Gerald Clarke Jr.: the Contemporary Indian Experience rough Art

Bird song gourd rattle painting | Photo: Courtesy of Gordon Johnson.

Gerald Clarke Jr., Indian artist, runs about 65 head of cattle on his familys Cahuilla Reservation land near Anza in Riverside County. Its a balancing act, he says, especially during drought years, trying to match the size of the herd with the ability of the land to support it. In these dry years, 65 seems to be a sustainable number.

Clarke, 45, recently invested in a hay rake and baler and put up 1,000 bales this summer. There arent many SoCal Indians left so committed to raising cattle, but Clarkes father was a cattleman, so hes bent on keeping up the family tradition. As a result, Clarke is equally comfortable with a paintbrush in hand, daubing acrylics on canvas, or wielding a pair of wire cutters restringing a barb wire fence. Hes a working man. He plants orchards, splits cords of wood to heat his home, holds an annual round-up to brand his cattle, teaches art at Idyllwild Arts Academy, creates award-winning works of art. In 2007, he won the prestigious Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art. Hes an Indian cowboy with art on his mind.

Gerald Clarke Jr.

Ask him what his preferred medium is -- painting, drawing, sculpting, performance art (hes done it all) -- hell say the kitchen sink. Hes a wild card, always experimenting, always switching it up. Once he made a series of road signs for the Cahuilla Reservation emblazoned with words from the Cahuilla language, words like Nesun e elquish (I am sad), Nextaxmuqa (I am singing), Kimul Hakushwe (The door is open), Ivawen (Be strong.) He placed them near his ranch road and at random roadside spots on the reservation. It was his off-beat version of an artsy statement, but he was hoping the signs might lend a little cultural pride to the place.

The fate of road signs on a reservation is dicey. Many of them get shot up, a handy target for target practice, and many of Clarkes artwork signs werent spared. Except one. It was stolen, dug up by its concrete base and trucked off. Clarke was secretly pleased that a local coveted his sign. Even better, he put the word out that hed like it back, and it anonymously reappeared. That is a reservation rarity.

These days, Clarke Jr. lives in his late fathers reservation home, with his wife of more than 20 years, Stacy, and their daughters. Emily and Lily. Emily likes to read, and to write. Next year shes hoping to attend the Idyllwild Art Academy where Clarke teaches art and is chairman of the arts department.

Peon | Photo: Courtesy of Gordon Johnson.

Hes an academically trained artist, so hes done his homework, paid his dues. He graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in 1991 with a bachelor of arts in painting and sculpture. He got his master of fine arts degree a couple of years later from Stephen F. Austin State University, Texas. While working on his masters thesis he taught at Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas.

Now he teaches students and is department chairman at Idyllwild, but he still thirsts to create his own art. Lately, hes been busy painting large-scale canvases based on a birdsong motif that is close to his heart. Clarke is a birdsinger -- the ancient Cahuilla songs that describe the Cahuilla cosmogony and the search for home of his people. He learned from Alvino Siva, a much respected teacher. His latest paintings feature the gourd rattles used to accompany bird songs. Each singer often makes and decorates his own rattle. I was interested in how each individual invests himself into its design. I wanted to explore that. Plus I felt my work lacking in color lately so I turned to painting. I havent painted in a long while, but it was fun to return, he says.

Bird song gourd rattle painting | Photo: Courtesy of Gordon Johnson.

Clarke paints with acrylics on canvas and clear coats them so they can be easily cleaned. He likes acrylics because theyre safer than having a lot of flammable oil paint solvents around. And he likes the ways the colors pop.

Clarke puts a premium on relevance. When he was a kid being led by teachers on field trips to see Indian art in museums: the headdresses, the beaded gauntlets, the statues of warriors riding on fiery horses, the oil paintings of a starry night with a yellow glow from a tipi pitched next a tumbling creek didnt make much sense to him. These things and scenes werent part of his Indian experience, he says. Clarke decided his art would have more connection to his life, his family, his people, his Cahuilla community.

Continuum Basket | Photo: Courtesy of Gordon Johnson.

Take a look, for example, at a sculpture he calls Continuum Basket. In the Continuum Basket, past and future interweave to make present. Its a metaphor for Clarkes work and life. To make this sculpture, he crushed and coiled 668 soda and beer cans into a star design that resembles a traditional Cahuilla Indian basket.

In many ways, the piece is an homage to the past, to the centuries of Cahuilla basket-making that Clarke harbors much respect for. But its also a look into the future of Indian people, the aluminum cans asking questions about where we go from here. He insists the past is not confined to the future. He refuses to be defined like an artifact on a museum shelf by his Indian heritage. He seeks to let the past inform the present, but not restrict it. He is living proof of Indian evolution.

He hopes the viewers of the Continuum Basket sense comments in the basket about the Indian present. For one thing, diabetes is rampant in Indian communities, with beer and soda contributing heavily to the epidemic. Clarke intends for the cans to provoke thoughts about lifestyle choices and about cultural differences, about native foods versus high-sugar, high-fat processed foods.

The sculpture has presence, filling a good-sized wall, and was bought by the Idyllwild Arts Academy where i

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