Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation Endowed Fund for Excellence... and OPB members and viewers like you.

Funding for arts and culture coverage is provided by... [ ♪♪♪ ] I really enjoy the woods.

Just being out there and looking at the animals, the rocks, the plants.

And the smells and just walking and walking, it's just a sense of calmness for me.

I'm really fascinated with Sasquatch.

Just hearing different stories, different things from elders.

A lot of it was just being respectful when you go into the woods, in that, you know, you're going into this space that isn't our home, knowing that there's other entities out there that we need to be respectful for, because they're watching us.

So going out there with a good heart.

My name is Charlene Moody, and my Indian name is Sunnit.

I live in Simnasho, which is in Warm Springs, on the reservation.

I'm an artist.

I'm part of the show at the High Desert Museum titled "Sensing Sasquatch."

Well... just going to wait for that to get going for a bit.

The show is about the different interpretation of Native artists and what their ideas and beliefs are of Bigfoot, or Sasquatch.

All these different ideas were popping up in my head, so I drew up a sketch and then had the idea of incorporating buffalo hide because of the big, thick texture that this animal has on its body and being similar to what is described as what Sasquatch has.

Right here is where the tuft is on the hump of the buffalo.

When you look at it, it's a little darker and thicker, and it kind of goes lighter away from it.

I got it from the Yakama Nation.

They have a herd there.

So when I first got it home, the fur is really dirty, you know, because buffalos are pretty dirty creatures, rolling around, doing buffalo things.

Dirty.

I scrubbed it for pretty much a full day of just repeating cleaning, washing it.

Just the size of it, and appreciating, you know, how big this creature was.

And like, "Wow, I'm actually able to do this."

The reason I'm smoking it with juniper and cedar root is I really like the smell.

They're both medicinal to our people, and so making sure I'm just putting that good medicine into this artwork.

So I'm an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, but I'm also Yakama, Modoc, Miwok, and Paiute-- Southern Paiute.

I just want to make sure I'm respectful to those different tribes that I represent in this one art piece.

I'm raking out the fur so that way, making sure that smoke and that smell gets in all the little fibers of it.

My impression or interpretation of Sasquatch is from a personal experience that I've had while out in the woods.

It's more or less like a sense versus, you know, like physically describing it.

It's just... it's hard to explain.

It's kind of like that, "Oh!"

You know, something that hits you to the core.

One time, huckleberry picking, I was looking down at this bush because it was just loaded with huckleberries, and what I thought was my mom was-- it was standing right there, but for some reason, something inside of me told me not to look up.

And I was talking to it and just picking, and she wasn't responding, but I could see it right there.

And it just kind of, like, walked back into the trees.

And I was like, "Mom?

Mom!"

And I started yelling, and I could just hear her way down there, "What?"

Then that sense of like... [ gasps ] And then we heard that... [ imitates heavy footsteps ] And then we all stopped and kind of listened, and I was like, "Let's get out of here."

And we got in the van and left and found somewhere else to go.

So I'm painting... it's like a silhouette of Bigfoot, or Sasquatch.

And with the forest and showing the image of the mountain.

The face in the sky kind of always watching over these-- this area, which, you know, a lot of our sacred foods come from our water, and kind of protecting that.

And then, of course, the little family sharing around a campfire.

Maybe they're sharing stories of this being that's out there and it's protecting this land.

I feel calm.

I just get into the zone, and it's just my little... my little calm place.

That traditional teaching of working on it when you have that good spirit, I think that's why I'm calm, because I wait until I have that good energy.

[ ♪♪♪ ] My mural, it's based off of our basket-weaving designs.

If you look at a cedar basket, it's kind of like blocks, the way you twist it line after line, and so that's what I based off the landscape of similar to what you would see on a basket.

But also incorporating those big, bright colors on it and kind of giving that modern twist to it.

I'm excited to see it up and everything, but I'm also going to be a nervous wreck, because I'll be like, "Oh, no, what are people going to think?"

It's-- it's a mixture of everything.

I'll be relieved that it's done.

[ chuckles ] [ people chattering indistinctly ] MAN: The title of this exhibit is called "Sensing Sasquatch."

It's an artistic endeavor to kind of capture the imagination surrounding this... this being.

MOODY: With the fur facing towards you as you walk up to it, almost going to be like a silhouette of something to what I've seen.

CASH: It's really exciting because many of the artists do have some kind of experience and knowledge to draw upon when depicting or giving creativity to the idea of Sasquatch.

MOODY: All of our tribes have different stories and teachings of it, and so also interesting getting the interpretations from the different artists from different areas.

[ ♪♪♪ ] CASH: Rarely outside the community does this idea get expressed, so we're getting a first-hand glimpse of what the artists bring to this idea.

WOMAN: Can you touch it?

Yeah, it's meant to be interactive.

MOODY: I do want people to touch it, and then when you're that close, you should be able to smell it.

And so being able to be like... [ sniffs ] "Oh, what is that?

It might be cedar, it might be juniper, might be Doug, who knows?

Or sage."

Sasquatch is kind of looking into the sunset, but when you come here, looking this way, then you get to see a little story of my childhood and everything, being out in the woods.

WOMAN: What kind of hide is it?

MOODY: Buffalo.

Yeah.

Buffalo?

Okay.

Hopefully this will spark a little interest on people educating themselves on the Native peoples of the areas they live, understanding their tribes and their treaties and... You know about Sasquatch, also learn about the tribes here in Oregon.

Very cool.

Are you explaining all this?

I was, yes.

When people approach my work, I want them to have an experience that comes from within, like their heart.

WOMAN: It's wonderful.

I love it.

Thank you.

For me, it's not necessarily, like, knowing exactly what Sasquatch is, but understanding that, hey, this creature, this being is from the forest.

And so when you do go to the forest, you need to be respectful.

And so that's what I kind of hope comes from this.

[ shutter clicking ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ shutter clicking ] What I'm interested in mostly about these places is the once-lived-in nature of them and how they have a semblance of familiarity to them... but they've been stripped of that by time and decay.

It's like a quick flash, and then it all went away.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I shoot mostly in the Pacific Northwest, primarily Oregon.

I tend to seek out isolation and a remote nature to places: the high plains and farmland.

I guess the more remote, the better.

[ birds chirping ] So there's one house that's in central Oregon on the Columbia Plateau that's completely surrounded by rolling hills and just grassland.

I like that one because it's somewhat ornate.

Someone put effort into that craftsmanship of it in order to make it feel special.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I will be successful taking the photograph if the person feels the same uncanny, strange, hard-to describe feeling that I am feeling when I'm in the moment.

Most of the houses that I've been to in Oregon that are east of the Cascade Mountain Range, they all have signs that they were abandoned in, like, the '60s and '70s: the laminate, the wallpaper.

They were the last remaining people to continue farming, and it just didn't really pan out.

You can uncover only so much about someone's life and someone's story, and the rest you kind of have to just make up in your mind.

I think that I've always been interested in them because it's what I grew up in.

I grew up in Myrtle Creek, Oregon.

I was raised on a farm that had pigs and cows and chickens.

So this is me in 2004.

I was in fourth grade, and this was my first pig that I raised at fair.

It was a very isolated logging community.

By the '90s, as the lumber industry collapsed, the town itself also faced a lot of economic hardship.

It's a unique experience to live in a place that was kind of in a downturn.

I do enjoy leaving things up for interpretation.

I never tell the full story intentionally because I want the viewer to construct something on their own.

I think that that's something that I've always been intrigued by.

You can tell such a powerful story with so little context.

And I hope it inspires curiosity in what else is out there.

I do wonder how long I will be able to continue to do this.

There's a finite nature to the subject matter.

Just within the time period that I've been shooting, there have been, like, hundreds of houses that I've photographed, hundreds of places have been completely bulldozed.

I talk to older people that live out in these areas, and they always say, like, "Oh, back in the '80s and '90s, there were, like, dozens more, and they just were lost to natural disasters."

[ ♪♪♪ ] And so the few that are left do feel kind of like these shrines almost.

They feel, like, representative of a memory of something that no longer exists.

If I'm the last person to appreciate it, even in the state that it's in, it feels like I'm paying respect to it or respect to the experience.

These places are really special to me, and that'll keep me coming back.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I always drew a lot.

You know, when you're that kid, you're like, "Oh, well, Liza can draw."

I just was like, "Oh, I draw."

My name's Liza Mana Burns, and I'm an illustrator and a muralist.

The art I did as a kid and the art I did even in college and as a teenager, it was all storytelling.

Like, I would draw characters, I would draw out scenes from books, and I would draw cartoons, graphic novels like "Fables" or like Graeme Base, you know, his illustrations are so packed full.

It's really dense, and you can spend a lot of time looking at it and the story gets clearer the more you look at it.

[ ♪♪♪ ] So that's what I want people to do.

If you drive by it, it looks cool, but if you are walking by it and you have the time to find the story in that... Garter snakes are everywhere.

I just have so much fun doing that, so that's what I want other people to do.

It's fun!

It's a treat.

So I grew up here.

I moved away when I was 18 to go to Boston University for college, and then moved back here in 2013 to get my associate's in graphic design.

Graphic design is a more formal communication to me, so it's like there's a thing I need them to do, like buy something or understand something.

But then right before the pandemic and right before I had my first kid, I launched freelance.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I was trying to do more of the stuff I loved and less of the graphic design.

Even though I like it, it's just not my passion.

And illustration, it's pure storytelling to me.

I can tell sort of a wilder story, I can tell something more magical.

I can take my time.

My work is really like a love letter to Oregon, a lot of it is.

It's for Oregonians and people that live here and have been here for a while and know this place.

You know the camping spots-- "I recognize that, I did that as a kid.

I recognize that building."

I love it when people feel some kind of ownership over my work.

Take some of this...

Very scientific way of picking colors.

[ chuckles ] Just sort of finger painting.

Eh, that's pretty good.

I'm using the iPad just to sort of give myself a reminder of where things are and, like, what I want to paint.

This is the background layer that all the pen work will sit on top of, so just want, like, color and texture and coverage, and that's all I really need from the base layer.

[ ♪♪♪ ] It's a piece for a tech company in Portland.

I asked the owner who commissioned me, I said, "Can you go out to your rank and file and ask them to send you images that were meaningful for them?"

Ask and you shall receive.

When you ask tech nerds to send you images, they send you everything.

I got sent lines of code, a super-wide range of stuff, which is so much fun.

There's a lot in Eugene.

I kind of get surprised when I'm driving around.

I'll get to be like, "Oh, that's me and that's me.

And I designed that, and that's me," which is fun.

The Kiva has a lot of my art.

I think I came up with the idea of, like, "Ooh, it's like a big bounty of things just exploding out of a bag."

It turned out so well.

I loved these!

[ ♪♪♪ ] For the Oregon Cultural Trust "Celebrate Oregon" piece, they did like an open call, like a call for artists, and so I submitted and got the job, and it was life-changing.

It started out as like just, "Hey, design the license plate."

But because my work is what it is, like, it's crazy detailed and there's lots of little small parts, I think a lot of people that saw it were like, "Wouldn't that be cool if it was big?"

You know, and I was like, "Yes, you should hire me to paint it big."

MAN [ over PA ]: Attention, Southwest passengers traveling on flight 1794 with service to... WOMAN: Tapestry with all of these symbols that depict all the different kinds of arts and heritage.

In a 127 symbols, I have to tell you, every time somebody views this artwork, they find a symbol that they feel a connection with.

It not only tells the story of Oregon but it tells the story of Oregonians.

BURNS: They made it a float at the Rose Parade in Portland, so I got to go see my art made out of flowers, and then I got to ride on it in the parade.

It was the coolest, weirdest experience.

I've gotten a lot of "pinch myself" moments out of this, and it's-- it's just like really fun.

[ child exclaims ] Hey, you want to come say hi?

Hi.

[ Burns chortles ] The nice thing about being a freelance artist, this is one of the biggest nice things, is that I get to be home with my kids and I get to-- you know, I'm not working 9 to 5.

But it also means that I've turned down jobs because they would either take me away from home for too long or they would just take up too much time and I couldn't commit.

And I'm really lucky.

I have tons of support.

Thank you.

That's good sharing.

Good job.

The idea that you could have a full-time artistic career and be a parent who's there for your kids, that's a really hard needle to thread.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, honey.

You know, you, just... your style...

Thank you.

You've got this style... [ ♪♪♪ ] BURNS: The show is called "You and Me."

And it started as, like, a fun little thing for my husband.

I realized that we had this kind of like shared memory bank.

It's a little embarrassing because it's very revealing.

It's pretty intimate, but it's a story, and I like sharing that.

MAN: It's been great to realize her dream to have it in here, mine to be able to support her and her artistry, and then to see the collection that she actually put on exhibition, a real life story.

And you're engaged in glimpses, moments that she's been able to portray.

It's a very touching thing to really capture the essence and the emotion within a moment.

BURNS: I'm hoping they find their own thing in it.

Like, "Oh, I remember that when I was in the hospital with my kid."

That it feels like it speaks to them or they recognize it and find themselves in it.

I love that.

It makes me feel good.

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H for Henry, and you did a T for Tommy?

You did pretty cool.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Lots of happy accidents when you're working with paint.

[ shutter clicking ] Mm, you guys are all loved.

Oh!

Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation Endowed Fund for Excellence... and OPB members and viewers like you.

Funding for arts and culture coverage is provided by...