Cole Redhorse Taylor: Creating Contemporary Work Through Connection to Traditional Art Forms

Transcript

Cole Redhorse Taylor: I never thought of myself as an artist up until I was entering college. When I was younger, if you tried to use the label of artist, people assumed that you had to be able to like draw someone's portrait, and it looked exactly the same. I couldn't do that. I didn't think I was good at art the whole time, though. I didn't realize that I was creating art because I learned how to bead when I was 13.

Leah Lemm: Boozhoo, hello. Welcome to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. I'm your host Leah Lemm.

Cole Premo: I'm your other host Cole Premo. Miigwech for joining us on Native Lights. Native Lights is a podcast and radio show. But it's more than that. It's a place for Native folks to tell their stories. Each and every week, we have captivating conversations with great guests from a whole lot of different backgrounds. We're talking musicians, artists, community leaders, healthcare advocates, educators, language warriors, you name it. They have a wonderful mixture of passions, and we talk to them about their gifts and how they share their gifts with the community. And it all centers around the big point of purpose in our lives and amplifying Native Voices. What's going on, Leah?

Leah Lemm: Hey, you know, just hanging in there. It's the dark days, the dark months. But yeah, doing well. How about you?

Cole Premo: You know, it was an interesting day today. It was the first daycare day for our boy, Artem. So had some mixed feelings there, and I wasn't even the one who dropped him off, for crike's sake. Dealing with those feelings. But it's, it's fine. He came back. He was all tired out and sleeping a little bit. It's good, you know? Yeah, that is tough. Do you remember Marvin's first day?

Leah Lemm: I don't. It's been a long time. I think the profound thing is that, you know, it just kind of becomes normal, and every day seems magical, but then looking back on it, it's like, man, where'd the time go? I don't know. It's still magical. That's a thing. Marvin's still doing cool stuff. He surprises me, like every day. So it'll keep going, Cole. Gosh, it's so fun. But enjoying that close to teenager phase of life, the tweenager, actually. He has some friends over, upstairs, right now. I had to go upstairs and ask them to be quiet before I came down to record. Good luck. So apologies if you start hearing some bumps and yells and yelps. Awesome.

Cole Premo: All right, what we got for this episode, Leah? What are we working with?

Leah Lemm: It is going to be another good one. I'm super excited to talk to our guest today. Probably seen his artwork around. Cole Redhorse Taylor. Not Cole Premo. Cole Redhorse Taylor. It's a great name, yeah. Cole is Mdewakanton Dakota and a member of the Prairie Island Indian community. And he's an artist, and has worked in many mediums, drawing, painting, beadwork, quill work, hockey helmets. He's created contemporary and traditional pieces heavily inspired by the artwork of his ancestors. And of course, if you're a sports fan, you may have seen his collaborations with the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Wild. So let's welcome our guest Cole Redhorse Taylor. Boozhoo.

Cole Redhorse Taylor: Hi.

Cole Premo: Boozhoo. Cole, could you just start by introducing yourself, letting us know where you're joining us from? All that good stuff.

Cole Redhorse Taylor: [Introduction in Dakota language.] My name is Cole Redhorse Taylor. I am Mdewakanton Dakota, and I'm enrolled in the Prairie Island Indian Community in southeast Minnesota.

Cole Premo: We always like to ask, you know, how are you doing? How's the family doing?

Cole Redhorse Taylor: Good. So I live and work as an artist in my community, on my reservation. I work from home, and so I'm very, very home based, and I live near just about all of my family. We're called Prairie Island, and we very much are an island, not only in the actual technical sense, but also in the communal sense. And so, you know, I'm related to like everybody I live around. It is a small community, but it's also just very tightknit that way. And so I'm thankful to live near my family. I have plans to go to Paris for New Year's Eve with my cousin. We plan to go to Disney World over there. You know, I love Disney. I have one sister, one biological sibling, with many relatives, of course, though, and adopted relatives, but just my sister and I growing up together with a single mom. My mom loved Disney. She loves Disney. And so she always had us watching the movies. I have relatives who live in Florida, and we always went to go visit them to Disney World. I just think there was just such magic. And like going there as a little kid, and not many kids get to do that.

Leah Lemm: Well, that's wonderful. And is there anything that you're thinking about or concentrating on these days? I'm, uh, deep into some Netflix shows. And is there anything that you are thinking about now?

Cole Redhorse Taylor: So as far as Netflix goes, just for funsies, I just watched both seasons of The Interview with the Vampire. I mean, I've always loved Anne Rice's books. But it's a fun fact, I'm actually not a huge reader. So I love her universe. I love the movies and the things that come from her world that she created. I haven't got to read all of her books, though, and I'm not a fast reader. But I did actually just finish reading the book, Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich, who's one of my favorite authors. But it was just so insanely accurate to the times we're living in now. Because, you know, it's all about Native people living in an authoritarian government. What happens to women, especially a Native woman who is having a baby? And what it means to have reproductive rights be taken away and all that stuff. It's just insanely like on key. So it was really good.

Cole Premo: Awesome. Thank you. And yeah, tell us about your artwork.

Cole Redhorse Taylor: I got my Bachelor in Aine arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2017. I actually originally went to UMD my first year of college. I didn't think at the time I could really bank on being an artist, and so I actually majored in American Indian Studies, which is really beneficial, but it was just really hard to get past the sort of general classes. Because I was like, this is all stuff I already know, you know? And then I minored in art. And then I just said you know what? I think I should just go to an art school. Because UMD is a really amazing school, but I wanted to be at an art school. So I transferred to MCAD in Minneapolis. I was the first person in my family of my generation to get a degree. My mom was the first person in my family to have a college degree, and one of the first people from my community, actually. And I majored in fine arts studio with an emphasis in drawing and painting. So I technically had a drawing and painting background. I've always been inspired by the traditional arts of our people, beadwork and quill work and traditional painting, regalia, making all these things, like I was so inspired by them. For the longest time, I didn't even know that they could be considered art forms. I just knew that that's what people did. And I was still inspired by all of that, though. But when I started to see in the early 2010s other artists blending those fields of art making, I was just enthralled. The contemporary artwork, Native artists combining themes that are traditional and customary to Native people, and then combining them with contemporary art movements—was just so like mind opening to me and that it's what really drove my work, the trajectory of my work. It felt like it gave me permission to do that kind of work and to be that kind of artist, because I also was in such a field, especially at MCAD—one of only two Native people at MCAD, by the way, where every little thing about Native art is just questioned, like, why? Why this? Why that? So much of our artwork being relegated to craft. They didn't understand how deep and ancestral, how advanced that type of artwork was. So anyway, so that all just really drove my work going forward, and it's what I left MCAD feeling like I wanted to do that type of work. One of the things that they asked us as we were leaving undergrad was that they wanted us to have goals. And so I made a goal to also enter my work into the Santa Fe Indian Art Market. I did that about a year or so after I finished college and I got into Santa Fe. I also was able to sort of broaden what I wanted to work on, what kind of work I wanted to create. And then in 2022, I decided to get my master's degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts. At that point, my work needed to be sort of pushed even further along. I was thinking about family. I was thinking about working with textiles. I've always worked with textiles. Textile artists create works that are basically like quilts, blankets. I just was so like enthralled by that connection of our culture of blankets and giveaways, but also how they can be made as art objects, and that you can tell stories with them, and that there's just, they're very, very weighted subject matter. It's kind of what I've been doing as of lately, using textiles to create work, and also talking about ancestry, talking about family, talking about historical events that have affected, you know my people, so yeah.

Leah Lemm: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today, we're speaking with Cole Redhorse Taylor, member of the Prairie Island Indian community and multi-disciplinary artist.

Cole Premo: I see on your Instagram where you're kind of melding in historical figures and historical photos in your work.

Cole Redhorse Taylor: One of the biggest things that really influenced me was getting the artist residency with the Minnesota Historical Society, the Native American artist residency. What I did then wasn't necessarily artwork, but it was really me working in a lot of cultural revitalization and really getting into my people's material culture history. I worked on creating Dakota style pucker toe moccasins, which is that type of moccasin is more associated with Ojibwe people, with Potawatomi, Menominee, Ho Chunk, Sauk people, our neighboring tribes, you know. It kind of led me down this like rabbit hole of really getting into what my people's material culture was really like. Because a lot of what people assume about Dakota people is that we're like Lakota people were on the planes. They assume, just because we'reDakota, that we're the same as that, but we're really not. And there's a really, really complex and beautiful history that we have with Minnesota, with this like woodland area and with our neighboring tribes, and we were very, very similar with them. So anyway, that also led me into looking, when I was doing research for all of that, I was not only doing research in museums and collections, but I was looking at photos. And I just spent so much time looking at these old photos, these old daguerreotype glass plate photos, you know? I was able to look at the details of what they were wearing. And then I just was, like, spending so much time looking at them that I wanted later on in this work I've been doing lately, I wanted to connect with them. And, you know, they became subject matter to me, but also me—how am I placing myself in relation to them? A lot of them are my ancestors. They're my direct ancestors. And a lot of that was also the use of photos as well. Was also triggered from the loss of my grandmother in 2023. We're all poring over, you know, our family albums, and looking at photos. And just like, you know, looking at these photos of her life, before I even knew her, you know, when she was a young girl. And, you know, all these things. And then going back. And it's because of my grandmother's line that I'm descended from people who survived all these things that my ancestors survived, yeah. And when I was doing those works with photos, actually, I was using solar fast to expose onto fabric and then using that fabric into creating, you know, textile works. Well, it's funny, because I never thought of myself as an artist up until I was entering college, when I was younger, in elementary school and middle school. If you tried to use the label of artist, people assumed that you had to be able to like draw someone's portrait, and it looked exactly the same. That was the preconceived notion of being an artist that we had, the art history that we had at that time. I couldn't do that. I didn't think I was good at art. I wanted to be a photographer for a long time, I wanted to do photography for National Geographic even. I mean, I had all these, you know, whatever. I wasn't a good photographer, though, and it's not really something that I'm super passionate about, but I use photos, obviously, the whole time. Though, I didn't realize that I was creating art because I learned how to bead when I was 13, and I was the only boy that showed up to the beading class too. I wouldn't say I was necessarily making art, but, you know, I was making, like, key chains and earrings and stuff. You know, I wanted extra cash, and my mom wouldn't give me an allowance anymore, and I wanted to have extra money to do things and stuff. So I would do those and sell them to people I knew. I was in my early high school years, so I always have known how to bead. Not a lot of people in my family beaded. For many people that I know, beading is a generational thing, multi-generational, grandmas and moms and daughters and whatever, that like, are all learning how to bead from each other. And I didn't have that, you know. I learned from a relative of mine, but it wasn't a direct like from my mom, and she didn't learn from her mom, and, you know, all these things. Like it skipped a couple generations. But, you know, I also have come to understand that my great, great grandmother, she was known for her bead work, and she was kind of one of the last people on my grandmother's side of the family that did bead work. And I also have a great grandfather on my grandfather's side, who was a pipe maker. He made pipes and he carved pipes and he was, they were really, really good, really ornate. I believe that those two ancestors of mine gave me the ability to do what I do. I've always been beading and stuff. And that's when I said earlier, like I didn't consider any of that art until I saw how elevated it is, or it could be as an art form. And so I really started to take beadwork seriously as an art form. And I also learned how to do quill work when I was 21. In a lot of ways, a sacred art form for Dakota, Lakota, Nakota people. And then, you know, I've always worked with textiles. I learned how to sew when I was a college student and, you know, I've made my own outfits and stuff. Pow Wow, I've always danced. Not only was I doing this research for what I was doing at that time with that residency, but I was also doing research to figure out how I wanted to present myself. I almost kind of used myself as a medium as like a canvas to create and to put together my dancing regalia. Now I dance what's, what's called, like the men's woodland style dance, but I do it from the point of view of being Dakota. And so I really looked at a lot of my ancestors clothing and applied that to my outfit. And when I put my outfit on and dance and all these things, I consider it like a form of self-expression, you know, moving artwork, not to sound pretentious or anything, but I really started to take what these skills that I had and using them towards art making.

Leah Lemm: Thanks. You mentioned selling some beadwork to community and representing yourself as a form of self-expression, your artwork, when you're dancing. What do you find community response to be to your artwork? How do you feel like your artwork kind of fits into your community's whole ecosystem of artwork?

Cole Redhorse Taylor: I very much have been uplifted by my community. There are beaders in my community, there are people who make outfits, there are quilters, they're dancers. So it's not that like, you know, I'm the only one who does any of that. But, you know, being that we are such a small community, I didn't have a lot of people, some people, but have a lot of people to really learn from, especially not as a young male. This was always presumed that just girls did this stuff, which was something I received, like, shame for then. One of the elders in my community, my uncle Art, who actually gave me my Dakota name, he kind of took up for me and said no. He's like, "You know, when I was young, I had to learn how to bead. No one was around to bead my outfit, so I had to learn how to bead." And he's like, "Some of the best beaders are guys." It was nice to feel supported by my community at the same time, and to know that people were happy that I was doing that type of work. A lot of times I would get asked to do things for people, or asked to make things, do artwork for something, because they knew that I was getting some recognition for some of the stuff I've done. So they kind of like went right to me. That was good. It was also a little stressful though, because again, I was very thankful to be supported and to be acknowledged. But, you know, I don't, I'm not the only one who can do something here. You know, I don't want people to feel like I'm trying to take all the spotlight. If I mess up, am I being held responsible for representing my community that way? Or, you know, I mean, so at the same time, though, what comes with being an artist in a community I've now learned to sort of walk a really careful balance of accepting opportunities on behalf of my community, like when, you know, I did the helmet for the Minnesota Wild and when I did the collaboration last year with the Timberwolves.

Cole Premo: I was going to actually ask about the Minnesota Wild experience, yeah, that was a big deal. How has it been with the Minnesota Historical Society, and, you know, acquiring that mask that you created for the Minnesota Wild gold tender. Is it Marc-Andre Fleury?

Cole Redhorse Taylor: Yeah.

Cole Premo: How did that come about?

Cole Redhorse Taylor: My tribe, for 25 years, sponsored the Minnesota Wild. But, you know, we had a really strong relationship with the Wild for a really long time. They never used to do this, but when they started doing Native American Heritage Night, I was like, really, like, oh, wow. Like, we're starting to get acknowledgement as Native people, and especially because where the Excel—and well, where the Grand Casino Arena is, is literally Dakota land, and is literally across the river from an ancestral village that I descend from, that a lot of my people descend from, in Kaposia. You know, we were getting acknowledgement for that. And you know, especially my tribe at the time, we sponsored them. We helped the Minnesota Wild with a lot of things. And so it was cool to see that they were doing that. And then in 2023, this opportunity came. Well, before that. they were doing like special jerseys for Native American Heritage Night. And then 2023 there was a call to artists in the community, in my community, to do collaboration with the Minnesota Wild and to design a helmet for Native American Heritage Night. And then it was because of Marc-Andre Fleury wanted to have that night be like celebrated, and he wanted to do, like, a really special thing, because he was the goalie, and also because his wife is Native. She's Indigenous from Canada. He has kids, and therefore they are Native as well. And so it was really, it was a really important cause to him. And then, you know, the years that we've been doing this, my tribe had been doing this, you know, they always raised money for Native causes and Native foundations in the Twin Cities. I put my application and my portfolio in and, you know, I was selected. And I knew that I wanted to do something that is really unique and iconic to Dakota material culture, and that's Dakota florals, which is floral designs, which are kind of receiving a bit of a resurgence lately. Because, again, people don't understand that we are woodland people, and so our material culture and esthetics reflect that. And so then I designed that for this helmet, I received, like a mock-up, and I kind of just put my designs on top of that mock-up. And then also I wanted Dakota language to be part of the helmet. I just wanted it anywhere on the helmet they could put it. But they put it on the brim, like right on the, above the visor, right here. And it said Mni Sota Makoce, which is the traditional name of what our state is now, is the land of the cloudy waters. You know, I wanted again to have that acknowledgement of Dakota people in Dakota land at this event that is being put on. It was cool. I got to see what the helmet looked like. A lot of people assume that I painted the helmet, but I did not paint the helmet. I designed the helmet, and then they had a specific company paint the helmet with, like it was, like a spray paint, and they used stencils that they made from my designs. So the helmet was painted professionally by Shell Shock, which is a company that paints specifically hockey helmets and sportswear. They did a really good job. So I feel bad kind of taking credit. I mean, I don't mean to take credit from them, but I always try to say, yeah, this company painted it. I just designed it. It's a company that they use all the time for helmets.

Cole Premo: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Today we're speaking with Cole Redhorse Taylor, a member of the Prairie Island Community, and a multi-disciplinary artist. Certainly making the rounds, for sure, and but, yeah, what a wonderful way to, you know, honor the ground that the game was on. And it must have been pretty surreal experience.

Cole Redhorse Taylor: Yeah, I got to see the helmet. You know, I got to go to the Wild's practice and see the helmet and unveil it, and unveil it to Marc-Andre Fleury. It was funny because he has a really thick accent. It's like a French accent. And he was like, oh yeah, it's, uh, very nice. So very simple. And I was like, okay, this was like, not simple, but I know he liked it. So, you know. And of course, his last name is Fleury, and which has to do with his, like, French for flower. And they call him the flower, that's his nickname. So this all felt very right to do it that way. He had specific modifications that he had on his helmet that were what he puts on his helmets all the time, which are the names of his kids, and then, like, a quote from his dad and whatnot on the back. But yeah, it was cool. And then they knew that—not to get into the story of it—but they knew that he wasn't necessarily allowed to wear it for the Native American Heritage Night, which is the day after Thanksgiving. But they just said, oh, he'll just wear it and just like whatever. Like, if they fine them like, whatever. But then, you know, the day before the game, I think it was on Thanksgiving, actually, they put out there like, he's not allowed to wear it, he can't wear it, and if he wears it, the whole team gets fined. You know, they just put a whole stock to it. And I was like, you know, I kind of felt like, dang. Like, why? Like, I just, I just didn't understand it. And then it just caused this huge, caused this huge, huge uproar. And it just really became this huge thing that was just snowballing, and it was just, you know, a lot of people were getting, you know, mad about it. And then when the game day came, I was actually interviewed by a lot of magazines in Canada and sports magazines here. And what I said over and over again is like, this is like, racist. Like, it's not anything to do with politics, it's not anything to do with whatever, like, this is really just racism. And then he wore it, and it was like, he just kind of stuck it to the man and wore it, and it was just like, oh my God. And then it like, went viral for a minute. Anyway, I just, I say all this, because it was just really amazing to see it become bigger than me and bigger than anything. And it was this moment in history. So then when it was put up for auction, I didn't know it was a silent auction, so therefore I didn't know who the final bidder was. But when I saw the amount of money it raised, I like, wanted to, like, throw up because it was so much. And I was just like, oh my God. Like, this is crazy. And I kept seeing it all over Facebook. I kept seeing it all over Instagram. It like, kind of made me nervous, actually, because it was so huge anyway. And then when it was revealed sometime later that the Minnesota Historical Society was the final bidder. Because it would go to a collector, I thought I would never see it again. And I thought nobody would ever see it again. So to know that the History Center was the one to win the auction because of the significance of it, and then because it will then live forever at the Minnesota Historical Society, just means, like so much to me and so much to what we were trying to talk about. And so it was this whole thing, and then it entered their collections in 2024 and then I also gave Marc-Andre Fleury a blanket, a star quilt, which is a custom in my people's culture, you know. Again, it was bigger than him. It was bigger than me. And I wanted to acknowledge him for doing that, just sticking it to the man and wearing it. And then what's funny is he didn't even play that game that night. He literally, it was loaded for practice. And it was just like, such a big deal. Yeah, that was the story of the helmet, and you know how much it meant to me.

Leah Lemm: Oh, yeah, we were all talking about it. Yeah, it's big news.

Cole Redhorse Taylor: Yeah. Everyone always asks me.

Cole Premo: So what are you working on now? What's next?

Cole Redhorse Taylor: Thankfully, I had an opportunity in residency with the Minnesota Museum of American Art that's in St Paul. A lot of people call it the M and it's a really an amazing museum. It kind of went through different transitional phases before, but now it's been fully redone. They have a huge, really, really good, huge collection of Native art, which is, you know, very unique to a lot of places in Minnesota. It has the largest collection of George Morrison, which he's a really, obviously, a really well known artist in the world, but also in the Native community, in the Minnesota community. I'm the first artist in residence with them, and I've been working with them since. A lot of people are like, well, what do you do for them? And it's like, it's just an artist residency. A lot of times, places and institutions will have residencies that have very specific goals, but the main thing that artists use them for is just to create work and to be supported financially, but also be allowed the space to work on things. And so I knew that I had projects, specific projects in mind, that I wanted to work on that I never got the chance to while I was doing my MFA. I finally have the time to do that.

Leah Lemm: Before we say goodnight, Cole, is there any advice you'd like to give up and coming artists?

Cole Redhorse Taylor: One of the things I would say to a young artist is, don't overthink it. I spend so much time overthinking projects and overthinking works that it causes me to not let the work be created. And then it's really important to not only know who you are, but also to know where you come from. It's really important to know what it is you're trying to say with your work. You have to know like, what it is you're making, what it is you're creating. Like, why are you creating that? Because you're going to be asked that one time. Your work will hold up if you know exactly why it is you're making it. You can't just make something and say, "I don't know. Just because it looks nice." People will take you seriously if you really know how to talk about your work.

Cole Premo: Awesome. Loved hearing from a fellow Cole. Cole Redhorse Taylor. Know what you're about.

Leah Lemm: Yeah, I think that's important. That can be a process. But yeah, don't overthink that. I like that a lot. That is a challenge, though.

Cole Premo: You know, despite some pushback, discouragement in his younger years, he kept going.

Leah Lemm: Yeah, you can tell he really thinks deeply about his work and where that source of inspiration comes from. Chi-miigwech, Cole Redhorse Taylor.

Cole Premo: Miigwech to our guest, a member of the Prairie Island Community and a multi-disciplinary artist. I'm Cole Premo.

Leah Lemm: And I'm Leah Lemm. Miigwech or listening. Giga-waabamin.

Cole Premo: Giga-waabamin.

Leah Lemm: You're listening to Native Lights, where Indigenous voices shine. Native Lights is produced by Minnesota Native News and AMPERS With support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.