The Painted Tipi

I am continuing my series based on books concerning Native Americans, by depicting a Tipi and adding an abstract design based on the tipi form. I have based this piece on illustrations  of tipis in the book “The North American Indian: the complete portfolios“, by Edward S. Curtis, though I have deviated slightly from my previous work in the series by adding a more modern abstract element.

My work is based on painted tipis in a camp of the Piegan tribe.  Often the tipis are symbolically painted, and in this case the painting is imitative of a tipi seen by the owner in a vision. Because the illustrations in the book are all sepia photographs there are no clues as to the colours used, so in this case I have used a little artistic license and have used colours which I thought may work.

The tipi is made from a fairly rough canvas painted in acrylic, following the pattern in the book’s illustration, and I have included couched threads underneath the tent and extending beyond it, to represent the wooden poles that form its structure. I have purposely left the main tent unquilted, so that it stands out from the heavily stitched background. I have created an abstract background based on the tipi form. For this I have used triangles of transfer printed sheer fabric in a fairly random order and overlapping in some cases, to create the feeling of a large number of tipis, that may haver been in the same campgrounds for many years past. I further overworked the background by adding triangles of straight stitches to form the quilting, to give a further ‘ghostly’ echo of previous tipis.

Detail view: