Page 13 - the NOISE November 2014

RetURN OF the WARRIOR tWINS: FROM FAR LEFT: Mr. Bighorse’s Drum Circle;
By Clair anna rose
tyler Bighorse & the legend of Bio-Corn
Prayer at Grand Canyon; and Rez Punk Rocker.
afew years back, when Tyler Bighorse was primarily work- ments to it and I’ll just keep going — I’ll add machinery parts.
growing up I’d see drum circles out in the middle of the reser- vation; you’re just wandering around getting into trouble and you’d hear native drums all over and all the kids would come over and check it out,” he says. “I just drew it because it was something that’s always been there. The whole digital thing is something I’ve been moving towards.”
“This was one of the first concepts of one of my monsters,” Mr. Bighorse tells me about the painting Bio-Corn, picturing two hands holding an ear of corn with an electronic laser eye coming out of it. “I have another painting I’m doing right now of the Warrior Twins, they’re going to see him, and they’re standing on the mountains and a bunch of stalks of corn are propping up this big piece of corn and he’s the monster of In- novation. In some of the books he’s an old white man.”
“The stories talk of corn with light coming out of its eyes,” he explains further. “The reasons why they’re there is because of the separation of man and woman. That’s what my stories are going to be surrounding – the second separation of man and woman. In the legends, during the first separation, women started appreciating themselves more, because of what their body could give them and man got jealous because his hard work wasn’t being appreciated, so he left and went to the other side of the shore. Now there’s a second separation, it’s obviously happening, women are becoming more indepen- dent — they don’t need a man. Out of this second separa- tion the monsters have gotten bigger, stronger, and they’re becoming more powerful. And that’s why there’s a need for the warrior twins once again.”
“If you read what natives described innovation as, they de- scribed it as tool making — like shovels, it was crude at the time, but as innovation grows it becomes different, and part of Innovation is the Genetically modified food, electronics, circuitry — it’s all innovation. That’s a monster that was al- lowed to live and now it’s consuming the world. That’s why I’m writing this story about the warrior twins coming back.”
The paintings of Tyler Bighorse can be found at Suite 104, 13 North San Francisco Street, during the First Friday ArtWalk and during regular business hours. When his new body of work is complete, Mr. Bighorse plans to display select pieces at Suite
104, and also hopes to participate in some of the regional In- dian Art Markets in the Southwest in the near future.
| Clair anna rose checks her bio- corn regularly. arts@thenoise.us
ing in ink, pencil and colored pencils, his designs drew my attention by crossing traditional Southwestern and Native American imagery with modern themes, gadgets and trends. Since last interviewing him, Mr. Bighorse’s art has been fea- tured at Suite 104, a shoppe filled with local, handmade and creative items. Paintings by Mr. Bighorse hang on the wall, amidst whimsical gifts, cards and jewelry that are mostly made from up-cycled materials.
On a Monday afternoon I meet Mr. Bighorse at the shoppe. In the last few years, the artist has transitioned from pencils and ink to painting. “At some point I felt like I got the color down and I wanted to start doing something else, so I started working with acrylic,” Mr. Bighorse says.
Opening a laptop Mr. Bighorse pulls up a screen to show me one of the projects he is focusing on. “I am currently working on a graphic novel/cartoon about the Warrior Twins,” he says. “These are my versions, I was told all the stories when IwasakidandthiswasthewayIsawit.” Heshowsmethe graphics he has designed in intricate detail. Traditional look- ing dress is interwoven with a futuristic robotic theme and each layer of the digitized painting can move separately from the rest of the graphic.
“This is going to be a panned scene,” he says, showing me a long panoramic drawing of the reservation lands. “The fur- thest background will be moving the slowest and as you get closer, it will move faster, it will be able to pan and that is why these are all different lengths. It will slowly pan to here,” he says pointing to a dwelling, “and there will be a little boy right there and there will be a giant walking across the background.”
New, larger works in progress also spin off the traditional tales. “I’m also working on some paintings around the same subject. Most of the paintings I’m doing right now are really future oriented,” Mr. Bighorse says. “One I’m doing is of a Na- vajo woman sitting, she’s got a regular face, a bun and tradi- tional dress but her neck and hands are robotic. That’s the direction I’m going in. The robotic theme is more of a move toward technology. That’s why I’m not doing traditional art. The more I think about where we’re going I have to include some native narrative to it and the Warrior Twins was a really awesome story for me growing up, but I had to tell it in my own way.”
“Before, my creative process was all over the place,” Mr. Big- horse says. “Now I’m really focused on the robotic thing so every time I draw something I’m trying to add in this whole electronic android feel to it and I’m going to work a lot more with that. I usually start with a simple humanoid drawing and I’ll make it traditional, I’ll make it Native, I’ll add Native ele-
They’ve all been different so far.”
Growing up in Flagstaff I remember the story of the Warrior
Twins, but the details of it are hazy. Mr. Bighorse tells me a little more about the stories that have been inspiring him. “If you read the Warrior Twin stories and creation stories, they’re all interrelated,” he explains. “The creation stories talk about how the Warrior Twins defeated the giants and the monsters back in the day, and there were some giants and monsters that they had to let live. They didn’t kill all the monsters, and my stories are focused on the aftermath of all that. These monsters were allowed to live and they were allowed to grow huge and my stories are about them being to the point where they’re massive. All the monsters they let live are the prob- lems we’re dealing with in the world today.”
“I see a lot of the well-known Native artists doing the War- rior Twins story, but I’m doing it in a whole different way. With the graphic novel, it’s not just a painting, you have to read the story, and you have to look closely at it. When I go with this much detail,” he says as he zooms in on his digitally drawn rendition of White Shell Woman, “Someone’s going to be shocked by it and look closer. I’m drawing all this robotic stuff and I think that even if I make it look realistic, I want to make it look really cool and have it go into something a little different. It makes some people uneasy, it’s a taboo with a lot of Natives, I think.”
I ask why it’s taboo. “My Grandma would be the best way to explain it, it’s like a bad energy, that’s what my grandma would call it. I’ve picked up a rock before that was inside of a spring that was coming out of sandstone. I dug my hand inside and I picked a rock out and it was perfectly round and smoothed over and I wanted to keep it, and I thought it was the coolest thing I ever found and my Grandma wouldn’t let me and I have no idea why,” he says with a laugh. “It has something to do with energy and she wanted me to put it back, so I put it back. I don’t know why, a lot of the times, but when I look at my paintings I know my Grandma would feel the same way. It’s just feeling I get and I kind of know it.”
Born in Tuba City, Arizona, Mr. Bighorse’s clans are The To- bacco Clan and The Rock Gap Clan. “I grew up all over the place: Sanders, Gallup, Yuma, Tuba City, Cameron, out in the middle of nowhere, and we moved here and I graduated from high school here at Flag High,” he tells me.
One of his paintings, Drum Circle, is inspired from the time he spent growing up out on the reservation. Done in a style of painting that makes it seem as if it would come from a screen shot of an early video game, the image is pixilated and at the same time portrays a traditional scene. “When I was
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