New Mexico Desert, 2011. Oil on wood panel, 40" x 80" x 2". Purchased through a special gift from the Louise Ann Williams Endowment, 2013. National Museum of the American Indian 26/9250


living synthesis of human presence and place.” The painting Farewell to the Smokies (2007)


demonstrates this synthesis between an intense sense of ancestral presence and place. Although WalkingStick was very familiar with the story of the 19th


-century forced removal of the Chero-


kee people from their eastern homelands to In- dian Territory in Oklahoma, she never thought it would be the subject of her art. Yet upon visiting the Great Smokey Mountains in North Carolina she found herself overtaken by the contrast between the intense beauty and lush- ness of the mountains with the tragic expulsion of her ancestors. To capture this, she spread a breathtaking view of the mountains across


“...THERE ARE NO FIGURES, BUT BANDS OF PATTERNING LIFTED FROM NAVAJO RUGS AND NORTHERN CHEYENNE BEADWORK FLOAT LIKE SPIRITS OR MATERIALIZED MUSIC ACROSS DESERT VISTAS IN WHICH CEZANNE COMES TO THE RIO GRANDE.” – HOLLAND COTTER, NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW, MAY 10, 2013.


SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 23


PHOTO BY ERNEST AMOROSO


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