Tribal Portrait: Encountering Messengers

Trent Thursby Alvey
Tribal Portrait: Beauty and Brutality
Salt Lake City Main Library: Feb. 25 – March 31, 2007

My experience exhibiting at the library became an opportunity for self discovery. The reasons for creating art vary for different artists, but during my library exhibit, it became clear that extending my interaction with people outside my immediate circle, friends, supporters and art community is really important to me. This exhibit was a strong antiwar statement for me. I didn’t know how it would be received in the art community. But it became a magnet for a disenfranchised group of war veterans, one imparticular named Trudelll Paul Braudeau, a Lakota Navy Seal who had completed two tours in Iraq, the first time. Shortly after installing my paintings and assemblage pieces, Trudell was drawn into the space from a glimpse of a helmet and the icon stencil of an AK47 on one of the paintings. He went right up to the painting and said, “Yep, an Ak.”  From that day we became friends. One day he brought me a blanket that he’d found. It looked like a blanket that you’d find draped over grannies rocking chair, not like a gift from a tatted-up brother with a long black pony tail, who can do 15 one arm pushups, but the message woven on the blanket is timeless.

Our Family is a circle
of strength and love,
With every birth and every
union, the circle grows.
Every joy shared adds more
love. Every crisis faced
together makes the
circle stronger.

Trudell ask me if I understood the circle. He said when he and his brothers meet they circle up, which is exactly what they did in the exhibit. Trudell called me one day to ask me to come down to the library. He said that he and his vet buddies were having a ceremony in my exhibit space, using the helmet (part of my assemblage) as the receptacle for burning sage. He told me his buddies sat around the alter for a long time in silence recalling memories of war then started singing and then, finally laughing. When I arrived Trudell was asleep in a chair adjacent to the gallery and his buddies were gone. I noticed that two of the 25 caliber shells were gone from my Flags of War and Peace assemblage.

The message that Trudell brought to me was a reinterpretation of the intent of my exhibit. My original message was about the restorative and destructive cycles that we humans continually cycle through: war brutality, greed, redemption, purification and rebirth. My exhibit asks the unanswered question, will we ever transcend this cyclical existence? But, I believe that Trudell has wisdom to share, I think that he was helping me to understand that the circle itself transcends what we do on a daily, yearly, lifetime, generational basis in peace or in war. The circle is the transcendence. Understanding that you are a part of the circle is your own enlightenment, whatever you do from there is perfect.

I want to thank the library staff, Hickmet Lowe, Camille ________, and especially Howard Brough for being so very supportive of my work. I appreciate the Library administration and staff and their willingness to allow me to voice my political, moral and spiritual statement about war and brutality. Thanks again to Howard for all of his hard work and support for the exhibit as well as helping me with the logistics of the butoh performance. The library is a haven for a cross section of humanity and I appreciate the extended audience.

Thank you, too, to Jerry Gardner for the Butoh Dance Theatre performance on March 1 as a reaction to the exhibit. Those who saw the performance were held in a spell of attraction / repulsion for 25 minutes of introspection. The Theatre members are Jean LaSarre Gardner, Arwen Ek, Alana Kindness, Jeremy Yamashiro.

Thank you to Eric Ristau, Walkabout Workshop, based in Salt Lake City, who spent many hours shooting and editing this video of my art and the performance.