Crow's Shadow Institute Of The Arts: Selected Works

Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts is a nonprofit organization aimed at providing opportunities for Native Americans through artistic development. Crow’s Shadow’s growing and extensive collection and archive is the source of this traveling exhibition of more than 45 prints presented here. With an emphasis on contemporary, fine-art printmaking, they also function as a venue for traditional Native American art practices of the Plateau region. Formally, their mission is to provide educational, social, and economic opportunities for Native Americans through artistic development.

The studio is housed within the historic St. Andrew’s Mission schoolhouse, situated at the base of the Blue Mountain foothills on the Umatilla Indian reservation in Oregon. Artist James Lavadour (Walla Walla) and his friends and supporters incorporated Crow’s Shadow in 1992 with the idea of using art as a transformative tool within the Native American community. Just as art had changed and given new meaning to his own life, Lavadour wanted to create a place that would help others of Native American heritage realize the vocational potential of art.

In 2001 Crow’s Shadow turned its focus to fine-art printmaking and an artist-in-residence program where artists could come and expand their portfolios by creating high-quality prints with the help and guidance of a qualified master printer. The Crow’s Shadow Press printmaking studio is managed by Master Printer Frank Janzen, a 1996 graduate of the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, NM. Janzen joined Crow’s Shadow in 2001 and has transformed the studio into a world-class facility that offers a professional workspace with the capability to produce most forms of printmaking.

Crow’s Shadow Press invites artists to work with a master printer for a two-week period, typically with the intent of producing one or more editions. It is then incumbent upon the institute to share and market the prints, offering them to collectors, galleries, and museums. This traveling exhibition includes works by artists who have been celebrated with solo exhibitions at MAM, including Rick Bartow, Joe Feddersen, James Lavadour, Marie Watt, and Sara Siestreem. The list of artists included in the exhibition is extensive and speaks to the professionalism, prestige, and integrity of the institute itself. MAM is honored to host this impressive collection of prints.

The exhibition is hosted in the Lynda M. Frost Contemporary American Indian Art Gallery, a gallery dedicated to honoring the creative cultural contributions of American Indian people to contemporary art and to ensure that Indian artists will always have a place to celebrate that contribution. Sponsored by a generous grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.