Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation in the exhibition title alone implies alteration and re-creation through human influence. This new perspective into contemporary American Indian art at the Museum of Art and Design is empowering as it shows the strong and unique voices of one of the most stereotyped and held-back populations. But many of the pieces in the exhibit depict nature, above humans, as the definitive artist. Nature frequently acts as both subject matter and shapes the art as a whole. A clear example of this is Robert Tannahill’s “The False Face,” a series of reinterpreted Iroquois masks made from wooden slabs filled and shaped by glass. On each mask there are visible dark, chalky spots from where the hot glass burned the wood. And though Tannahill has the artist’s role of carving the wood and binding the two wood slabs with wire, it seems the natural heat of molten glass was the main sculpture of each mask.

Maybe Changing Hands represents the passing of objects between human hands and natural forces—in this way changing hands between the earth and its inhabitants. “Cuento de Dos Jardines” by Patricia Deadman demonstrates this relationship in a different way. Her piece is a wall-filing print of reflected images of a meager garden cast in orange and red. The print alludes to fire and it overwhelms the garden depicted. This natural force—the overpowering influence of nature—comes across in the image and in the subject of “Cuento de Dos Jardines,” instead of in the actual creation of the art as it does in “The False Face.”  With just these two pieces from “Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation,” the whole exhibition loses its human ego. Art here is not a product that these contemporary American Indian artists create, but a natural process that they capture on canvases. This is not a discredit to the dozens of talented artists in this show. No, this interpretation is further praise to these artists for they were able to reign in and display in an organized way, the power and influence that nature has in life and over art. In a way, these artists have tamed nature and overcome its unfathomable scope, they have brought it closer to the viewer and thus their art actually taming it.

Image source: Pipe and Punty Glass Works