PHOTO: Guest artists and Renwick Gallery staff, May 25, 2023.
Stepping off the airplane and entering the terminal at the Ronald Reagan National Airport, also known as DCA, I noted that the interior design relied heavily on the colors, yellow and bronze.
I turned to my traveling companion, Ursala. My daughter.
“I remember this airport. The yellow color.”
My second trip to Washington DC.
I’m not a person who travels much. I’ve lived nearly my entire adult life in two relatively isolated communities: Juneau, Alaska and Pagosa Springs, Colorado. I guess I’m just a person who enjoys isolation.
But I had visited Washington DC once before, in September 2004, for the grand opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), and a concurrent gathering of thousands of Indigenous Americans that same weekend, called the “First Americans Festival”. The largest known gathering of Native American people in history.
My wife, Clarissa, of Tlingit Indian heritage, had been invited to demonstrate a particular style of Alaskan weaving — Chilkat weaving — and one of her demonstrations that weekend took place in the lobby of the new NMAI museum.
Clarissa had been blessed with considerable artistic talent, and also with a lack of inhibition, in terms of being comfortable talking with complete strangers about almost any topic. A couple of her comments about the Festival appeared in a video produced in 2005 by the Smithsonian Museum.
I grabbed a few clips out of that 10-minute Smithsonian video, including Clarissa’s comments.
You can view the entire video, here.
NMAI sits on the National Mall, near the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument, and celebrates — in its typically institutional fashion — the American Indian cultures that somehow — and perhaps remarkably — survived the arrival of Europeans in North America in 1492.
Clarissa passed in 2016, but not before sharing much of her knowledge about Chilkat weaving to her two daughters, Lily and Ursala.
Both daughters took that knowledge and ran with it.
Nearly twenty years after my only previous trip to Washington DC, Lily and Ursala — my two daughters — were invited to Washington DC to participate with four other contemporary American Indian artists in a show entitled, “Sharing Honors and Burdens” at the Renwick Gallery, located a stone’s throw from the White House.
The posters for the show featured Ursala wearing headphones, decorated by her sister Lily with Chilkat style weavings.
Those headphones were part of the Renwick Gallery exhibit, accompanied by an audio recording of Tlingit Indian singing.
The idea being that American Indian art is alive and well, and eagerly explores contemporary themes, the same as other styles of art in America.
I’m using the word “Indian” in this essay because, living in Alaska for 20 years, I lived closely connected to Clarissa’s relatives — people who referred to themselves as “Indians”. Some people may feel more comfortable with terms like “First Americans” or “Native Americans” when referring to indigenous North American tribes. But I will note that even these labels include the word ‘American’… which was likely derived from the name of an Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci.
So, my second trip to Washington DC. Once again, to help celebrate the art of Chilkat weaving.
Ursala and I checked into our vacation rental on O Street, a 30-minute walk from the Renwick, and had a dinner of Japanese food at a nearby restaurant.
Our vacation rental was located in the basement of an older two-story townhouse.
Lily and her teenage son, Nicholas, had booked a room a block away from the Renwick, in the same hotel where Clarissa’s sister Deanna was also staying, having flown in from Alaska with Lily and Nicholas, for the show opening on Thursday, May 25.
My son Kahlil would be arriving on Thursday morning, along with his daughter Violet and Ursala’s daughter Amelie. So all the teenagers in my immediate family would be present.
A family reunion of sorts. Courtesy of the Renwick Gallery.
On Wednesday, prior to the exhibit’s ‘private’ opening reception, Ursala and Lily spent much of the day at the Renwick, preparing for the opening.. thus leaving me to my own devices. So I decided to walk through the city. Sightseeing.
The rather massive office buildings offered a fascinating historical mix of architectural styles, with some dating from the 1800s, others from the 1930s, and some recently built. But mostly, large.
I wasn’t the only pedestrian using my feet to get through the city; the sidewalks were relatively well-peopled. Not like you might see in downtown New York City, but more like what we see in downtown Pagosa Springs during July. The city planners had placed stoplights at practically every possible intersection, so street crossing was mostly convenient. And a few streets were ‘pedestrian only’.
My ultimate destination, for this meandering stroll, was the Renwick Gallery, which was located about a block west of the White House. Not that I was going to step inside the gallery — what would happen on Wednesday — I use wanted to ensure that I could find the building…
…and see where my daughters would be showing their work in a year-long art exhibit.
One curious thing about walking through the streets of downtown Washington DC: I felt safe.