Alan Compo from the Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians grew up wishing there was more imagery from the Anishinaabe culture portrayed in local art. Now that he is a full-time artist, he uses the stories that he heard growing up to create vibrant pieces of artwork.
Oct. 11 is Indigenous Peoples’ Day which is a holiday that celebrates Native American culture and traditions. Compo has multiple pieces in the Grand Rapids area that commemorates the history of his tribe.
“Now that I’m able to do a lot of outside art and murals, I’d like to think that there’s some little Anishinaabe kid walking by and sees it and they’ll know that it came from another Anishinaabe,” Compo said.
Sharing Anishinaabe stories to the public is one of Compo’s main motivations for his art. He said he was lucky to grow up with grandparents who still shared stories and relates them to everyday happenings. There are some young Anishinaabek who have not been as lucky to have heard these stories.
“It’s cool to be able to take those stories and to be able to create them in my way or how I took them growing up and how I think of them now,” Compo said.
Compo has always gravitated toward art as he was surrounded by working art such as basket making his whole life. He was also exposed to painters and other native artists throughout the Michigan community that have inspired his work throughout his career. However, the older generations are not the only ones who inspire Compo
“There are so many younger artists coming up and I’m inspired by them and what they’re doing. Especially how they are taking new media and doing new things with it,” Compo said.
While he portrays traditional stories and themes, Compo refers to most of his work as contemporary. His work typically involves vibrant colors and imagery that draws the viewer in closer.
“A lot of the time I really like the bright colors because I feel like we are all bright people,” Compo said.
One of Compo’s most recent projects is his collaboration with Graffiti Wall GR and other Anishinaabek artists. This wall in the Creston Heights Neighborhood is a legal graffiti wall that allows the community to freely express themselves.
The wall was painted all orange to honor and remember the survivors and children who lost their lives in residential and boarding schools across Turtle Island. Compo led a group of collaborators who each contributed to the piece by bringing their own experiences and forms of expression. The orange wall is an example of a piece of community art, but Compo said he sees almost all of his murals as community pieces.
Compo considers his 2018 ArtPrize entry “Anishinaabek” his pride and joy. This mural, located on Pearl St. downtown Grand Rapids, is intentionally placed in a tunnel along the Grand River. This specific area was chosen because it is where the sacred plum orchards used to be.
The plum orchard was known as a women’s area as well as a place where ceremonies were held. This land was taken away from them when settlers came and burnt down the orchard, leaving them without a place for ceremonies and gathering.
Compo’s piece retells the history behind the plum orchards and the Anishinaabek women.
“To work with the city to help bring that idea back and that story back that a lot of people don’t even realize,” Compo said.
Compo’s mission is to spread the stories of his people throughout the community. His brightly colored murals and artwork can be found throughout the Grand Rapids area.
In the pre-dawn hours of March 18, 1990, following a festive St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, two men dressed as police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and walked off with an estimated $500 million in art treasures. Despite efforts by the local police, federal agents, amateur sleuths and not a few journalists, no one has found any of the 13 works lost in the largest art theft in history, including a rare Vermeer and three precious Rembrandts.
The legacy of the heist is always apparent to museum visitors who, decades later, still confront vacant frames on the gallery walls where paintings once hung. They are kept there as a reminder of loss, museum officials say, and in the hope that the works may eventually return. Last month, Richard Abath, the night watchman who mistakenly allowed in the thieves, died at 57. He was a vital figure in an investigation that remains active, but where the trails have grown cold.
Here are five oddities that make this one of the most compelling of American crimes.
The thieves took a really strange array of stuff.
Important paintings were taken from their frames during the heist. But other items that were stolen were not nearly of the same caliber: a nondescript Chinese metal vase; a fairly ordinary bronze eagle from atop a flagpole; and five minor sketches by Degas. The thieves walked past paintings and jade figurines worth millions, including a drawing by Michelangelo, yet they spent some of their 81 minutes inside fussing to free the vase from a tricky locking mechanism.
The handcuffed guard was later scrutinized.
Abath, one of two guards on duty, was handcuffed and gagged with duct tape. He was never named a suspect. But over the years investigators continued to review his behavior because he had, against protocol, opened the museum door to the thieves. (The second guard, who is still living, was never a focus of investigative interest.) The F.B.I. monitored Abath’s assets for decades but never saw any suspicious income. He consistently said he told investigators everything he knew, and an F.B.I. polygraph he voluntarily took was deemed “inconclusive.”
The empty frames have stayed on the walls.
The museum was once Gardner’s home and she wanted to ensure that her expansive art collection was displayed in the same manner she had arranged it. She stipulated in her will that not a thing was to be removed or rearranged, or the collection should be shipped to Paris for auction, with the money going to Harvard University. Though it’s long been reported that the empty frames are left hanging to accord with that will, the museum says that is actually a long uncorrected mistake. “We have chosen to display them,” it said in a statement “because 1.) we remain confident that the works will someday return to their rightful place in the galleries; and 2.) they are a poignant reminder of the loss to the public of these unique works.”
The thieves left behind a prized Rembrandt.
A self-portrait of Rembrandt at 23 was taken down by the thieves but left leaning against a cabinet. “I really believe they probably forgot it,” said Anthony Amore, the museum’s current security chief. The work was on an oak panel, making it heavier than the paintings on canvas that they stole. But it was about the same dimensions as Govaert Flinck’s “Landscape With an Obelisk,” which was also on oak, and stolen.
The list of suspects has been a dizzying stew.
Investigators have looked at all manner of burglars and art thieves and dismissed all sorts of theories. Did Whitey Bulger steal the art to help the Irish Republican Army raise money for arms? No. Did the Mafia want a bargaining chip to help free a member from prison? Maybe. In 2015 the F.B.I. named two long-dead, Boston-area criminals, George Reissfelder and Lenny DiMuzio, as the likely bandits. They have never publicly discussed why.
Investigators still hope to recover the art. The museum upped its reward to $10 million in 2017 from $5 million in 1997 and $1 million in 1990. It has devoted several sections of its website to educating the public about the crime. It embraces publicity in the hope that someone, someday, somewhere will recognize one of the artworks and contact it.
“We have followed every lead and continue to check out new leads,” Amore said, adding, “All that matters is finding out where they are today and getting them back.”
Banksy is back with his first confirmed installation of 2024.
The anonymous British street artist posted on his Instagram account on Monday that he was behind a mural that was first spotted in Finsbury Park in London over the weekend.
In the artwork, a stenciled figure of a woman appears to have sprayed green paint over a white wall behind a pollarded tree, thus giving an optical illusion effect of foliage.
Others suggested it was a pessimistic take on the environment or a commentary on greenwashing, the tactic the United Nations defines on its website as “misleading the public to believe that a company or other entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is.”
Documentarian James Peak, the creator of the BBC’s “The Banksy Story” radio series, said the message is “clear” that “nature’s struggling and it is up to us to help it grow back.”
“When you step back, it looks like the tree is bursting to life, but in a noticeably fake and synthetic way,” he told the broadcaster. “And it’s pretty subtle for a massive tree, I’d say.”
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