Rose B. Simpson in “Everyday Icons” - Season 11 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

♪ 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 ♪