Raven Halfmoon’s Monumental Homage To Indigenous Women
By Chadd Scott | Forbes | July 6, 2023
A story this big needs artwork this big.
For her solo exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation; b. 1991, Norman, OK) debuted her largest sculptural piece to date, Flag Bearer, a three-stacked figure measuring over 12-feet-tall.
“Watching that be put together with cranes–I kind of had a heart attack, I had to leave the room a couple of times–but it went smooth,” Halfmoon told Forbes.com of the monumental sculpture’s installation. “To watch that be strapped in the air 10-feet above everyone's head was crazy, but it was awesome.”
The bottom portion of the sculpture alone weighs over 2,000 pounds.
Halfmoon started working big early in her career. At the University of Arkansas where she studied art and cultural anthropology, she had access to a 3-foot kiln, so she made pieces as big as it could hold.
“When I was in those anthropology classes, not only was I learning about my own tribe and our histories, but also about the Olmec heads in Mexico and the Easter Island heads and then not only that, but the earthworks that are in America: Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma, Moundville in Alabama, Serpent Mound in Ohio,” Halfmoon explained. “A lot of those earthworks my ancestors made, Caddo ancestors, especially in the Mississippi region, so I was always interested in large scale works and being a part of that, the idea of community being in those works.”
Halfmoon makes each sculpture by hand using the coil method.
As her career progressed and residencies took her around the country where she had access to increasingly larger and larger kilns, her sculptures became larger and larger as a result. Flag Bearer was made at Cal State University Long Beach which has an 8-foot kiln.