Athena LaTocha is an American artist based in New York artist. Her mixed-media works focus on humans' relationships to natural landscapes. She is of

Hunkpapa Lakota The Hunkpapa (Lakota: ) are a Native American group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota tribe. The name ' is a Lakota word, meaning "Head of the Circle" (at one time, the tribe's name was represented in European-American records as ...

and

Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...

descent. Her work has been featured at the Fairfield University Museum of Art,

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed i ...

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission. Overview ...

New York State Museum The New York State Museum is a research-backed institution in Albany, New York, Albany, New York (state), New York, United States. It is located on Madison Avenue, attached to the south side of the Empire State Plaza, facing onto the plaza and to ...

Artists Space Artists Space is a non-profit art gallery and arts organization first established at 155 Wooster Street in SoHo, Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1972 by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts ...

, South Dakota Art Museum, the CUE Art Foundation in New York, International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska, and the Ice House gallery in New York. She was one of six artists selected for Wave Hill's winter workspace program in 2018.

Early life

LaTocha was born in

Anchorage, Alaska Anchorage, officially the Municipality of Anchorage, is the List of cities in Alaska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Alaska. With a population of 291,247 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it contains nearly 40 percent of ...

. Her father is Polish and Austrian descent, and her mother is Native American, from the

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North & South Dakota controls the Standing Rock Reservation (), which straddles the border between North and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic "Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakot ...

in North and South Dakota and from the

Keweenaw Bay Indian Community The L'Anse Indian Reservation is the land base of the federally recognized Keweenaw Bay Indian Community () of the historic Lake Superior Band of Chippewa Indians. (The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community was defined in 1934 by the Indian Reorganiza ...

in Michigan.

Education

She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Art Institute of Chicago and earned her

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admi ...

(2007) from

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

in New York. While she was trained in oil painting, LaTocha apprenticed in bronze at the Beacon Fine Arts Foundry in Brewster, New York. She also took printmaking classes at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

Creative process

Her background in oil painting gave way into using other methods of her art. She has said that, "Over the years, I started removing my hand more and removing brushes and all of the proper tools we're trained with as painters. It's been years of finding other ways to look at the process, and other ways to look at and interact with materials." She is often using

sumi ink Sumi may refer to: People ;;Names: * Sumi Haru (1939–2014), American film and television actress * Sumi Hakim (born 1944), Indonesian fashion designer and former model * Sumi Helal, is a computer scientist * Sumi Hwang (born 1986), South Kor ...

(made from the soot of pine branches in Japan) mixed with earthy material and gathered objects such as bricks and tire shreds to paint. She'll use the tire shreds to pull the ink over the canvas, or move the canvas itself in "wavelike undulations" to guide the ink. In her time at Wave Hill, she also made use of a

root ball A root ball is the mass of roots and growing media at the base of a plant such as trees, shrubs, and other perennials and annual plants. The appearance and structure of the root ball will be largely dependent on the method of growing used in t ...

, a mass of roots at the base of a plant that has soil surrounding it. She usually works with her canvases on the floor with her working over and on top of them. She has said that, "Working aerially with my images on the floor, I am interested in being inside the image rather than the outside as an easel painter."

Message

LaTocha brings attention to the idea that landscapes are an active thing as opposed to objects. She embodies the belief that humans are part of the landscape rather than separate from it by literally standing within the scenes she paints. She has said that, "For a number of years now I've been working with land motifs, land imagery. All of my work is about being immersed in these spaces, these environments. Sometimes I'm reluctant to use the word 'landscape' because there's a certain kind of genre, a certain kind of concept or ideology when you think about the idea of landscape. It connotes a kind of reverence or allusion to something. It's usually something that you're looking at or looking upon. It's this view or window into another world, a natural world or an industrial one." While bringing attention to this she tries to have the observer and artist be a part of the piece itself as she herself has stated, "In the aboriginal sense one is actively moving through the landscape. Humans are part of the landscape, not separate from it."

Selected exhibitions

LaTocha has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, including the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design, the

Weatherspoon Art Museum The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more ...

, the

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the supp ...

, and

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

. The CUE Art Foundation in New York presented a solo exhibition in 2015 curated by curator/artist/activist

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (January 15, 1940 – January 24, 2025) was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American visual artist and curator. She was an enrolled citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and was also of M� ...

. Another solo exhibition, ''Forces of Nature'' (2017), at the

Museum of Contemporary Native Arts The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed ...

in Santa Fe displayed ''La Bajada Red'', an ink wash work that spanned the entire wall from floor to ceiling. In January 2021, the solo exhibition, ''Land Disturbed'', opened at the Olin Fine Arts Center at the

Washington & Jefferson College Washington & Jefferson College (W&J College or W&J) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Washington, Pennsylvania, United States. The college traces its origin to three Presbyterian m ...

. For ''Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now'' (2018-2019) at the

, the curators selected ''Ozark (Shelter in Place)'', a large wall piece in ink and earth on paper created from rock face impressions from a local national park and then molded lead sheets affixed on top. In December 2020, she was one of the artists featured in the ''Urban Native Artists'' exhibition at the Revelation Gallery, New York, NY; fellow exhibitors included

Vernon Bigman Vernon Bigman is a Navajo artist known for his abstract painting. Bigman's work is housed in the permanent collections at the National Museum of the American Indian and San Francisco Art Institute. As of 2019, Bigman is a library worker for the P ...

(

Navajo Nation The Navajo Nation (), also known as Navajoland, is an Indian reservation of Navajo people in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah. The seat of government is located in ...

), Nadema Agard, and Mario Martinez (

Pascua Yaqui The Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona is a federally recognized tribe of Yaqui Native Americans in the state of Arizona. Descended from the Yaqui people whose original homelands include the Yaqui River valley in western Sonora, Mexico and southe ...

Selected grants and awards

Anonymous Was a Woman "Anonymous Was a Woman" is the fourth episode of the eleventh season of the American police procedural drama ''NCIS'', and the 238th episode overall. It originally aired on CBS in the United States on October 15, 2013. The episode is written b ...

Award, 2023 *

Rockefeller Brothers Fund The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) is a philanthropic foundation created and run by members of the Rockefeller family. It was founded in New York City in 1940 as the primary philanthropic vehicle for the five third-generation Rockefeller brothe ...

Pocantico Art Prize in Visual Arts, 2022 *

Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is an art museum in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The Eiteljorg houses an extensive collection of visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as Western Ame ...

Contemporary Art Fellowship, 2021 *

NYSCA The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) serves to foster and advance the arts, culture, and creativity throughout New York State, according to its website. The goal of the council is to allow all New Yorkers to benefit from the contribution ...

/ NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting, 2021 *

Joan Mitchell Foundation Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

grant, 2019 and 2016 *

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Milton Ernest "Robert" or "Bob" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combine painting, Combines (1954� ...

grant, 2013

References

External links

Athena LaTocha
official website
Athena LaTocha , JDJ , Artsy

Athena LaTocha — Joan Mitchell Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:LaTocha, Athena Living people American painters American people of Standing Rock Sioux descent American people of Ojibwe descent School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Stony Brook University alumni Art Students League of New York alumni Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women 21st-century American artists American women artists