INSIDE NMAI
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Iroquois Creation Story–The Twins. This is one of the many drawings Jemison created for a film for the orientation center at the Seneca Art and Culture Center at Ganondagan.“ I produced drawings for the animators and filmmakers, about 100 of them,” says Jemison. “I found it was the best way to answer questions [from the filmmakers], and the fastest way.”
Iroquois Creation Story–The Twins, G. Peter Jemison (Seneca), 2015, colored pencils, china marker and oil pastel on paper, 14" x 6½".
major New York exhibition, a showcase for contemporary Indian art presented by what was then the Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation, the predecessor of the NMAI. He joined the company of not only Oxendine but the now-famous painters George Morrison (Ojibwe) and Fritz Schold- er (Luiseño). In 1973, Oxendine gave Jemison a one-man show in his own gallery, Ameri- can Art, in the SoHo neighborhood of lower Manhattan. When Oxendine closed shop, the American Indian Community House in Manhattan opened its own art gallery. Jemi- son, who was then working as an ironworker in Buffalo, was asked to be its director. After a brutal winter of working outdoors and facing a fork in his career, Jemison gladly accepted. The Community House in Manhattan
provided the cultural outlet for American Indians in the New York area, the largest Native urban concentration in the United States. From 1978 to 1985, Jemison staged four or five exhibitions a year, giving a consis- tent outlet for Natives working in all forms of contemporary art. At the same time, he expanded into a new
medium, producing a series of paintings on paper shopping bags—an ubiquitous recep- tacle for modern consumerism. Two of these
44 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER 2020
works are in the NMAI collection: “White Bead” reproduces traditional beadwork and the other, “Cherry Shadow,” depicts a cherry tree. Jemison says he was fascinated by the texture of this and other papers. His paint- ing of two fish “Northern and Brown” that is part of the “Stretching the Canvas” exhibi- tion at the NMAI in New York was created on handmade paper. In spite of his influential position in the
network of Native New York artists, how- ever, Jemison felt a pull in another direction. “I moved into SoHo when it was the center of the art world,” Jemison says. But his life in New York began to pall. “I was away from home, away from traditional life.”
A BRIDGE BETWEEN CULTURES
As Jemison was tiring of the eight-hour drives it took to reach Seneca territory, a visiting relative offered a solution. The caller was the distinguished scholar John Mohawk, a cousin by adoption, who brought word of an open- ing in the western New York town of Victor, near Rochester. A historic Seneca village from the 17th century named Ganondagan was being restored as part of the New York state Parks system, and it needed a manager. Jemi- son took the job, building up what is now a
PHOTO BY ANDY OLENICK
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