Counterculture B, 2022

Carved New Mexico pine, twine, clay and acrylic
© Rose B. Simpson

Rose B. Simpson hails from a long line of Santa Clara Pueblo potters, from whom she learned customary methods of pottery making. Yet instead of producing the glossy red or black pottery that her pueblo is famous for, she is known for creating commanding androgynous figures adorned with found and manufactured metal embellishments that recall jewelry and armor. Take, for example, the slender, nine-foot-tall figures of Counterculture, which represent ancestors acting as witnesses to landscape and history. The series engages with multiple mediums, which is indicative of Simpson’s approach. It began with clay maquettes that Simpson then used as models to create hand-carved full-size versions in wood. Eventually, she made the sculptures in cast concrete and installed them at the Field Farm in Williamstown, Massachusetts, the ancestral homeland of the Indigenous Mohican people. The watchful figures have since moved around the United States, always serving as a reminder of those that colonization has aimed to silence.