Blackwater Draw II, 1983

Narrator: In Blackwater Draw II, Smith layered fabric, painted abstraction, and images of horses. It’s from a series of paintings she made reimagining ancient Native sites. She named them after the sites, many of which she had researched but hadn’t seen firsthand. 

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: So I have to imagine what I might think a Blackwater Draw might be.

And that means a sort of canyon-like place, a narrow place between the rocks. And so that's what I'm forming here. You can see these narrow channels of water, and they’re dark. And so my imagination has to make it up if I can't find a picture. Remember, in the days when I did this, 1983, there were no computers. There were no cell phones. There was only the library. 

And I'm interested in what information is available. It's very hard to find. There's not a lot written on our history. So threaded all the way through this show are little soundbites in some way about this history in the United States that's not told and not known.