Many people have a fascination with science fiction, whether it be ghosts, aliens or a large, hairy man with an astronomical shoe size. What once might have been considered an odd hobby has now propelled itself into the zeitgeist of popular culture with no shortage of content. The paranormal phenomenon is nothing new to Caddo potter Chase Kahwinhut Earles. He grew up hearing ancestral stories passed down, lighting a match to his love of sci-fi and Indigenous futurism that now manifests in his work.
Growing up mostly in Oklahoma City, Earles knew he was an artist from an early age. He went to Savannah College of Art and Design and got into a 20-year career in web design but was restless to find a new outlet for his art. He was inspired by Southwest pottery and started making pots modeled after that style, quickly feeling like something wasn’t right. That style wasn’t his to create, and he knew he needed to look within his own culture and found that the Caddo Nation has one of the biggest pottery traditions in America. “But nobody knows,” he says. “That’s what triggered my purpose as an artist.”
Ancient Ancestors: Food Sovereignty, left, and Nah-ka-kah-hi-yoo: Disc Above.
Nah-ka-kah-hi-yoo: Disc Above, traditional hand-dug clay Red River, mussel shell temper, pit-fired, etched post firing, 8 x 10”
Earles says, “The new show Ancient Aliens likes to depict over and over again that the genius of ancient ‘Americas’ culture, architecture, earthworks and art surely could not have been imagined, designed and built by the thousands of Indigenous cultures that lived here.” Chase flips the script on the paranormal series with his new show, Ancient Ancestors, opening at King Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this June.
He connects the paranormal to Caddo culture with the main idea that it was their culture before it was made into pop culture. Each modern piece is coupled with a traditional Caddo style showing how they are not so different. The shape of a flying saucer reflects the more ancestral shape and style of a Caddo pot, and The Hairy Man Effigy echoes the customary human-shaped bottle. Another piece illustrates Native figures providing corn to a sky person aboard his ship, representing the passing of knowledge from the Caddo people to the alien and not the other way around.
Hay-aa’-bee-yun: The Hairy Man Effigy Bottle, hand-dug traditional clay from central Oklahoma, Mussel shell temper, pit-fired the old way, 14”
Ancient Ancestors: Food Sovereignty, hand-dug white clay from Texas, crushed rock temper, pit-fired the old way, etched after firing, 7 x 9”
“Maybe they were impressed by our works and visited us. Maybe in our sovereignty we even supplied them with ideas, art, goods or services,” the artist says. “We were the Ancient Ancestors.”
Ancient Ancestors opens June 3 and runs through June 24.
King Galleries
June 3-24, 2023
130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite D, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (480) 440-3912, www.kinggalleries.com
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