“Gathering Time: Pomo Art During the Pandemic” explores how the COVID pandemic has impacted Pomo communities and, at the same time, encouraged Pomo artists to reconnect with their cultural traditions through artmaking.

The show features 15 artists from ten different Pomo tribal groups spanning Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma Counties, as well as multiple art forms, including painting, photography, basketweaving, regalia, and digital media.

Artists in the panel include Vince Brown, Patricia Franklin, Robert Geary, Clint McKay, and Meyo Marrufo.

The exhibit closes on Sunday, Jan. 15.

Article by Roberta Werdinger

On Saturday, January 14, from 2 to 4 p.m., the Grace Hudson Museum will host a closing reception for its exhibit Gathering Time: Pomo Art During the Pandemic, including an artist panel on Pomo regalia and traditional art. Gathering Time contributors Vince Brown, Patricia Franklin, Robert Geary, Clint McKay, and exhibit curator Meyo Marrufo will speak about their regalia and traditional art pieces. The event will close with a performance from the Elem Indian Colony dance group.

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020 had an outsized impact on the California Native community. Death rates were higher than with other groups. An economic slowdown meant that some Native people, including local Pomo people who were selling their crafts, could no longer do so. Art shows got cancelled. Basketmakers had trouble gathering materials.

“Our country hasn’t seen something like this since the polio epidemic,” comments Meyo Marrufo, an artist and curator who is Eastern Pomo and a member of the Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians. Approached by Museum director David Burton to organize an exhibit of contemporary Pomo art, she decided to focus on art the Pomo community was producing  during the pandemic, working with Museum curator Alyssa Boge to develop the idea. The result was Gathering Time: Pomo Art During the Pandemic, the first exhibit of present-day Pomo art that the Museum has hosted.

While the pandemic slowed down or stopped contact between people, it also stimulated a renewal of art and regalia-making in the Pomo community. People simply had more time on their hands, and a heightened impulse to connect to their traditions and express joy and grief. Community members took part in online classes. Places like the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center (CIMCC) helped elders set up their wi-fi so they could stay in contact while they sheltered in place. Pomo craftspeople found each other on social media. Silver Galleto (Cloverdale Rancheria/Southern Pomo) started a Facebook page for Pomo weavers to share knowledge of Pomo basketry.

Marrufo and Bonnie Lockhart (Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians) collaborated on a mass mail-out of masks and cards reminding people to wash their hands and wear masks, because “your elders would do anything for you, you should do it for them.” Marrufo and Lockhart sent out cards to over 4,000 tribal people with this message, causing people to respond that she was “a good person.” She answered, “I’m not good; it’s that I can’t afford to lose anyone else.” Others such as Eric Wilder (Kashia Pomo) also created PSA art to keep the community aware and incorporate tribal traditions.

“Indian country is a small country,” muses Marrufo. “These [artists in the exhibit] are all people who I know…I could wax lyrical about all of them.” That includes Robin Meely (Graton Rancheria), who, in Marrufo’s words, “really blossomed as a weaver during the pandemic.” Patty Franklin (Eastern Pomo) started working with tule to make basketry and teach it to kids. “Clint McKay (Dry Creek Rancheria) used this time to weave coiled baskets for his daughters as a way to show them how proud he was of them,” Marrufo explains, and for his family to continue the practice of gathering and weaving during the pandemic. Donna Ramirez (Cloverdale Rancheria) “went out of her comfort zone,” going beyond the watercolors she was accustomed to creating. “I watched her during the pandemic and her exploration with different mediums.” Robert Geary (Elem Indian Colony), a regalia maker, learned acrylics and “did an amazing first-time picture. In his art of making beautiful regalia, I see him keeping his traditions alive.” The same could also be said of Vince Brown (Redwood Valley), who makes magnesite beads, traditional Pomo high currency.

Connecting with the elders through learning and deepening knowledge of Pomo traditions also seemed to stimulate a wave of concern for the generation yet to come. Many artists in the show created baby baskets as a means to express this. Katie Williams-Elliott (Hopland Tribe) contributed to a baby basket display, with photos, art, and the cradles themselves. Corine Pearce (Redwood Valley Rancheria), a sought-out baby basketmaker, made a “pleasure basket,” one that she only worked on at her leisure. Martina Morgan (Kashia Pomo) contributed not only her baby basket work but her other weaving as well.

Innovation was also present in the process. Rachel Smith-Ferri (Hopland Tribe) found a way to incorporate basket designs in her loom work and added in the beads used in traditional basket design one at a time. The results shown together resembles, Marrufo says, “more of an installation piece.”

It was also important to mourn and honor those felled by the pandemic. After losing her father, Laura Inong (Little Lake Pomo and Concow) wrote a poem for him which is installed in the roundhouse on display in the exhibit. “What makes magic? What makes good medicine?” Inong asks in the poem. “The magic is your memory. The medicine is your legacy.” Jojo Birmingham, a regalia maker, also died during the pandemic. “When we dance, we dance for loss but also for renewal,” states Marrufo. “We survived historical trauma. And we continue to survive. One event doesn’t define who we are.

“We dance in and dance out,” she continues, noting that the Gathering Time exhibit opened with a dance from the Hopland Pomo Dancers and ends with one from the Elem Indian Colony dance group. “We dance to understand that everything we do is rooted in our traditional ways.”

Admission to the closing panel is free with Museum admission: $5 general; $12 per family; $4 for students and seniors; and always free to members, Native Americans, and standing military personnel.

Gathering Time was made possible by the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, the Guidiville Indian Rancheria, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, Conrad Forest Products, and California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. For more information, please go to https://www.gracehudsonmuseum.org/ or call (707) 467-2836.