Larry McNeil

Artist Statement

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Raven dreamt about light. The peculiar part is when Raven woke up, the dreams about light were mostly just a dim haze. Sometimes there would be a flash of light, like the chrome from a 1950ʼs car, and just like that, it was gone. There was a guy wearing a mask made out of spruce root and it looked kind of desert hot from the glowing yellow atmosphere. It felt more real when we could see a shadow in the sand, which was a fleeting shadow of outstretched wings. Things became a little clearer about our journey. We donʼt know why, but our assigned task was to walk the earth. That’s all, just meet people, have adventures and kind of wing it. 

 

While cruising near Route 66 between the Santo Domingo Pueblo and Albuquerque we came upon a sight that we saw often, nearly every time we drove by. After pulling over to the shoulder of the freeway, one of us quickly jotted down a paragraph. Part of it read, “…I set out on a quest to gather sacred power. On my sacred journey, I found this sacred power pole…” We’re still not sure what it means, if anything. We pulled a camera bag out of the trunk as cars flew past way over the speed limit. “I’m not sure how long we should stay here,” said one of them. “I’ve already got the shot” replied the other. As a matter of fact, he fired off a dozen shots with subtly differing compositions. They jumped back in the car and punched it easily back into the early morning traffic. “The light was pretty cool,” said one of them.  

 

The photograph “Women’s Honor Song, RezNet 3076-2” was made as part of a poster to welcome Wilma Mankiller as our keynote speaker in 2008. She was ill and had to cancel, but we loved it that she accepted our invitation to our First Nations Conference. We were thinking about how to honor Indigenous Women and easily decided to use archival photographs from the 1800ʼs (from the public domain) as the poster. The photograph of the young woman carrying her baby seemed most heroic and we agreed that it should be on a billboard. Time felt more fluid than usual and before you knew it, we were cruising on Route 66 in December of 1977. We zoomed past a cool looking trading post that was a sudden blur at first. We did a U-turn and went back, thinking, “Was that what we thought it was?” The epic sign said, “Real Indians,” and I thought, “Hey, that’s me,” so in we went, ready to be at the one place in the universe that would welcome us wholeheartedly. One of them tightened his headband and leaned against the beat-up Rez car out front and snapped a quick photo. 

 

Fast forward to sometime around the start of the 21st century; was it 2002? It’s kind of a blur again. The journal said something like, “In the true spirit of white man, I stole this car in my search for America. Just call it manifested destiny. I asked the owner to take my picture in front of his car before I took it…” Tonto’s earthen house had a beautiful turquoise Cadillac parked out front. That’s me in the driver’s seat wearing another spruce root mask. The rear fenders had faded Chilkat designs on them and the bumpers had a silver engraved killer whale that had a noticeable tarnish. We’re not sure what the Lone Ranger did to land himself behind bars. 

 

On this journey it became clear that Raven loves cool cars. By now, some of us are plugging our cars into wall outlets like they’re refrigerators or something. The cool part is that the 1955 gull wing car loves to go fast on electric power. With planet Earth fighting for its life, this is a good choice even with the rusted-out body. And the killer whale teeth designs are sublimely perfect. Over the past few years, our killer whale relatives have been sinking wealthy people’s yachts. What’s that all about? We’re not sure, but Raven is still having the recurring dreams about light. All we know for now is that Ms. Coyote has love, gratitude and anvils.

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Raven Dreamt About Light

Prints Available

Foto Forum Santa Fe Exhibition Record

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• Raven Dreamt About Light, solo exhibition, 2024

Biography

Larry X̱ʼeidé grew up in a tribal family in Juneau whose culture includes thousands of generations of fishermen, catching all manner of seafood for harvest. In this sense, they are a tribal nation who have been able to live in the same large village site for thousands of years, defying the perception that only farmers were able to live at one specific site since ancient times. Because of this, Larry's Tlingit and Nisgaá Nations have been able to dedicate eons to being artisans and they developed their own Northwest Coast style of art that is unique to humanity. 

 

Larry was an apprentice to master fishermen and by the time he was 16, was a full-fledged fisherman himself, spending seasons out on the ocean in the rugged North Pacific. This has been an ancient practice of his people and continued with him. It is highly skilled work that often requires working 48 to 60 hours straight without taking a break for sleep. This is because when the fish arrive, they donʼt wait for humans. They swim by according to the rhythms of the ocean, and if the people were not there to harvest the monumental abundance of seasonal fish, the villages would starve. 

 

The above training has stayed with Larry X̱ʼeidé for his entire life and he has applied it to all the jobs and professions he has worked, especially as a young man. Larry has applied this ethic to being an artist-in training as both an undergraduate and graduate student. He completed an intense and highly demanding three-year graduate program in two years, which serves as a regular example of this fierce work ethic. Life wasn’t going to wait for him, and it was time to go to light speed. When Larry landed a tenure track university teaching position, he reached the rank of Full Professor faster than usual too.

 

Years later, Larry's mentor Patrick Nagatani at the University of New Mexico casually said, “Larry, you realize that you finished our program the second fastest in the history of our college? I know how you did it, but why?” Larry replied that he had a toddler son and that his wife was a Plaza Vendor in Santa Fe who was supporting the family while Larry was in graduate school. Their agreement was that Larry could apply to any graduate program he desired, but he had two years to finish it. Larry paused and replied, “If I knew anyone was paying attention, I’d have finished the program faster,” which drew a smile from Nagatani. 

 

Larry is protective of the speed of his creative practice though. It is because his intuition whispered that art takes time, and it is often impossible to speed it up. “We need time to let our art evolve and change. Sometimes our art matures in unexpected ways that we have little intellectual control over. We see the world differently than we did five years ago, especially when the world is changing so quickly. We make more work and before we know it, nearly everyone’s lives have changed because the world has changed. We may speed up other aspects of our lives, but the spirit of creativity goes at its own pace. Each generation teaches the next and among other things, our art nurtures our spirits and very being; it offers intellectualism, spiritual world views, and a deep love for the future generations as a most essential part of our identity. We see and feel our ancestors and elders in the art, and we sense their profound love for us, especially decades after they have ‘Walked into the forest.ʼ In this sense, a critical role of our Tlingit and Nisgaá art has to do with healing; the art is not just about beauty. Our life experiences (biographies) and creativity become so intertwined that they can’t really be separated.”