This new body of work is my first exploration into AI. Although I haven’t yet ventured to MidJourney, I am excited about the amazing results I’m getting by creating multiple avatars from a series of selfies then later after putting the images through several generations of applications including cell phone based AI applications I’ve created a compelling body of work where I’m finally able to visually translate my ancestral dreams, which includes my Native American heritage and corresponding dreams of raptors that serve as protective spirit guides along my journey, which in Native American terms translates to the Vision Quest. In this exciting new body of work I’m able to tell the stories of my ancestor's journey as we were a migratory people initially coming from the Siberian Straits then settling for thousands of years as a Coastal Alaskan Tribe that is unfortunately now extinct. Later we migrated to Oklahoma and became Cherokee and for many, many years we were slaves. While there is ample historical knowledge of the horrors of African American Slavery, unfortunately there's not a lot of general knowledge about Native American Slavery. However there is ample historical documentation of the infamous boarding schools, the prison camps and then ultimately reservations. My work traces the footsteps of my ancestor's. Several of the images show how the women in my tribe plowed and harvested many fields throughout their lifetime's and probably much of the hard manual labor was done with their bare hands as life and work was intentionally made difficult for all enslaved people. I wonder how many full moons passed over them in their lifetime's, I wonder if they ever found love, I wonder if they were free from harm and the all too common rape of enslvaed women. I wonder if they were forced to have children under inhospitable conditions and if they had biracial children as a result of unwanted and forced pregnancies. I wonder if they ever found love. I think of them often and about their lifespan. I do know that my great grandmother was named Racahel "Nellie" Crave, and that her sister's were Georgia and Snow, and that her cousins were Tina Blue Duck and Whispering Corn Mary. When I traced my geneology I came across the name of the man who owned us, his name was Robert Moffat, I could not locate him or his family but thought it would be interesting if I did because I have a lot of questions. This new work articulates and integrates the imagined experiences and images I conjure when imagining what my ancestor's, mainly the women in my family may have looked like and felt like. Although they are all self portraits, I know from the spot on similar physicality of myself and my aunts that I must have looked incredibly similar to all the women in my lineage. In my lifelong recurrent spiritual dreams, which includes both Native American symbolism and signage, they also include Jungian mythology and archetypes in the form of healing raptors guiding my journey and vision quest with the ancestral knowledge, love and guidance paving my path for an exciting journey through the dream world and the physical world as Native American art so commonly uses in its imagery.
“Warrior Spirit Guide #3”
“Warrior Medicine Woman”
