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Scholder is of Native descent-a registered member of the Luiseño and La Jolla bands of San Diego County-yet he rarely associated with Indian people, other than his own family, until he was in his twenties. He only began to work with Indian subject matter in his thirties. But with his olive-toned skin and broad face he looks Native, and in outlook and spirit definitely stands inside the Native realm. The preeminent Indian artist of our time is a raft of contradictions and odd twists and turns, but he would have it no other way. "I have been described as a paradox, and I truly am," he recently explained in his extraordinary studio-home off a quiet lane in booming Scottsdale, Arizona, where he has lived since 1972. Scholder is also an avid collector of art, antiques and odd ephemera. Just a quick glimpse around reveals several full size stuffed buffalo, tiny stone effigies, walking sticks, stuffed bats, stone pipes, Hindu bronzes, the preserved head of a two-headed calf and many masks. (See NP July-August 2000.) Adjoining the low-slung, modest home are his Spartan studios-one for painting and another for printing and storage. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out on the sculpture garden, with bowing trees and a small fountain. The ceiling is bare insulation, and the walls are rough. What counts is on the walls and floors-flecks, globs, runs and drips of paint.
"I call myself an American expressionist, someone who celebrates life in paint and other media. I am most interested in gesture, color and an honest use of the material. As far as subject matter, every serious artist has his own subject matter; it\'s very personal. It has to do with his own life or a statement he wants to make about life."
Mystery Woman with Green Mask (detail), 1985, edition of 12, 2234 x 9 x 9. Repetition will never be a word associated with Scholder. While he most often works in acrylic and oil paints, he was one of the first Southwestern artists to produce monotypes (dating back to 1977), and has worked extensively in lithography at the Tamarind Institute of Albuquerque and Mourlot in Paris, where Picasso printed. Other paper works have included serigraphs, etchings, collages, photography and drawings in many media. In 2000, he tackled the new world of computer-generated imagery. But unlike many artists who confine themselves to one primary medium, Scholder also works in sculpture, and has produced many bronze figures over the years, as well as fabricated works from found objects and mixed media.
"I try to make the creative process as spontaneous and non-thinking as possible. I don\'t worry about what\'s coming next. I don\'t go into the studio every day. I go in when I get too nervous. For me, it\'s a catharsis-putting yourself in a place, alone, where you have the possibility of finding personal integrity, pushing back any influences. If anything is of value, it has to come from you."
This ability to focus on what he feels and then to pursue it with passion has made Scholder one of America\'s most valued artists. He has been the subject of at least 11 books and three PBS documentaries, and has received five honorary degrees. He is a lifetime member of the Salon d\'Automne of Paris, and has received fellowships over his career from the Whitney Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation and the American Academy of Art and Letters. He has been an artist in residence at Dartmouth College, as well as guest artist at numerous other colleges and universities. His work has been exhibited around the world and is represented in many private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of American Art in Washington and the Milwaukee Art Museum. In addition, he is on the board of directors of the American Academy of Achievement.
It all began on the windswept prairie of the Midwest, where Scholder was born in 1937 in Breckenridge, Minnesota. His earliest years were spent in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where his father served as an administrator in the Wahpeton Indian School. "There\'s lots of horizon lines there," he notes. "It\'s a place you have to use your imagination." Scholder is actually Fritz the fifth. His German-born great-grandfather emigrated to America as a young man and walked across the continent. In southern California he fell in love with a young Cupeno Indian woman and they wed. Their second son, another Fritz, went on to marry a Luiseño woman, and thus Scholder traces his Native heritage.
After obtaining his bachelor\'s degree in art from California State, Sacramento, Scholder\'s life pace began to quicken. In 1961 he was asked to join an Indian arts program at the University of Arizona in Tucson financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. The program was directed by the internationally known Indian apparel designer and artist Lloyd Kiva New, and included teachers such as Charles Loloma, the famed Hopi jeweler (and Snake priest), who befriended the young artist. Scholder fell in love with the area and decided to pursue his MFA in Tucson, with the goal of assuming a career as a teacher.
Right: Millennium, Remembering the 20th Century, collage, 1998, 36" x 24" "I thought I was going to have to teach for the rest of my life, which I was prepared to do," he says. "It was the biggest compromise of my life, but you have to get real sometimes. I found the whole art education system to be completely detrimental to anyone who is an individual. But meanwhile Lloyd had begun his school in Santa Fe [the Institute of American Indian Arts-the nation\'s first college-level Indian arts school] and he said he\'d love for me to join them. I had never been to Santa Fe, or really ever even known many Indians, but it was the best offer I had, so I went." At IAIA Scholder served as the instructor of advanced painting from 1964 to 1969. "It was interesting times. The kids had a certain pride. The timing was perfect. The school had excellent funding and we were able to buy top materials. It was a delight, the brightest light of the BIA. It spilled into my personal life, because I did get involved with the students. At first I resisted painting Indians but I realized I wanted to say some things. And, I\'ve always painted in a biographical context and Indians were now fully a part of my life. I was going out and visiting the Pueblos, attending dances, collecting stuff. After three years or so of doing large abstract banded, horizontal works, in 1967 I turned my attentions to Indians." And did he ever! With works like "Indian With Beer Can," a buffalo dancer holding an ice cream cone, or an arrow-ridden white settler, Scholder blew open the doors of "acceptable" Indian imagery. Gone were the stylized and restrictive portraits of the stoic Indian on a horse, the cliché-bound pictures of the heroic, "noble savage" trapped in the past. He recalls, "News of the work spread like wildfire. I had to have armed guards at the shows! I had challenged and intimidated the non-Native, so-called \'Indian experts\' in Santa Fe, and I had also angered Indian elders and traditionalists who didn\'t know what to do with me. The subject matter was loaded-images that had never been seen. But these weren\'t things I imagined; I saw them." Scholder\'s paradoxical upbringing-of Native heritage but imbued with a global awareness of art and culture, a part of both worlds-meant he alone was in the position to have pulled this off. "An Anglo artist couldn\'t touch these subjects, nor could an Indian artist." The resulting furor launched the New Indian Art Movement, and firmly placed Scholder among the most challenging and interesting of American artists, a standing he has subsequently gone on to extend over and over with numerous series of works in many media. These series include his original Indian paintings: "Mystery Women," "Vampir" (begun after a 1972 tour to Romania, setting off a lifelong fascination with such subject matter), "Mysteries," "Shaman," "Entities," "Monster Love," "Dream Horses," "Arizona," "Mystery Man" (his annual self-portrait begun circa 1987), "Carnival," "Possessions" (in which his painted figures and sculpture first sprouted wings) and "Humans in Nature." The latter coincided with his appointment to the board of ECO, the Los Angelesbased environmental group. The early nineties brought "Apparitions" and "Conjurors," followed by "Borders," then "Man and Dog" and "Woman and Dog," revealing his love of animals, dogs in particular. The latter nineties brought "Martyrs" and "Millennium." Most recently Scholder has returned to the themes of isolation and love in "Alone" and "Not Alone." Heaven and Hell
"There is also such a thing as a \'public persona.\' Today the media rules. I feel that you can\'t give them the real you. My photographs rarely show me smiling. I always think of [Georgia] O\'Keeffe. She once told me, \'Oh, I never smile for a photograph. I don\'t want to look like an idiot.\' Art is tough. It\'s not a career for the weak." If one word might sum up Scholder, it\'s bravery-bravery to stand up as an individual and bare his soul. He concludes, "Throughout my life I have lived out my fantasies and created my own adventures. I knew I did not want to be bored in life, so it started early-climbing up to Transylvanian castles in the moonlight, touring the Egyptian pyramids. I have been very lucky-if that\'s the word-in every area In the past decade I\'ve done a lot of lecturing, and I often stress the importance of attitude and approach."
Daniel Gibson, managing editor, has been writing about Indian issues, individuals, and arts for over 15 years. He is the author of three guidebooks: The American Southwest and New Mexico (both John Muir Publications), and Audubon Guide to National Wildlife Refuges: Southwest (St. Martin\'s Press). 
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| Scholder\'s Books Books are another fascination of Scholder. Among his library of more than 7,000 titles are five Incunables (rare books from the Middle Ages), but more importantly he produces limited-edition books from his own Apocrypha Press. His latest, Thoughts at Night, was released in early 2001. It features short poetic statements matched to 55 original works of art. It is printed on archival paper and is bound in black silk with a slipcover. It is his first digital project, which he transcended by approaching the project it in a 15th century format. Only 100 copies were printed, but this is actually a large edition for Scholder, who usually produces only 26 copies of his books (one for each letter of the alphabet). Other handmade books he\'s produced since acquiring his own letter press and type in 1991 include Esoterica, Cordiale IV: Words and Etchings, Fate Awaits and Eat & Drink. In addition, HarperCollins recently re-released six of author Louise Erdrich\'s books with cover images drawn from Scholder\'s work. | ||||||
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Many consider him dark and obsessed with death, but he\'s actually luminous, jovial and drawn to life like a moth to a flame. His art may be considered wild and extravagant, yet it is done with extreme deliberation, based on knowledge and information. He might be called a recluse, yet he loves people and life. He\'s perceived as a painter, but he has produced a large body of sculpture and works on paper, as well as an amazing selection of handmade books. He has also been called a paradox, and of all the descriptors, this one hits the mark of the ever-moving figure of artist Fritz Scholder.
"There are so many layers. You can\'t deny who you are, and you shouldn\'t-embrace every inch and ounce of your blood. All we own is ourselves," Scholder offers.
Scholder\'s father was often transferred by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and in Pierre, South Dakota, the 16-year-old budding artist had the good fortune to study art with Oscar Howe, a notable Sioux artist of the era. "He was one of the first Indians I got to know closely, on a one-to-one basis," recalls Scholder. But soon the family moved on, with stints in Shawano, Wisconsin; Ashland, Wisconsin; and the University of Wisconsin in Superior. At the latter, Scholder received a full scholarship and began formal art studies, but his father was transferred again-this time to the California State University at Sacramento. At Sacramento City College, Scholder\'s teachers included the acclaimed Wayne Thiebaud, who helped organize Scholder\'s first one-man show in 1958.
"Evil backward spells \'live.\' Evil is not a matter of believing. It\'s a matter of observing-whether it\'s a drive-by shooting or somebody telling you off because they don\'t like the way you look. We all have a dark side. Life has both positive and negative. To deny that is not intellectually feasible. As an individual, I\'ve never cared about what people say or think about me Our society has terrible connotations about skulls and bones as dark and scary, but I find them very beautiful in form and full of positive energy, in the way the Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead. Some people, apparently, see an image that is \'dark\' and they think therefore I must be dark, evil. That\'s absolutely false. I describe myself as a natural optimist. People bring their own frame of reference to viewing art. Their reactions can tell you a lot about them.