From the second-floor hallway, Natalie Ball’s (Klamath Modoc) intense pastels hold their own against the goldenrod color of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art wall. This tension of color fits the tension in Ball’s work between urgently expressive lines and symbolic references that demand to communicate. Curator Rebecca Dobkins, responsible for every one of the eight Crow’s Shadow Biennials, starts this show with a room of powerful women artists who harness the energy of Indigenous past and present.  

On the right, Ball’s Billy Nat (2023), a ten color lithograph that has been collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art features the historical “Indiansploitation” symbol of the Billy Jack hat. [1] This reexamination is paired with the raw power of Deer Woman’s first Tribal Council email (2023), in which gilt fingernails stab out her inaugural message of “Land Back.” On the left wall, Wendy Red Star’s (Apsáalooke Crow) prints of bishkisché [2] present the artist’s research and family history through alternating prints that formally display and joyfully celebrate the functional form. On the opposite wall, the energy is calmed by Dyani White Hawk’s (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) symmetrical abstractions, the motifs drawn from Lakota quillwork, beadwork, and painting. Finally, as one turns to leave this space, there is a photo of Judith Baumann, the well respected former master printer of Crow’s Shadow, whose collaborations and printmaking have been central to the last three Biennials. A room of powerful energy indeed. 

Created in 2006, the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts (CSIA) Biennial honors the Hallie Ford’s role as archive for the unique prints created at CSIA. The Biennial comes amid what CSIA Interim Executive Director Emma Barnes describes as “changes and challenges” for Crow’s Shadow and what Dobkins describes as a moment of assessment and discernment. [3] Since the last iteration of the Biennial in 2023, these changes have left the organization without a permanent master printer, lead printer, or executive director. At the same time, board membership has shifted, with original and long-time members stepping away or moving to trustee roles. Funding a rural non-profit arts institution, especially now, is daunting.

Barnes acknowledges that the situation is not ideal, while emphasizing that CSIA is leaning into the challenge, reflecting, and moving forward with intention.[4] At the moment, this movement includes assembling an advisory committee to select the next cycle of residencies. Barnes says that this committee, which includes artists, printers, curators, and some members of the Crow’s Shadow staff and board, will recommend invitations to both established and emerging Native American artists. As the organization also searches for a new Director of Printmaking, the choices of the advisory committee carry even more weight, sketching out the organization’s path and the collaborations of the new Director and lead printer. The focus on Indigenous artists reflects CSIA’s stable financial and physical capacity, and what Barnes describes as the “…near endless pool of both emerging and professional Native / Indigenous artists – [with there being] no reason to not prioritize those artists and perspectives. Now more than ever.”[5] Barnes says that while there is still space at Crow’s Shadow for all artists, this “intentional shift” toward prioritizing Indigenous artists mirrors the organization’s mission.

The mission of CSIA, to “provide a creative conduit for educational, social and economic opportunities for Native Americans through artistic development” has remained consistent since its founding in 1992. Numerous artists and supporters speak of Crow’s Shadows importance, including Biennial artist Marwin Begaye (Navajo/Diné) who describes the organization as “paving a path,” five time resident Marie Watt, who refers to CSIA as “a major touchstone,” and co-founder James Lavadour (Walla-Walla), who describes his collaborations at CSIA leading to breakthroughs in his painting practice.[6] Jaune Quick-to-See Smith included eight prints from Crow’s Shadow in her influential exhibition at the National Gallery of Art: The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans (2023). In addition, 16 of the 50 artists included in the National Gallery show were prior Crow’s Shadow residents. 

One of the artists whose Crow’s Shadow print, Columbia River Custodian (2019), Smith included was Marwin Begaye. In May 2018 Begaye didn’t intend to make the three-hour drive from Portland to his residency at Crow’s Shadow. But his flight cancellation gave Begaye the opportunity to see the land – and to “understand why my friends use the colors and subjects [in their art] that they do.”[7] It is the land in all the ways that makes CSIA unique – the scape and the color and the amount of it that lies between the small St. Andrew’s Mission building that houses the print gallery and studio and any metropolitan area. It is to both the land and the people of this land, the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla, that James Lavadour committed himself and Crow’s Shadow. That commitment is also to the challenges of a rural arts institution in which the distance from metropolitan art ecologies compounds the difficulties of funding, staffing, and publicity. 

Seated in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, just west (and a little south) of Pendleton, on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indians Reservation (CTUIR), Crow’s Shadow is the only professional print studio on a US Indian Reservation. The organization still lives in the old mission building where founders Lavadour and Philip Cash Cash had their studios in the 1980s. The main archive of  CSIA prints have been stored at the Hallie Ford Museum since 2010, an arrangement in which Crow’s Shadow maintains ownership. There are works in progress and a permanent collection of prints at Crow’s Shadow, and Begaye describes the twinned importance of the land and the history of previous artists held in the building. After his road trip across the land in 2018, Begaye dove into the library of work from previous Crow’s Shadow residents, learning from those artists and from Master Printer Baumann how a print collaboration could work. During his second residency in 2023, storms passed through the landscape and those clouds became combined with the Navajo textile patterns in the background of Begaye’s prints. 

In the 33 years of its existence, CSIA has pursued its mission in two ways: by becoming an internationally known artist residency and fine art print studio, AND by maintaining traditional arts programming. As the prestige of the Crow’s Shadow Residency and printmaking program has expanded, so have the offerings in traditional arts, now coordinated by Traditional Arts Director Jacy Sohappy (Cayuse/Nez Perce/Yakama) and ranging from workshops on basketry to horse regalia to ribbon shirts. 

Held in the gallery space of Crow’s Shadow the traditional arts programs connect the past and future. They also connect the artist-in-residence with the local community. Dobkins recalls Joey Lavadour teaching a basketry class in a gallery hung with fine art prints. Dyani White Hawk’s Biennial wall text for Adorned (Blue) (2023) points to the inspiration that she felt from the dentalium earring workshop held while she was a Crow’s Shadow resident. 2025 Biennial artist Alx Kujana (Cayuse/Nez Perce) grew up on the CTUIR, a self-described wayward kid who attended as many of the CSIA workshops that he could.[8] At the Biennial, a photo of a teenage Kujana participating in a 2000 workshop led by artist Tim Rollins hangs next to the prints Kujana made at his 2023 CSIA artist residency. SUUSII Series (2023) imagines a Sahaptian translation of modern food, Kujana’s “record breaking” bright colors depicting abstract sushi. In 2024 and 2025, Kujana has come full circle, returning to Crow’s Shadow to lead workshops in digital art. 

As Crow’s Shadow rises to its challenges, expansion of staff, programs, and capacity are all on the to-do list. Interim master printer Alyssa Ebinger is finishing the editions of last year’s artists, while the search is underway for the next Director of Printmaking – a role that Barnes describes as more focused and supported than in the past. Former lead printer Maggie Middleton comes in as a consultant these days, but Crow’s Shadow will soon search for her permanent replacement, and the complement, a new Gallery Director. Residency invitations, currently the work of the advisory committee, will soon be extended, giving an idea of CSIA’s trajectory, at least for the next year. In the meantime, Crow’s Shadow will have a table at the Portland Fine Print Fair in January, and the Biennial remains up at the Hallie Ford Museum through June 2026.

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The other half of the Biennial hangs in the Hallie Ford Print Study Room. Dobkins describes it as a place to “reflect and ponder.” [5] The prints complete the representation of every artist that held a residency in the Biennial time frame. They also represent the diversity of artists and skill of the print studio. Here is co-founder James Lavadour, with Spring 2023 (2024) and Winter 2023 (2024) drawn from the eastern Oregon land. In the table case, rhiannon skye tafoya’s (Cherokee/Santa Clara Pueblo) geometric basket form and Iván Carmona’s Hojas (2024) surround Ka’ila Farrell-Smith’s (Klamath Modoc) Emergent Glyphology (2024) with yellow. In her second residency at Crow’s Shadow, Farrell-Smith places symbols of animals and trees against an abstraction of mountains and sky. On the neighboring wall, the birds of Marwin Begaye perch amongst swirls and patterns. In the last case and corner, Lisa Jarrett’s lithographs of hair, combs, and picks are also cultural symbols, representing hair routines of the African Diaspora. 

In writing this article, I spoke to and corresponded with many people (artists, curators, printmakers, CSIA staff) connected in some way to Crow’s Shadow. There are many more that I didn’t have the opportunity to chat with, certainly not for lack of interest. In several of these conversations, a saying from James Lavadour was repeated to me, in slightly different terms, but with the same meaning: “The intention of Crow’s Shadow is to bring the reservation to the world, and the world to the reservation.” It’s an ambitious and prescient goal, one which can never truly be finished. 33 years in, Crow’s Shadow has established itself as a critical arts institution: on the CTUIR, for rural communities, in Oregon, and within the international fine art print world. It’s a time of transition, of centering, of finding the right people to polish the institution that Marwin Begaye describes as “a diamond.” Good thing that Crow’s Shadow has more work to do, as its innovative journey benefits the artists, the world, and the reservation.

[1] Murtaza Vali, “Natalie Ball at Bortolami,” ArtForum 61 no. 23 (November 2022): 187.
[2] In the colonial period, these rawhide packs were called parfleche, a French term. Red Star uses the Apsáalooke word bishkisché.
[3] Emma Barnes in conversation with the author, October 24, 2025. Rebecca Dobkins in conversation with the author, October 2, 2025.
[4] Emma Barnes in conversation with the author, October 24, 2025.
[5] Emma Barnes, email to the author, November 12, 2025.
[6] Marwin Begaye in conversation with the author, October 14, 2025. Marie Watt in Benjamin Verheijden, “Marie Watt on the Art of Storytelling and Collaboration.” ELEPHANT, April 13, 2024. https://elephant.art/marie-watt-on-the-art-of-storytelling-and-collaboration/. Rebecca Dobkins, “The Magnitude of the Gift,” in James Lavadour: Land of Origin (Museum of Art, University of Oregon, forthcoming 2026).
[7] Marwin Begaye in conversation with the author, October 14, 2025.
[8] Alx Kujana in conversation with the author, October 16, 2025.
[9] Rebecca Dobkins, email to the author, November 10, 2025.