After looking at the work of sculptor Bob Haozous at Four Winds Gallery in Shadyside, one can't help but ask a lot of questions.
They arise particularly around the piece "Two World Indian," which is half of a large Native American head, complete with headdress, carved in stone, on the blank side of which is attached a steel hook.
But that's the point, Haozous says.
"It's to inspire the question, 'What is a contemporary Indian?' That's been my driving goal for many, many years -- to help Indian people redefine themselves as contemporary people, but still maintain their traditional values. The environmental and ecological values that made us so special in this world."
Haozous (pronounced HOW-suss) is the son of Allan Houser (1914-94), who is widely recognized as one of the most influential and respected American-Indian artists of the 20th century.
Like his father, who is credited with reviving the art of stone sculpture in the United States, Haozous also works in stone for the purpose of bringing attention to the legacy of his people.
Now the work of both father and son can be seen in two complementary exhibitions that have recently opened here in Pittsburgh -- one at Four Winds Gallery and the other at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
The former features the work of both artists as well as a few works in bronze by another of Houser's five sons, Phillip. The latter, a solo showing of works by Houser on display in the museum's Special Exhibitions Gallery, features a wide range of the elder artist's bronzes, a stone carving and several original drawings on loan from the Allan Houser Foundation and a private local collector. Together, both exhibitions reveal not only the legacy of a family but also the legacy of a people.
A Chiracahua Apache, the elder Houser was born Allan Haozous in 1914 on his parents' small government-grant farm in Oklahoma. Houser's father, Sam Haozous, was the grandson of chief Mangas Coloradas, who served as Geronimo's translator during the 27-year imprisonment that followed the Chiricahuas' historic surrender to the U.S. government in 1886. The Chiricahuas were freed in 1913, and a year later, Allan was the first of the freed Chiricahuas to be born.
As a child, Houser made drawings based on the traditional songs sung to him by his mother and the tribal stories told to him by his father. He began his formal art training when he entered The Studio, established by Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School, but soon abandoned the traditional style Dunn espoused and left to develop his own style, which had a more modernistic approach to art making.
In the late 1930s, he opened a small studio of his own in Santa Fe with Navajo painter Gerald Nailor and began exhibiting his paintings in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
In 1948, Houser completed "Comrade in Mourning." A large-scale marble carving, it was commissioned by the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kan., as a memorial sculpture honoring the American-Indian students from Haskell who had died in World War II. This was his first major sculpture commission, and many more soon followed.
Also an art instructor, Houser later taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe from 1962, when it was founded, to 1975, when he retired as the head of the sculpture department to devote himself full time to his own work.
"My father was a teacher, and he hated people who copied," Bob Haozous says. "He always believed that you do who you are. Even if it's historically inspired."
That's why, among the works on view, visitors will be able to trace the thematic development of Allan Houser's portrayal of the Chiricahua Apache Mountain Spirit Dancer from several original drawings to nine bronzes that range from early, smaller-scale realistic works to the late, monumental "Abstract Crown Dancer I."
Most dramatic is "Spirit of the Mountains," a larger-than-life painted bronze he created in 1994 to which five wall-mounted steel silhouettes of Ga'an dancers from 1991 serve as backdrop.
Dominating the installation is a spectacular monumental version of "Spirit of the Wind" from 1992, which is a soaring abstract work that resembles a whirlwind in the dessert.
Although this latter, completely abstract piece might seem different than all the rest, Bob Haozous says visitors should not be perplexed by such stylistic differences contained in his father's work.
"Once you know the full range of his work and how he developed as an artist -- and his later years turning to abstraction -- you realize that that piece is more representative of his thought process than the representational pieces," Haozous says.
Hoazous says that if there is one thing he learned from his father, it was to be original. "He just wasn't impressed unless you did your own thing," Hoazous says. "He always said to do what you want to do, not what other people think you should do."
'The Sculptures of Allan Houser'
When: Through Aug. 15. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; noon to 5 p.m. Sundays
Admission: $10; $7 for senior citizens; $6 for children ages 3 to 18 and full-time students with ID; free for members and children younger than 3
Where: Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland
Details: (412) 622-3131
'Sculptures by Allan Houser, Bob Haozous and Phillip Haozous'
When: Through Aug. 31. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays; until 9 p.m. Wednesdays
Where: Four Winds Gallery, 5512 Walnut St., Shadyside
Details: (412) 682-5092
