First American Art Magazine No. 3, Summer 2014 | Page 8
WHERE I FIT
Textile works by Maggie Thompson
(Fond du Lac Ojibwe)
Exploring Native identity, experiences, and authenticity in a
period of blood quanta, stereotypes, and appropriation
February 28 – May 31, 2014
Presented by Minnesota’s Only Native Owned and
Operated Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery
All My Relations Gallery
1414 E. Franklin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55404
612-284-1102
www.allmyrelationsarts.com
Editor’s Greetings
W
ELCOME TO OUR FOURTH ISSUE.
First American Art Magazine is officially one
year old. By successfully making it through
our first year, FAAM has beat the odds, as
an estimated 60% of newly launched magazines do not
survive their first year. Not only have we survived, First
American Art Magazine was named one of the Ten Best
New Magazines Launched in 2013 by Library Journal, based
in New York.
FAAM received a warm reception at this year’s College
Art Association conference. We’ve found many allies
in the larger art world who want to see serious writing
about Indigenous American art. We are building bridges
between our tribal communities and the global art world
by communicating our values and perspectives.
Several questions repeatedly come up. Why the Americas?
We want to define our Indigenous communities by our
thousands of years of interconnected histories and cultural
exchanges, as opposed to defining ourselves by those
who colonized us and their language barriers. This issue
welcomes our first writer from Mexico, and next issue will
feature writing from our second Chilean author.
I’m often asked if the magazine only focuses on
contemporary art. While we profile living artists active
today, we also honor those artists who have gone before
us, and we want to keep providing features about historical
and precontact artwork, since our past, present, and future
art all inform each other.
An art historian asked which methodologies we use in
reviews. The answer is we hope writers will experiment
with a range of approaches, from established critical
methodologies to the newly developing Indigenous
methodologies to their own approaches. By experimenting
with a range of approaches, we can see our art world from
different perspectives to discover new insights into the
complex relations among our art, artists, scholars, and
great communities.
Thank you for being part of our quest for knowledge
and reflection in the exciting and ever-changing world of
Indigenous art of the Americas!
—America Meredith
LEFT: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Point and Shoot:
Julia Tuell and Company, 2002, acrylic on hardboard panel, 24 x 18 in.,
private collection.
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