Some thoughts about Sueellen Ross

Sueellen Ross’s art work definitely caught my eyes at the first time when I saw them at the Howard / Mandville Gallery in downtown Kirkland. The piece called Beach Buddies, the size of it is 12 1/2 x 15. I can tell that this piece of art work’s drawing method is oil painting.

The subject of this piece of art work is about two dogs lying on the beach, within my best knowledge, I think both two dogs are Labrador Retrievers, and they are both looking at the camera as well. As viewers consuming this piece of art, it gives people a strong feel simply because we as humans, have a direct eye contact with the dogs. And it is almost being proved that dogs are humans’ best friend, and Studies suggesting dogs are more humanly complex than we think are just plain wrong (Dogs and Human Emotions).

I think that the use of available lighting, evenly distributed sandpits, wild grass and the distribution of objects in this work of art which make its subject matter stand out or give strength to its theme.  Admittedly, all those compositions are wonderful to highlight the two Labrador Retrievers in the centre the of picture frame.

According to Wildlife Artist Sueellen Rosee, the artist, Sueellen Ross has been called "America's Definitive Dog Artist," and her images beautifully support that high praise. However, Ross' complete body of work ranges far beyond the mysterious feline universe. She is a highly versatile artist both in her mixed media technique and hand-colored etchings. Her distinctive paintings of wild birds and domestic pets, such as dogs and cats, which are rendered with exquisite richness and detail, grace the homes of collectors across the country.

Acclaimed for the strong emotion and personality in her paintings, Sueellen Ross never quits thinking about art. She combines her passion for producing art with her love of animals to create works of exceptional design and subtle wit. "My strength as an artist," she says, "comes from my deep love of my subjects."

For many years Ross focused her energies on perfecting the etching process, and it was those experiences that helped hone her abilities to use texture, line, and color to achieve the nuances and details in her work. She later continued to push her skills even further by developing her own unique combination of mixed media using India ink, watercolor, and pencil. Today, her paintings are brilliant in color, meticulous in detail and texture, and are highly coveted by collectors.

Sueellen Ross has authored books and appeared in countless publications both as a featured artist and as an author. Ross' paintings, etchings, and other prints have been exhibited worldwide and have won her Featured Artist positions at art exhibitions across the nation. According to Meet the Artists of Our Animal Doormats, she has frequently been juried into the prestigious "Birds in Art" show at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, and "Arts for the Parks" in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Ross' range of subjects has considerably expanded since childhood, though she still holds a special fondness for etchings of domestic dogs. Dogs lovers, who instantly recognize the realism of Ross' cats, have a particular appreciation of them; she captures both their characteristic poses and their own endearing personalities. She draws her own dogs and those of her friends and neighbors going about their daily business of being dogs.

Through my research, I find out that she is really an artist with full of passion in her life and the creation of art. The artistic ability that she has cultivated enable her to be a great artist and successful in drawing. What’s more, through her drawing, we can definitely tell the emotions between human and animals.

Gallery Visit

Through my research, I find out that there is a wonderful art gallery in Kirkland area, and it is located in downtown Kirkland, named Howard / Mandville Gallery. I went in on a Friday and was totally amazed by its fantastic artistic atmosphere. I was almost fooled by its small appearance—after got inside of the Howard / Mandville Gallery, then I just realized that it was a gallery which occupies over 4,000 square feet of gallery space. What’s more, they are also the one who offers one of the largest collections of fine art in the Seattle area.

The art works that they present at the gallery are both regional and nationally acclaimed artists working in contemporary realist and traditional styles. More impressively, there are over 50 artists who show with the gallery on a regular basis, including works in oil, acrylic, watercolor and bronze. The gallery also features rotating monthly exhibits of artists’ works ranging from one person shows to group exhibitions such as our annual Anniversary Show and Small Works Show.

I am most impressed by the paintings that they present in the art gallery. On their website, I actually find out that there are 58 painting artists’ works are yearly demonstrating in the Howard / Mandville Gallery. Four of the artists are from my country, China~ But fairly speaking, the artist who I like the most is the one who named Sueellen Ross. Her works are mainly focusing on animals. Reading her personal biography, I notice that Sueellen Ross began drawing animals as soon as she could hold a pencil and never stopped. I think that her love for animals and their distinct personalities is apparent in every work of art she creates.

Right now it is Kent Lovelace’s personally art work, and the name of the gallery show is called the The Bourgogne Paintings, it is going to be closed on March. 20th. His works are wildly engaged with trees. I think that a lot of the artists have their favorites in drawing from different kinds of aspects, and this is tied closely within their cultural references.

Since this quarter we have been working with pencils on our drawings, and didn’t get a chance to work with oil and paints, so I am not quite sure about the drawing techniques for oil painting. But it seems like oil paintings take more time and patience. And it is definitely a level up compared to pencil drawing. I don’t know if the oil painting artists do have to do the pencil draft on their paper, or they just paint on the paper. But speaking in general, I was very amazed by the creativity that they have cultivated and the excellent skills they have.

Amazing charocoals

Normally we have two kinds of charcoals, black charcoals and white charcoals. It is almost like a comment sense to know that charcoals are black and there is really none people are curious about how black charcoal is made, so I am going to find about how the white charcoal is made. White charcoal is made by carbonizing the wood at a moderately low temperature, then, near the end of the process, the kiln temperature is raised to approximately 1000 °C to make the wood red hot. When making white charcoal, you need to be quite skilled in removing the charcoals, which have turned deep red, from the kiln and quickly smother it with a covering of powder to cool it. The powder is a mixture of sand, earth, and ash. This will then give a whitish color to the surface of the charcoal. This is where the name "white charcoal" was derived. The quick rise in temperature, followed by quick cooling, burns up the outer layer of the wood leaving a smooth hardened surface. It is also called a "hard charcoal".

I really appreciate that how smart we as human beings are, and how critical we are. It is definitely a great moment for inventing the white charcoal. I haven’t used the white charcoal yet but I can see it will be really power in the process of drawing. And now, I just come up with an interesting idea of using White Charcoal to draw on the black paper. In that way, I can have the darkest dark with the pure white charcoal on the paper. Using the white charcoal for drawing the objects’ outlines, since the black is there already, so I can just leave the shade part but work on the area where I want it to be less black.

Gallery visit

 I find out that there is a wonderful art gallery in Kirkland area, and it is located in downtown Kirkland, named Howard / Mandville Gallery. I went in on a Friday and was totally amazed by its fantastic artistic atmosphere. I was almost fooled by its small appearance—after got inside of the Howard / Mandville Gallery, then I just realized that it was a gallery which occupies over 4,000 square feet of gallery space. What’s more, they are also the one who offers one of the largest collections of fine art in the Seattle area.

The art works that they present at the gallery are both regional and nationally acclaimed artists working in contemporary realist and traditional styles. More impressively, there are over 50 artists who show with the gallery on a regular basis, including works in oil, acrylic, watercolor and bronze. The gallery also features rotating monthly exhibits of artists’ works ranging from one person shows to group exhibitions such as our annual Anniversary Show and Small Works Show.

I am most impressed by the paintings that they present in the art gallery. On their website, I actually find out that there are 58 painting artists’ works are yearly demonstrating in the Howard / Mandville Gallery. Four of the artists are from my country, China~ But fairly speaking, the artist who I like the most is the one who named Sueellen Ross. Her works are mainly focusing on animals. Reading her personal biography, I notice that Sueellen Ross began drawing animals as soon as she could hold a pencil and never stopped. I think that her love for animals and their distinct personalities is apparent in every work of art she creates.

Right now it is Kent Lovelace’s personally art work, and the name of the gallery show is called the The Bourgogne Paintings, it is going to be closed on March. 20th. His works are wildly engaged with trees. I think that a lot of the artists have their favorites in drawing from different kinds of aspects, and this is tied closely within their cultural references.

Green Beer!!

It is interesting that I was told by my teacher that not to drink green beer on St Patrick's Day. Actually I don’t know about green beer much so I did some research on it. And I did see some people who hold the opinion that no green beer in order to keep St. Patrick's Day holy. It is actually pretty easy to make green bear,

here are five steps for making green bear,

1: Purchase a light colored beer or ale. This can also be done with a dark beer, but it'll require so much food coloring that it turns your teeth green when you drink it, and that's something most people would like to avoid.

2: Pour some of the beer into a glass or mug

3: Place 4-6 drops of green food coloring in the beer. You can also experiment with adding blue food coloring, since the beer is already yellow and mixing that with blue makes green.

4: Pour the rest of the beer. The pouring action should mix in the food coloring, but stir lightly if needed. (Stirring too much can make the beer flat.)

5: Enjoy!

Japan's earthquake

It is very sad of what has happened in the Japan for the past week. And a country with 127,360,000 people, and more of it, Japan is an archipelago of 6852 islands. I am kind of surprised that it will take 5 years to rebuild Japan. I will say that the earthquake could have caused much worse situation if it happened in other countries, because I think that Japan is the most prepared country for the forthcoming earthquakes. There is no doubt that Japan’s economy has developed rapidly in the recent 30 years after the reform. However, within that amount of time, China wasn’t also to do so. Now, Japan is the world’s third –largest economy by its nominal GDP and by purchasing power parity. And now the devastating quake has caused the huge lost for Japan, it certainly affects the world economy as well. 

Artistic Response update

For my artistic response, I decide to do a collage which uses some of the illustrations from Sherman’s Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I chose to use red and white stripes as the background being implied that the main character in the novel, Junior had a very difficult time of being recognized by either the Native American tribe or the Whites at school. And for some the pieces, I decided to put blue tape on the collage which can refer to the book, because that’s the way how the author, Sherman Alexie did in his book. Overall, I am glad that I am now having a better understanding of Native Americans and appreciated that I was given the chance to do so in this class.

Topic Proposal

Through reading Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I learn more about the poverty on the Reservation, and realize that all the situations what are happening there are not caused by a simple reason but have left from the history.  Another interesting fact that I picked up from his book is about the alcoholism. Junior discovers that alcohol has a much more important position compared to education in most of the residents’ mind on the Reservation.  Alcohol found its way to the Native American population of North America during early contacts between Native people and European visitors, traders and explorers who, for whatever reasons, were eager to share their intoxicating drink. And, like many other so-called civilizing influences, alcohol altered the Native American existence, culture, and way of life for many years even yet to come. As generation followed generation, and more of the culture and identity of the past was lost, newer generations of the Native population eventually found alcohol to be their only salvation. With no strong cultural heritage to lead them, and a continued lack of acceptance out in the world at large, there has been little else left them.

Artistic Response

For my artistic response, I am going to do a collage based on Sherman Alexie’s the true diary of a part time Indian. In the book, he mentions more than couple of times that he claims as an artist. By proving to his statement, all the illustrations in the book are drawn by Sherman. It is not hard to tell that he writes the book with a humor tone, even though he is talking the serious things like an Indian boy who leaves the Reservation for better education and has a very difficult time of being treated fairly by the White kids and his own people. I will argue that the illustrations in the book are excellent, it also helps developing the story.

reflection on student diversity training

On Jan 28^th, I attended an event on the campus called the Student Diversity Training and it was held in UW building. Before I went there I had no clue of what it was, so I did a little bit of research on the internet and understand that the purpose of it was to increase participants' awareness and knowledge of cultural diversity and be more generous of adopting different identity groups in order to pursue the same goal to have better teamwork. The speaker we had for the training named Eric Davis, an UW professor who has expertise include diversity management, intercultural communication, leadership development, conflict resolution, and student success strategies.

During the training, Professor Davis shows us couples of demos to illustrate his lecture. Here is one of the practices that we have -- we have to write down 4 people who we think are the most important in our life, such as mom, dad, etc. then write down 3 of our titles who represent who we are, such as son, grandson, brother, etc. last but not the least, we have to write down 3 things are crucial to us, like schools, birthplace, etc. And here it begins, Professor Davis asks us to throw away two of the elements that we have on our paper at the first time and three pieces at the second time, later on, he comes and randomly grabs two of the elements away from everyone. The whole thing is about whether you think it is harder to give away something by your decision or enforced by others, or can be called as willing and unwilling. This practice is certainly important because this is so close our real life, we can’t control everything in our life, there always things happen that we are unexpected and not prepared.

Another example that Professor Davis demonstrates in the diversity training is that he let us guess how many doctors, dentists, and athletes out of the 34 million of American Americans in the US, very surprisingly we get all the answers wrong and off quite a bit. According to his data, there are about 35,000 ~ 40,000 doctors, 15,000 ~ 20,000 dentists and only 2000 ~ 3000 of athletes. We always think that African Americans are so much involved into sports but in fact, it is not the truth. Media has definitely changed our perceptions.

To me, for the reason why we have the diversity training is because we are human, and we are “all” somewhat biased. Effective diversity training with capable speakers let us learn quickly to manage differences. I also think that as long as we are human, diversity training is necessary.

Great Presentation by Kohl and Paco

Today in the class we heard the presentation by Kohl and Paco, through their personal stories and comments on certain issues from their perspective, I now have a better scene of who Native Americans are. Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, it tells me how Alexie’s thought of being as a tribe members and living outside of the reservation. And now, I am lucky enough to hear two different views presented by Kohl and Paco which is very cool.

It is pretty interesting that the night before our class, my high school basketball team actually played a very close basketball game with the Muckleshoot tribe school team and back to school the second morning to listen a presentation presented by two Native American speakers. I appreciate the chance being provided in this class to know more about Native Americans.

I really appreciate that how much information, ideas and storiesthat  Paco and Kohl were able to share in each class. What’s more, having a presentation about the stories and issues about their race in front of a group of people with different culture background is hard.

Sherman Alexie’s biography

Sherman J. Alexie, Jr., was born in October 1966. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane, WA.

Born hydrocephalic, which means with water on the brain, Alexie underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months and was not expected to survive. When he did beat the odds, doctors predicted he would live with severe mental retardation. Though he showed no signs of this, he suffered severe side effects, such as seizures, throughout his childhood. In spite of all he had to overcome, Alexie learned to read by age three, and devoured novels, such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, by age five. All these things ostracized him from his peers, though, and he was often the brunt of other kids' jokes on the reservation.

As a teenager, after finding his mother's name written in a textbook assigned to him at the Wellpinit school, Alexie made a conscious decision to attend high school off the reservation in Reardan, WA, about 20 miles south of Wellpinit, where he knew he would get a better education. At Reardan High he was the only Indian, except for the school mascot. There he excelled academically and became a star player on the basketball team. This experienced inspired his first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.

In 1985 Alexie graduated Reardan High and went on to attend Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, on scholarship. After two years at Gonzaga, he transferred to Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, WA.

Alexie planned to be a doctor and enrolled in pre-med courses at WSU, but after fainting numerous times in human anatomy class realized he needed to change his career path. That change was fueled when he stumbled into a poetry workshop at WSU.

Encouraged by poetry teacher Alex Kuo, Alexie excelled at writing and realized he'd found his new path. Shortly after graduating WSU with a BA in American Studies, Alexie received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship in 1991 and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1992.

Not long after receiving his second fellowship, and just one year after he left WSU, his first two poetry collections, The Business of Fancydancing and I Would Steal Horses, were published.

Alexie had a problem with alcohol that began soon after he started college at Gonzaga, but after learning that Hanging Loose Press agreed to publish The Business of Fancydancing, he immediately gave up drinking at the age of 23 and has been sober ever since.
In his twenties he continued to write prolifically. His first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1993. For this story collection he received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction, and was awarded a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. In March 2005 Grove Atlantic Press reissued the collection with the addition of two new stories.

Alexie was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists and won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize for his first novel, Reservation Blues, published in 1995 by Atlantic Monthly Press. His second novel, Indian Killer, published in 1996, also by Atlantic Monthly Press, was named one of People's Best of Pages and a New York Times Notable Book. This book was published in paperback by Warner Books in 1998.

In the past, Alexie has done readings and stand-up comedy performances with musician Jim Boyd, a Colville Indian. Alexie and Boyd collaborated to record the album Reservation Blues, which contains the songs from the book of the same name. One of the Reservation Blues songs, "Small World" [WAV], also appeared on Talking Rain: Spoken Word & Music from the Pacific Northwest and Honor: A Benefit for the Honor the Earth Campaign. In 1996 Boyd and Alexie opened for the Indigo Girls at a concert to benefit the Honor the Earth Campaign.

In 1997 Alexie embarked on another artistic collaboration. Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian, discovered Alexie's writing while doing graduate work at New York University's film school. Through a mutual friend, they agreed to collaborate on a film project inspired by Alexie's work.

The basis for the screenplay was "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona," a short story from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Shadow Catcher Entertainment produced the film. Released as Smoke Signals at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1998, the movie won two awards: the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy.

After success at Sundance, Smoke Signals found a distributor, Miramax Films, and was released in New York and Los Angeles on June 26 and across the country on July 3, 1998. In 1999 the film received a Christopher Award, an award presented to the creators of artistic works "which affirm the highest values of the human spirit." Alexie was also nominated for the Independent Feature Project/West (now known as Film Independent) 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.
In 2002 Alexie made his directorial debut with The Business of Fancydancing. Alexie wrote the screenplay based loosely on his first poetry collection. The film was produced and distributed independently, and won numerous film festival awards.

In 1998, in the midst of releasing Smoke Signals, Alexie competed in and won his first World Heavyweight Poetry Bout competition in June 1998, organized by the World Poetry Bout Association (WPBA) in Taos, New Mexico. He went up against then world champion Jimmy Santiago Baca. Over the next three years he went on to win the title, becoming the first and only poet to hold the title for four consecutive years. The WPBA closed its doors in early 2005.
Known for his exceptional humor and performance ability, Alexie made his stand-up debut at the Foolproof Northwest Comedy Festival in Seattle, WA, in April 1999, and was the featured performer at the Vancouver International Comedy Festival's opening night gala in July 1999. He continues to pursue his work in comedy.

In 1998, Alexie participated with seven others in the PBS Lehrer News Hour Dialogue on Race with President Clinton. The discussion was moderated by Jim Lehrer and originally aired on PBS on July 9, 1998. Alexie has also been featured on Politically Incorrect; 60 Minutes II; NOW with Bill Moyers, for which he wrote a special segment on insomnia and his writing process called "Up All Night;" and on The Colbert Report in October 2008 and December 2009.
In February 2003, Alexie participated in the Museum of Tolerance project, "Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves," an exhibit showcasing the diversity within the personal histories of several noted Americans, and celebrating the shared experiences common to being part of an American family, encouraging visitors to seek out their own histories, mentors and heroes. This project was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, "Our Big American Family," which originally aired in January 2003, on which Alexie was a guest.

Alexie, also a thought-provoking public speaker, was the commencement speaker for the University of Washington's 2003 commencement ceremony. In 2004, 2006 and 2008 he was an Artist in Residence at the university where he taught courses in American Ethnic Studies.

He was the guest editor for the Winter 2000-01 issue of Ploughshares, a prestigious literary journal, and was a 1999 O. Henry Award Prize juror.
He has been a member of a number of Independent Spirit Awards Nominating Committees, and has served as a creative adviser to the Sundance Institute Writers Fellowship Program and the Film Independent Screenwriters Lab.

Highlights of his most recent honors include the 2010 PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction for War Dances, a collection of stories and poems, was released by Grove Press in October 2009; the 2009 Odyssey Award for The Absolutely True Diary audio book, produced by Recorded Books, LLC; the 2009 Mason Award; a 2008 Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award for middle grades and young adults; a 2008 Stranger Genius Award; and the 2007 National Book Award in Young People's Literature for his young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
His most recent poetry collection, Face, was published by Hanging Loose Press in March 2009 and was Small Press Distribution's best selling poetry book of 2009. Four of his books of poetry were among the top five of Small Press Distribution's best selling poetry books for 2000-2009.

Other awards and honors include the 2007 Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award and the 2003 Regents' Distinguished Alumnus Award, Washington State University's highest honor for alumni. His work was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore, and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Small Presses. His short story "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" was selected by juror Ann Patchett as her favorite story for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005.
Please see the books and movies pages for more details about Alexie's complete works, and please see the awards page for a complete list of his honors.

Alexie lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and two sons.

couple good websites

http://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/sovereignty.html

http://www.dshs.wa.gov/dcs/tribal/news2.asp

http://www.indian-ed.org/

Something about Quinault tribe

The original Quinault flourished with access to good fishing (especially salmon and steelhead), hunting, berry picking and wood gathering.

Nearly a third of the Quinault reservation has been used or owned by timber and saw-milling companies. Have previously sold its timber right, the Quinault tribe is in the process of regaining them. They also built a salmon hatchery and a fish-processing plant. It markets a considerable amount of such seafood as clams. It also operates an arts-and -crafts manufacturing plant.

You must have an Indian guide to fish on the Quinault reservation. Off reservation fishing is open to the public.

Special events: the Quinault trout derby is held annually, usually around Memorial Day. The main feature is a cedar dugout race. The tribe also holds Taholah day, a Fourth of July celebration featuring Indian dances, canoe race, and salmon barbecue.