“It has to come from somewhere, and I have no problem with that,” he said.

Ambrose-Smith’s work seems to draw ideas and images from all over art history and pop culture. Things that come to mind when creating or talking about art include “The Simpsons”, The Rolling Stones, Barbara Kruger, high quality fonts, clip art, graphics, iPad designs, Dark Vader, Trickster stories of Coyote and his mother, the widely celebrated artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.

Ambrose-Smith, an art professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, traveled to Missoula last week to work on a residency with Matrix Press at the University of Montana and for his exhibition at Missoula Art Museum, which includes a Salish and English Title, “č̓ č̓en̓ u kʷes xʷúyi (Where are you going?)”

“Everything comes from somewhere. Nothing comes from nothing. You cannot create works of art in a vacuum, ”he said. “You are always influenced by the world around you and by the research you do. “

The pieces are on display in the museum’s Frost Gallery, which is devoted exclusively to contemporary Indigenous art. Ambrose-Smith is a Flathead Salish, Métis, and Cree, and a member of the Confederate Nation of Salish and Kootenai.

The exhibition includes prints, paintings and a floor-to-ceiling neon installation and draws inspiration from abstract painting, text, found images and pop culture. They address a sense of confusion and entry into uncharted territory, sometimes with direct references to Star Trek.

“You see a lot of the same imagery repeated,” said Brandon Reintjes, senior curator of MAM. He thinks the show feels like an aggregator website, with information coming from hundreds of sources.

The works in the exhibition were all made after the 2016 election and reflect his disappointment. After two terms under Obama, he “was really shocked.”

The title piece, “č̓ č̓en̓ u kʷes xʷúyi (Where are you going?)” Stretches from floor to ceiling, 10 feet high and 15 feet wide. It’s like an abstract design transferred into a neon – four looping lines of red, yellow, green and purple around a wooden background. Set on a timer, they lighten and darken in sequence, ultimately leaving only green.

“I practiced my doodling like crazy, because I love to doodle,” he said. As he worked on it, he began to see its content as cultures and separation.

“As these are Mobius bands, continuous loops with each color connected to itself and not really blending with anything else,” he said. “And the idea that there is no escape. In this country we can’t escape, we have to face each other, so why can’t we face each other?

While the neon at close range can seem overwhelming, it’s good that the effect is pleasant and somewhat hypnotic. It’s a piece that makes you want to sit on the bench and soak up it.

“It’s really calming. This changing light is like the sun breaking through leaves and trees, how it moves across the sky… things are always changing, ”he said.

Prints and paintings are united by repeated patterns. Lewis Carroll’s Alice has in some cases apparently merged with a bunny character. He also likes to doodle. The scribbles in the neon sculpture are also in the paintings. It is sometimes difficult to say whether imagery is appropriate or if it is just that way, said John Calsbeek, senior curator at MAM. We have the impression that he puts “everything he knows” and everything he has learned.

In one of the larger paintings, “Get in the Relief Pod,” (7 feet by 8 feet), the Starship Enterprise rushes through a vortex of images – an abstract brush, a mesh of what could be Spirograph designs, all swirling in weightlessness with what looks like vintage images of a headdress, vintage trailers, irons, a clown face and more.

The edges of the canvases are covered with text he took from SkyMall magazine, alternating light and dark in a long sentence – “all art is false”, “the politics of instability”, “resculpting the lands”, “high brightness means high impact”, “get into the emergency pod”, and so on.

Black light painting and 3D glasses are not that common at MAM, but Ambrose-Smith wanted to add an element of excitement for children who visit the museum through the fifth grade art experience, and when the lights are on. are subdued, you see even more images loaded on the canvas.

In one of the show’s large-scale prints, “The Story Teller,” a hand-drawn coyote sits in a chair, dressed in a costume, legs crossed, pipe in hand. Appropriate images of trailers, headdresses, irons, a clown and more orbit him like an asteroid belt. Put on the glasses and everything seems to hover over the glowing galactic background.

Smaller format paintings have thicker rendered type and hand lettering. “If I have to listen to the news one more time,” focuses on a coyote / trickster with circles in his pupils, like a character from a cartoon who has been hypnotized. The stunned creature appears immersed up to its neck in a white and red pool. A chaotic red brush looms above like ominous weather. (For reasons of context and speculation, the piece dates from 2019.)

Ambrose-Smith’s dam is Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a member of the CSKT from the Flathead Reserve. She paved the way for Indigenous artists and women artists from the 1970s, not only through her own work, but also through her curation. She was also the first Aboriginal painter whose canvas was purchased by the National Gallery of Art.

Ambrose-Smith said when her mother finished her bachelor’s degree, they couldn’t afford child care, so he went to art classes with her and took it. “I took ceramics, I was painting, I was drawing, and you know, I sat there and did what everyone else was doing,” he said.

He also worked with her on her archives and in her studio. Their home was a stopover for innovative artists like Joe Feddersen (Colville) and more, and his work also influenced his thinking and imagery.

All last week, Ambrose-Smith was at UM working on prints. The team included engraving professor James Bailey and Jason Clark, a 2D technician and assistant professor of engraving, as well as a team of UM students, all of whom will share the portfolio of prints when they are finished.

The tour was paid for with a grant from the Warhol Foundation for Matrix and the museum to fund projects like this. Previous guest artists with the grant include Sara Siestreem, Lillian Pitt, Molly Murphy-Adams, Melanie Yazzie, John Hitchcock, Duane Slick and more.

The title of one of the new prints represents a dialogue the viewer can imagine, as the Coyote tells Batman: “So your grandmother is a Princess Cherokee, no kidding?”

“So it’s funny, isn’t it, but it tells a story, it talks about something,” he said.

He likes that there is content and conflict but humor, which makes him more open.

“The best stories are about how we work together,” he said.

Another is direct in the joke. Coyote said to Darth Vader, “Find your feelings. Who is your daddy? “

One piece contains images of the three non-student artists – Algonquin images of Clark, a hot tub of Bailey, while Ambrose drew a Coyote version of Rat Fink in a canoe instead of a race car. The first pass seemed too busy so they decided to start over which is easier with a whole crew.

“In my own studio, I spend a lot of time fixing things all the time. Because nothing ever works. All the best-designed plans, forget it. The title is gone. The original idea? Gone, out the window. Things don’t always work out as I expected, ”he said.

One print features a black and white coyote spewing out clip art designs against a faded background of yellow and tangerine washes, drops and drips that the students imagined.

He likes to use well-made appropriate images and place them in new contexts to tell a story. The cleanly designed clipart image is from Crap Hound magazine, an artist resource that compiles vintage images. One piece shows the Coyote holding a mask bearing Alfred E. Neuman’s awkward face, the “what, we worry?” Mad Magazine mascot. Ambrose-Smith points out that this image itself was taken from an old dental advertisement.

In a different approach to the theme, Coyote’s mask has a half-open mouth. He saw it on the wall in the UM print studio – at first he thought it might be from the Rocky Horror Show, but it isn’t. It almost could be, however. Or it could be reminiscent of the Rolling Stones lip logo.

He’s not sure where this came from, only that he liked the way it looked on the print.

“There has to be a bit of fearlessness when you work, and so working here with the students is really great because they… could see it in action, like how it goes,” he said.