Cook County Clerk’s Office: Democracy is NOT a Spectator Sport
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April 14th – Seventh Annual Urban Native Education Conference
2023 Conference Theme: Making Way for the Next Seven Generations
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Vincent G. Romero
Tribal Affiliation: Pueblo of Laguna
Call 505-659-1112 or email [email protected]
Stone’R Designs showcases my jewelry work that was inspired by the years working with my mother and siblings when I was a teenager. She would fill large orders of southwest style jewelry to galleries and we would help using a lazy susan pie plate for production. My designs are both traditional and contemporary styles with natural materials such as stone, bone, crystals, shells, leather and glass.
I also write poetry and do performance poetry, as well as storytelling. Stories range from history presentations to children’s stories. I coordinate poetry workshops for my community and other groups that cover issues of personal experience, traditional values and lessons, humor and horror. I’m from the Pueblo of Laguna and also I’m a Dine’ descendant, a Navy veteran and a longtime Chicago community member. You can visit Vince’s Etsy shop here.
Art Form
Traditional Arts – techniques that reflect cultural traditions, such as beadwork, quillwork, basketry, pottery, drums, rattles, textiles, leatherwork, traditional jewelry, etc.
Norma Robertson
Tribal Affiliation: Dakota
Call 773-297-0025
Han. Norma Robertson emaciyapi. I’m an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Lake Traverse Reservation, Sisseton, South Dakota. Beading has been a gift to me from my Kunsi, which I have passed on to my daughters and others.
As a teenager I became interested in learning how to bead and my Kunsi Ella Wanna taught be some basic techniques. She also told me “You learn to do this and you’ll never go hungry.” Today, I’ve beaded amulets for all my grandchildren that hold their umbilical cord, and then their first pair of moccasins.
Art Form
Tradational Arts, Beadwork
Nora Moore Lloyd
Tribal Affiliation: Obwibwe
Call 773-508-5828 or email [email protected]
Nora Moore Lloyd creates artwork with an emphasis on indigenous cultures, nature, and documenting community and family history through traditional storytelling and photos.
Combining her interest in history with photography projects, her artistic focus is to tell first-voice stories through images. She has exhibited at Chicago museums and galleries, in Bolivia and Guatemala and Hungary and is represented in private collections. Nora’s website is nativepics.org.
Art Form
Photography, culture
Annabelle Two-Rivers Broeffle
Tribal Affiliation: Ojibwe and Menominee
Call 312-826-3204 or email [email protected]
Chicago-based designer, Annabelle Broeffle has been honing her graphic skills since 2016. Broeffle received her BFA from St. Norbert College in May of 2020. She creates various artworks like paintings, photography, animation, and multimedia collage work. The types of inspiration Broeffle finds tend to come from a mix of artists and designers that include Paula Scher, Francis Bacon, and Marshall McLuhan. Currently, Broeffle’s work is design-based, both graphically and physically. Combining an abstract and modern editorial feel, Annabelle creates work that inspires others and connects with her viewers through thought-provoking emotion.
Recently, she has been creating work that is based and focused on the indigenous peoples from around the world, it is creating a series of both graphic and fine art that revolves around the beauty and gracefulness of indigenous women. Annabelle’s evolution to graphic design has introduced her to new methods of art and allows her to express her messages in many more effective and bold ways. Her use of abstraction challenges viewers and invites them to look deeper into a new meaning of work. Visit Annabelle’s website for more of her work.
Art Form
Fine Arts – contemporary arts such as paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, contemporary jewelry design, etc.,
Media Arts – technological arts, such as film, video, digital and audio works, documentary, experimental, animation, narrative works, etc.,
Multidisciplinary – mixed media
Sharon Hoogstraten
Tribal Affiliation: Citizen Potawatomi Nation
Call 773-486-3747 or email [email protected]
A member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and professional photographer, Sharon Hoogstraten has spent a decade creating formal portraits of fellow Potawatomis. This legacy project spans all nine Potawatomi Nations and is our gift to the future seven generations. Focusing on both the traditional and contemporary aspects of regalia, it is also a declaration of continued existence.
WE ARE STILL HERE! Her nearly life-sized portraits have been widely exhibited and collected. A book, Dancing for Our Tribe: Potawatomi Tradition in the New Millennium is scheduled for 2021 publication. She lives in Chicago/Shikaakwa, homeland of her ancestors. Visit Sharon’s website for more of her photography.
Art Form
Fine Arts – contemporary arts such as paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, contemporary jewelry design, etc.
Noelle Garcia
Tribal Affiliation: Klamath, Northern Paiute
Call 702-809-1556
Based in the Chicago metropolitan area, Noelle Garcia is an artist who focuses on themes of identity, family history and recovered narratives in her work. She is an indigenous artist from the Klamath and Paiute tribes from Oregon and Nevada. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Her work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions across the United States. Garcia has earned awards and fellowships at various institutions such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the American Indian Graduate Center, theNevada Arts Council, and the Illinois Arts Arts Council Agency. Noelle has held residencies at multiple organizations such as ACRE, Ox-Bow, and Ucross Foundation. Additionally, Noelle has published multiple articles and illustrations in the American Quarterly, Arts Everywhere Musagetes, Lust to Dust: A Collection of Comics, and Drunk: A Comic About Bar Stories. Visit Noelle’s website for more of her artwork.
Joe Yazzie is a master artist who loves teaching community members to transfer knowledge from one generation to another generation. For the last 20 years he has worked to advance opportunities for Native peoples and people of color, through his art.
Joseph Podlasek is a citizen of the LCO Ojibwe Tribe in Northern WI and is also of Polish descent. He is the father of three great children. Mr. Podlasek (Joe P), a fellow of the Leadership of Greater Chicago and FBI Citizen Leadership Academy, moved in July 2012 full time to establish the Trickster Cultural Center, a 10,000 sq. ft. facility and nonprofit organization in Schaumburg IL.
He has produced 6 great films from the opening of the Smithsonian to five documentaries, and one full film on D-Day’s 75th Anniversary.
