here."
Smith's son, artist Neal Ambrose-Smith, stands by her side.
"You don't need an art education and you don't have to years of art history to enjoy or appreciate Jaune's work," he said.
"I am a storyteller," Smith said. "But I don't have a beginning and I don't have an ending."
But Smith does have this moment. As a little girl growing up here she might not have had enough money to buy a ticket to a museum. Now she's the subject of an entire retrospective.
"It's almost surreal, let me say" she added.
"Jaune Quick-To-See Smith: Memory Maps" opens Thursday and runs through May 12, 2024
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