AFA Summer 2019

Summer 94 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com left Fig. 8: Emery Cloth Bird, Leon Niehues (b. 1951), 2015. 3M emery cloth, white oak, brass and stainless-steel machine screws. Bent free-form, fabrication. H. 20, W. 12, D. 15 in. Lent by the artist (RRR.60). The gritty surface of the emery cloth skin is enclosed within a skeletal structure of white oak. Inverting inside and outside, it reveals the interdependence of natural and industrial production in contemporary life. Niehues harvests white oak on his forty-acre farm in northern Arkansas, using emery cloth — a 3M product — to sand the wood to a fine, smooth finish. Here, the emery cloth is more than a tool. It becomes a fine art material that forms the body of the bird, its presence made explicit by the brand label that appears inside the neck. below Fig. 9: They Were Called Kings, Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee, 1957–2018), 2013. Watercolor paper, archival inks, acrylic paint. Plaiting. H. 13½, W. 8½, D. 7 in. Lent by the Shan Goshorn Family (RRR.34 A-C). Goshorn addresses the history of Native and Euro-American encounters in this series. Each piece presents a photograph of a contemporary member of the Warriors of the Anikituhwa — originally the first line of defense for the community and now ambassadors for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation — wearing eighteenth-century-style clothing. The interweaving of past and present takes a narrative turn on the interior, which features printed accounts by Europeans of a 1762 visit of three Cherokee Warriors to England. Together, they show how European American representations of Native peoples, established over two hundred and fifty years ago, continue to dominate popular perceptions.