IN THE SPIRIT Contemporary Native Arts 2021

Todd Clark, Wailaki

Todd Clark is Program Manager for the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the University of Washington. In this role, he manages a series of programs funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help recruit, support, and retain Native and Indigenous students. He is also the founder and curator of IMNDN, a non-profit organization dedicated to advocating for contemporary Native art and artists. As an enrolled member of the Wailaki tribe, he brings a unique curatorial voice to his exhibitions by understanding what it means to be Native in the 21st century.

Prior to starting IMNDN, Todd worked in the museum field for over 20 years in the collections, exhibitions and curatorial departments at the Portland Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Petersen Automotive Museum and the Autry Museum of the American West. Todd has served as a panelist for several organizations including the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation Panel for Visual Arts in Portland, Oregon, and has been a judge/panelist for the American Indian Arts Marketplace for the Autry Museum in Los Angeles on multiple occasions. Todd is also a member of the curatorial roster of the Washington State Arts Commission, ARTSWA, program.

Laura VerMeulen, Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska

Laura VerMeulen is the Managing Director of the Longhouse Education and Cultural Center at The Evergreen State College. An enrolled citizen of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Laura served as the Assistant Director of the Longhouse from October 1999 to February 2021. She has worked to support its mission: to promote Indigenous arts and cultures through education, cultural preservation, creative expression, and economic development by supporting artist workshops, residencies, cultural programming, the business of art workshops, art markets, and exhibitions.

Philip H. Red Eagle, Dakota and Puget Sound Salish

Philip Red Eagle is a born and raised Northwest writer, artist, metalsmith and carver. He is the author of Red Earth: A Vietnam Warrior’s Journey, styled in mythical realism and now in its second edition (saltpublishing.com). He is also the originator and a co-founder of The Raven Chronicles: A Journal of Art, Literature & The Spoken Word, established 28 years ago and currently based in Seattle. An “occasional poet,” these days Philip spends most of his time working with Tribal Journeys, a cultural movement using the canoe as a vessel for cultural renewal.

Philip Red Eagle began shooting film with a small 35 mm Canon camera while in Vietnam in 1971. When back in the fleet in 1972-1973 he upgraded to a Canon F-1, 35 mm SLR (top of the line). Upon returning to the states and while stationed in San Diego, California, Philip took photography classes at San Diego City College. He began taking wedding photos for his buddies. He came to the University of Washington in 1976 and continued his education and his camera expertise moving to professional levels in the 1980s, shooting headshots, modeling portfolios, and advertisement photography, then moving into gallery-level photography in the early 1990s. He has currently started digitizing his old slides and black and white work and is now shooting with a Sony digital camera.