Two of my works, Ancestral Plane and Burning Tree, will be on display at The Works Gallery of the Ohio Center for History, Art & Technology. The exhibition, titled “Mounds, Moon and Stars: The Legacy of Ohio’s Magnificent Mounds”, was curated in conjunction with The Great Circle Alliance.
The “Mounds, Moon and Stars” show highlights those who built the Newark Earthworks, cultural and spiritual pioneers who radiated their very significant Hopewell influence across North America!
Acquisition of “Ancestral Plane”
The Great Circle Alliance has acquired the large signed limited edition print of “Ancestral Plane” that is included in the show:
Review of Earth Works Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts.
My invitation to the show was in direct response to Chadwick Allen’s groundbreaking book about Indian burial mounds, Earth Works Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts.
As you may remember, six of my works were included in the book as color plates, with my “Ancestral Plane” collage being chosen as the cover:
The book was recently reviewed by Annabel Labrecque (University of California, Berkeley)
Published on H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. (September, 2022)
Commissioned by Daniella McCahey (Texas Tech University)
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58047
A neon blue embryo stands suspended in prismatic strata. Supple grass, dense wildflowers, and blooming trees abound against a deep purple sky. A bird prepares to make a landing on an energetic earth. At the center of this living landscape is a mound, itself a monument to the depth and dynamism of Indigenous ingenuity. This mound, represented in Alyssa Hinton’s electrifying artwork Ancestral Plane (1998), is one of the many featured in Chadwick Allen’s Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts. Constituting the book’s cover, Hinton’s Ancestral Plane promises a lively discussion of Indigenous earthworks. And Allen delivers. With thorough literary analysis, original artistic interpretation, and innovative interdisciplinary research, he explores the past, present, and future of Indigenous earthworks and their looming presence in Native arts and literature….
“Burning Tree” Ancestral Spaceship Assemblage
Burning Tree is also included in the show. This assemblage is part of the Ancestral Spaceship Series. It’s made from found wood, acrylic paint, photos, oil pastel, pen and cutouts of recycled digitally edited passages.
This is an environmental twist on the Celestial Tree, or sacred Tree of Life, an ancient icon common to Indigenous creation stories across North America. Standing at the center of the universe, its branches reach out in the four cardinal directions and towards the upper sky dome. Its roots are anchored in the watery underworld below a mound. This womb shaped earthwork contains cloth prayer ties, holding words of reverence for the earth, trees, waters and sky. It’s a statement about the loss of earth’s forests, the pain of ecological devastation, and a wish for healing.
Great Circle Earthworks, Newark, Ohio
The Newark Earthworks was built by the Hopewell culture between 100 BCE and 400 CE in present day Newark and Heath, Ohio. It consists of three sections of preserved earthworks: the Great Circle Earthworks, the Octagon Earthwork, and the Wright Earthworks.
This complex, contains the largest earthen enclosures in the world and is soon to be approved for inclusion as a UNESCO World Heritage site!
It was used as places of ceremony, social gathering, trade, worship, and honoring the dead. The Octagon Earthwork (upper left) comprises a lunar observatory for tracking the moon’s orbit during its 18.6-year cycle.
In mid-February I will be visiting the The Works Gallery and surrounding Newark Earthworks in person and will update you on that in an upcoming newsletter.
Stay tuned!…
