♪ soft uplifting music ♪
[welder crackling]
♪ ethereal ambient music ♪
[Rose B. Simpson] There's something so important about witnessing.
Anything is a witness, even inanimate things --
or we consider inanimate things.
This is an idea I was working out for a public art piece I'm working on where...
these sort of ancestor beings are watching.
My art is basically taking a moment of that experience.
♪ uplifting ethereal music ♪
I'm building these beings that are then reflecting my process
back to me,
but it's also going out into the world and watching.
♪♪♪
[Rose] That's that.
I figured out if I use clay that's very thin, I have to be very present with the
process and I have to just do it.
You can't, like, go back and fix it later and,
you know, carve stuff down.
It has no...
forgiveness, in a sense; it is what it is.
So you have to just be with it.
So now that I started this, I have to finish it today.
This is New Mexico Clay, where I get my clay.
I really like putting different clays together,
just as a aesthetic, but also the idea of, like,
we're all made up of many different things,
and we're trying to understand ourselves and be...
you know, compassionate and graceful and accepting of all
the many things that we all are.
Because I'm mixed blood, I was always hyper-aware of how I
wasn't fitting in.
And as a multicultural two-spirit person,
I'm always navigating one foot in two worlds. [laughs]
And so, you know, the clay gets to do that too.
♪ ethereal ambient music ♪
I'm trying to reveal our deep truth and that deep truth is process,
and so why would I hide? Why would I hide that process?
♪♪♪
To allow it to have fingerprints and to show the touching and the
making, the making -- the actual making of something --
is our power, right? Is our greatness.
That's why I love going to ancestral homes or ruins, you know?
And seeing the fingerprints in the plaster.
It's like, "Whoa, those are my ancestors' hands that were here
making just like we make," you know?
Right now, we're here in Santa Clara ancestral homelands.
My people were living here between these mountain ranges
along this river for thousands of years.
This was our place long before European contact.
It's considered a tri-cultural place, where we have the Indigenous ancestry,
and then the Spanish, and also the English-speaking colonizing.
Many of us are descendants of all those things, like myself.
Still a lot of anger and hurt.
People are navigating that inherited historical trauma.
But it's also home; I am of this place very deeply.
— Yep.
But you're not going to fall.
So holding your hand is just because I love you.
See that right there?
So this was a big reservoir right here.
The water would come down. Ancestors used to catch the water up here for drinking
and stuff -- for farming, even.
— So this rock used to be a waterfall, Mom?
— Mm-hm.
I've been coming here since I was a kid.
— There you go, now try.
The proof of people's bodies interacting with the place
and old sites where you see, like,
plaster still on the walls and you see that handprint or, like,
fingerprints in old pottery shards or whatever,
it's like this very relatable moment.
This is ancestry in the making, and we're in that, right?
We're given this line and this heritage and this story to continue.
♪ soft ambient music ♪
-[Rose] 'Cause they're cute? -[Cedar] Yes.
[Roxanne] That's really good.
[Cedar] I made a snail. [Rose] Hey, you made a snail!
That's cute! Look at its eyeballs.
[Rose] The person I love to make things the most with is my mom.
She learned to communicate through her clay,
and she was given clay through her mom;
it was a matrilineal gift.
♪♪♪
[Roxanne] It's like we leapfrog in a funny way,
because as she learned from me, then I learned from her because
she tries something I never tried.
It's quite a blessing to be able to have a child [chuckles] that
can walk the trail with you.
♪♪♪
[Rose] Whether we're plastering a house or laying adobes
or planting a field, to be able to make work that's
building a conversation together is a really
beautiful tool that we have to heal.
I often think about relationships within Indigenous world,
and we have this big heart to exist and to empower ourselves
and to change the narratives and express what it
means to carry this story forth.
♪ uplifting music ♪
I kept making these objects of empowerment.
I made warriors for years that were sort of in this state of being empowered and
and not being aggressive or confrontational, but just -- boom -- in itself.
In that, we're transforming that victim narrative.
♪♪♪
I think I'm looking for that inside myself, and
the car was actually inspired by growing up in
Española -- Española is the low rider capital of the world --
seeing people who are very disempowered in lots of ways but
totally proud of their experience and their car.
[engine rumbling]
The love and energy they put into this piece of art,
I remember thinking, "When I grow up,
I want that feeling of being complete and protected and whole
and I become that piece of art and I'm carrying myself with pride."
So when I came back from graduate school, I was like, "I'm gonna go find that."
And at that time, that looked like "Oh, muscle cars;
I need it to go real fast and be real loud."
♪ aggressive rock music ♪
The base color is called "hot rod black," which is a satin.
I taped it off, and then I threw a glass clear on top, which is what gives it this
kind of gloss versus matte.
The pattern is based off of traditional patterns from this
area of pottery designs.
We have, like, the traveling spiral,
we have mountains and clouds, and then we have feathers coming back here.
It's rooted in this place, and if you take it outside of this area,
it doesn't make much sense.
♪ sensitive ambient music ♪
I named her "Maria" after Maria Martinez,
who is a master potter and also an innovator from San Ildefonso Pueblo.
She developed the black-on-black style, and that is very, very, very specific
aesthetic color choice to this area.
♪♪♪
I started doing performances I was calling "Transformances"
'cause the intention was to actually change.
I was transforming.
I'm trying to evolve and transform my perspective.
We were using the car and taking up spaces, locking up roads,
and marching up with what I call "post-apocalyptic Indigenous regalia."
I put these subwoofers in the El Camino, and I played a heartbeat
just super loud -- gu-gung, gu-gung, gu-gung --
while we were walking, and the car-- [mimics engine sound], right?
And then, this, like, gu-gung.
They closed off the streets and we just walked slow with this car.
[engine revving]
You wanna get your, like, adrenaline going.
It was like, "We're in the post-apocalypse now,
we've experienced this for hundreds of years.
Now look at us; we're just gonna claim it, we're gonna be in it," right?
After my daughter came into my life, I did another "Transformance" in Las Vegas, Nevada
with a collaborator, Fawn Douglas, who's Southern Paiute,
and we ended up taking up space with our bodies very simply and meditatively,
and we ended up not using the car.
♪ sensitive piano music ♪
I was carrying my daughter, and there was two mothers and two daughters.
I realized that what empowerment is looking like for me is
changing, and it actually is changing from this genderqueer,
more-masculine space to actually accepting the feminine and
understanding that I can stand in my femininity and still feel that power.
The marks all mean something, right?
So for this one specifically, I keep thinking about,
like, marking of time and marking of the steps and this
monotonous-but-also-dedicated process.
The wings flapping of migrating birds,
it's this, like...You just go, you just go, you just go.
♪♪♪
This chick acts like she knows what she's doing.
It'll fit! I think it'll fit.
I hope it fits. Pretty close to that.
Good job, baby!
Let's get this done, and thank you for your hard work.
There is no separation between art and life.
I feel like my life has been being in between.
When you can't ever be comfortable in one place,
the discomfort can create an incredible environment for investigation.
You have to kind of fall back and close your eyes and hope
that where you land is exactly the place you need to go.
♪♪♪
♪ sparse ethereal music ♪