Raven Halfmoon

BIO

Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation) is from Norman, Oklahoma. She attended the University of Arkansas where she earned a double Bachelor’s Degree in ceramics/painting and cultural anthropology. She is represented by Kouri + Corrao in Santa Fe. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Art and Design, Jeffrey Deitch, and Ross + Kramer in New York, Bill Brady in Miami, Nino Mier in Los Angeles, Western Exhibitions in Chicago, Allouche Benias in Greece, and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been considered in Artsy, Vogue, and Ceramics Monthly. It is in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts and Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. She lives between Oklahoma and Montana, where she is an artist-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts.

Interview with Raven Halfmoon

Questions by Marcus Civin

What is your most recent project?

I just had a show at Kouri + Corrao in Santa Fe. It was about horses. I haven’t made horses before. This was my first time building them, and I wanted to build a whole field of horses almost like they were running in the wild. Living in Oklahoma and Montana, there are horses all around. I grew up riding horses. I wanted to devote a show to horses and the impact they have, what the horse is to a lot of Native peoples. The horse has helped us through the years. It helps with agriculture, with trade. I wanted to give light to that. Even deeper, this is also political for me. Horses have blood quantum and Native peoples are traced through blood quantum. Keeping track of “how much Native Blood we have” is like looking at us like horses. We keep track, or the government keeps track, and in terms of people, this is only put on Tribal people.

Do you have a horse that is truly your heart?

My grandma had horses named Oscar and Smokey. Oscar was a beautiful red chestnut who was kind of a grouch. He was super-fast and bucked people off. A lot of people got hurt on him, so the kids couldn’t ride him, but every once in a while, my grandma would let me ride him. I liked that horse a lot. And then, Smokey was so sweet. 

I saw your incredible sculpture Bah’hatteno Nut’tehtsei (Red River Girl in Caddo) in the exhibition Claypop at Jeffrey Deitch in New York this fall. I wonder if you can talk some about that piece.

A lot of my work relates to me as a woman and being Native American. It’s tied to living in the twenty-first century. For that piece, the faces of the two women are these facets or identities that I carry with me—my experiences living as a Native woman, those experiences that my mom has faced or my grandmother has faced. I use multiplicity or the multiple heads as ways to physically manifest these ideas of who I’m carrying with me. And not only people in my direct line, but also ancestors more generally. Everything that I was learning about when I was in school, everything that my tribe has been through, that’s where these strong powerful women come from. That’s how I see the world, as a woman. There are always these really strong women trying to fight to maintain a place in the world for our culture.

How do you construct a sculpture?

That piece is fired in one piece. The kiln that I work with, at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana is about sixty-five inches tall and about that same width, maybe about 80 inches in width. I fired that piece all in one firing. It’s not in pieces. It’s one big piece. It takes a long time to fire. I would say she probably takes a week.

Because my sculptures are all so thick and because they’re so massive, you have to make sure that the clay is dry. It takes a long time to get the moisture out of the clay. You have to just go slow to get to the temperature for their firings. Otherwise, they would probably blow up. If there’s still moisture in the clay, and you try to get it to temperature, things will bust, blow up, or crack. Sometimes that’s just a part of clay. Clay can be very finicky. It’s wonderful. It’s also fragile and delicate. Sometimes I will put the glaze on for the first firing. Sometimes I will do two firings. It depends on the clay and the glaze. The more you fire things, the more things can go wrong. Sometimes it's better to do it in one fire, but you’re also risking that the fit of the clay may not match the fit of the glaze. 

How do you get that spray paint look with the text you write on your sculptures?

I’ll paint the glaze on really thick when I’m writing my signature or putting words across the pieces, and I’ll just write them out, and then I’ll thin the glaze and let it drip down. However, there are a couple of companies now that are making spray glaze which I also use. This is something I have introduced into my work in the last three months or so. That piece you saw at Deitch uses this spray glaze. There’s a company that’s making what looks like cans of spray paint, but it’s glaze. It’s genius. I had to have some.

What are some of your inspirations?

I have a degree in cultural anthropology. At the University of Arkansas, I took museum courses and Native American studies courses. I was finding my own voice in material, what I wanted to say with my art, and I was looking at my own ancestors’ pottery right there where Caddos are originally from. I was looking at the designs and iconography on my ancestor’s pots, on Caddoan vessels, then at the same time, looking at other monolithic pieces, the Olmec Heads in Mexico as well as the Easter Island statues. I was looking at Jun Kaneko and other masterful sculpture-makers. In my work now, I take references from pop culture, music, and fashion. I’m super into Louis Vuitton. I’m trying to find my way and bring my history with me. Continuing this legacy of Caddo history is important to me. I feel it is important to continue and keep these ceramic traditions alive. A lot of the Caddo ceramics are really intricate pots. Certain design elements on the pots are specific to the area where they were made. The Caddoan pots have a waveform on a lot of them that I use in my work.

There are artists who are continuing to make this traditional pottery. I also have gone out and made traditional pots where you dig the clay, coil build the pots, pit fire the clay, burnish them afterward. That knowledge is important. I’m not making functional ware myself, but I still think it’s important to have that knowledge. You dig out a pit and put the pots right on the fire, cover the pot in grass or sticks, and fire in one firing. I wish I could fire my pieces in a pit fire. It would be a six-foot-deep pit!

I admire the sense of community that ceramicists often have. How would you describe the community around your work?

Yes, the community is wonderful. Ever since I was in college, the ceramics studio has been a hub of information and people helping each other out. At every step in clay, you need help—whether that’s someone taking a shift on the wood kiln or I need help unloading clay. The ceramics studio is a place where we all help each other because we just need to. I feel like ceramic residencies are very important in our community. We need a kiln for firing. I don’t have the funds to buy a two hundred thousand dollar kiln.

Specifically for large work, it is super helpful being in community. People love gaining knowledge by helping in these processes. The places where we come together are really important. Online too, people share their glazes, recipes, and firing schedules. People are very open which is nice. The ceramic community is open and welcoming probably because the process is so hard. At any step of the process, something could go wrong. You’re like: “Oh no, the clay body is wrong;” “Oh no, I built something wrong;” “Oh crap, the firing went bad;” “I picked the wrong glaze; it doesn’t look good.”

A piece will look great and then in the drying time, these cracks will appear. There are so many steps in the process. There are things you can fix, but I do not show all the work I make. If I feel like it’s not good enough to be seen, I won’t show it. There’s something very freeing about breaking your work or destroying a piece you have made. I suggest all artists do this. Sometimes it’s very hard to do. You spent twenty hours on it, but break it, paint over it, get rid of it. Start fresh.

What’s next for you?

I have a show coming up at Art Omi in upstate New York in March 2022. I just recently made a double-stack piece. Because the kiln I work in is only a certain size, I’m firing two sculptures that are sixty-five inches that go on top of each other. I’m trying to figure out the under engineering so that these don’t fall. I’ll have another show at the Missoula Art Museum in Montana. They have a great space. I have to ship the sculptures cross-country for the New York show. Putting them in crates and shipping them is always a heart attack for me. Nothing ever does happen, but it’s a blessing when they show up OK.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

If there’s one statement of everything I’m about, it’s that Caddo people are still relevant. I’m still building traditions, and there are a lot of other artists with me. We are still here, still resilient, still powerful!

To find out more about Raven Halfmoon, check her out on Instagram or on her website.