DIGITAL EXHIBITION SERIES WITH THREE INDIGENOUS ARTISTS TRAVOIS TO HOST ARTISTS TALKS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (August 21, 2020) – Meet Indigenous artists and hear their stories from the comfort of your home. Three digital artists talks are scheduled for Fall 2020 with Travois First Fridays.

Travois is a Certified B Corporation focused exclusively on promoting affordable housing and economic development in Native communities. Since 2017, Travois has opened its Kansas City, Mo., office to host Indigenous artists as part of the city's First Fridays art events. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Travois First Fridays will host digital artist talks with three Indigenous artists. The digital format provides an opportunity for audience participation outside of Kansas City.

"As a Certified B Corporation, we believe in using business as a force for good," Travois CEO Elizabeth Glynn said. "The mission of Travois First Fridays is to support and promote Indigenous artists. We're happy to provide a digital opportunity for people to meet Indigenous artists, see their work and hear their stories."

Tune in for lunch time talks on the first Friday in September, October and November. The artist talks will be hosted on Zoom, a video communication platform. Find registration information on the Travois website: travois.com/news-events/first-fridays/.

Exhibition dates and artist info:

Friday, September 4 at 1 p.m. (CST): "The Current State" by Thomas Breeze Marcus (Tohono O'odham Nation)

Tune in to hear from artist Thomas "Breeze" Marcus as he broadcasts from the Arizona Heritage Center. Breeze will showcase an ongoing and eye-opening art series created to foster a dialog about the border wall, desecration of sacred sites, and how the U.S.-Mexico border militarization is affecting a southern Arizona Native American community, the Tohono O'odham Nation. Breeze will also discuss his canvas and large-scale mural work, process and the inspiration behind his art. He will present pieces from an exhibition currently showing in Phoenix and other pieces on canvas that talk to the duality of everyday issues among the Tohono and Akimel O'odham tribes of Arizona.

Thomas Breeze Marcus, commonly referred to as "Breeze," is a full-time artist based in Phoenix. He is a painter with over two decades of large scale mural and public art experience. His personal work showcases a tightly interwoven and complex composition of patterns. Breeze developed the line work out of his experience as a graffiti writer and inspiration from his native cultures - most notable, the intricate woven basket patterns and cultures of the Tohono O'odham and Akimel O'odham Tribes.

Breeze pushes the boundaries with his compositions. He moves in a forward direction but maintains awareness of the surrounding environment, personal identity and experience, human behavior, social issues and all things beyond the human view.

Breeze is also an arts educator working with youth in the Salt River community, and has performed multiple artist presentations, projects and workshops on murals, street art and graffiti at museums such as the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Ariz .; the Field Museum of Chicago, Ill .; and several other institutions throughout the country.

Find more of Breeze's work on Instagram @breeze1phx.

Friday, October 2 at 1 p.m. (CST): "Disappearing Earth/Invisible Sky" by Starr Hardridge (Muscogee Creek Nation)

Join artist Starr Hardridge for a discussion about southeastern contemporary Native pointillism in the time of a pandemic.

Starr Hardridge is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. His works are an assemblage of pointillism and a Southeastern Woodlands beadwork aesthetic. Starr uses bold colors and geometric shapes to create modern works inspired by Muscogee patterns and designs. Through pattern, texture, and dream-like reverie, his work is a sensory journey of candy-coated hues and meticulously executed textures. Even serious contemplative themes are handled with a delicate mix of reverence and whimsy.

"I draw inspiration from all things in nature and I try to make connections from the past to the present with an assemblage of multicolor paint dots," Starr said. "I use pointillism as a means to express a "beaded surface" in which I narrate relationships and archetypes of the human condition."

Starr received a BFA in illustration and painting from Savannah College of Art and Design. He continued his studies at a one-year residency in Penne D'Agenais France at the Nadai Verdon Atelier of Decorative Arts.

Visit starrhardridge.com for more artist information.

Friday, November 6: "The Great Basin Native Artists" by Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute, Modoc)

Melissa Melero-Moose, a Great Basin Native artist, will discuss the origins and processes of her Great Basin mixed-media artwork. She will also explain the evolution of her career, which led her to founding Great Basin Native Artists, a collective of Indigenous artists living in or from the region.

"I created these works to celebrate the art, design and culture of the Paiute people through color and texture on canvas," Melissa said. "I am honored to be a part of Travois First Fridays and very grateful to be sharing my paintings and stories in this part of the country."

Melissa Melero-Moose is a Northern Paiute enrolled with the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe with ties to Fort Bidwell Paiute, Calif. She is an accomplished artist with her own unique style. Her works consist of contemporary mixed media paintings inspired by the landscape and culture of the Numu (Northern Paiute) in Nevada, California, and Oregon - natural surroundings in the Great Basin (willow and pine nuts), and Paiute basketry and local petroglyphs. Melissa has also integrated her own green painting techniques and disciplines to her process that ensures a lighter environmental footprint.

Melissa holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a bachelor's degree in psychology and fine arts from Portland State University. Her works are included in permanent collections of the School for Advanced Research (IARC), Santa Fe, N.M .; Autry Museum in Los Angeles, Cali; Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, N.M .; the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, Nev .; and the Lilley Museum, at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Visit melissamelero.com for additional artist info.

Please note, this is not a live artist talk. A recorded video of Melissa Melero-Moose's talk will be published on the Travois website.

TRAVOIS FIRST FRIDAYS

Travois First Fridays is a visual art exhibition series featuring North American Indigenous artists at the Travois headquarters in the heart of metro Kansas City. Our mission is to support and promote American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian artists. Our vision is to see Native artists more prominently featured and powerfully supported in metropolitan Kansas City. More information about the exhibition series and previous featured artists can be found at https://travois.com/news-events/first-fridays/. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Travois First Fridays exhibition series will be a digital experience.

ABOUT TRAVOIS

Travois is a Certified B Corporation focused exclusively on promoting housing and economic development for American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian communities. Since 1995, Travois has brought investor equity to more than 230 developments through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program and New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program, making an impact of more than $1.5 billion across Indian Country. These private investor funds have helped build or rehabilitate more than 5,700 homes and have helped finance critical economic developments, including infrastructure, health care, community centers, education facilities and job incubators. The Travois family of companies also offers architectural design, master planning, and construction monitoring services, environmental assessments, consulting on green energy improvements, asset management and compliance services, impact investment models, and comprehensive training to clients in 19 states, from Hawaii and Alaska to Maine and California. For more information, please visit travois.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.