Saturday, February 15, 2014

Free Write. Native American Month.

Drawing by Mark Vallen

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Punk/vallen_mohawk_slash_magazine.htm

"Come Back To Haunt You" - Mark Vallen. Pencil on paper. 1980.

Artist's Statment: "In 1980 I did the cover art for what turned out to be the very last issue of Slash magazine, the premiere publication of the Los Angeles punk movement. My drawing, titled Come Back To Haunt You, was a visual proclamation that the spirits of Native American warriors had come back to possess the youthful punk rebels of the U.S. The mohawked and leather clad fellow in my drawing represented those spirits. My drawing was actually inspired by the words of Chief Seattle, leader of the Dwamish tribe of the Pacific Northwest. After surrendering to the Whites in the treaty of 1855, Seattle said the following:

'When the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Man, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.'

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