Homelands / Tipi
2024 Street Wise Mural Festival
Location: West-facing exterior wall of Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St, Boulder, CO 80302
Photos by Dona and Niko Laurita and Cam Margera
Al Hubbard (Northern Arapaho and Navajo) and Bruce Cook (Haida and Arapaho) explore environmentalism and land stewardship through Indigenous perspectives in their mural for #SWMF2024.
The mural combines Al’s pop art sensibilities with Bruce’s use of traditional Haida formline design. Three tipis anchor the mural, evenly spaced along the wall. Bold brown lines flank the tipis on three sides with graphic stripes of yellow, red, and blue completing the enclosure along the top. Green and yellow curvilinear triangles reminiscent of Haida formline design fill the space between the tipis, and a variety of circles in primary colors of red, yellow, and blue bounce across the wall.
Al and Bruce place QR codes at the base of each tipi, linking the viewer to an oral history that discusses the Arapaho worldview, sense of place, and connection to Mother Earth. (Listen to the oral history by playing the video on this page!) “As an indigenous artist I see myself as a time traveler,” Al has said. “I am trying to connect history with our contemporary life and to be mindful of where we're headed.”
In the oral history, an Arapaho elder discusses the importance of the morning star and four cardinal directions, which help to guide the Arapaho and bring the good things of life. A nomadic peoples, the Arapaho left the Great Lakes to follow the buffalo west across Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and even Montana. They moved from winter to summer camps, but wherever the Arapaho set up camp, that was home.
Finding a new campsite started with a prayer before scouts would run out to scour the land. By following the guidance of the four cardinal directions, they were able to find campsites with important materials and medicine. However, all of the resources were not used. The Arapaho always left some for the next peoples and out of respect for the land and Mother Earth.
Al’s and Bruce’s mural was painted in conjunction with the “Homelands: Reconnection” exhibition hosted by Creative Nations at the Dairy Arts Center. The exhibition featured artworks by Ute, Cheyenne and Arapaho artists, whose ancestral lands now make up Boulder County. During the festival, Al and Bruce also participated in a panel discussion on creating art as Native culture bearers and the power that comes with bringing your artwork to your ancestral home.
About Al Hubbard
Al Hubbard is a Northern Arapaho and Navajo multi-media artist born in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Central Wyoming College in Riverton, Wyoming.
Al’s range of projects have included painting, installation, and printmaking. The unique mix of materials consisting of image-transfers, acrylic mediums, and collage elements reflect the complexity and multi-levels of living as a Native American in today’s world. His work combines stories, memory, and iconography of the Northern Arapaho and Navajo nations. Connecting these elements into his own visual language creates a direct link to the preservation of the past, living today, and preparing for the future.
Al currently resides on the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming. He continues to inspire others as he creates and produces bodies of work that challenge and redefine institutional Native American art.
About Bruce Cook
Bruce Cook is an artist with a complex ethnicity, Haida and Arapaho. He explores his art through wood carving, painting, drawing, sculpture, and design.
As a Haida artist residing in Wyoming, Bruce is driven to explore and innovate. The woods and natural materials he used that were once abundant in the Pacific Northwest are now scarce. This scarcity of resources has led to a creative drive which has been vital to his survival as a Haida artist in the high plains desert.
Bruce’s subject matter is Haida; both traditional and contemporary. As a Native artist capable of inhabiting both forms simultaneously, Bruce is free to create without the confines of being bound to one or the other.
His favorite mediums are yellow cedar and fresh red alder. Their suppleness, delicacy, strength, and willingness to be transformed in both form and texture make them perfect mediums for exploring Haida art.
Each day brings with it a new desire to practice the forms of those who have come before him and a push to innovate in the forms that are yet to come. This inspiration is his daily spirit to create. For many artists who work in traditional mediums there is a difficulty in telling the story of their artwork to a larger audience. The items that we toil over for endless hours move into the hands of the recipient only to be seen on special occasions or never to be seen again. Sometimes this is part of an ethereal ethic but many more times it is simply because there was no way to capture the project in imagery and push the story forward. That is certainly the case with Bruce’s wood carving, drawing, and painting.