Trickster as Teacher: The Art of Julie Buffalohead (Virtual)

Please note, this event was moved to Wednesday, November 15. 

In recognition of National Native American Heritage Month, artist Julie Buffalohead joins National Museum of Wildlife Art Curator Tammi Hanawalt, PhD, for a discussion of Buffalohead’s work and how she employs wildlife and tricksters to tell contemporary stories using traditional characters.

Buffalohead explores Indigenous cultural experience through metaphor and narrative. Using an eclectic color palette, her paintings feature representations of animals caught within a horizonless field and speak to the issue of the commercialization of Native culture. She often depicts the paradoxical trickster character from traditional Native stories. Sometimes represented as a coyote, crow, or rabbit, according to Buffalohead, “. . . the tricksters are the teachers that reveal something about what it means to be human.” Understood to be both good and evil, tricksters are complex, with animal references whose designation is specific to cultures.

Support provided by Art Bridges.