ABSTRACT
STEPHEN PENTAK
My thought was to begin with some general questions that would provide a background. I would be interested in hearing a few words about your life as an artist and an educator, and your role in this Cheyenne Elk Warrior Society, and life on the Cheyenne Arapaho reservation
EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDSWell I moved back about ten years ago, I think in ‘80 or something. I had been on the east coast, had a studio space, finished graduate school in Philadelphia, kind of showing in New York a little bit in alternative spaces, and then had to just sort of get out of town, get back to the basics of nature in a way, and to learn some things that I couldn’t learn in the city. And, of course, the tribe was instrumental in that too, but it was kind of getting back out of the city and exploring some things that I wanted to do, but just couldn’t get the information, or feeling from where I was in Philadelphia. It was a pivotal time—I had a piece downtown at this gallery, and I came and took it out of the gallery and took it with me. They just freaked out. It was in the SOHO Weekly News, and people were going to come and see this piece, and I just said, “I’m going to move back to Oklahoma.” And they thought, “Are you nuts?” They said you are supposed to move to Tribeca and get a loft and do this thing. Which I could have done, I mean I was interested in that too, but it didn’t seem to be the prudent part of the plan. Anyway, I moved back and eventually moved into this old house on the reservation area
SPThis was about ten years ago or so?
EHBYeah, it was about ‘80 or ‘81 or so. Moved back. I rebuilt this old house that was just derelict. No bathroom, no road, no electricity, and just sort of started hammering out by hand, sawing with a bow saw, making a bathroom, and I have just been there ever since. I got more involved with learning from the tribe on the ceremonial level, pretty heavily into that, that’s a big responsibility, and that’s where the Warrior Society comes in. It’s something you can join, if they will accept you and you can just decide to go into it and you get responsibilities from that, and also basic learning. So, I’ve been really involved with those things and then trying to work on my art too. I was artist-in-residence for about eight years for the Arts Council of Oklahoma, did gigs all around, little schools and little tiny towns, and worked with kindergarten kids, or third graders, or whatever, and made a living that way and kind of learned about the state also. It’s a very strange way to learn about the state. You come into this little tiny town of insensitive people or whatever, and you’ve got to learn how to deal with them and they learn about me. So I learned about Oklahoma doing those jobs, and teaching kids. I also learned how to communicate with people, I think, teaching young kids
SPSo you’ve been active in the Warrior Society for that period of time as well?
EHBYeah, just about. Maybe about eight years or so
SPAnd you’ve had an active career beyond the boundaries of Oklahoma for that same period of time, though. How were people finding you? It’s not the same as you being in New York or Philadelphia, being able to meet people
EHBYeah, that’s a good question. Now they do. They come out to the studio. Curators fly out sometimes and look at the work. But, no, I had to work really hard at that, you know. And a lot of it wasn’t very successful. I tried to have a show in Europe and it flopped, and I tried to have a show at PSI and it flopped. And now I don’t know if I’d take a show at PSI, but I tried and they said they lost my video tape, and they didn’t call back, and whatever. But I kept plugging away. But it was more like being interested in just exchanging ideas, you know. That’s how I look at careerism as not just about getting a good gig or getting well known but actually just …
SPMy reason for asking was to find if there has been a sense of isolation
EHBI guess there were both things going on. And that’s the strange thing about where I am, this very isolated place, yet if you catch an airplane every now and then you can be anywhere. Actually, I was teaching in Sweden for a while. I went to Europe two or three times and I was doing a show at the United Nations in Geneva. I did a large native group show that I curated. I took it to Geneva and I hung it. I was hanging out in Switzerland for a while and I met some people from Sweden who asked me to teach in the public school system in Sweden. Then my tribal business committee members’ council, they paid the air fare for me to go to Stockholm and then I taught. So it was always these kinds of networks, coming out of that place and reaching out to different parts of the world
SPThat must provide an interesting role model for your students at the University of Oklahoma to see how somebody can have their life the way they choose it to be and still connect to other communities
EHBWhat’s been difficult now though, is that I have two children, two sons, you know. I think we’re probably going to move off that place and move to the university town. We were therefor the ten years and it was fine. We were lonely, there is no place to get a pizza, you can’t buy anything. The store closes at six, there’s no store open. You know the conveniences are zero. And then you’re driving an hour to go anywhere
SPSo then, the children are the motivation, in terms of meeting their needs
EHBI think so. You know the schools, and then how you’re almost working more with raising your kids then you are anything else. There’s nothing else, I mean you squeeze in things, but before you could kind of go off and hunt in the canyon for five hours and come back whenever you wanted to, which I used to do with my dogs, but, of course, that’s not happening. We take walks everyday, but the access is a different story
SPWell that leads to the next thing I want to talk about. I think it would be good for you to have the opportunity to respond to this idea of a life in two worlds. So the first question is: do you see it that way, and to what extent do you feel distant from or connected to non-native artists?
EHBWell, I’m really connected to non-native artists
SPYou’re talking about Vito Acconci?
EHPYeah, Vito Acconci. I exhibit a lot, like in this show here at the Wexner Center. I travel a lot and I see a lot of work. I teach a course about contemporary art, a videotaped interview course. I play video tapes of Hans Haacke, Barbara Kruger, Vito Acconci, all of these people, Juan Sanchez, Pat Ward Williams, you know all of the contemporaries of mine. I feel like I’m friends with them, basically, because I show with them. So I guess I’m very versed in the contemporary vein, but by choice, because I’m interested in the work
SPSo the model of two worlds is not a model
EHBMore like the country. I think that is a big division, like rural America maybe. Because I think anyone who lives in rural America, that’s a whole other world in a sense, and not on an ethnic level, but just that pace and that kind of self-reliance and the kind of network you have to deal with, the farmers to get your car pulled out of the ditch or whatever, and those kinds of things. Or like, one farmer by me had a leak in his well, and he called me up and asked me to come pull this one hundred foot well out of the ground. And I had to go because he pulled my car out of the ditch. So we were working all day pulling this big hose out of the ground, and all of that. I mean that opposed to Norman, Oklahoma, even the University of Oklahoma, or New York City, those are very different places
SPI’m interested in your thoughts about your education as an artist. Reflecting back on what you considered the most important aspect of your education. Because on the one hand you have studied in Philadelphia and England and on the other hand you have the education you received from the Warrior Society. Would you say just a few words about what you consider true education?
EHBWell it’s a blend of both. It’s funny but it seems like the white education is more accessible in a way. That’s held up as a better role model, I mean people have more respect for that. That’s kind of what’s hurting native America in a sense. Ceremonial leadership and traditional responsibilities—no one understands what that means, so no one respects it. There was a man who died a few years ago who I respected immensely. He was a janitor, but he was the priest of the ceremonial ways. I mean he could turn the world around, he could renew the earth, but he was a janitor at the hospital, the Indian hospital, and I would just shake my head. And I don’t know if anybody minded him being a janitor, but the respect, he just didn’t get the respect he deserved. So in terms of role models, when kids look at that, and you tell them “well you go with him because he’s going to show you these things,” and he’s sweeping up or something, so it’s a screwy deal. Whereas, long ago if there was a warrior, a native warrior, they would go with him, because he’s, in the tribal context, a leader with respect. That’s kind of how I grew up too. I thought that academia was the best model that I had discovered. Ofcourse first was a good job. My father retired from Beech Aircraft in Kansas, twenty-eight years; my mother and father were excellent models on how to work and how to be committed to family. They still are, so I saw that, and then I learned later that you have college, because I didn’t know that. That was an important thing, you know. Then I later became a graduate student to become a professional artist. But that was the first kind of goal. But then of course, after graduate school and after working in a studio for a while there was something missing. That’s when the ceremonial knowledge kind of beckoned. I think it’s led the work into the best direction, overall, but I can’t divorce the two things from each other, they compliment each other. My friend Willie, the priest of the ceremonial ways, what he said, I totally believe. I mean I know what he’s talking about and when things come down to very difficult circumstances, you know where you’re gong to be. Which one you’re going to pick. You’re going to be with your pipe. You’re going to be sitting on the ground, there’s going to be a fire burning, and you’re going to be humble before the spirits. There is no doubt what is most important
SPWhat is the most irreducible
EHBYeah. And I use that myself and my son does. He understands the priorities of that. And that’s where you start and that’s where you end, and that’s always something you can count on
SPI want to read something, a passage from an article by Kay WalkingStick that was in Art Journal in fall of 1992 and I’d like to get your reaction to it. She says, “Curators have instead used issues such as gender or ethnicity as an opportunity to show artists who may then be left out of exhibitions dealing with more mainstream themes. Such a separation seems to reduce the possibility of serious critical discourse, and thus implies that there are different standards for different people—and, indeed perhaps there are. Separate is still not equal; it marginalizes the art, no matter how wonderful that art might be. Critical questions that would be raised in other venues simply are not considered in ethnic or gender-specific exhibitions. Not to receive serious critical review is a kind of disempowerment.”
EHBWell that’s a real important observation. I’m very behind that thesis, because I came up through all of this multicultural whirlwind kind of thing with Group Material. Which I found to be very sort of fascist, basically. And I find a lot of liberal places fascist, basically, because they have an agenda. Even though it is very well meaning or whatever. And they’ll phone you up and tell you what it is, and then you do it. And then you’re in, but what did you do? What did you compromise? Or what is their interpretation of what you should do? Their fantasy of what fits the agenda. Actually, you probably know this, but I showed at Documenta in Kassel, West Germany, like the preceding one or something, and Group Material calls me up on the phone from Germany and said my piece wasn’t “working.” I’m on the reservation in Oklahoma and they call from Germany and say “Edgar, it’s not working.” I say, “Why did you take it on Lufthansa all the way over there then? Why didn’t you just leave it in America? Didn’t you look at it?” They said, “Well it’s not fitting what we’re trying to do.” And we’re the artist now. We’re curators hanging the show so we’re making our art. Well I hear that at the Museum of Modern Art. Any kind of dominating museum’s going to tell you “Well we’re in control. What you’re doing is to serve us and we know best.” And that was really a telling circumstance. Group Material didn’t really respond to the work the way they hoped they would have. So maybe we should change it, see. And this is the catchall, liberal, activist group that’s going to make everything right. They’re just like everybody else, they had their agenda, they wanted you to fit into it, you didn’t fit into it, they change it, or get someone else. So I find all of that stuff pretty problematic. It sets a foundation of knowing, like reference, but I’m hoping to move past the reference point—where we have these shows, gay show, lesbian show, whatever, Greenpeace show, all of these things, all of these politically active causes. But I don’t really find myself relating to all of them, personally. Like the Decade show for instance. I don’t find myself being in that book necessarily making any sense, because there are all of these divergent kinds of theories or ideas and here they are all caught together. I don’t know what they have to do with each other. I don’t know what a Cheyenne artist has to do with a gay activist/AIDS program or something, you know. Or if I’m antiabortion, you know that’s not cool. You know that I’m supposed to be this liberal thing, and I’m not. I’m not, I’m just not that simplistic. So I find that to be a big problem
SPWe talked about that earlier, in terms of a simplistic reading where there may be some projection in terms of somebody wanting you to be their image of what they expect you to be, rather than going with where you really are
EHBWell that happens in a big way with the idea of the Warrior Society. I’ve had a lot of run-ins with liberal-thinking people in New York. They start asking you, “What does that mean?” and you start telling them. And they think, “Hey, wait a minute. That doesn’t sound like you’re doing your own thing out there,” and this and that. And I say “Well, no. If you step into that circle, that means you carry the tribe on your back and everything you do is for that.” You can’t just go change the rules if you don’t feel that way today. It’s a pretty closed totalitarian system. It’s not like a radical thing. So a lot of the readings are misinterpretations
SPWell that gives us a chance to maybe shift over to talking about your work specifically and some of the questions I have about the pieces here in Columbus. In the Wexner Center there are the paintings of the Neuf series and then the three walls of wall lyrics. Could you talk about the concept of the installation as a whole briefly?
EHBWell first of all, the whole thing is called Is What Is, and basically it relates back to what you asked earlier about this whole kind of liberal catchall kind of scheme going on about all of these disenfranchised people coming together again, exhibiting and stuff. And I was getting kind of weary of that years ago. It’s come to pass now, but I was tired of it a long time ago. The thought of it being about the public art, which I am very heavily involved in, too, but how that kind of became the lightening rod for the work. The public persona, the provocativeness of it all
SPYou’re talking now in terms of the billboards?
EHBYeah, the billboard signage and stuff. And people really liked that a lot. And they sort of liked it before they even knew what it was. The one-liner, what it said, and everyone gets all happy about that instead of being subversive and whatnot. I sort of felt myself getting trapped a little bit in that, and I was interested in many more things than that—when it was at the Berkeley Museum before this, I didn’t make a public piece there and wasn’t truly interested in making one. And there is no public work in the show. Here I did billboards as another project, but there is none in the gallery. Often when I have an exhibition, we’ll show everything. We’ll show the public things, drawings, paintings, sketches, and whatnot, prints. But here I just eliminated all the public work
SPFrom within the Wexner Center?
EHBYeah
SPI am curious about the unity within the various aspects, and the distinctions within the various aspects of the work. For example, on the wall that has the four paintings, there’s a distinction among four separate panels, although they come together as a cluster in juxtaposition to the wall lyrics. Yet the whole installation is one unit. In general, what might you say about the degree of unity and distinction between the individual elements of your work?
EHBWell, that was based again on the need to do something four times. That was, I guess, my idea of how could I really sum up what I believed in without using the political kind of signage and playing into their hands that way. I wanted to be bigger than that, harder to describe than that, or what I thought the essence of all these things was really about. Because all of the things come from that place where I live, and all the ideas, so that’s not a city and it’s not an art community and all of that. So I just came upon that idea of the four
SPThose four paintings are the whole series, or were there others?
EHBNo, it continues on, but I usually paint them four at a time. I make four at a time and there’s been, I don’t know, sixteen or twenty-four or something of those. But the way that it sets up is that … that’s sort of the principle wall where those four paintings are and I sort of find, in a way, that I feel more comfortable with their description than anything else, because they’re less literal on a certain level
SPNow you said those point north and refer northward. Is it as specific as the Black Hills or someplace like that?
EHBWell, no, there’s actually a mountain that we make reference to all of the time in our renewal. Actually, I’ve never been to the mountain, but I’ve seen it many times, you know. So the kind of priority that that place has with the tribe was like a very ambitious theme to me to try and encounter, and I hope that the paintings get close to that in some way. Of how important that direction is from Oklahoma and how hard to describe that whole situation would be, what that mountain means, that the paintings tend to describe it more because they describe it less, in a way. That it’s really almost like a ceremonial knowledge that you can’t even talk about, but everyone knows what it is, and they honor it all of the time, but you can’t just put it in a book and write about it. So I put the paintings in that direction because of the prominence of that place and then the rest is the east, west, and south, so it forms that kind of quadrant
SPI found it interesting to try to absorb the content of the wall lyrics without prior knowledge of what each wall was supposed to indicate, I would like to give you some reactions. It’s not naive because I certainly have some knowledge of what the sources are for them. I did find, for example, in the east wall that the flow through the words was very fluid. The one that refers to the “sons,” and must have something to do with your children, that had a very flowing, lyrical sort of ring to it. Whereas the west wall, which as it turns out is a California wall, is kind of sharper, choppier, you know has a whole different pitch to it. I guess I’m saying that the wall lyrics accommodate a real range of emotions. One time maybe angry, another time maybe more gentle
EHBThat’s what I like about making the drawings. I make drawings about everything, from a stewardess I see, to a show I go to, or an opening I might go to, I mean all of these weird things. I’m pretty blatant about the whole deal. I write about anything. It’s pretty revealing, really, if you look close enough at that stuff, it’s kind of an indictment. But I made other drawings. There are maybe a hundred of those drawings, or a hundred and twenty or something, there’s a lot of them. A lot of them do vary from being gentle to being aggressive. A lot of them are sort of sexual, I would think. I did that a couple of years ago. I did a whole show, a whole wall, a whole wall called the Sexual Wall where it’s all about that. And that was a breakthrough I felt we needed to make in terms of native men being too noble and too ideal or something. There wasn’t enough sexual energy in native art or it wasn’t revealed. So I tried to stir a bunch in to my show, because I think it’s in the native culture in a big way, and it’s a very sexual culture. Like most cultures
SPBut it’s just not acknowledged?
EHBYeah. Not really revealed or let into the scheme of things. So that west wall has a lot of tension, back and forth, I would think
SPYeah. It had a sense of being sharply critical to me. “Make my movie,” or …
EHBYeah, make my movie
SPWhereas the east wall seemed almost like a celebration. It had that general tone about it. The east wall is not as specifically oriented towards a place?
EHBNot really
SPThere’s California for the west wall, your experience in Peru for the south wall, but the east wall …
EHBThe east wall was kind of, I don’t know, it just caught a lot of different ideas. But I couldn’t limit it to one experience, I mean there were so many other experiences. I sort of picked them and put them together in that side, in a way
SPThe use of language in the wall lyrics, seems frankly lyrical, and the use of language on the billboards seems to have a different use of language that I guess could be described as taking the power of language and turning it back upon the dominant culture. For example the piece that you did, Sooners Run Over Indian Nations: Apartheid Oklahoma and “Sooners” is in mirror lettering. That seems much more about addressing the power of language, to have power over people and turning that power around
EHBWell I see the distinction more like personal and public. Where the wall lyrics are all really personal, kind of hidden jokes or hidden stories that happen to me, and then I distill them down to three words and then I put them out there. I sort of wonder, or I want to see if anyone understands it, or if they catch on to what’s happening. And it’s like a little hidden, it’s sort of like Vito stuff. It’s sort of like a taboo thing going on, where you tell this secret out in public
SPCan you bring the personal into the public space?
EHBYeah. Will they know what happened in that room or whatever, this kind of scenario? I don’t know if people can figure that out or not, frankly. But that’s kind of interesting to me. But the billboards are really like getting even, in a way. I mean talking to people very directly and there’s not much of a hidden agenda in the billboards, you know, they’re pretty straightforward
SPThey don’t have the room for the kind of playfulness that the wall lyrics have. And speaking of playfulness, I find the wall lyrics invite a sort of participation in the viewer to say “What happens if I string all of the red words together, read diagonally rather than reading down?” and so it seems to invite that kind of involvement
EHBWell the color is all symbolic too. I mean the color in the wall lyrics is all kind of set. It’s got to be whatever I say it was
SPSo the bones would be whitish?
EHBKind of and then sort of good things are green, you know, that grow, and pink things are about white people, for the pink skin. It’s a way to see pink, it’s about white people, most of the time. So all of that stuff is pretty much set up to interconnect in a way
SPAnd do you ever sabotage that system?
EHBNot yet
SPWell that’s a good insight, thanks for that
EHBI’m giving away too much here
SPI think the last question I want to ask returns to the general. Maybe you’ve already addressed it to a certain degree, but I want to give you one more crack at it. I’d like to know how you feel about the current blossoming of interest in work of indigenous artists. Whether it is only a blessing or does it feel like another act of “discovery?”
EHBWell, that’s important. I talk about that and I write about that. I’ve written about the earth awareness, and I’ve written about robbery. There’s been all kinds of land robbery everywhere, basically, but now because of the desperation of Western culture, there’s been ceremonial robbery happening with new age religions and all of these things, where they synthesize. They go down this shopping list of what they want and they make this new thing out of it. I talked to some white women who were building sweat lodges together, and they had a Sioux man helping them, and they were so proud of this thing that was reaffirming themselves, which was good. But then I said, “What happens if those Sioux spirits come down in there? Are you going to call them?” and she said “Well, no.” But I said, “Well you built the lodge a certain way, and did these certain things, and this Sioux man told you how to do that, right? So that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?” And they said “Well, no we’re not intending to do that. We’re doing our own little thing. We’re doing what we want to do with it.” But not really. They’re making this Sioux sweat lodge, it seems to me, but they don’t want the spirits to come see them. So it’s pretty convoluted
SPIt seems like it’s a little bit of what Joseph Campbell might have talked about: when signifiers get used up, people start shopping around for other signifiers
EHBOh yeah
SPBut they may not really want what’s signified
EHBYeah, but I was serious. I wasn’t trying to scare them, but I was serious in saying, “Do you want them to come see you? What are you going to do when they come, or did you even think of that.”
SPWell, you did talk about the janitor who also could teach children something very valuable, and you say academia generally does not accommodate somebody like that. I have heard about a university that has created a center for creation spirituality. They have a professor of drumming there. Have you heard about this?
EHBNo. No, I haven’t
SPNo? Well, another subject for another day maybe. But it’s a part of something; a yearning of people
EHBYeah, there’s an absence there. But then again, the point would be you’ve stolen the wherewithall for these people to make their world, I mean their economic world, native America. You’ve taken all of that and now you’re looking for their spirituality too. And so I caution young native artists as to what they’re giving away. To be included in certain projects and do all of these things—what are you really trading and why are you being selected for these things? But if you can use it and turn it. In Documenta I made a piece about the violence suffered by the Jews and native people. And I wouldn’t even go to Germany myself. I wouldn’t even go to Germany probably ever, because Germany is a dangerous place, I think. It seems to be more and more today. But to show in Germany, I made a piece about Germany, rather than to make a piece about Cheyennes. I think if you can turn that around sometimes then it becomes an important opportunity. But just to report on yourself totally, almost like you’re a piece of anthropology being milked, that’s not good
