About the Event:

Join us on May 2nd from 7-10PM at Books & Books Coral Gables. This exhibition is free and open to everyone. We hope to see you there!

Decades ago, my Uncle Alex would return to his home on the Akwesasne reservation lean as a strip of jerky. He called it the Santa Fe Diet, a polite way of saying he could barely afford to eat. He lived in the desert, sharing his house with migrating spiders and selling paintings at the market in Santa Fe. During his months back on the Rez he’d eat my Tóta’s cooking and use the front porch as a studio, then he’d go back to the desert with new work and more meat on his bones.

Uncle Alex never categorized his art. He occupied Wounded Knee in 1973 as part of the White Roots of Peace, was program director for the Mohawk Nation Radio (CKON 97.3) in the 80s, and fronted Tribal Dada, a Punk Funk Groove Performance Band in the 90s. He co-founded, edited, and wrote for two of Indian Country’s most important newspapers – Akwesasne Notes and Indian Time. For 30 years, Akwesasne Notes had the largest circulation of any Indigenous-owned newspaper, and Indian Time, which ran from March 3rd 1969 to December 19th 2024, was the longest-running Indigenous-owned newspaper. He’s had two chapbooks of poetry published. He might never be a household name, but Uncle Alex has managed to live off nothing but his creative endeavors for more than fifty years.

I don’t remember learning our family is Turtle Clan. Alex’s artwork on our walls made such knowledge innate, the way my parents seeped into my identity before conscious thought. When he started making quilt portraits from Tóta’s old fabric scraps – what his peers at the Santa Fe Indian Market dubbed “soft sculpture” or “soft painting” and which Alex calls “therapy painting” – he struck a nerve. I have two of his quilt portraits on my walls, but “Santa Fe Dude” has always been my favorite – fifteen fabrics touched by our family layered into a portrait of a badass Mohawk, laid over sheets of uncut cigarette wrappers that symbolize how capitalism commodifies Native culture. The original is lost at the moment, sold to a collector who has since passed on.

When the folks at Hillman Grad and Zando Publishing asked me what I envisioned for the cover of my debut novel, I sent them a picture of “Sante Fe Dude.” The first time I saw the cover mockup, I broke down crying. Of course, then I had to ask Uncle Alex for his permission. When he granted it, it seemed like fate. I feel blessed that my uncle – the artist I looked up to as a child, whose life served as a model for chasing my own dreams – gave me this cover.

-Aaron John Curtis, author of Old School Indian

About the Artist: