LEFT:Portrait of Frank Day, ca. 1974, Photograph by Frank LaPena. Collection of Frank LaPena. RIGHT: Sunflower Remedy, ca. 1970's, oil on fiberboard, 11" x 14". Collection of The Heard Museum. Photograph courtesy The Heard Musuem.

Day's life art and legacy are captured in a major exhibition and catalog called Memory and Imagination: The Legacy of Maidu Indian Artist Frank Day. It opens at the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, in New York on February 15 as the museum's first-ever one-artist exhibit.

W. Richard West, NMAI founding director, says that Day's works are ideal for the unprecedented exhibit. "The exhibition highlights Day's artistic achievements as well as his part in the cultural revitalization of the Maidu people," West said. "The success of Memory and Imagination stems from the collaborative efforts of Native artists and the Maidu people, in addition to anthropologists and collectors, which echoes the spirit of the mission of the National Museum of the American Indian."

The exhibit runs through May 3 before moving to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/ Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe from June 21 through September 12. Then, it will show at The Heard Museum in Phoenix from October 10 through January 10, 1999.
Organized by the Oakland Museum of California, Memory and Imagination features 49 of Day's finest paintings and drawings, along with historical photographs and Maidu artifacts from Day's home territory­Berry Creek and Bald Rock areas of north-central California. It is based on the extensive research of guest curator and anthropologist Rebecca Dobkins, whose doctoral dissertation was on Day. In the exhibit, Day's legacy is explored through three contemporary Maidu artists-Dal Castro, Harry Fonseca, and Judith Lowry-and through photographs of the Maidu Dancers and Traditionalists, a group Day was instrumental in founding.

Day (1902-1976) was a Konkow Maidu self-taught painter. His life, artwork, and teachings played a major role in the 1960s and '70s revitalization of California's Native American dance and visual arts. Amid presumptions that California Indians were vanishing, or had vanished, Day sought to prevent Maidu traditions from being forgotten. During his last two decades of life, Day created more than 200 paintings. He recorded stories, songs, and memories deriving from his early childhood in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. In retrieving these cultural traditions from his memory, he also employed his imagination in embellishing them for the canvas.

Rebecca Dobkins calls Day a pioneer in California Indian visual arts. "As one of the first California Indian artists explicitly to celebrate Native traditions, Day sent to later artists, through the example of his artwork, a message that the need not remain silent while the dominant culture tells the tale of the vanishing Indian."

Indeed, the bearers of Day's message are all around: artists, dreamers, scholars, teachers, elders, and their students-message-bearers to the next generation. Moving from painting to painting, I was almost hypnotized by the continual velocity of visible dreamers.

Right: Star Woman ca 1973-75, oil on canvas, 20" x 24". Collection of Gladys Nilsson and Jim Nutt. Photograph by M. Lee Fatherree.

Allen Wallace says, "What Frank did was not so much of [being] a teacher as he was an inspiration. What he was talking about was the impact and importance of preserving art and culture. He communicated on canvas but his real goal was to not let the Native expression die. . . . They [the paintings] are like a formula. Powerful, overwhelming. It was like you were there watching the brush strokes."

That is how I felt when I entered Day's realm one day last fall at the Oakland Museum of California. It was as if I was standing just behind him. With great authority, he painted "DAY" in the lower-right corner. Not only did Day's paintings invite me, they wrapped around me.

And I had a deeper feeling, another expectation, that if I looked upon certain paintings long enough there would magically appear another painting behind it. An older expression, more original to nature, complete in "the instructions": thoughts that address the spirit of the land, through the spirit of the dreamer, translated for the spiritual universe where the life-force of humanity is on a constant quest.

Harry Fonseca says, "Frank was not only a wonderful painter, but he was a great storyteller, which has become a major element of his visual image. His paintings and drawings convey great drama due to their subject matter, composition, and his incredible use of color. Having this major one-person show has allowed us to see Frank's creative process with its variety of imagery, strength, and above all, its passion."

It is as though a Great Power came to Day and lingered for our benefit. Through his paintings, we are in the presence of some ethereal immensity just beyond explanation. I experienced having access to knowledge and wisdom, yet without the ability to capture it-like netting the rainbow in the water splashed by the sturgeon, arresting the golden flash in the eyes of the mountain lion, holding the trust of a baby, capturing the fragrance of beautiful girls gathering fruit in the forest.

Ishi And Companion At Iamin Mool, 1973, oil on canvas, 24" x 36". Collection of Herb and Peggy Puffer. Photograph by M. Lee Fatherree.

I lingered in front of Ishi and Companion at Iamin Mool and thought deeply about what I know of Ishi-his life in freedom, his capture, then his maintenance in the anthropology museum at Berkeley. And I felt that I was ushered into the painting as a witness to both a historic event and the creativity of survival. The Burning of the Roundhouse is another expression addressing survival. Day's people burned many dwellings to rid the tribe of disease. The exhibit accents the burning camp with one of my favorites, Sunflower Remedy. A child has fallen out of its cradleboard and is being attacked by tuberculosis. The child picks a beautiful sunflower, holding it close-a remedy for the disease.

Two paintings, Pekunee, in which a mountain lion attacks a hunter, and Star Woman, where Bear embraces Star Woman in an act of protection while warding off Coyote's enticements, cause me to look beyond the brush strokes. The suggestion seems to be that there is another vision in the background.

Native artist, Frank LaPena, says, "When Frank talked about the meaning of his artwork, the explanation integrated myth and legend, oral tradition, and an explanation of the painting and Frank's own symbolism. As I look back over the twenty years since his passing, the impact of Frank Day's legacy has been felt in many quarters.

. . . The importance of his vision is through his identity as a Maidu culture bearer, his oral and symbolic interpretation of Maidu heritage, and his seminal role of song-giver to the dance and ceremonial activities of the Maidu Dancers and Traditionalists."

Often we must sacrifice to acquire knowledge and wisdom. Frank Day, just home from boarding school and still dressed "properly" in uniform, asked his father, Billy Day, to tell him stories. Day recalled, "He said to me, 'What do you want to know?' I said, 'I'd like to talk about Grandpa. You did tell me a lot when I was four years old and up to that time. . . .' He says, 'All right. You take that coat off and sit down there.' I took the coat off, and I started a fire and burned it, out there in the open flat ground. . . . I had to sacrifice something to receive instructions from my father."

We are sometimes wavering, but never losing sight of our target, always and forever moving in the direction of our elders. We must honor our origin while lifting the huge stones from the societal path so that future generations can use their time and talent more efficiently. That is one of the messages of Frank Day.

Day was a controversial figure, not quite as polished as our expectations of a super-hero demand. But his talent remains like a shining winter mountain that we are able to study much better from a distance, and to appreciate more deeply in our memories, imaginations, and dreams.

The Memory and Imagination exhibition, catalog and national tour are made possible by major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Community Folklife Program, which is administered by the Fund for Folk Culture. Additional support is provided by the California Council for the Humanities, the LEF Foundation, the Oakland Museum History Guild, and the Oakland Museum Art Guild.