In early November, I visited Alex Ponca Stock’s triptych Renaissancing the Osage at the Osage Nation Museum. It’s a monumental work that struck me with its power.
Three very large paintings, each nine by five feet, fill the wall above Wendy Ponca’s installation Seven Bends in the River of Life. At the unveiling, museum director Marla Redcorn-Miller acknowledged that art has the flexibility to convey things we can’t convey with words, particularly English words.
In the darkened room—the walls are charcoal gray—Ponca’s white fabric and Ponca Stock’s richly colored canvases shine. The center panel of Ponca Stock’s triptych is placed lengthwise, which emphasizes the architectural elements in each of the pieces. Taken together they convey an entry into the natural world through arches and rectangular entryways. Each painting enshrines a recognizable contemporary Osage.
Ponca Stock studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute, focusing on oil painting, particularly from the Renaissance. “I was, of course, totally blown away as most people are. I wanted to touch that, whatever that impulse was. Perspective play … I wanted to also talk about the concept of what’s sacred, and how do we show God and the people who were shown as God in those paintings.”
In the first painting, Elompa, a boy wears traditional clothes, beside him are the handprints familiar to Osages. Here, the hands also call to mind European religious imagery. The second lengthwise piece, Madonna, contains a pregnant Osage woman wearing a red velvet gown, a vibrant upset of expectations. The third, Elder, which echoes the most recognizable Renaissance painting, Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, features the esteemed elder Mary Jo Webb at the center place at the table.
Ponca Stock painted Osage figures, including nephew Luke Elsberry, and a dear artist friend, Jessica Moore Harjo, who was pregnant with son Rexy, and adoptive grandmother Mary Jo Webb in settings that suggest traditional European Renaissance paintings. They represent excellence and the beauty of an inclusive community.
“Jessica is one of my best friends in the world,” Ponca Stock said. “I’ve looked up to her my whole life.” These pieces are about “how beautiful we are as Osage people and human beings.”
By superimposing Osages over figures in acclaimed European paintings, Ponca Stock is acknowledging our validity. Logically, if Europeans can be models for religious figures, so can Osages. The fact that this feels radical tells us how much pressure there is to accept European culture as humanity’s highest achievement.
Using contemporary Osages recognizes the joy and depth of Osage community, the true basis of power for our people and our being. Listening to Ponca Stock talk fluently, or as she says, esoterically, about her paintings is inspiring in itself.
As she worked, Ponca Stock found that the heavy ornamentation that’s a hallmark of Renaissance painters gave way to elements from Wah Zha Zhe history, our origins in earth, sky and water. Osage artist and elder Norman Akers notes that the tapestries usually found in European paintings give way to ribbon work. By placing Osages in the center of the European cosmology, she reclaims our vision from the ongoing bias around us.
While the pieces are powerful individually, placed above The Seven Bends in the River of Life, the two artists reflect on our full Osage experience. Ponca’s piece examines and celebrates our traditional knowledge, our teachings of a long well-lived life. Europeans intruded and sought to appropriate Osage lands and eradicate Osage culture. Ponca Stock’s piece inverts the received European paradigm, acknowledging the ongoing power and wholeness of the Wah Zha Zhe. Taken together, mother and daughter speak to the integrity and resilience of our best selves. Or, as Redcorn-Miller said, “the two women are setting a pathway for the journeys we have before us.”
The paintings and installation will be exhibited through Dec. 31, 2023.
