PULLMAN, Wash. – An exhibit titled ‘Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts at 25’ will be on display Sept. 18‑Dec. 22 in the Wright/Harmon and Smith Galleries at the WSU Schnitzer Museum of Art.
A reception and gallery conversation with artists James Lavadour and Rebecca Dobkins, professor of anthropology and curator of Native American Art, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, will be held 4:30‑6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27, at the gallery. The event is free and open to the public.
Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts is an extraordinary center for artistic creativity located on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation near Pendleton, Oregon. Housed in the historic St. Andrew’s Mission school building, Crow’s Shadow was founded in 1992 by Walla Walla artist James Lavadour, one of the Northwest’s most critically acclaimed painters.
Organized by the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in partnership with the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts (CSIA), the exhibition chronicles the history of Crow’s Shadow over the past 25 years. Today, CSIA is perhaps the only professional printmaking studio located on a reservation community in the United States. Since opening, it has emerged as one of the most important printmaking studios in the country, bringing together Native and non-Native artists from around the world to make prints under the guidance and direction of master printmaker Frank Janzen.
Prints produced at Crow’s Shadow can be found in some of the foremost public and private collections in the United States and have been included in exhibitions around the world.
This exhibition features 75 prints drawn from the Crow’s Shadow Print Archive and focuses on themes of landscape, abstraction, portraiture, word and images, and media and process. Included in the exhibition are works by 50 Native and non‑Native artists who have worked at CSIA, including Rick Bartow, Pat Boas, Joe Feddersen, Edgar Heap of Birds, James Lavadour, Truman Lowe, Lillian Pitt, Wendy Red Star, Storm Tharp, and Marie Watt, among others.
