Don Bailey @ Luke’s Frame Shop in February
Don Bailey
Everyone’s a Winner: Exploring Icons
February 6 – March 4
Don Bailey is known for his complex, richly colorful compositions. An enrolled member of the Hupa tribe, Bailey was raised on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in California . He teaches fine arts and art history at the Chemawa Indian School in Salem , Oregon and works out of his studio in Portland . Bailey’s work raises questions about the conventional telling of history and winks at the worn clichés about Indian artists living in both the past and modern worlds. His work is in the permanent collection of the Hallie Ford Museum in Salem .
In the collection “Everyone’s a Winner: Exploring Icons,” Bailey weaves together images from history with those of contemporary advertisement, traditional Native American design elements with the tools of political bureaucracy, and the iconography of the Chinese propaganda machine with the iconography of western popular culture. He asks the viewer to consider the dichotomy between image given and image taken away. What does it mean to carve presidents’ faces on the Sioux people’s sacred black hills? What does it mean to market t-shirts on which those Mt Rushmore faces are replaced with Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph and Geronimo, or with Marx, Che, and Mao? What are we selling when we make Indians our teams’ mascots and assign tribal names to cars? Who are the winners?
ARTIST’S RECEPTION:
Saturday, Feb. 6th, 6-8pm
Luke’s Frame Shop
2707 SE Belmont St.
Portland, OR 97214
Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 11-5
www.lukeart.com