 "Photo: Photo by David Audett")
HCC celebrates world art with “Snake Dance Moon: A Contemporary Native American Art” display. During the month of November, the Ybor School of Visual and Performing Arts Gallery was full of modern Native American works by three different artist; Doug Coffin, Brian Coffin and Linda Haukaas. The mediums used in this exhibit varied from paintings and sculptures to ledger drawings.
“The Ybor Gallery continues to amaze me with its commitment to celebrating the works of different civilizations around the world,” said student Richard Robbins, 21. “I love coming into the gallery and never knowing what kind of culture I will get a glimpse into next. It is fun to learn about cultures through art.”
At the exhibit, Robbins was captivated by a ledger drawing created by Linda Haukaas. “I really like ‘Stealing Back Horses.’ The lines are so crisp and it makes me wish I could draw like that,” said Robbins.
, Haukaas, of the Sicangu tribe attended University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture. Haukaas has permanent collections on display across America from New Mexico, Colorado, South Dakota, Indiana and Florida all the way to Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire.
According to Carolyn Kossar, the Ybor Gallery Director the gallery tries to coordinate its themes around appreciation. “We aim to show art based on what is going on month by month to celebrate different cultures,” said Kossar. We do Hispanic appreciation, Native American celebration, art in honor of women and a special gallery for black history month to name a few,”she said.
For the “Snake Dance Moon: Contemporary Native American Art” exhibit Kossar chose artists she met from her travels to New Mexico and invited them to bring their work. Kossar says the opening of the exhibit featured dancers and presentations by the artists and had an incredible turn out of viewers.
The exhibit’s opening featured presentations by artists and dancers as well, said Kossar.
Aside from the ledger drawings of Haukaas, Brian Coffin and Doug Coffin’s paintings and sculptures are on display. Brian Coffin realized his calling to be an oil painter in the Pecos Wilderness of New Mexico, when his father, also an artist, asked him to draw circles on a blank canvas, doing whatever came to his mind. His works such as the textured oil painting titled “In the Beginning” are an example of Coffin’s father’s guidance, as it consists of swirls in a mythical pattern.
Doug Coffin, of the Potawatomi/Creek Tribes, is best known for his painted steel and mixed-media sculptures. Coffin’s style of totemic art mixes abstract and geometric forms of modernism, into pieces like his “Buffalo Spirit Moon Totem.”
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