George Longfish

George Chester Longfish (born August 22, 1942) is a First Nations artist, professor, and museum director. His art work blends Pop art with Indigenous motifs, and often features assemblage. Many of his works have been featured in major public museum exhibitions, including the Heard Museum, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. Ohsweken is a village on the Six Nations on the Grand River First Nation Indian Reserve. Longfish's mother left him and his brother when he was five years old. His mother took Longfish and his brother to the Thomas Indian School. At this school, Longfish and his brother had to take care of farm animals, slaughter them, and many agrarian tasks. As a child, Longfosh admired modern artists such as Frank Stella and Arshile Gorky. He attended Tuley High School in Chicago, Illinois.

Longfish earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (1970) and his Master of Fine Arts degree (1972) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Longfish's art style consisted of stenciled text, pictures of indigenous people, and a variety of bright colors.

In 1972, the graduate program in American Indian Arts at the University of Montana was founded and managed by Longfish.

From 1973 until 2003, Longfish was a member of the faculty at the University of California, Davis' Native American Studies Department. He was added to the faculty when Carl Nelson Gorman had retired. In addition, Longfish served as the director of the C. N. Gorman Museum at the University of California Davis, from 1974 to 1996. In the mid-1970s Longfish was active in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene.

Spirit In this painting Spirit, Longfish paints a Pawnee chief in black and white once again. However, this time, the date he was born on is painted on the artwork. In addition, many phrases such as "Honoring women family children our histories memories", "broken treaties", "toxic waste dump", "genocide" and "disease" are written in the background. This painting symbolizes how colonists came to America and laid waste to many of the tribes. Colonists often made treaties with indigenous people, only to break them later. Also, they destroyed nature by building there factories and houses that all excreted toxic chemicals. Many of these colonists also brought diseases along with them, killing many indigenous people. As the viewer examines the painting, one can tell Longfish paints this painting to show how colonists have changed the way of living for indigenous people and caused many children to lose their parents and families to war or sickness.

Lightly Salted The mixed-media Lightly Salted (1990) features Land O'Lakes "lightly salted" butter packaging with images of "Mia" the Native woman. Above the butter packaging is a bright red church and angels, painted much like a Guna mola. Brilliantly colored arrows and zigzags flare outward, including ones cut from reflective metallic paper. The artist statement explains, "This artwork is a political statement of a people who have endured and survived."

Group exhibitions 1994: "Cultural Contrasts", Stamford Museum and Nature Center, Stamford, Connecticut 1992: "500 Years Since Columbus", Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, California 1992: "Haudenosaunee Artists: A Common Heritage", Tower Fine Art Gallery, State University of New York, Brockport, New York 1992: "Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives", Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec 1992–1994: "The Submuloc Show/Columbus Wohs", Atlatl, Phoenix, Arizona 1992–1993: "We, The Human Beings/27 Contemporary Native American Artists", College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, Ohio 1991–1992: Acknowledging Our Host: Communal Sources, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California 1990: The Decade Show, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City, New York 1985–1986: "The Extension of Tradition", Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California 1979: "George C. Longfish Mary L. O'Neal: Works on Canvas", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California.

Solo exhibitions 2008: "George Longfish a Retrospective" (2008), Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, Missoula, Montana 1989: "George Longfish", Jennifer Pauls Gallery, Sacramento, California 1989: "George Longfish Paintings", LRC Gallery, College of the Siskiyous, Weed, California 1971: Second Unitarian Church, Chicago, Illinois Washington State University, Pullman University of Montana Heard Museum (1973) October ArtFest, Davis, California (1981, 1st)

Publications