ledger art

I saw this posted on Facebook by Gathering Tribes.

Contemporary ledger artist George Flett passes away.

I read Mr. Flett’s obituary, seeing once again place names that I knew from the past. Nespelem, Wellpinit. It is a small thing, but I am happy that I know how to pronounce these names. Inchelium, Disautel. I know this area, slightly, from a sojourn in Omak in 1977-78. I can’t find a map online that shows all these towns on one screen. They are too small for the scale of anything like Google maps, which shows the reservation as an expanse of emptiness.

Although, amazingly, I found this Place Name Document online: Native American Place Names Along the Columbia River Above Grand Coulee Dam, North Central Washington. It describes and maps 408 places along the Columbia River in the eastern portion of that area. Human scale!

Ledger art evolved from hide painting. Used ledgers were available from white institutions, and were easily portable, thus suited to nomadic artists.

There was a George Flett exhibit at Wheaton College in 2003, that spawned a lot of websites authored by the curator Richard Pearce. This post‘s discussion of the piece “Spear in the Ground” is very moving. The artist has brought together layers of text, pictography, papers, and multi-media techniques from collage to burning to embossing. So rich.