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Artist Steven Deo, working in his North Valley studio, uses puzzle pieces to form a sculpture. Deo uses materials in his work that have levels of meaning. "I'm figuring out my own identity, with a modern sense of art and material. The material has an implication of its own."

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American Indian art has the richest of traditions.

There's no mistaking a pot by Lucy Lewis or Maria Martinez, a sculpture by Allan Houser or a painting by Fritz Scholder, Dan Namingha, R.C. Gorman or T.C. Cannon.

Their artistic vocabulary is rooted in culture. Colors and materials come from the earth. Themes stick to life on the reservation: Painted and feathered warriors and leaders, fearless hunters, graceful women, ancient symbols, majestic animals and landscapes.

The work has stature and distinction.

But there's a flip side.

"While a handful of artists of native descent have achieved national and international recognition, Indian artists have largely been ignored by the power brokers of the art world," says Marjorie Devon, director of the Tamarind Institute, a center for fine art lithography within the University of New Mexico Department of Fine Arts.

The snub has been felt most deeply by contemporary Indian artists trying to break out and define their work beyond traditional culture. They've struggled against strong preconceptions to show there is more than one kind of Indian art and that being an Indian artist can mean many things.

A matter of time

"This is a whole untapped part of art in America," says Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a Corrales artist who has been at the forefront of the modern movement in Indian art. "It is a field filled with treasures and richness. When I see what younger artists are doing, I'm blown away."

Charles Giuliano, director of exhibitions for Suffolk University in Boston, calls the attitude toward contemporary Indian artists "downright racist."

"There are embedded cultural attitudes that make it difficult for the artists to reach out," he says. "There is a critical mass of very good artists emerging who are absolutely deserving of national and international attention. It's just a matter of time."

Four years ago, the UNM Art Museum and Tamarind launched the Migrations project, a traveling art exhibit and accompanying book designed to broaden the understanding of contemporary American Indian art.

A panel chose six artists to showcase: Steven Deo, a Creek/Euchee from Rio Rancho; Tom Jones, a Ho Chunk from Wisconsin; Larry McNeil, a Tlingit/Nisgaa from Boise, Idaho; Ryan Lee Smith, a Cherokee from Tahlequah, Okla.; Star Wallowing Bull, a Chippewa/Arapaho from Fargo, N.D.; and Marie Watt, a Seneca from Oregon.

The art exhibit, titled "Migrations: New Directions in Native American Art," opened this week and gets its public reception tonight, hand in hand with publication of the book of the same title edited by Devon and published by the UNM Press.

The exhibit showcases a range of modernist approaches by the artists in mediums including wood, photography, collage, oil, crayon and textiles. The book features select pieces of their work along with essays by four art scholars exploring the evolution of modern American Indian art and the history of arts training at such places as the Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton, Ore., the Tamarind Institute and the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

Ultimately, Devon hopes to "reach a wide audience to help dispel generalizations about the style and content of Indian art."

Drawing on experience

Deo has fought those generalizations much of his life. He drew horses growing up in Tulsa, Okla., influenced by the painterly style of Jerome Tiger. Deo moved to Santa Fe in 1989 to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts.

"While there, I had a revelation," he says. "I was painting Plains Indian-type stuff - you get caught up in the market in Santa Fe. I was painting this Indian man shooting a buffalo, and, for some reason, I felt I needed to be more connected to my work. I didn't feel I was connected to that image.

"I grew up on horses, but I never shot a buffalo. I had never really seen a buffalo. I started asking myself a lot of questions. A teacher, Craig Anderson, nurtured me. He said `If you feel you need integrity, that's how you should paint.'"

Deo went in a contemporary direction, drawing on his life experiences. He delved further into modern art as a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he earned a bachelor's of fine arts and "embraced modernity."

"The work there was really experimental, and I felt I needed to understand it," Deo says. "It was the biggest influence on what I do. I started deconstructing my identity and looking closer to what I was in the world. I looked more at myself as a modern person."

Much of Deo's art now is three-dimensional, addressing political and social issues. He builds sculptures from shoes, toy soldiers, wood and other materials that, to him, have meaning.

"I know what history says about Native Americans, but I didn't experience that," he says. "I'm figuring out my own identity, with a modern sense of art and material. I feel I convey my message a lot easier. The material has an implication of its own. It is more cognitive."

He says his artistic journey has been lonely. "I don't really feel like the contemporary art mainstream has seen my work or accepted it, and it's not really accepted by the native American community," says Deo, who shows at the Thirteen Moons Gallery in Santa Fe and the Gallery of Functional Art in Santa Monica, Calif. "I don't get a lot of invitations to native shows. And I'm just starting to get shows that are contemporary."

A dearth of collectors

Quick-to-See Smith, a Flathead Salish/Kootenai, says black and Hispanic contemporary artists have gained acceptance through the support of major collectors such as Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Cheech Marin, and Eileen and Peter Norton. Those ethnic artists - Martin Puryear, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, John Valadez and Carmen Lomas Garza, to name a few - are also extensively represented in the contemporary collections of U.S. museums, such as the Heard in Phoenix and the Seattle Art Museum.

"You won't find contemporary native art in any proportion like that in this country," says Quick-to-See Smith. "At some, you may find five or 10 pieces of contemporary; the rest is traditional."

Says Deo: "Collectors of native art are the people who hold it down."

Quick-to-See Smith says American Indian artists are fighting not only tradition, but economics and education. "We haven't yet moved into the upper classes," she says. "When our economic position changes, native people will begin collecting native artists. We need a bunch of Cheech Marins.

"Education is the other piece of it. I'm the first in my family to go to college. That sets us apart from the other ethnic groups."

A commodity

Nora Naranjo-Morse of Santa Clara Pueblo, who does sculptures in clay and bronze and abstract installations in earth materials, says she resisted going in a contemporary direction, then "succumbed."

"Native art became a commodity," she says. "People made Eurocentric judgments on what native people were doing. I didn't have a choice on what was coming out of me. I just kept doing it.

"I wasn't the first. But I'm a part of this process of making change - not just in the collectors' community, but in the family and even the pueblo community."

Naranjo-Morse shows her work at Addison Arts in Santa Fe. Owner John Addison, who represents five other contemporary American Indian artists, says Naranjo-Morse comes from a family, the Naranjos, with a long tradition of clay pottery and figurative work.

"She's gone outside that, and explores contemporary culture on a larger scale, how her identity fits into that and how it changes as she grows," Addison says.

Naranjo-Morse has been collected by major contemporary museums, and won a commission to do a large outdoor installation for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. She says the project, now in the prototype stage, will address the politics and culture of contemporary American Indian life. Naranjo-Morse says she'll invite people to help build the sculptures, a project that will be filmed.

What Addison likes about contemporary native artists is how they draw on their cultural experience, but comment on modern life.

"They make an individual statement instead of a statement of tradition," he says. "There is an incredible amount of cultural and personal content. Cultural identity helps enrich their art."

Hoping for a breakthrough

Addison says the market for contemporary native art has grown and sees future superstars in artists like Yatica Star Fields, a New York City bicycle messenger by day and a painter by night; and Douglas Miles, an Arizona Apache who channels the skateboard culture.

Giuliano says contemporary Indian artists are close to a breakthrough to a larger audience.

"Someone is going to break really big," he says. "And once somebody makes it into the mainstream, there are others, there are more. At that point writers and curators start circling around. It could be any one of a dozen artists."

Giuliano says young Indian artists coming out of top schools need to promote their work. "These kids are savvy. They know the deal," he says. "They know what it takes to make it in the art world."

He says their strength is the "deep and complicated" work. "They are rooted into this extraordinarily rich and complex culture."

Quick-to-See Smith says: "The art is out there. There is a hotbed of young people coming up in the creative arts. They're stepping off the cliff and not looking backward."