Dolores Purdy's Ledger Art: Colors That Sing
By Richard Pearce, author of Women and Ledger Art: Four Contemporary Women Artists, published by the University of Arizona Press, 2013
Blessing of the Morning Sun
10 1/2 x 16 inches. Private Collection.
In 2005 Caddo mask artist and watercolor painter Dolores Purdy started drawing with colored pencils on antique ledger pages. Focusing for the most part on women’s lifeways, her drawings represent daily life and historic ceremonies that are still a vital part of Caddo life today. Some of her drawings have a playful humor, especially since Women and Ledger Art, which was published in 2013. They have also become more colorful: "I am highly influenced by Peter Max and continuing to evolve as a 'colorist,' seeking the 'static line' found when 2 colors are perfectly complementary. I love bright vibrant colors that 'sing' on a page."
All her drawings are made with colored pencils and India ink.
Buffalo Quest
16" x 10 1/2 inches. Collection of Richard and Nedra Matteucci.
One of the distingushing marks of Corcoran's ledger drawings is her faceless figures. "I enjoy having a faceless warrior or woman looking out at the viewer as if he is questioning why the viewer is there."
Blessings
12 x 16 inches. Private Collection.
The decorative elements in this ledger drawing (the flowers and bows) are an illustration of her colors that sing. The cut-off Tipi might be seen as a gallery wall filled with the same picture.
Scentuals
10 x 16 inches. Private Collection.
The colorful women carrying umbrellas and decorative flowers might distract the viewer from the small skunk on the bottom right—which gives the drawing it's playful title.
I'll Go Where You Want MeTo Go
9 x 12 inches. Private Collection.
Caddo woman wearing a headpiece called a dush-to rides over a over a sheet music page of an 1882 Shaker song.
Dush-tos are worn during the Caddo Turkey dance, one of the most important Caddo dances. It is danced today exactly as it was danced in 1541.
An Unclouded Day
6 x 9 inches. Private Collection.
"As the story goes, in 1885 the Rev. J. K. Alwood was riding his horse home from a debate with an Adventist minister in Ohio. The debate had gone late into the night, and as he was riding, Rev. Alwood saw “a beautiful rainbow north by northwest against a dense black nimbus cloud. The sky was all perfectly clear except this dark cloud which covered about forty degrees of the horizon and extended about halfway to the zenith.” He was so stunned and inspired by the sight that he wrote the song “Unclouded Day." In 1987, Willie Nelson sang this song in a “Farm Aid” concert broadcast all over America.
I Will Sing
9 x 12 inches. Collection of James Bialac.
I Will Sing of My Redeemer is the first song ever recorded on a phonograph. It was made for a demonstration of Thomas
Edison’s new invention in New York City.
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Pot Holes
6 x 10 1/2 inches. Collectrion of Harold and Pat Oseff.
Corcoran's playful humor: a pun on pot holes as the faceless driver looks at us and ignores the pots falling out of his truck.
Sunbrella
Antique frame, satin fabric, color pencils, used old buttons, and venetian lace.
30 x 30 inches. Collection of Harold and Pat Oseff.
Waterbirds
10 1/2 x 16 inches. Collection of University of California San Diego.
"A Waterbird is a symbol of the Native American Church (a combination of Christianity and peyotism. It symbolizes rain, renewal and distant travel."--Dolores Purdy
Ghost Dancers
11 x 16 inches. Private Collection.
Around 1889, Wovoka, a Paiute from Nevada, had a series of visions, which precipitated a religious movement eventually embraced by more than thirty Indian tribes in North America. He passed on to his people the messages he received from God: live peacefully, do not lie, work hard. Besides this general ethic, God gave Wovoka directions for dancing what is known as the Ghost Dance, and further advised him that if Indians would live and act in the prescribed manner, they would soon experience a remaking of their world: white men and their unwanted influences would disappear; dead friends and relatives would return; and all would live happily together in the traditional way with plentiful game. Threatened with poverty, subjugation, and extinction, tribes rapidly took up this doctrine of hope. Within a few months people across the plains were practicing the new religion. As each group adapted the religion to its own needs and previous habits, variations arose in the ritual (such as the wearing of special clothing believed to render the wearers invulnerable to bullets. Regardless of the details of the ritual, however, the basic ideas of the religion were enthusiastically accepted.
In spite of the peaceful tenor of Wovoka's messages, white officials grew alarmed by the inherently anti-white movement. At Pine Ridge Agency, an inexperienced government agent and others over-reacted to a number of Sioux who had not heeded the prophet's warnings against violence, and a small incident sparked the infamous Wounded Knee massacre of December 29, 1890. (Harold Peterson, The Catalog of I Wear the Morning Star: An Exhibition of American Indian Ghost Dance Objects, 1976.
The symbols on top of the ledger page are like those on Ghost Dance shirts and dresses. The dancer on the right is wearing a dush-to.
Caddolac, 2014
10 1/2 x 16 inches. Private Collection.
The traditional Caddo dance begins with the women’s Turkey Dance—one of the most important of the Caddo dances—and is followed by the meal. Historically, the dance was a victory dance, welcoming warriors home, while the songs recounted their coups and praised the brave men. The Turkey Dance is performed in the afternoon and must be completed by sunset (when turkeys come home to roost).” What distinguishes this important dance is the women’s headpiece called a dush-to [“dush-tow”], “which they take off after the Turkey Dance, when they also change their floral dress to another outfit.” (the dush-tos in this drawing are teal, red, and green)
In 2009 Dolores made a drawing called Caddo-lacs, and she tells us: “I just had a great time with the ‘Caddo-lacs,’”relishing the pun. “We have a family joke about driving 'Caddo-lacs,’ although no one did in the family that I know of.” In this drawing three Turkey Dancers are driving to the dance, their dush-tos flying in the air.
Humor is a common ingredient of Purdy's ledger drawing.
Lois Smokey
2016, 10 1/2 x 16
In 1920s. Susie Peters, Kiowa agency matron, invited Lois Smokey and a group of Kiowa artists to attend a local painting class. In 1926 she arranged for Smokey to attend the University of Oklahoma, Oscar Jacobson, director of the Art Department selected her to become one of the original Kiowa five and arranged for an exhibition of their paintings in museums across the country and in Hawaii. Her paintings reflected importance as well as the beauty of Kiowa women in tribal life.
For other sites on Native Art see:
Storied Beads: The Art of Teri Greeves
Colleen Cutschall: Recovering the "New" World
Caddolac Babes, 2015
16.4 x 10.2, Haffenreffer Museum
Drawing of Caddo-lac girls in traditional dress driving fin-tailed Cadillac cars. The girls wear brightly-colored clothing flying into the wind. Butterflies, stars, dragonflies, and geometric designs float above the group. Drawn on page from ledger book, "Township 13 North of the base Line, Range 1 West, of the Fifth Principal Meridian" (page 13).
