A fired clay “hunny pot” inspired by the vessel in which Winnie the Pooh stored his favorite food may seem incongruous in Diné artist Ryan Singer’s upcoming exhibition of paintings called Remembering, but the pot fits right in. Last fall, in his first semester as a master’s student at the University of New Mexico, he took a pueblo pottery class and learned all about the vagaries of clay from the forces of gravity, dryness and the heat of the kiln.
Cochiti Pueblo Matriarch, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30"
As a boy, he was “a fan of all the characters playing in Christopher Robin’s imagination.” He was also a fan of dinosaurs. “I drew them as a kid,” he says. “I studied them and learned their names and loved dinosaur movies and toys. When I was 7, I would visit my great grandmother at her sheep camp on the Navajo Reservation west of Tuba City, Arizona, and we would find dinosaur bones. My imagination was going crazy and I would dream about dinosaurs running around. During recess at school, I would go outside and run around like a triceratops.” His fascination with dinosaurs continues in his clay Dino Pot.
Dino Pot, natural clay, 6½ x 6"
“The exhibition has to do with my childhood memories, recollecting about growing up on the Navajo Reservation and using my imagination as a kid—my own personal experiences of racism, land issues, the recollections of my older uncles and aunts and their boarding school experiences,” he adds. “That affected my cousins and me. Art is one way of dealing with it.”
Later, as a student of two-dimensional design at Arizona State University, “something clicked and ideas for artwork poured out of my imagination. The other students were from California, Florida, Chicago, and they were really smart and talented. I knew I was going to have to step it up if I was going to compete,” Singer says. “I also wanted to teach them about racial stereotypes like they’d seen in movies and NFL logos. Now there are multiple and hidden meanings in my work.”
Honey Pot, natural clay, 6¾ x 6¼"
Oglala Lakota Man, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30"
He paints in different styles as he paints on canvas the ideas he has worked out in his head. In Cochiti Pueblo Matriarch, he pays homage to Minnesota Chippewa painter David Bradley and his painting Pow Wow Princess, Southwest, itself an homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The model, who he photographed in his UNM studio, is a mother and a Cochiti scholar.
“Although the paintings are in different styles,” he explains, “you’ll know it’s me by the vibrant colors.”
Remembering opens March 28 at Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe and continues through April 8. —
Blue Rain Gallery
March 28-April 8, 2025
544 S. Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 954-9902, www.blueraingallery.com
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