“Extraordinary Animals Revisited” anthropomorphizes animals and their relationship to the world through paper, paintings, photography and sculpture from Native artists. But that’s less simple than it sounds. For example, Darren Vigil Gray’s “Mystery Framework #4” features an elk-like animal in what appears to be a hunting jacket, while Rich Barstow’s wooden sculpture “Fish III” depicts a swimming salmon with knife-induced serrations. Steven Yazzie’s “Santa Fe Trail” places a coyote in contemporary urban setting, while Julie Buffalohead’s mixed media works featuring clothed animals combine traditional Native stories with present-day fairytales -- some doubling as political statements. “I try to be provocative,” she says in her artist statement. “I use stereotypes because Indians didn’t have a hand in creating them. It’s my way of saying, ‘This is not who we are. This is your invention.’”
Mondays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sundays, 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Starts: May 18. Continues through Sept. 17, 2012
