JAUNE Quick-To-SEE gave a voice to an original women’s artist
Although she faced an arduous battle at every turn, the Jack Quick-To-SEE Smith had the motivation and leadership to work tirelessly to make her voice heard, along with the voice of other original artists. Jau was a great teacher who encouraged anyone struggling with the movement of art. She actively sought original artists for her sponsorships, and she was using a young book to help in many of the catalogs and books she collected. She was moving constantly, giving talks, attending conferences and networks. It would take a day from today from New Mexico to New York to check the offers of museums and visit the exhibitions-then return home to the land of magic on the red eye!
JAUNE reflects this same energy. An endless flow of information, good and bad, pour it as quickly as possible. While the paint is dried below the fabric, it was spoiled with collage, then more paint, and building a layer on a layer, at the present time. While her work was always in dialogue with an old and new art, she felt strongly that her creative process was linked to her traditional tribal methods, including consumption, tanning and death. Jaune signs were made with a contemporary eye, but she was informed of the land on which she grew up and the utilitarian things that her father created and collected, such as venous braids and the traditional beads he was wearing.
Despite its intensity and leadership, Jaune has always been a humor in her passion for the historical truth and its endless endeavor to shed light on negligence and blatant supervision of the perspective of indigenous Americans in contemporary art. JAUNE fruits, and we all owe their focus on expanding the minds that were fixed in a central approach in the history of art.
When I am thinking of returning to the influence of Jaune Ali in the early days, one of the episodes that includes a conservative technical professor participated in the University of New Mexico. When you feel pressure to produce a beautifully plated fabric to persuade our teacher, take a raw jaune roll, cut it into the form of hiding an animal, and threw it into the washing machine with a Rit clothes dye. After the distorted painting dried up in the chaos of wrinkles, I began commenting on the top of two wooden poles found in a computers store. The confidence I showed in providing such a work – which broke all the rules and expectations at that time – is one of the things that I admired more in Jaune, and he gave me courage to defend my original ideas with confidence I was standing on solid ground.
Jaune’s confidence in her work extended to her ability to include herself in the scene of feminist art in the eighties in New York. At that time, Maryam Shapiru and Hamermouni Hammond presented it to the current art trends, from “Women’s Work” such as crochet, embroidery, and needle to “masculine” sculpture on a large scale by the likes of Jackie Winnsor. Jaune and I also participated with Peter Jemison at the home of the American Indian society in New York, which helped us negotiate the art world and gain some exposure. When she was hanging over the age of 18 with JAUNE, my eyes were wide open, and presented me to a group of street artists and their ideas.
She met with jaun at a lucky time, apparently the fate of the meeting and the participation of friendship. Initially, when I arrived at the university directly from high school, I was only 17 years old and I must be patient with her patience, sometimes. But it was always there for me.
Over the decades in which we were friends, Jaune and Romradery’s activity helped refine my vision to break the surface of what appears to be a large group of water with a technician. The course I chose, and expanding that vision remained in every painting I made, and I owe a part of JAUNE and all the wisdom and support that I have shown to me and many other artists of our time.
