TitleSnake Dance
Artist
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
(Enrolled Salish member, b. 1940)
Date2011
MediumOil, collage, mixed media on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 72 x 48 in.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, November 7, 2012
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2012.79
Label TextAs the artist has relayed about this work: In August, about 20 years ago, my artist friends Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi and Choctaw) and Karita Coffey (Comanche) invited me to go with them to the Snake Dance at Hopi in Arizona. After we arrived there, we all had to climb ladders and sit on the rooftops out of the way of the snakes. The men and boys had gathered snakes, whip snakes, bull snakes, racers and rattlesnakes for several days before the dances. As they danced through the afternoon, the men reached into pouches hanging from their belts and brought out snakes which they draped around their necks, coiled them on their arms and hung them from their mouths. They also gave them to the boys to hold in their hands. Toward the end they laid them on the ground and snakes crawled in all directions while the afternoon thunderheads gathered over us bringing much needed rain.
This ceremony is thousands of years old and was originally a water ceremony. Snakes are considered to be the traditional guardians of springs. Snake worship was prominent among the Toltec, Mayan, Olmec and Aztec. There are lots of images of coiled snakes throughout Meso-America.
Hopi was on the "super highway," one of the main trade routes through the Americas and had many connections to Meso and South America including sharing a common language base with the Aztec, as did one of my grandmother's tribes, the Shoshone-Bannock in Idaho.
The summer I worked on this painting, we were experiencing severe drought in New Mexico and I began recalling the Snake Dance as I worked making my own call to water. I found a number of images of coiled snakes and in the end loosely used a Celtic image. I added shellac to resemble the desert water in my village which is heavily laced with iron.
I sometimes use a rabbit to represent tricksterism, the most noted is Brer Rabbit, who is claimed by the South Eastern tribes and also by African Americans, but generally I am referencing the Cree, Ojibwe, Chippewa's Nanabozho, Giant Rabbit and part of their creation story since I also have Cree ancestry. In this painting I changed standing rabbit to Durer's sitting rabbit as an observer, while hidden beneath is Bugs Bunny trickster at work, but likely taken from Native stories.
We know that all Natives in Meso-America, throughout the Southwest and South America were involved in farming and domesticating plants. Aztecs built elaborate artificial lands called Chinampas which grew corn, squash, beans (the sisters) tomatoes, chilis, flowers and integrated food systems with fish and water fowl.
I added these rectangular patches to my painting as symbolic of my life in the desert and collecting old Indian seeds that grew in my climate. I live in an area called the Sand Hills, which is nearly impossible to farm, but I've added my own compost and bring in horse manure for some years now and cropping here with Native seeds. I nearly always do research for painting, though it might not show or might not ever come to light, it is part of the process. In a way, I was painting a diary of my life.
