Travois is a Certified B Corporation focused exclusively on promoting affordable housing and economic development in Native communities. Since 2017, Travois has opened its Kansas City, Mo., office to host Indigenous artists as part of the city’s First Fridays art events. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Travois First Fridays exhibition series has been changed to a digital experience. The digital format provides an opportunity for audience participation outside of Kansas City. Find more information on the Travois website: travois.com/news-events/first-fridays/.
Join artist Starr Hardridge on Friday, Oct. 2, at 1-2 p.m. (CST), for a live discussion about southeastern contemporary Native pointillism in the time of a pandemic.
Register on Zoom for Starr’s digital artist talk: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SkH916_mRS6cK6oVRLNRkA
Starr Hardridge is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. His works are an assemblage of pointillism and a Southeastern Woodlands beadwork aesthetic. Starr uses bold colors and geometric shapes to create modern works inspired by Muscogee patterns and designs. Through pattern, texture, and dream-like reverie, his work is a sensory journey of candy-coated hues and meticulously executed textures. Even serious contemplative themes are handled with a delicate mix of reverence and whimsy.
"I draw inspiration from all things in nature and I try to make connections from the past to the present with an assemblage of multicolor paint dots,” Starr said. “I use pointillism as a means to express a "beaded surface" in which I narrate relationships and archetypes of the human condition."
Starr received a BFA in illustration and painting from Savannah College of Art and Design. He continued his studies at a one-year residency in Penne D’Agenais France at the Nadai Verdon Atelier of Decorative Arts.
Visit starrhardridge.com for more artist information.