Jessica Crabtree

Have you noticed? I’m sort of proud of this little logo showing that my site is 100% wind powered. This blog, along with its companion photo blog and my home page, are all hosted by IPower, whose facilities across the country are run entirely on wind energy. Being green is such a big thing these days, and with good reason; so it’s nice to be able to make a little difference for the environment right here from my studio.

Usually my tips are geared towards art and photography, but in this case I’m taking a minute to promote the hosting service that makes all this possible. I don’t mind showing IPower’s ads on my page because I’ve been so pleased with their services over the years I’ve been with them. Besides being green, their servers are extremely reliable and their hosting plans come with an array of useful web tools including WordPress, ZenPhoto, and b2evolution’s PHP platform blog – all of which I use myself. They come with a host (no pun intended) of other features for all levels of users from beginners to programmers. Their interface is very user-friendly (and very clean and professional – no tacky ads) and their customer service is bar none.

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Bama’s career reads like a cross between that of Norman Rockwell and Charles Marion Russell. Born 1926 in Manhattan, his early career paralleled that of Rockwell (as a commercial artist and illustrator, including work with the Saturday Evening Post). But like Russell, he became a “child of the West” after moving to Wyoming in the 60′s to be closer to the subjects he desired to portray.

Since then he has become a living legend of Western art. His extensive portfolio covers nearly 50 years of work in capturing the iconography of Western lore, from cowboys to mountain men, in gorgeous life-like realism. He is one of the most renowned painters of Native American portraits (which makes up a sizable share of his portfolio), generally painted from live models in historical attire. One of the things I appreciate most about his work, aside from his skill in realism, is the historical integrity and his no-nonsense, un-romanticized treatment of the subjects.

“James Bama’s modern realism approaches the larger-than-life romance of the West from a new angle. The subjects of his portraits are real people, doing real work, with the history of generations past written in their faces and the surrounding landscapes. ”

Profile from The Greenwich Workshop

JAMES BAMA: Gallery and Artist Profile from The Greenwich Workshop

There are so many stunning paintings in his portfolio I had a hard time choosing which ones to feature in this post, so I’ve included just a few of my favorites (click images for larger view).

“Young Plains Indian”

“Old Arapaho Storyteller”

“Little Fawn”

June 25, 1876: Battle of Little Big Horn

There’s not much about this event that hasn’t been said – both true and not so true. It has been studied more extensively, and become more entrenched in popular culture, than possibly any other encounter between Indians and US forces. Maybe that’s because it involved so many influential figures – General Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse – or maybe because it was so shocking to Americans when it occurred that it was instantly and permanently seared into the public memory. Whatever the reasons, our understanding of the conflict and the events surrounding it have changed dramatically through time. The technologies of forensic archaeology and ballistics have reconstructed the course of events on the Greasy Grass, from the movements on the field to weapons used and the nature of the combat.

Perhaps the biggest change in perception is the shift in bias. The role of the US military, and of Custer in particular, is no longer so glorified as it once was, and the Indians not so vilified. We’ve come to understand how the hunger for gold in the forbidden Black Hills motivated the Custer Expedition of 1876. And with more Native accounts coming to light – and being heard – our understanding of the events on the ground has become more objective and comprehensive.

These changes are relatively recent, however. For most of the 20th century, discussing the legitimacy of US Indian policies was strictly taboo – and so was challenging the objectivity of “official” accounts. (continue reading…)

I’ve started a new portrait, Acoma, on 18″ x 24″ black suede board, from an Edward Curtis photo of a Pueblo man. Below is the same portrait one day earlier. It’s still in the first stages (face first, then hair, clothing/accessories, and final touch-ups), but I’ll be updating with photos as I go along.

Check out my Latest page to see them all step-by-step.

“We know you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in these colleges. And the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would very expensive to you. We’re convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal, and we thank you heartily. But you who are so wise must know that different nations have different conceptions of things. And you will not, therefore, take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happens not to be the same with yours.

We have had some experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up in the colleges of the northern province. They were instructed in all your sciences. But when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, and therefore were neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor councilors. They were totally good for nothing.

We are, however, not the less obliged for your kind offer, though we decline accepting. To show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.”

- Chief Canassatego, Onondaga speaker & diplomat (1744)

From American Rhetoric: Online Speech Bank

The Eyes Have It

When painting a portrait, don’t put in the eyes until the rest of the face is more or less complete. As tempting as it may be to show the whites of the eyes early on, or the bright reflection that really makes them “pop,” you’ll just end up having to touch them up or even do them over when the white is dulled by chalk debris. Bright whites (including teeth) and the twinkle in the eye really should be last-minute touches.

And just to be clear, remember that “white” areas are rarely pure white; diffused light gives them a colored cast, often blue or pink, and subtle coloring helps to give shape and depth to an otherwise cartoonish white surface.

Close-up of “Lummi,” 16×20 pastel on suede

June 12, 1616: Pocahontas, her husband John Rolfe, and their infant son Thomas arrive at the port of Plymouth, England.

Why Visit England?

John Rolfe was a young English colonist whose claim to fame was obtaining tobacco seeds of a marketable variety that would grow in the cooler mid-Atlantic colonies. At the time, England and Spain were locked in a power struggle for domination of trade and colonial expansion, and Spain’s rigid monopoly on the booming tobacco industry gave it a valuable edge. Rolfe’s tobacco enterprise in Virginia offered the English colonies a lucrative advantage, and his marriage to the daughter of the region’s most powerful sachem represented an alliance between colonists and Native Americans – a relationship that had already proven vital to the existence of the colony. So in a word, a visit to England with his wife and son (as well as around a dozen Powhatan emissaries) was a well-calculated move in a public relations strategy.

Reception

Pocahontas was received at the court of King James with all the pomp of a visiting dignitary. Her presence was widely acclaimed throughout London and she appeared at numerous high-profile social functions, where according to contemporaries she distinguished herself by her poise and dignity. Her meteoric career as a media darling was short-lived, however; she fell ill and died unexpectedly while preparing to embark on the return voyage to the American colony in 1617. But her legend continued to enthrall Europeans for centuries, as implied by the long tradition of paintings, songs, and literature she inspired.

Left: A hypothetical reenactment showing Pocahontas in Jacobean dress. (I’m not sure of the source of this photo but it’s a very interesting attempt at a historical reconstruction.)

It is arguable that the sensation caused by Pocahontas’s presence in England helped to spawn the legend of the “Indian princess” that subsequently became so entrenched in the American ethos. As European colonists emigrated to the Americas by the thousands, they desired to connect with their new homeland and forge a unique identity, and before long nearly every colonial family could trace back to some “prominent Indian maiden.” Even today this vestigial “Indian princess” ancestor still reflects the desire of white Americans to try to incorporate their national past onto a personal level.

Behind the Scenes

Still, Pocahontas’s celebrity image stood in stark contrast to the reality in which most Continental Europeans associated with the American Indian. By this point, Native Americans made up a significant, although lesser-known component of the European slave trade. Since the 1500s, European slavers plied the Atlantic seaboard, taking captive thousands of Indian men, women, and children, who were then shipped to England, Spain, and other countries and sold at slave markets. (A prime example is the story of Squanto, the well-known Pawtuxet who was sold into slavery in Spain before escaping to England.) Even more were enslaved elsewhere in the colonies on plantations, and later on, in colonial communities as a primary labor source. As part of European expansion in the colonies, Native Americans from New England, and from Pocahontas’s own homeland in the mid-Atlantic regions, were a major part of the slave trade well into the 18th century.

In this way, Pocahontas’s image both past and present has reflected the discrepancies in white perceptions and portrayals of Native culture, particularly in its interactions with European colonialism.

“Sedgeford Portrait”

See also:
More on the Sedgeford portrait, the Rolfe family, and portrayals of Pocahontas through the ages -
This Day in History: Birth of Thomas Rolfe

In an interesting footnote, a relic of Pocahontas’s visit to England may have survived. A pair of earrings shown in the so-called “Sedgeford Portrait” (which supposedly portrays Pocahontas with a somewhat older Thomas) has been passed down through the Rolfe family and now belong to the Association for Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. The earrings are made from a very rare and valuable variety of shell, in English silver settings. According to George Percy, a Virginia settler and author of a history of the colony, the earrings were set in England by his brother the Duke of Northumberland during Pocahontas’s 1616 visit. The earrings were on display at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and the Jamestown Exhibition of 1907.

General Links

National Geographic Interactive: Jamestown and the Powhatan

Historic Jamestowne: Official Website

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Partial transcription of a 1935 article on the history of the Sedgeford portrait and Pocahontas’s earrings

A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: The First Century by Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Ph.D. (An e-book provided by the National Park Service)

Smithsonian Magazine: “Picturing Pocahontas”

Finders Keepers? Adulteration of Native American Cultures in the Name of Profit: an essay by Marchell J. Wesaw