Isa Rodriguez: Hello, welcome to Practice Practice. This is Isa Rodriguez,
Dylan Cale Jones: and my name is Dylan Jones,
Isa Rodriguez: and today we're talking with Marwin Begaye. Marwin, would you like to introduce yourself?
Marwin Begaye: Yes, I would. Uh, Yá’át’ééh (ha) qua á’ásiní. Shí éí Marwin Begaye yinishyé. Deeshchii’nii nishłį́, Tsinaajiinni bashishchiin, Tó tsohnii ee dashicheii, da baa łíishinii ee dashinalí, aa wii taah diné hosteen' nishłį́.
So, I just introduced myself, and I introduced my clans and my relationship to those environments that these clans are from, and also their relationship to cosmology. Within each of those clans, those clans have a characteristic, and they have a responsibility to the community. And that's how we introduce ourselves. So when I'm making, or when I'm thinking about stuff, all of those clans are influencing how I speak and how I relay energy. And then also you know those clans really inform my practice.
A lot of it for me is really tied into ancestral knowledge. And when I'm making , that information helps me to remember where I'm from. It helps me to remember songs. It helps me remember prayers. It reinstills my identity as a Navajo man .
I think that if you look at the Navajo culture through color, through design elements, all of those are a relationship. As Navajo people, we can read those design elements, those lines both negative space and positive space. And those designs help us remember our being and our history.
Isa Rodriguez: Uh-huh, that they're full of information.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. They help us remember these stories because as we grow up as we go through life, we may hear the same story like 250 times. And I can hear it month after month, but I'm extracting something different because I'm getting older and I understand just a little bit more of what that story is.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. So now I'm thinking about it as like maybe a location, right? Introducing yourself in that way, as locating yourself within a network, within time, within space, within place, within relationship to ideas.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. And it's just like dropping a point in the great wide universe. So everything in between at the moment of that pin being dropped. When we say "Yá’át’ééh" it's referring to being in between, right? And "yáh" is a reference to "yáʼąąsh" is the sky or is the universe and "ééh" is a reference to mother earth.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah, I like that. I like that. So next we'd like to hear a little bit about how you experienced creativity growing up.
Marwin Begaye: I get asked this question all the time. When did you know that you were an artist? When I was in my mama's belly. It's always been in the forefront. 'Cause I come from a long line of rug weavers and textile artists and jewelers. I grew up way out in the Navajo reservation and where my parents live there is no cell service and it's awesome. It's awesome that they still live like that, but then they're so far out that they have to get creative to fix things, so they become engineers and inventors, you know, trying to figure it out. That's been a, such a constant in my family. I feel like having that experience really encouraged me to one, to explore, to be very curious about stuff. So I was one of those students who always took stuff apart and got in trouble because I wanted to know how it worked. And then it also reinforced that risk taking. Because there was nothing else. If you are stuck out there, there is nothing else you had to do it.
Isa Rodriguez: You have to try something.
Marwin Begaye: I think what I've also picked up about creativity is the work ethic. It's every day. That's another question that gets asked of me is like, "When do you make time for art?"
I'm like, "Art is every day. You should be eating, you should be sleeping and you should be doing everything about art. You know, that may be extreme, but that's, that's what I think. And because that today is so much a part of what I do. And then, you know, being a brown person trying to make it in the Western world, it's like, I have to work harder. So that just kind of keeps me going.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah, there's, there's an idea that I've been turning over in my head for a couple of years now that's definitely influenced by the work of indigenous philosophers that, creativity, it's not this side thing, right? Creativity is a technology. That's how everyone's ancestors have all survived up until this point Working with what's there to create something, to solve a problem that's today, that's right now, that's about dinner. Creativity is, is essential to our being.
Marwin Begaye: Part of that too is risk taking, right? As artists, I feel like we're constantly taking risks. That's the topic for this week for my students I keep telling them, "You're at a ledge and you could either jump off or you could just be walking around for days, trying to muster up the courage just to jump. And then in the end you haven't done anything, you're just walking around in circles. So just jump! "
Isa Rodriguez: Just jump!
Marwin Begaye: Just take that risk.
Isa Rodriguez: Where I lived as a teenager, there was this cliff and you could climb up it, but you couldn't climb back down and it was over like a body of water, right? So once you climbed up, you had to jump. That was the only way back down.
Marwin Begaye: And so I try to really be curious and take a lot of risk in my practice and that is all coming from observing my elders doing that. Part of that is like that survival as well.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
Dylan Cale Jones: I tell my students a lot, like "What's the worst that's going to happen?" Right? I try to ask them that question when they are hesitant to take risks or be weird or be different or whatever.
Isa Rodriguez: Or start.
Dylan Cale Jones: Or start, right? And then there's also this other aspect, which is "What's the best thing that's going to happen?" in the situations you're talking about, like if a car breaks down, the best thing that's going to happen is I'm going to get my butt out of here and get home! And the worst that's going to happen is actually if they don't do anything!
Marwin Begaye: Yeah, they're, they're on side of the road.
Dylan Cale Jones: Stuck and you're stuck.
Marwin Begaye: People think that there's a light switch for creativity and it's like, "I'm not doing this anymore because it's past five o'clock. So... I'm gonna go home."
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: Right. For me, my mind is over time. If I'm not doing it I'm kind of thinking about it and if I do this then what's my next steps?
Isa Rodriguez: Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with the information, like "Okay, okay... I have to sleep!" Yeah Yeah. And it's like, "No, right now! Work on it right now!"
Marwin Begaye: I can't turn it off. It's amazing that people think that it's just like a light switch, on or off.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. They've been, they've been taught like that!
Marwin Begaye: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's going to change too with social media. And I think that's what we're starting to see as well within how people are thinking creatively. That's my experience watching it throughout the years. How ideas are getting developed, right? Even the size and the shape of images, they're more catered to our phones.
Isa Rodriguez: At the University of Oklahoma, where I teach, we have a really huge print collection there.
It's amazing to see through the years. Like back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the narratives are so complex and the issues that they're talking about are complex. The compositions had a background, foreground, there was detail, and it all surrounded what the narrative was.
And you're talking about the narrative, right? Like to, to find those stories that are important and that are told over and over again. Artwork can be like that too. We're sort of saying the same things over and over again.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah.
And that, and that is also cultural as well. So when I'm teaching, I get a lot of eyebrows raised when I'm like, "Listen to your story! What is your story? What is your family story?" They're like, "I don't know. I'm just from Texas. Leave me alone." How did your family get to Texas?
There's a lot of art that needs to be made about that story. And like, how did your grandparents meet? I'm really interested in that. So some people kind of connect with that. And then some people are just like, "You're crazy"
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. I think a lot of people don't have that information, right? I'm thinking back to when I was in undergrad. At that time, it felt so far away, right? My ancestors felt really far away. And it's like, like, I don't, hear them. So what am I supposed to make art about? And making art about not hearing them was too vulnerable for me. It took years to start to pull that apart a little bit or pull that closer and find the information that I could understand.
Marwin Begaye: I believe that that information kind of comes to you when you're ready for it.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: And then once you get to it, when it's meant to be, the doors just open up. And it's like, "Oh my gosh, like, there it is!"
Isa Rodriguez: I do understand it. Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: Where, where has this information been and, and it's been there all along and waiting for you
Isa Rodriguez: always, it's always been there.
Dylan Cale Jones: Yeah.
So Marwin, what is your practice like? What's your creative practice? What kind of art do you make? How do you make it?
Marwin Begaye: My practice is about printmaking and all of the printmaking processes. The traditional ones to the contemporary ones. Which is a lot of research into understanding chemicals, understanding material.
I've been doing a lot of woodblock that are two foot by four foot and I started going larger. I I started working on 10 foot, 15 foot woodblocks.
Isa Rodriguez: Wow. Okay. How are you printing 'em?
Marwin Begaye: How I'm printing them now is very experimental. I do this collaboration with contemporary dancers and different kind of native dancers, and they dance over the surface of the woodblocks to print it.
Isa Rodriguez: Wow. That's awesome.
Marwin Begaye: And the design element that are within these woodblocks are about the land. Earlier we were talking about dropping that pin . Using the host tribes' design elements. So there sort of a land acknowledgement. And for us, including the music, including the movement... It's not just one part.
Isa Rodriguez: That's not like just the visual information.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. There's the dancing part and there's the singing part.
And I've had, people dance ballet on them. Some modern dancing, some traditional dancing. I am going to do one at First Americans Museum. In the fall, they are hosting a battle of the bands and they've invited a bunch of punk bands. I'm going to create a piece and I'm gonna install it in the mosh pit. So that they can dance on top of it and stomp and do whatever. And then at, at a certain point, after a set, we can reveal it.
And so it's just very experimental in those aspects, but keeping some of those traditional elements of recognizing who our hosts are in the land.
Marwin Begaye: My mindset is to be as prolific as possible. So I'm always cooking up something. And right now I'm figuring out how to do laser cuts, how to use the laser cutter to make movable type. And how to use the different native languages and cut their syllabary, their typeface, or their marks so that they can use a letterpress to print their stuff.
Isa Rodriguez: Okay. Wow.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. Yeah. And it's a way to reinforce language. And and in the summers I teach at different art camps. And so I've tried this with, different native kids. Trying to figure out what their language is and using the laser cutter to make these words or to make their alphabet. I give them a dictionary. from their native language. And they have to print like 20 of these every day and it has to be a positive word.
Isa Rodriguez: Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: And so I show them. This is how you put the letters together. This is how you put the ink on. This is how you, you roll it through. Every day I want you to do a positive word.
Isa Rodriguez: So then they're like really spending time with that word, right? Like it gives a lot of space to really bring meaning to the word for themselves.
Marwin Begaye: And these words cannot be repeated. If somebody else prints one, you cannot use that same word. You have to find a different word.
Isa Rodriguez: Okay.
Marwin Begaye: And so we would go to lunch. It was about a quarter mile walk and we would take all the extras of the words. We would take the long way around and we would put these words around campus. So that people would associate who their hosts are.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. So they see them.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Isa Rodriguez: And that they're in their space. Yeah. The words are in their space. Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: And so these kids really got into it. They were putting them in little slits on the cars because everyone leaves their windows kind of down during the summer here because it's so hot. They were sticking their hands in the vending machines and taping it inside the window and they were just like putting them everywhere. They were putting them in trees. And by the end of the camp, we didn't know this, but we had a whole following throughout campus. And then we didn't know that people were fighting over, like who saw them first.
And so in, in the end I showed them how to do some bookbinding techniques to bind all of the words together to make a book.
Isa Rodriguez: Wow.
Marwin Begaye: And they got to take those home.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: And we, we made one for for the tribe as well. This is for your library. Just put it in, just have it there.
Yeah. And, and so the kids really got in, into that. To watch these kids put down their phones and to see them laying down on the ground, going through the dictionary and they were like, "Okay, how do you say ice cream? You take milk and hard or frozen, put those two together. How does that work?"
And just to see that, I was like, "Ah, this is a really great project!"
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. That's fantastic.
Dylan Cale Jones: I love the aspect too, of them putting the words around. Cause that's giving them a sense of agency and creativity with the space that they're in.
Yeah. Right. Which is another thing that is. Denied to native people and also denied to kids.
Marwin Begaye: It's part of that reclaiming that space.
Dylan Cale Jones: That's so cool.
Marwin Begaye: And so then that next year I came back, they were ready.
Isa Rodriguez: Like we have a plan.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. These are the words that I've been thinking about.
Isa Rodriguez: That's wonderful. That's wonderful.
Yeah. Wow.
Marwin Begaye: And to us, the letter press is so old, but for them it's something so new. It's, it's quite awesome.
Dylan Cale Jones: It sounds really joyful.
Marwin Begaye: And so I'm doing a live printing project using the letter press at the Sam Noble, down in Norman. They host a native youth language conference.
Isa Rodriguez: Okay.
Marwin Begaye: And so I'm going to bring some of my students to that. And then also to really get them involved in community, like they should give back to their community. They should give back to a community instead of just constantly taking. So there's lessons to be had all around.
Isa Rodriguez: It sounds really generative, right? Like there's layers and layers of connection and information and learning that's happening. Wow, I'm blown away.
Marwin Begaye: And after teaching a class like that or a workshop like that, I'm going! I'm like out, out, out, go, go home. Cause my, my creativity is like, I've learned so much! So you know, that's, that's the part that, that I love about, about what I do in my practice.
Um, and then I've been starting to work on some mixed media pieces. And so that's the way I've been wanting to plan my sabbatical, which starts in May.
Isa Rodriguez: Congratulations. Thanks.
Marwin Begaye: And to develop these mixed media pieces that are print based using rug designs and elements from the Navajo culture. And then also using birds, right. And just be a little bit more intuitive about it. Responding to the layers and the colors as I'm putting them down. And a lot of that is channeling my painterly side. I'm really excited about this new body of work. I'm researching birds in the area and design elements and bringing it all together and to, to make it a little bit more abstract so, that's what I'm working on now. Shoot. It's just a lot that I'm doing!
Isa Rodriguez: It sounds like you have a lot of ideas!
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. It's like, Oh, I have this idea and I need to do it. I don't know why I need to do it, but I need to do it. And then it's just kind of making it happen.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. How do you, how do you choose? Say you have a lot of ideas all at once. How do you choose?
Marwin Begaye: I just make them all. I don't, I don't choose. I just try to make it happen. And sometimes they are all related.
Isa Rodriguez: Sure.
Marwin Begaye: Some of the ideas are just a little bit more deeper in thought. Some of them are a little bit more, more surface.
Dylan Cale Jones: Cool. So we, we've talked a little bit about this at the beginning of like your art practice and how it relates to the rest of your life. And you've kind of told us that, from what it sounds like, it is your life, it encompasses everything. So I'm curious about what these other aspects of your life are and how you balance it all. How do you continue to feel rested or keep that energy going and sustain that practice?
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. How do things fit together?
Marwin Begaye: For right now it's just, you know, I sleep when I, when I get tired. And a lot of it is diet, you know, staying away from processed foods. I have to think about that. I have to think about that balance.
It's important because you need that energy and you use a lot of energy as I'm finding out. Whether I'm sitting there thinking about something or actually physically doing it . It's really important to get sleep and it's really important to eat correctly.
Isa Rodriguez: Scientists are figuring out that it takes a ton of energy just to think, right? Like for our brains to go, it takes a ton of calories. Yeah. Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: No, it's true. I can feel it. The idea of family as well, you know, spending time with my kids and being there.
There's a phrase within the Navajo culture that, that I always come back to. It's a phrase called, Sa’ah naaghai bek’eh hozho and that word is it's both female and male. Because we believe that everyone has that in them. They have a little bit of male and they have a little bit of female in them. Then that creates balance. The literal translation of that Sa’ah naaghai bek’eh hozho is forever living. And people I have translated that idea into walking beauty, but in reality, it's like balancing everything. All of those things that make you feel good reinstill who you are and makes you live longer, right? You have to keep that balance.
Isa Rodriguez: Well and that's also creative, right? Like the balancing takes creativity.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. And, and if you work too much it just throws you off balance and then your decision making becomes unbalanced and, and then you could see that conversation, that conversation that you're having with the piece becomes unbalanced.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: So I think that every aspect of that is important. And so the older I get, I'm like, shoot, I got to go to sleep. Like at some point. But when I was younger, I was, I was like to the wall all the time. Like, go, go, go. Like, I don't care if I don't sleep.
Dylan Cale Jones: So when do you think that started changing for you?
Marwin Begaye: Probably within the last 15 years.
Dylan Cale Jones: Okay. And is it something that you started doing intuitively? Or did you, do you have like strategies for those things? Isa and I, for example, if we know that we're going to have a really busy week, we will schedule rest into our calendars. After and often before we are doing things that we know are going to take a lot of energy.
Isa Rodriguez: Because I need to reserve a little bit of my energy to be present here, and then I also, um, Need to make sure I don't have something else afterwards because I am going to need the space to not process. Yeah, yeah, to like work through it all. Yeah, I don't want to jump to the next thing.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah, I've recently become that way as well. It's like if I go and teach a workshop, I'm going to take a couple of days to for my body to, to, to recoup and so that I can process the information that was exchanged.
Isa Rodriguez: So you said you're about to go on a break from teaching, right? This may. How does that change how you balance things, change your routine, change what you work on?
Marwin Begaye: For one, I can wake up later.
Dylan Cale Jones: Whenever you want.
Isa Rodriguez: Do you go to bed later too?
Marwin Begaye: Maybe. And then I think that it's going to be different. Like everything's going to be different. I've already reached full professor. Then now what? Right.
Isa Rodriguez: Uh huh. Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: There's commitments that I've made for exhibitions and for me, all of that, it's just automatic. And then being out in the community as well, and really helping people see what their potential is as well. Because when you teach there's a lot that you have to give up. You know, I'm going to try to do a little bit of traveling, a little bit of hosting people. A friend of mine from New Zealand is going to be in the States. And so, you know, just things like that, that you never get a chance to do or stuff that you have to turn away...
Isa Rodriguez: because of the academic calendar.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm looking forward to that.
Isa Rodriguez: You're gonna be rolling. What you said also made me think about visiting. Like, I think visiting is a really particular energy, right? Like, there's like a really specific sort of creativity that happens when we travel to visit, being a guest or receiving and being a host.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. Yeah.
Dylan Cale Jones: For me, it creates a lot of awareness around who I am. When I'm visiting people who I know and haven't seen for a long time how I've changed and also like picking up on the ways that they have changed.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. Yeah. I do believe that traveling And visiting and being in those spaces really opens you up and it really, and it changes your art
Isa Rodriguez: For sure.
Marwin Begaye: It changes your practice. And so I always encourage students to travel because it does make a difference. And you are informed by that travel and you are informed by those conversations.
Isa Rodriguez: And when I'm traveling, I actually have the attention to receive that information.
I can hear it more clearly like, Oh, okay. So this is what this person is saying. And like, it just changes my whole worldview, you know, just like one little conversation just like opens, opens everything up.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. I think that's really beautiful. When, when that happens. And I do think that that's really important to make time to do that because it makes you think a little bit different and, and it kind of opens up some part of your brain that later on, when you get back to art making that,
Isa Rodriguez: It like really, really nurtures something.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah, yeah. And so in April I'm going to the Venice Biennale.
Isa Rodriguez: Oh!
Marwin Begaye: As a spectator.
Isa Rodriguez: Cool. Yeah. So very cool.
Marwin Begaye: And, spending a week there and seeing what it's about. They just opened up a pavilion with all indigenous artists from around the world. And some of my friends from New Zealand are in that pavilion.
Isa Rodriguez: Awesome.
Dylan Cale Jones: That's exciting.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. And then also they're having Jeffrey Gibson, who's going to be representing the U.S. He's Choctaw and he's from Oklahoma. We're there to support him and also the curator who is Kathleen Ash Milby. She's the curator at the Portland art museum. We've been really good friends with her. So we're gonna support the both of them. I think if I can afford it, then why not do it? Right.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah, go for it!
Marwin Begaye: And be there as, as, as support. Who knows, you know?
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. And comes back to what we were talking about earlier. If you can do it, try it! Yeah. Jump!
So our last couple of questions are to ask you if you have any advice for your past self that you needed to hear when you were younger.
Marwin Begaye: What would I tell my younger self?
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: Work harder!
Take more risks! Now that I see what's expected, I feel like my past self was so, so conservative... Conservative with ideas and conservative with materials. And just Take more risks!
Isa Rodriguez: yeah.
Marwin Begaye: Go talk a lot more shit,
And the reason why I'm saying talk more, talk more crap is that it's like, it's one of the reasons why I got some, some solo exhibitions. Because I was like, " I can do this. I can do it. Yeah. Yeah" and then they were like, "Okay,
Isa Rodriguez: Do it! Here's your chance!"
Dylan Cale Jones: So like, talk yourself up?
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. Here are the dates. I'm like, Oh no. So I think because of that, because of me kind of talking that it gave them the confidence to give me that exhibition. And now that I see how people do that, right, on an international level, you have to have some confidence within yourself and what you do.
Isa Rodriguez: Sure.
Marwin Begaye: Right. And that exposure, you know, really does that to you. I want to have that presence.
Isa Rodriguez: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's coming back then to like the, like locating yourself. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah. And I think a lot of that is confidence and that is like a whole new territory for me.
Isa Rodriguez: Sure. Yeah. And one way to build confidence is to take risks, right? Take risks and then when things, you know, happen, it's like, oh, I did that. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Dylan Cale Jones: I got through it.
Isa Rodriguez: I got through that. I can do anything.
Marwin Begaye: I lived. I jumped off the cliff and I lived!
Isa Rodriguez: That's great advice. Yeah, yeah.
Marwin Begaye: Yeah.
Dylan Cale Jones: Do you have any advice for yourself in the future?
Marwin Begaye: Ooh, the same advice. Yeah. Yeah. More risks, more risks, more risks., Just keep applying!
Dylan Cale Jones: Well, it's been great talking to you, Marwin.
Marwin Begaye: Thank you for inviting me. Thank you. It's been an honor to share some of these stories with you. And thank you for having this space for artists to do this.
Isa Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you. This has been great.
Marwin Begaye: Thank you.
Dylan Cale Jones: Practice Practice is created by Isa Rodriguez and Dylan Cale Jones. The music you heard in this episode is by Kate Jarboe.
Isa Rodriguez: This season of Practice Practice is funded by a Thrive Grant from the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition and the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Dylan Cale Jones: Thrive Grants fund community-driven, artist-led projects across the state of Oklahoma. Learn more and apply at ovac-ok.org
Marwin Begaye: My name is Marwin Begay and you're listening to Practice Practice.