Mamakadendagwad

Date: 2015 - 2016
 * [[image:http://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=http://americanart.si.edu/images/2017/2017.3_1a.jpg&max=460 link="@http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=110761"]] || Title: **Mamakadendagwad**

Artist: **Tom Uttech** Born: Merrill, Wisconsin 1942

Medium: oil on canvas Deminesions: Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum purchase made possible by the American Art Forum. © 2016, Tom Uttech, courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York

Accession: 2017.3 || Tom Uttech's visionary paintings emerge from a deep sense of communion with nature. As an accomplished birdwatcher, conservationist, wildlife photographer, and hiker, Uttech (born 1942) has spent his life engaging with the unspoiled wilderness of his native Wisconsin and the neighboring woodlands of northern Minnesota and Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. Yet while Uttech's experience of the landscape is grounded in firsthand knowledge and close observation, his paintings do not represent specific scenes. Instead, he uses his understanding of the ecosystem's animals, plant life, light, and atmospheres to conjure fantastic reconstructions of the natural world.
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//Mamakadendagwad//, translated as "it is astonishing" from the Ojibwe language, is part of the artist's Migration series. In these works, throngs of birds and animals travel across the canvas from right to left, spurred by a mysterious force or unknown threat. In Mamakadendagwad, finely rendered falcons, hawks, and owls join wolves and caribou in a swarm at sunset; a lone bear, upright in the center of the scene, turns to face the onslaught, calmly observing the charge as well as, perhaps, its cause. For viewers, the sense of urgency is unexplained, lending a sense of foreboding to what might otherwise be an arcadia.

Like most of Uttech's paintings, //Mamakadendagwad// presents a fraught view of nature and humans' place in it--almost impossibly alive and fertile yet ultimately alienating. As well as being denied the knowledge accorded to the bear, viewers are prevented from immersing themselves in the environment. Fallen tree trunks and tangled branches clock access to the foreground, and abrupt shifts in scale of the incredible volume of birds represented foil any sense of visual mastery over the scene. Despite the exquisite detail laid out for us, the landscape ultimately remains impenetrable. At once agitated and calm, idyllic and charged with danger, Uttech's painting is--like nature itself--characterized by its multitudes and contradictions.

The scene depicted in // Mamakadendagwad // is not a real place; it is as much a fantasy as it is a reality. None of Tom Uttech’s paintings depict real places. Instead they depict scenes based on Uttech’s hikes and kayak trips in Wisconsin’s North Woods and Ontario’s provincial parks. He uses no photos or sketches to build his scenes, just his memories. It is also impossible that a person could witness such a profusion of animals in any one moment. To see that many animals shown in // Mamakadendagwad // in one place a person would have to sit in the same spot over the course of many days and weeks. In a sense the painting then is about time, its passage and rhythmic nature. Some of the birds and animals in the painting live in the North Woods year round, while others are migratory. All these animals are rendered accurately and are easily identifiable particularly if the viewer relies on Peterson field guides; this may be because Uttech is an avid birder himself. Finally, there is also a pervading sense of timelessness to the painting. The warm colors of the light seem to suggest twilight, but the sun is too high for it to be crepuscule. All of these elements come together to create an ethereal mood.
 * About the Artwork: **

Uttech builds an internal structure and balance within the painting by repeating geometric shapes. The more you explore the painting the more apparent these shapes become. The vertical lines of the trees is echoed in the central ray of light emanating from the sun. There are triangles and semi-circles also repeated throughout. Furthermore the lateral movement of the birds and animals is all the same, they move from right to left. In images both static and kinetic the mind reads this type of lateral movement as negative or oppositional. This would suggest that this movement is difficult. Uttech has said he’s not sure why he choose for the birds to fly in that way, but it felt right to him. The bear standing in almost dead center of the foreground is facing to the viewer’s right in opposition to the movement of all the other animals.

Uttech initially used the names of lakes to name his paintings, although the paintings were never depictions of locations on those lakes. Once he exhausted all of those names, he began to choose Ojibwa words which he found in a nineteenth century Ojibwa to English dictionary. Mamakadendagwad translates to “it is admirable; it is astonishing; curious.” He chooses Ojibwa words based on their sound as well as their meaning in relation to the painting he’s working on.

The creatures painted along the frame are depictions of Mishipeshu (or Mishibijiw) which translates to the “the Great Lynx” or “the Underwater Panther.” Ojibwe cosmology has a central open-ended duality between the Thunderbird (Upperworld) and the Great Lynx (Underworld) – they are beings who exist in opposition to one another, but they do not necessarily represent light v. dark or good v. evil. Both are beings of great power and can be destructive or protective forces. This is a common aspect of the indigenous cosmologies found throughout the Great Lakes region. As you go further south you see related duality in the cosmologies of cultures like Cherokee and Caddo, but instead of depicting the opposition as Thunderbird v. the Great Lynx we have the Thunders/Birdmen/Falcon Beings v. the Horned Serpent. It’s thought that such a wide diffusion of similar beliefs (i.e. stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast, from east Texas to the SE Coast) is because of the dominance of the Mississippian Culture and the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex from about 1200 to 1650 c.e.

Tom Uttech - Alexandre Gallery Beer with a Painter: Tom Uttech - Hyperallergic article Tom Uttech: Magic Beyond Belief - Youtube Video Tom Uttech: MPTV The Arts Page Segment - YouTube Video Meet the Artist: Tom Uttech - SAAM YouTube Video All About Birds - The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Left or Right? Why Character's Lateral Movement On-Screen Matters in Film - No Film School blog Underwater Panther Wiki entry Movie Geometry - Shaping the Way We Think - Now You See It YouTube Video
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SAAM Collections Page Artist Biography
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