Artists collaborate on ‘Gather,’ an exhibition on display in Portland

Artists Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt collaborated on an exhibition on view at Stelo in Portland. “Gather” includes solo work from each of the artists and a collaborated piece, “Each/Other.” The work was created using bandanas that feature political and personal messages. Luger, who is based in Glorieta, New Mexico and Watt, who is based in Portland, were able to collaborate in Colton, Oregon, where they worked together and spent time with each others’ families. They join us with more on their work and the collaboration.

This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud, I’m Dave Miller. In August of 2020, when the country was still reeling from the initial COVID shutdowns and Portland was dealing with nightly racial justice protests, two celebrated Native artists met up for a Residency in rural Clackamas County: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger went to Camp Colton between Molalla and Estacada to create a large scale work together, and they asked members of the public from all around the world to help them. The result was a much larger than life canine covered in bandanas that are embroidered with personal and political messages. It’s called ‘Each Other,’ and it’s on display right now along with solo works by Watt and Luger at the Stello Gallery in Portland’s Pearl District. I am joined now by Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt, welcome to both of you.

Marie Watt/ Cannupa Hanska Luger, in unison: Thank you.

Dave Miller: A ton of events and meetings and performances and conventions and just basically get together of every kind were canceled just before the two of you actually got together for this collaboration. Did you consider not doing this collaboration?

Cannupa Hanska Luger: All the time. That’s what collaboration is – the process of considering not doing it, and then finding a way to do it, anyway.

Miller: Marie, why did you, why did you still get together?

Maria Watt: Well, we had been invited by the Denver Art Museum to prepare for a two-person exhibition; and so as part of that project, the museum had hoped that we would do a collaborative project together and we started talking, prior to the pandemic about what that project would look like, and so, I think in some ways the decision was made up for us, although perhaps there would have been the opportunity to to have a change of heart or mind.

Miller: What was your initial plan – The pre-pandemic plan,

Channupa, for a collaborative work?

Hanska Luger: Well, all of the work that was in this initial exhibition was done in collaboration, so there was a through-thread in our kind of independent practice, but Marie and I had never collaborated together. And so the opportunity to work on something together, and with community, we were really excited about engaging with folks kind of firsthand. We had this intention of this giant canine form, which is like a nod to previous work Marie had done and continues to do. But the emphasis in that is, it’s easier for human beings to make the more-than-human kinship relationship if you start with a canine, like this idea of a friend being, that’s an animal, that’s not a human being. So that was kind of embedded in our original idea, but we wanted to build something that you could enter into, that you could have, you know, maybe take shelter in and collaboratively build with the artists on-site and add to it as it travels, like there was there was intentions that a pandemic just radically transformed, like notions around social engagement during the some kind of social distancing. We had to adapt to it.

Dave Miller: You ended up asking the public, instead of gathering under, say, or inside this a large canine sculpture which was not going to happen in 2020 or 2021. It’s…in some ways it’s still not happening now. So instead of that, you asked the public to provide bandanas that would make a kind of not exoskeleton but the kind of a hide for the canine. Marie Watt, what did you tell people? What was the brief in terms of what you were asking of people?

Marie Watt: The brief was an invitation for people to share something in this moment on the bandana. It could be a word, it could be an image, it could be on any piece of cloth available. It didn’t have to be on a bandana per se, but something similar in shape and form – and…I think it’s also important to share that for the call, we used an approach that Cannupa has practiced a lot in his work, which is, we created a short one minute video, where there was no words but we sort of acted out the the…actually, I’m gonna have you chime in here, Cannupa…we yeah, go ahead, take it over…

Cannupa Hanska Luger: We did…so in my social practice, I tend to use social media as a platform for cooperation and collaboration, and have made short videos that create prompts for people to participate. And through the process of doing that,

I found that the less words you use, if you could convey a message through images, it kind of opens up the possibility of people participating by…we could break language barriers and different things along those lines. So we made a video that had no words and it acted out what we were asking for. It was a visual cue at a time when we were all kind of demanding some digital content as we are all sheltering in place.

Miller: Marie Watt, do you remember when you got a chance to actually sift through the bandanas that people had sent in?

Watt: Yeah, I do. I remember them… the band, I remember sifting through them, they originally came to Camp Colton. They received all the bandanas there, but at some point I had the opportunity to go and see what people had contributed. And I… and I feel like you know, they almost felt like I don’t know if… I almost want to say a love letter, but they weren’t just love letters, I guess, like for me they were a stand in for the people who made them, and so I couldn’t touch or handle one without really thinking of there being a person on the other side of that, you know, intimate object and personal expression and the generosity and sense of collaboration and the desire to be part of a community and something larger than oneself, I think, was made very clear when you saw that relationship between part and whole.

Miller: And, it’s…I think it’s important that you’re using the word community there, because it seems like that was a part of the creation of the larger work as well. There’s a video on display at Stello, where I learned that it wasn’t just the two of you that got together at Camp Colton. It was your families too, your young kids too. What was it like to all be together there in that time of such disconnection?

Hanska Luger: I mean that was, that was the rare treat, and as far as I was, you know, that’s the most beautiful art can be, is the process of creation and my hat’s off to Stello and the community that that exists as, the care that they took up for us, in that, there was a lot of nasal swabbing and COVID tests and stuff so we could build a bubble. But once we have a bubble it’s a beautiful landscape in Colton and you have to understand that like Marie and I didn’t really know each other prior to this. The benefit of working with this project at Stello was that we were, we were going to collaborate, and prior to this pandemic, we didn’t know where we were going to collaborate. And there is a…there’s a certain kind of, like, vulnerability of inviting people into your studio and we didn’t have to do that, we went to another studio where we were both kind of neutral. So that was a really amazing kind of surprise, and so open for collaboration, plus, they had, you know, a facility that could house both of our families. There was open air and a beautiful landscape for them to kind of travel around and walk around while we worked and we could go on walks with them, but we bonded over meals and this kind of like bubble experience. But I think it was like the only way really that… it was the best possible way that we could have done this collaboration. I think in general, outside of a pandemic, it was the only way we could do it during a pandemic, but I think it was probably the…what I would hope we would have done anyway, there was some…the opportunity for our families to come together in that moment was beautiful and then Marie and I could bond and my partner, Ginger and you know, the conglomeration of kids running around after all of that time being isolated. It was like a real blessing.

Miller: I’m curious, maybe I can ask each one of you this in turn, not to put you on the spot, but Marie first, what do you think Cannupa brought to this collaboration? And then, Cannupa, I will ask you the same question in reverse. But Marie, what about the other half…from your perspective, what did Cannupa bring?

Watt: I have to think, [Laughing] I mean, he brought so much…so I’m just thinking about what I really want to share and you have to know I just have this huge, open smile on my face because I think part of it, you know, we’re talking about the pandemic, but part of it was this, like, deep connection, right? And like to get to know somebody and like great artist, whose work I admire like Cannupa, but like to get to know him and his family, like I don’t separate me, I don’t separate knowing Cannupa from like knowing his kids and knowing Ginger and knowing the bonds that our families share and in regards to the collaboration, he has kind of wicked welding skills and he has a much… I think there’s times where I would like, kind of probably deliberate longer over something and he was more…I feel like we’re both really deliberate in what we do, but I also think that he prioritized sometimes, how we would go about solving a pretty labor intensive problem and I really appreciated that. He also really developed a fondness for twill tape and that is something that brought us together.

Miller:  What is twill tape?

Hanska Luger: I know, right? Because…

[Everyone Laughing]

Miller: Maybe it’s something we can all develop a fondness for, if we knew what it was.

Hanska Luger: It’s like a ribbon…but it’s backed a little bit. It’s like somewhere between a ribbon and a…you know, like those nylon webbing straps that you have for ratchet straps and stuff like that.

Miller: Yeah.

Hanska Luger: Imagine a cotton middle version between a webbing and a ribbon. It’s pretty cool stuff.

Miller: What did Marie bring to this collaboration?

Hanska Luger: Every…everything else. She brought everything else. Marie, it was amazing working with Marie and once again it’s like you get to know somebody, you learn about them and even in those moments of decision and sitting down… like making art with somebody is a…it’s a really amazing kind of opportunity to really get to know the way somebody thinks. It’s a…it’s an insight into what they do, how they live, who they are. The knowledge around sewing and embroidery...I did it out of necessity, but not out of like care, necessarily, around how things were constructed. And even materials within that. So Marie’s knowledge of working with textiles was like, priceless, in this moment of moving through… like… I mean like twill tape, What is twill tape? I’d no idea, and it seemed so important to the construction and fabrication of textiles, you know. There was a wealth of knowledge from Marie that I also looked up to, Marie was always kind of like this, I had Marie in my mind and not in my heart, you know, prior to going to this to this thing, and working together really kind of embedded it in a moment of care and understanding that like my mind missed a lot of it.

Miller: If you’re just tuning in, we’re talking right now with the artists, Canupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt, their large-scale collaboration and some of their solo work is on display right now at Stello, in Portland’s Pearl District. So let’s turn to these two solo works Marie, yours is called ‘Vivid Dream, Awakening.’ Can you describe, first, what it looks like?

Watt: There are three large suspended forms that have some similarities or resemblance to clouds and they are created from jingles, tin jingles and these kind of suspended bell-like shapes when moved, have the capacity to kind of make this sound, or a sound  and kind of this music. So I guess that, I don’t know, I’m sure there’s probably more I should say, but that is where I’ll start.

Miller:  When I visited, the founder of the gallery…and I should say that I desperately wanted to touch them, and then the founder of the gallery who had let me inside to show me around, in preparation for today’s conversation, she gave me permission to touch them, saying that you had said this is all right. And so I did, and I recorded it. So let’s have just a brief listen to a little of what it sounded like

[Recording plays]

Miller: Marie Watt, what have these jingles been traditionally used for?

Watt: So traditionally, the jingles were used in…or they are used in the Jingle Dress Dance, which is a healing dance. And this dance was founded in the mid-1800s or so, and it was in response to a pandemic, excuse me, a pandemic. But in this particular case it was the influenza and a medicine person who was trying to help heal a young sick girl had this dream that if they made this dance using these tins that come from the lid of like a tobacco can or other type of tin can and they’re kind of rolled in this bell-type shape. If they were, if those bells when attached to a dress when, when those were danced around this sick child, there was the possibility that it would heal the child. And so the child did get better, or the story goes that the child got better. And so as a result that dance was shared with other people in the community as well as with other Tribes and it continues to be a healing dance to this day.

Miller: You’ve described this work, these three large iridescent clouds that you can walk under, as prototypes. What does that mean?

Watt: For me? It was such a great opportunity to  realize these large sculptures that have been in my mind for quite some time. But they are prototypes because I’ve long wanted to get to a point where people can really engage with this material and have permission to touch it and have like, actually listen to a sound. And so it’s a prototype with the understanding that I’m still trying to figure out how to create the mechanism for that engagement. I think that the desire to touch them is there in the way they’re presented. But ideally people wouldn’t have to be told that they can touch it. And so that’s the next step.

Miller: Cannupa, your work, your solo work in the gallery now is called Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure, which just so happens to have the acronym ‘Tipi.’ Can you describe what it is?

Hanska Luger: It’s a tipi.

[All laughing]

Miller: I deserve that.

Hanska Luger: It is what it says it is. No,  it’s been this kind of like exploration of an idea that I’ve been working towards and it’s like a facet of my practice, which is around ‘Indigenous futurism,’ speculative fiction, science fiction, you know, playing around with some of these ideas, but exploring kind of like ancestral technology and moving it through new material. The tipi itself is just the skin. It’s not the poles, it’s just the skin it’s presented in a way that is open and also closed. It’s presented in a way that you wouldn’t actually utilize the tipi.  But there is, you know, there’s like a little secret subtext in that exploration. I wanna…I’m trying to figure out ways to present indigenous technology and knowledge. I mean the tipi is a nomadic infrastructure. It…in order for it to function for a society, if…you have to relinquish the idea of ownership and possession of land, you have to be an extension of it. You have to adapt to it rather than making the land adapt to you. And I think, in that, that’s the technology. The technology…how do you re-establish a sense of belonging, instead of turning the whole world into belongings?

Miller: Hm…

Hanska Luger: So the presentation of the tipi in the way that I’ve presented it on the wall, it is both open and closed. And I say that because I’ve exhibited versions of this in places where it’s put up with poles. And there is…it’s funny because there is more of an entitled kind of intention to enter into the tipi – I think maybe because you can buy them on Etsy, you can get them for your kids as a play structure in their backyard. You can get them as doghouses. And in the presentation of it in that form, you’re undermining all of the kind of like, embedded technological knowledge that went into the tipi and what it is, why it has 13 poles, why the door faces east. You know, why it is like an optical lens, projecting what is in sky is also here on the land. It’s a… it’s a focal point for connection. The doors were small, so that you have to humble yourself when you enter into the tipi and when you enter into the world from the tipi. You know, there’s things…it’s funny, because it’s presented in a way that is both open and closed and it’s, you know, kind of contrary to Marie’s piece in that exhibition. And then we have a piece that you know hundreds of people touched in order to create it, you know. So there…I think it was a fun kind of exploration as an exhibition: Gather, what it means to gather. And you know the design of the tipi  was for intergenerational protection. It’s transportable, its infrastructure. Then…and there’s a dance party going on inside of it, with like, shifting lights, like… I’m like, ‘You can’t come in, but you want to…’

Miller: Well, it is so true that… I mean everything you just said, especially the last part when even before I noticed that… the shimmering lights, I desperately wanted to go in and I felt like I wasn’t supposed to, and that tension made it all the more fascinating and all the more delicious. Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt. Thank you so much for your time.

Hanska Luger / Watt: You’re welcome. Thank you.

Miller: You can see the work of the artist, Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger right now at Stello, in Portland’s Pearl District.

Tomorrow on the show, we’re going to talk with Portland Commissioner Joann Hardesty and Challenger Rene Gonzalez. They are in a runoff election right now for a seat on the Portland City Council. We’ll hear about their differing approaches to homelessness, crime, public safety and the future of Portland.

If you don’t want to miss any of our shows, you can listen on the NPR One App on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Our nightly rebroadcast is at eight pm. Thanks very much for tuning in to Think Out Loud on OPB and KLCC. I’m Dave Miller, we’ll be back tomorrow.

Think Out Loud is supported by Steve and Jan Oliver, the Rose E Tucker Charitable Trust and Michael, Kristen, Andrew and Anna Kern.

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