Terran Last Gun: Paper Bags

Concentric disks in saturated colors adorn the common paper grocery bag in Terran Last Gun’s latest solo exhibition, Paper Bags. “Paper shopping bags aren't the first thing that comes to mind when considering printmaking media,” says Gallery Owner Frank Rose. “Though used in the past by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, most prints are done on really fine cotton rag paper. Recycled brown paper bags offer another dimension to the work.”My artwork is a visual interpretation of nature, the cosmos, cultural narratives, and recollections in reduced geometric aesthetics and vibrant energetic color harmonies. Often referencing Piikani painted lodges and visual iconographic vocabulary, my work explores the varying relationships between color, shape, nature, and sky. Piikani or Blackfoot painted lodges are visual masterpieces of the Great Plains and are pre- European invasion classic art. Painted lodges depict the world in which we live, through geometric geological landmarks, figurative animals, and the above world that connects us to Natosi (Sun). In my varied approaches to making art—printmaking, painting, and photography—my work connects the ancient to the contemporary, and reaches beyond, all while creating visual color stimulation.With an emphasis in printmaking and the technique of serigraphy, I am revealing fragments of time, history, and Indigenous Abstraction that has been in North America for tens of thousands of years. I am working with an Indigenous aesthetic, which has been overlooked, appropriated, and shadowed since the Great Invasion, and that I am in the process of reclaiming, restoring, and reinvigorating. I am creating a New American and Piikani art form that is equally inspired by painted lodges, ancient art, and nature as it is about geometric abstraction, minimalism, pop art, and op art. My current body of work explores and visually dissects the three visual tiers of most Piikani painted lodges with a focus on the top and bottom zones, and the various narratives that accompany them and connect us to the land and sky. My work is bold, vivid, even humorous at times, and has minimalism qualities that are potent in meaning, content, and place.