Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
[8] Smith supported the Native arts community by organizing exhibitions and project collaborations, and she also participated in national commissions for public works.
[9] Growing up in poverty,[10] Smith worked alongside migrant workers in a Seattle farming community between the ages of eight and fifteen years old, when school was not in session.
Her education, however, was interrupted because she had to support herself through various jobs as a waitress, Head Start teacher, factory worker, domestic, librarian, janitor, veterinary assistant, and secretary.
Her initial attraction to the university was its comprehensive Native American studies program, but after applying three times and being successively turned down, she decided to continue taking classes and making art.
From this background of her childhood and formal arts education, Smith negotiated Native and non-Native societies by navigating, merging, and being inspired by diverse cultures.
"[12] This work serves as a mode of visual communication, which she creatively and consciously composes in layers to bridge gaps between these two worlds[10] and to educate about social, political and environmental issues existing deeper than the surface.
Her collage elements, such as commercial slogans, sign-like petroglyphs, rough drawing, and the inclusion and layering of text, were used to further complex visions borne of the artist's personal experience.
Her works contain strong, insistent socio-political commentary that speaks to past and present cultural appropriation and abuse, while identifying the continued significance of the Native American peoples.
[14] Smith's collaborative public artworks include the terrazzo floor design in the Great Hall of the Denver Airport;[15] an in-situ sculpture piece in Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco;[16] and a mile-long sidewalk history trail in West Seattle.
Her landscapes often included pictographic symbolism and was considered a form of self-portraiture; Gregory Galligan explains in Arts Magazine in 1986, "each of these works distills decades of personal memory, collective consciousness, and historical awareness into a cogent pictorial synthesis.
[citation needed] These paintings touch on the alienation of the American Indian in modern culture, by acting as a sum of the past and something new altogether.
A Hunkpapa drum become a Rothko painting; ledger-book symbols become Cy Twombly; a Naskaspi bag is Paul Klee; a Blackfoot robe, Agnes Martin; beadwork color is Josef Albers; a parfleche is Frank Stella; design is Vasarely's positive and negative space.
[21] The style of these paintings, with their collage, layered, and misty environments, have been compared to the techniques and imagery of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
[23] Her interest in these topics lay in her exploration of the adverse socio-cultural circumstances (including health, sovereignty, and rights) created for Native Americans by the government.
[24] An environmentalist, Smith often critiqued the pollution created through art-making such as toxic materials, excessive storage space, and extensive shipping.
The Nomad Art Manifesto, designed based on the aesthetic of parfleches, consists of squares carrying messages about the environment and Indian life, made entirely from biodegradable materials.
[citation needed] Her adoptive state of New Mexico has also lauded her contribution to the arts and local community with praise and continuous recognition over the decades.
