My Medicine Part Two

June 18--September 7, 2015

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Galaudet Gallery chose the title My Medicine to show the power art has to heal and to aid in self discovery and discovery of worlds beyond our day to day lives. Great art transports the viewer to another place and time, another space and moment, a new way of seeing life. The art in My Medicine  does just that. The title also comes from the belief that art is medicine for others and for the two primary artists of this exhibition Oscar Howe and Vicki Milewski.

Many Oscar Howe reproductions will be on view such as Horse Dance and Seed Player.  Oscar Howe painted symbolic scenes based on his Native American cultural mythology that are imbedded in a Tohokmu (spider web); every color and shape imaginatively propels the viewer forward into the seemingly infinite progression of possible configurations of the artwork.  Meaning and myth; while simultaneously pulling the viewer backwards toward a quest for the “original” source or referent that underlines the paradoxes between sacred rituals and the real life harshness they honor, also pull the viewer forward into the future of artisitc creation that is seeped in meaning but that speaks on its own.

Vicki Milewski's Badlands Roads collection will be a part of this exhibit.  Milewski's Roads tell of a journey with topography, cartography and  spirituality guiding her on roads and in skies while she finds that leaving means an ever returning to herself renewed and excited about life.  The roads in question all exist in her artistic reality and in the badlands of western South Dakota; and they offer a glimpse of the transformation of the American road trip into one of self discovery and humble acceptance that there are powers and experiences that are a part of our physical reality but which are seldom spoken of in our 21st Century lives.  Her work on this collection asks us all to share our experiences.