Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: The Sacred and the Profane, the Divine and the Witty

November is Native American Heritage Month.  Join us at the library as we celebrate the life and work of Native American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who was born in 1940, and raised on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. 

Speaker Janet Mandel will shed light on Smith's luminous work that addresses the myths of her ancestors in the context of current issues facing Native Americans. Her inspiration also stems from the work of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Robert Rauschenberg. She uses paint, collage, and found objects to produce both representational and abstract images. 

Smith has had more than eighty solo exhibits over the past thirty years, organized and curated scores of Native exhibitions, and lectured at almost 200 universities, museums, and conferences.  Janet’s talk will reveal how Smith’s oeuvre creates a unique, intimate, and insightful visual language grounded in themes of personal and political identity.

It will also prepare you to enjoy the first retrospective of the artist’s works opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on April 19, 2023.  Entitled Memory Map, it brings together nearly five decades of Smith’s drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date.

Janet Mandel taught in New Jersey’s public schools for 32 years, the last eighteen of which were at Columbia High School in Maplewood, where she taught English, art history, and world Languages and cultures. Now retired, Janet presents illustrated talks on a variety of art history topics at adult schools, libraries, museums, senior centers, community centers, and similar venues.

The talk is open to all and no registration is required.

It is made possible with the support of The Friends of the Livingston Public Library.