In museums, textbooks, the popular media, and college classrooms, American Indians are often kept in the ghetto of the past. Displays of American Indian art often focus on the past both in terms of when the art was made and the images shown. Indian people did not disappear nor did they stop producing art at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, American Indian artists have continued to produce creative works.
In his book Native Arts of North America, Christian Feest writes:
“Indian mainstream art is produced by artists who happen to be Indians.”
He goes on to write:
“While the subject matter of their art is sometimes related to their ancestry or ethnic classification, their style is not.”
The Portland Art Museum recently had an exhibit featuring contemporary American Indian artists.
Lillian Pitt
According to the display:
“Lillian Pitt (born 1944, Warm Springs, Wasco, and Yakama) was born on the Warm Springs reservation and move to Portland in the early 1960s after graduating from Madras High School. In the 1970s she began taking art classes at Mt. Hood Community College and took up ceramics, initially making masks. In the decades since, Pitt has become known for an iconography rooted in the Columbia River petroglyphs of her ancestors, working in a variety of media, including bronze, glass, and wearable art.”
She finds inspiration in ancient rock art—petroglyphs and pictographs. She has brought the indigenous iconography of Columbia River rock art to the public and reanimated it.