Hunkpapa Lakota
The Hunkpapa (Lakota: ) are a Native American group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota tribe. The name ' is a Lakota word, meaning "Head of the Circle" (at one time, the tribe's name was represented in European-American records as ...
and
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
Anya Montiel, "Athena LaTocha: The Presence of Monumentality," American Indian: Magazine of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (Summer 2016): 14-17, 19-22. /ref> artist focusing on unique ways of making landscape paintings and the relationship of man-made and natural landscapes. Her work has been featured at the
Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic ...
,
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.
Overview ...
, the
New York State Museum
The New York State Museum is a research-backed institution in Albany, New York, United States. It is located on Madison Avenue, attached to the south side of the Empire State Plaza, facing onto the plaza and towards the New York State Capitol. ...
,
Artists Space
Artists Space is a non-profit art gallery and arts organization first established at 155 Wooster Street in Soho, New York City. Founded in 1972 by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Artist ...
, South Dakota Art Museum, th CUE Art Foundation in New York, the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska, and the Ice House gallery in New York. She was one of six artists selected for Wave Hill' winter workspace program in 2018. Raised in Alaska, she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Early life
LaTocha was born in Anchorage, Alaska. Her father is Polish and Austrian descent, and her mother is Native American, from the
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
The Standing Rock Reservation ( lkt, Íŋyaŋ Woslál Háŋ) lies across the border between North and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic " Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakota Oyate and the Ihunktuwona and Pabaks ...
in North and South Dakota and from the
Keweenaw Bay
Keweenaw Bay is an arm of Lake Superior in North America. It is located adjacent to the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, to the southeast of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Keweenaw Bay is 22 miles long and 12 miles wide at the mouth. The hea ...
Indian Community in Michigan.
Academics
She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Art Institute of Chicago and earned her Master of Fine Arts (2007) from
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...
in New York. While she was trained in oil painting, LaTocha apprenticed in bronze at the Beacon Fine Arts Foundry in Brewster, New York. She also took printmaking classes at the
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists.
Although artists may stu ...
.
Creative process
Her background in oil painting gave way into using other methods of her art. She has said that, "Over the years, I started removing my hand more and removing brushes and all of the proper tools we're trained with as painters. It's been years of finding other ways to look at the process, and other ways to look at and interact with materials." She is often using sumi ink (made from the soot of pine branches in Japan) mixed with earthy material and gathered objects such as bricks and tire shreds to paint. She'll use the tire shreds to pull the ink over the canvas, or move the canvas itself in "wavelike undulations" to guide the ink. In her time at Wave Hill, she also made use of a "root ball," a mass of roots at the base of a plant that has soil surrounding it. She usually works with her canvases on the floor with her working over and on top of them. She has said that, "Working aerially with my images on the floor, I am interested in being inside the image rather than the outside as an easel painter."
Message
LaTocha brings attention to the idea that landscapes are an active thing as opposed to objects. She embodies the belief that humans are part of the landscape rather than separate from it by literally standing within the scenes she paints. She has said that, "For a number of years now I've been working with land motifs, land imagery. All of my work is about being immersed in these spaces, these environments. Sometimes I'm reluctant to use the word 'landscape' because there's a certain kind of genre, a certain kind of concept or ideology when you think about the idea of landscape. It connotes a kind of reverence or allusion to something. It's usually something that you're looking at or looking upon. It's this view or window into another world, a natural world or an industrial one." While bringing attention to this she tries to have the observer and artist be a part of the piece itself as she herself has stated, "In the aboriginal sense one is actively moving through the landscape. Humans are part of the landscape, not separate from it."
Selected exhibitions
LaTocha has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the United States. The CUE Art Foundation in New York presented a solo exhibition in 2015 curated by curator/artist/activist
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (born 1940) is a Native American visual artist and curator. She is an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and is also of Métis and Shoshone descent. She is also an art educator, art advocate ...
. Another solo exhibition, ''Forces of Nature'' (2017), at the
Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic ...
in Santa Fe displayed ''La Bajada Red'', an ink wash work that spanned the entire wall from floor to ceiling. In January 2021, the solo exhibition, ''Land Disturbed'', opened at the Olin Fine Arts Center at the
Washington & Jefferson College
Washington & Jefferson College (W&J College or W&J) is a private liberal arts college in Washington, Pennsylvania. The college traces its origin to three log cabin colleges in Washington County established by three Presbyterian missionaries to ...
.
For Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now ' (2018-2019) at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the curators selected ''Ozark (Shelter in Place)'', a large wall piece in ink and earth on paper created from rock face impressions from a local national park and then molded lead sheets affixed on top.
In December 2020, she was one of the artists featured in the ''Urban Native Artists'' exhibition at the Revelation Gallery, New York, NY;The Village Sun website /ref> fellow exhibitors included Vernon Bigman, Nadema Agard and Mario Martinez.