January is Human Trafficking and Awareness Month, which tragically and disproportionately affects Native communities in the US and Canada. As a result of a state grant from the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, a year-long art quilt project led by Corine Pearce will culminate in a month-long show at Art Center Ukiah, entitled ‘Bring Them Home.’
Angela James, the Vice Chairperson for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, says, “For the tribe, the most important thing is bringing light to the ‘Missing and Murdered Persons’ (MMIP) movement. So many times our Native women are targeted, but their cases go cold. We need to keep this issue at the front of everyone’s agenda. We currently have some grants from the state for MMIP and a lot of the money is targeted for educating our young girls and boys to make them aware of ways to protect themselves. One of the biggest problems is that social media gives predators easy access to young people.”
Tatiana Cantrell is the project director for one of the MMIP grants that was awarded to the Pinoleville Pomo Nation. She notes that the grant applies to all tribes in Mendocino and Lake Counties, and that their focus has been to raise greater community-wide awareness of what MMIP is. “There are 160 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people in Lake and Mendocino County,” Cantrell says. “It’s an epidemic, and it affects the whole community on a daily basis.”
Cantrell continues, “Our whole team provides art therapy to help people process grief and find support while they are looking for missing loved ones. We have held monthly quilting groups at Pinoleville for people to come and work on projects. We have also reached out to Covelo, Big Valley, and Robinson Rancherias in Lake County, Redwood Valley Rancheria, and other places. We bring culture into everything we do – that’s Corine’s job as the director of the quilt project that will be shown at Art Center Ukiah. People all over the two counties have been creating art quilts to tell their stories about the whole issue of MMIP, It’s a way for people to bring awareness to a particular person who is missing, or to pay tribute to their relatives and friends who have been affected by MMIP.”
Pearce found the quilting project that she directed to be extraordinarily intense. “I realized through a previous quilting project called ‘Our Safety, Our Sovereignty,’ how gratifying it is to memorialize people through art,” she explains. “People in the MMIP project had a lot of stuff to deal with, and we found that coming together as a community to shine light on our grief was powerful. We created one large community quilt that will be the centerpiece of the show… It’s made with squares that people wrote individual messages on with fabric pens. One of the most powerful squares made me bawl… it just said ‘I miss you, nephew.’”
Other quilts in the show use collaged fabric to tell the stories. One of the individual quilts made by Monique Sonoquie (Lakota) is a portrait of her nephew in red to celebrate the traditional red cloth that the Lakota are buried with. Other people have made traditional dresses for the show, some of which include graphic art, to raise awareness about the issue. As Corine says, “There are a lot of different ways of expressing grief.”
Cantrell sums up her hopes for the show. “I have a 7-year-old daughter who reminds me that we need to deal with the issue of MMIP every single day,” she says. “I hope people will come to our show and learn what MMIP is and how it affects all of us… our neighbors, the kids we go to school with, and the people we work with. I hope we get support for the people who have created the quilts that represent the family members and friends that they have lost. Most of all, I hope someday my job will be unnecessary, which will happen when MMIP is no longer an epidemic.”
Painting by Paula Martin. (Contributed)The Corner gallery will feature guest artists Ken Edwards, Paula Martin, and Adriana Oberg in their front window display.
Ken paints abstract compositions with acrylics. He also has a line of sculptures created out of rusty old tools. “I lop the handles off the tools and add new ones that I paint with acrylics,” Ken says. New to this area after his career as a firefighter in the Bay Area for thirty years, he describes his process, “I always thought I’d take up art in my retirement, and here I am. I’m self-taught and do all kinds of noodling around with various techniques, and I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it.” Ken’s wife JoAnn, has a little more to say about it. “Ken is very modest,” she adds. “His work has been shown in the San Jose Museum of Art and the De Young Museum, and one piece is in the permanent collection of Imagery Estate Winery from their wine label challenge in 2013.”
Paula Martin, in the north window, will be sharing the space with Adriana Oberg, who she describes as her ‘bonus daughter.’ In Paula’s words, “Adriana has been an artist all of her life… she has definitely put in her ten thousand hours of art practice.” Paula is contemplating making it a real family affair with the addition of a few pieces by yet another daughter, Alyson Miller. Their theme will be ‘Figures and Fruit’ to encompass the disparate styles and subject matter of all three women. Paula is a creative whirlwind, manifesting art in the form of gardening, cooking, and teaching painting on cruise ships. “Art is in my blood,” she says, “My mother was an artist who also taught art, so I was exposed to art at an early age. After my retirement, I’ve really gotten back into doing art. On the cruise ships, I’ve discovered some phenomenal artists who have never done art before, and that is inspiring to me. Working on the cruises also forces me to paint regularly, which is good because I haven’t developed that discipline on my own.”
One additional guest artist in the gallery will be Polly Palecek on the pony wall dedicated to the Mendocino County Art Association. Polly’s whimsical oil paintings of local scenes and subjects are always a delight for local art lovers.
The First Friday opening celebration for all the above will be on January 2 from 5-8 pm. Live harp music will be presented throughout the evening by Suni Smith. Art Center Ukiah and the Corner Gallery are located at 201 S State Street in Ukiah.
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