Page 21 - the NOISE July 2015

STORY BY A ‘SCENT OF RAIN’ IN SHONTO’S NEWEST BODY OF WORK CLAIR ANNA ROSE
Not long after the last snow of May and before the start of the early summer monsoons, I sit beside Shonto Begay in his Aspen Loft studio as he paints details in brushstrokes on the canvas of Her Tapestry II, featured on this month’s cover.
A young Navajo woman in traditional dress is seated in the middle of a painted desert scene, the formation of rocks created by swirling sand frozen by time. In this timeless scene the viewer may not even notice at first that in her silver adorned fingers she holds a cell phone.
It was in 2009 that I first saw this juxtaposition of technology and tradition in Mr. Begay’s paintings. The humor speaks of reality however, and Mr. Begay tells me about the marriage of technology to a culture still rooted in tradition.
“Too many times we tend to believe that the market or at least how people see us out there (on the reservation) is basically what has been kept as a time capsule in the 1930s — where we’re picturesque and very ethnic,” Mr. Begay explains. “We live in a time now that we’re still participating in ceremonies, we still live in Hogans, we still walk out to the sheep — but we also stumble along the sage brush checking our emails. It’s just an acknowledgement to the changes. We are hanging on to the core self, the basis of who we are. The important foundation, our roots are well planted but we’re reaching out like a tree. Taking in all the newness. That’s what I like to acknowledge. That’s why I like truck scenes, highway scenes — I like more of the contemporary because it’s what I know. I’m a painter of the truth.”
Her Tapestry II is coming to life as Mr. Begay tells me about the painting. “I like this one because it takes me back to the basics,” he says. “It’s not pretentious, it’s what I know. It’s about promise. It’s about hope. It’s about looking forward. It’s about the marriage between the traditional and the modern with the cell phone here. Upon her tapestry — tapestry referring to the natural design of sandstone and of course on her land there. Being dressed like this eludes the fact that maybe she is going through a transition, maybe a coming of age, maybe graduating into another stage of life. I think it is a positive look into the summer, into the spring, into all the promises that are yet to come. That’s what I’ve been concentrating on — promises, hope, fingers crossed.”
Around the studio are other works in progress, and immediately I notice a reoccurring image of subjects’ feet in water — pools, rivers, streams and I ask Mr. Begay if there is a message in that. He tells me, looking up from Her Tapestry, “The feet in the water is a touch of the elements. The water, the air, the earth. The water has been a very important issue these days. Among the native people, especially here the southwest, it’s been a major issue. In fact, it is a major issue. It is the new gold rush — people are running out of water. Communities are running out of water and so with that in mind I think I pay a lot more attention to our fluid. The water is nothing permanent. It’s all kind of temporary.”
Tying into the theme of water, Mr. Begay’s July show at West of the Moon Gallery is called, “Petrichor: Paintings Inspired by the Smell of Rain.” This summer will mark the tenth year Mr. Begay has been showing his work at West of the Moon — first at the smaller space that was
located on Aspen Avenue, and now at the airy, spacious gallery on North San Francisco.
“A lot of my work has been about coming home,” Mr. Begay shares, as we talk about the upcoming show. “The road back home — because I’m away quite a bit and then I come back. I’m more aware of where I come from — when you go away you are seeing your home from the outside, through the lens you were born with. That does nothing but good for an artist. I know.”
Mr. Begay has been spending a lot of time on the California Coast, but though he’s away from his studio, he takes his art with him. “Every time I leave I feel I come home with a new sense of appreciation, a new sense of color, and a new sense of texture for the land and so it helps to travel,” he describes. “As an artist it helps to get yourself out of your own comfort zone and be out there. I’ve always traveled. I’ve always been very, very restless. I guess this is only
42 • JUNE 2015 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
an extension of it. Getting away — but always knowing where my heart is — which is here. Flagstaff has been wonderful to me. It’s where home is. It’s where my sacred mountain lies, so I can’t imagine ever saying goodbye to it for good.”
Mr. Begay says that a sentiment he shares with those who were born and raised here, or those who moved here and made it their home — is Flagstaff is magic. “This is the longest time I’ve ever been in one place,” he recalls. “I’ve been in this town going on 18 years and I love it. There’s no reason for me to leave because my family is near here and my mother is in her 90s and she still lives here on the reservation, just two hours away, so I see her every week. My home is there. My birthplace is there. My cornfield, my sheep camp and my family is there. It (the west coast) allows me to come back and just really make use of this studio. For a while there, I wasn’t even here because I know I’m going to take off again, it allows me to get a quality span of time in here.”
Recently in the studio Mr. Begay has been working on large scale pieces. “I want to continue that,” he says. “It’s like a canvas you can actually dance with. It will move your whole body, using your whole body to paint rather than on a small canvas using just your hand and wrist. Maybe that’s why I enjoy doing murals also. Painting is very much a meditative process when I’m at the studio. You sit here, you tap, your drum slightly, you get lost into it, you just get totally involved and you’re somewhere else. Slowly everything else around you just fades away. It’s just you and the energy you’re creating. I’m trying to get more and more into that meditative process without mellowing the passion.”
Looking at paintings he created in the 1990s Mr. Begay questions, “How’d I do that then? It was just taking the time,” he realizes. “It was really also painting without business in mind, just painting for myself. So I’m trying to reclaim that too. Reclaim the fact that this is for me. I tell that very same message to young people who are starting out as an artist.” Mr. Begay has noticed that young artists often get caught up in the business aspect of art as soon as they find they have a talent for it — focusing more on what would be marketable, than what moves them as an artist. “I tell them when they do that, when the whole passion of creating turns into a financial gain pursuit, something is lost. There’s a spirit that leaves. Paint for you and you only, the best you can. Paint for your spirit. Paint for the inner you, the deepest part of you that appreciates the most profound of beauty. That’s what we paint for. And as soon as we’re satisfied and know that we like it and automatically everybody else likes it. That’s usually how it happens. People automatically gravitate towards it. They know. The art speaks for itself.”
One event that Mr. Begay is a part of is “Rock the Canyon.” “It began years ago as a means to reach the kids and tell the young people of the community, ‘Hey, we support you.’ The young people are given the idea and the message that, ‘Yeah, we’re from the very same place you’re from. The canyon that tempered us — the weather, the clouds, the landscape, the same wind, the same opportunity — we traveled the same asphalt, and you can make it too. This is a road map, it’s to encourage them.”
Mr. Begay tells me he is “looking forward to seeing what emerges out of the studio, but later on in the summer in August everything cumulates in the big market in Santa Fe.” Mr. Begay hopes to get started on a mural in the near future in the Market of Dreams. He is also finishing up his autobiography which covers the first 17 years of his life and working on illustrations for a young adult book.
His collection of paintings, “Petrichor: Paintings Inspired by the Smell of Rain,” will be featured at West of the Moon Gallery, 14 N. San Francisco, for the month of July. WestOfTheMoonGallery.com
| Clair Anna Rose has her nose perked. editor@thenoise.us thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news • JULY 2015 • 21