|
Fonseca was born
in Sacramento, California in 1946, and is of Nisenan
Maidu, Hawaiian, and Portugese
heritage. He studied for a time at Sacramento City College
and with Frank LaPena at Cal State University at Sacramento,
but was reluctant to become an academic stylist, so
he
decided not to continue formal art education in order
to pursue his own vision.
In his close to twenty-year career as
an exhibiting artist, Harry Fonseca's work has gone through
a number of transformations, but the one constant has
been his openness to new influences and sources of inspiration.
Fonseca's earliest pieces drew from his
Maidu heritage. He was influenced by basketry designs,
dance regalia, and by his participation as a traditional
dancer. Further, the creation myth of his people, as recounted
by his uncle, Henry Azbill, became the source of a major
1977 work, Creation Story. This piece visually embodies
the underpinnings of Maidu culture. Margaret Archuleta
has noted that the work is a pictorially complex sequence
set in a spiral motif. The central focal point is Helinmaiden,
the Maidu Big Man, Great Man, or God, as he appears on
the raft with Turtle. The continuing pencil and ink drawings
are linked together as they rotate in a clockwise movement
around the central axis of Helinmaiden, whose importance
is expressed by his central placement. The spiral design
echoes the cyclical rhythm of the storytelling in connection
with the seasonal celebrations.
This myth continues
to inspire Fonseca, as his 1991 The Maidu Creation
Story shows. The basic
imagery of this painting recalls petroglyphic symbols,
and although less figurative than the 1979 work, still
seeks to give visual form to myth. Fonseca does not
replicate
his past imagery but looks for new ways of connecting
to tradition. Regarding the 1991 work, Darryl Wilson
has
pointed out that Fonseca "was particularly struck
by ancient rock art from the Coso Range in the high desert
country near Owens Lake [north of Ridgecrest, California].
Because of its powerful appeal, he incorporated some
of
its images into the similarly powerful and appealing
creation story Henry Azbill told him."
Another level of transformation is evident
in the Coyote series, which Fonseca began in 1979 (and
which, after a few years' hiatus, he has started again).
The subject of these works is Coyote, the trickster and
transformer. Fonseca resituates the culture hero into
contemporary settings, such as San Francisco's Mission
District. Coyote can become an updated and sneaker-wearing
Rousseau, holding his palette on a Parisian quay (Rousseau
Revisited, 1986), or headress-clad and sneakered (Coyote
in Front of Studio, 1983). Coyote becomes an alembic through
which Fonseca filters his vision of the artist, and the
Indian, in society.
Fonseca's continuing interest in rock
art led him to develop the Stone Poems, an extensive series
of works exploring the imagery of petroglyphs, not only
from California but throughout the West and Southwest,
especially Utah. The Stone Poems are not meant to be so
much an interpretive recording of rock images but a way
of self-exploration. The canvases, some as large as 6'
by 12', suggest the size and scope of petroglyphic panels
in situ.
Fonseca's work took
a more political turn with the 1992 Discovery of Gold
and Souls in California
series. Each of these small mixed-media pieces, measuring
about 15" x 11", offer subtle variations on
the image of a black cross surrounded by gold leaf and
partially covered with red oxide. Fonseca has stated that
this series "is a direct reference to the physical,
emotional and spiritual genocide of the native people
of California. With the rise of the mission system, and
much later the discovery of gold in California, the native
world was fractured, and with it, a way of life and order
devastated." |
|