On Topic: Season Two, Episode One

On Topic is a platform exploring the complex and lucid cultural conversations that represent the DNA of MCAD. If you like this episode, you can explore events, writings, and more episodes. 

Mike Medicine Horse is a 2000 graduate of MCAD in computer animation and animation. He was the recipient of the John Garrigan scholarship.

He is a Crow Indian from Montana who moved to the Twin Cities to attend MCAD. Mike is currently Lead 3D Technical Artist at Target. Has also worked as a medical animator and a media artist for e-learning applications.

Jonathan Herrera Soto is a 2017 graduate of MCAD and a print based studio artist, who approaches printmaking as an act of love through the gesture of translation. He visually articulates relationships between collective memory and historical instances of state-sponsored violence inflicted on politicized bodies by constructing print-based work that echo the lived experiences of those who are no longer with us.

Full Transcript: 

Note: On Topic is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Sanjit: It was a pleasure to speak with Jonathan and Mike and get their insights, which are so relevant to the reality we occupy now. I want to welcome my two guests today, Jonathan Herrera Soto and Mike Medicine Horse. Both fantastic creative cultural leaders. And I'm so excited to be part of this podcast series. So welcome the two of you.

Jonathan: Thanks for having us.

Sanjit: First and foremost, I'll just, I'll introduce my two guests a little bit and know that we'll get to know them more through this conversation as we start to talk both about their really rich backgrounds and narrative, but also about their thoughts about issues regarding creative and cultural leadership, as well as equity and what they've been learning from the past 18 and 20 months.

So first Mike Medicine Horse is a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design from the class of 2000. He's a computer animator, he's a Crow Indian from Montana who moved to the Twin Cities to attend MCAD. Mike is currently a lead 3D technical artist at Target. He's also worked as a medical animator and a media artist for e-learning applications. So thanks again, Mike, for joining us.

We're really fortunate to also have Jonathan Herrera Soto, who's from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design class of 17. Jonathan's a print-based studio artist and really sees printmaking as an act of love through translation. I was fortunate enough to first meet Jonathan when I first arrived at Minneapolis college of art through an exhibition he had at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which involved prints that were on the floor that viewers were supposed to walk over that dealt with the trauma of migration. Really fortunate to have him, especially as he's starting his working towards his MFA in painting and printmaking at the Yale University's School of Art. So welcome to you too, Jonathan.

Yeah. I'm going to start by talking that both of you have just had some interesting moments here in the past month. And I think that there may just be something to reflect on this. Mike, as you and I were talking before the podcast actually started that there's an annual powwow that occurs over in Crow Junction called Crow Fair. And because of the pandemic last year, you weren't able to attend, but you did this year. Do you want to explain to us what Crow Fair is and why it's so important for you?

Mike: Sure. Yeah. So Crow Fair happens annually in the third weekend of August, and there's a few things that happen. There's a powwow that happens every day. There's also parades, rodeos happen out there as well. And one of the main things that happens there is everyone comes together to camp there at the festival. So the main area of it is three days, but people will come and camp there a few days before just to kind of get settled in. They'll bring so many things in, so much furniture just to live in that space for four to five days. But it's really a moment to connect with family who maybe you haven't connected with in a while, and just to be together and living and cooking together for those days. So it's really a good connection point to get in touch with everybody. Even though it's a small reservation, I feel like it's hard to be in touch with everyone. And it's just a good time to do that since we're all so close together.

Sanjit: What's one thing that if you're not from the Crow Nation that's hard to understand about going to Crow Fair.

Mike: I think it's just the, and maybe for people who camp often, this is easier to understand, but it's really about setting up camp, and being at camp, and being in that experience, which is you have a role when you go there. Are you going to be the cook? Are you going to be the person who cleans? And it's just being around and sitting around. It's not really dictated by activity. It's more about being in the space and spending time together.

Sanjit: For me, I had heard about Crow Fair in part because of the collection of teepees and I think it's the largest collection of teepees that are assembled in North America at any one given time. And I just, I keep thinking about that in relationship to craft and to artistry. And I'm just wondering, is there an aspect of that type of artistry or craftsmanship that you can illuminate us on a little bit about how that may have been a part of your upbringing?

Mike: Yeah, I think that's a great question. There really is a craft to the way that the Crow people do teepees versus someone of a different tribe. And there are craftsmen who you seek out to either set up a teepee or find polls, and it's someone that's actively sought out. But is it a great skill? I would love to know that skill. And I do think there is that element of creativity to it and how you assemble your teepee.

So that would be a goal if I could learn that. You know what I mean? There's just a handful who do, and even so, there's also the other side, which is going out and getting teepee poles. That's also a skill which is going through there and getting them and just getting them prepared for that, too. So there's kind of twofold. There's the teepee poles and then there's actually assembly.

Sanjit: Jonathan, you've just started a new adventure of being at the Yale School of Art. And I guess first and foremost, how's that transition going?

Jonathan: I graduated from MCAD in 2017, and I've had a few years to try to figure out what I'm doing and what's to come. For the most part, had a pretty steady line of work right after graduating. I taught, thanks to my friend Lindsay. She recommended me for this job at Juxtaposition Arts, where I taught for a year from 2017 to 2018 in their textile department. I was one of their co-leads. And it really was a nurturing opportunity to connect with youth and to provide a type of mentorship and teach in a way that has nurtured me throughout my student years. And it felt really good to teach.

And at MCAD, actually, I did their teaching artist minor. So even in school, I had the opportunity to teach. And thanks to Linda, who ran the teaching artist program, had a lot of experience as a student leaving. So I felt really comfortable in my job at Juxta.

But after a year, I think there's a shift in wanting to see if I can make this art ... Well, everything is art. To make a shift to see if I can sustain a practice as a priority, as making being the predominant thing. And so all of 2018, most of early 2019, I was on the road, really cranking out work and thinking I knew what I was doing was like my most authentic, most honest self.

And then the pandemic came and in March of 2020, I traveled to the East coast to shelter in place with my partner who was pursuing a graduate degree at Brown University and realized that a lot of my practice was codependent on the institutional framework on these colonial structures of reward and glittering legitimacy. Or not authentic legitimacy. I realized that I was codependent on something that was leaving me spiritually malnourished. And I spent a lot of this pandemic reflecting and unpacking my practice and learning how to make for myself, for my ancestors, and for my ghosts, from the ground up. I had to construct a new way of making that felt nourishing to me. I feel ready for mentorship, for a bit of guidance.

And also as a student, being a student at MCAD who has participated in a lot of student activities on campus, I'm excited to attend such a ... What would the word be? Famous program or something? And see what's composting because as time, these last couple of years has changed everything. And I think artists have a lot more power than they used to have. Traditions are being questioned in a way that has to be acknowledged. And it's interesting, creative terrain, and I'm excited to be thrown in the midst of it and see how I contribute or how I can texture all the changes that are happening in the midst, but also art to come.

Sanjit: One thing that you're touching on Jonathan, something that I'd love to talk to both of you about, which is this idea of mentorship. I have to say, I get allergic to the term mentorship sometimes because I think it's a sometimes overly-used term. But that being said, I guess I want to start with the two of you by just seeing from your perspectives is, how do you both define mentorship?

Mike: Yeah. For me, it's with someone who has an investment in your goals, challenges that you'd be facing and helping you to break those down and find a way. I think you're right, there could be this delineation between teaching and mentorship where I think mentorship is a little more sharing experience versus maybe directly teaching. At least that's how I see it anyway. I like to share in my mentorship roles, just how I've faced challenges, how I've dealt with even people, which is important, because I think that's a critical component is how to help younger people in situations they may not have been before, or to watch out for any problems that might come a long way based with on what I've done. So that's how I see mentorship.

Sanjit: I've got some thoughts here too, but Jonathan, if you're defining mentorship, how are you defining it?

Jonathan: Yeah, Mike, I think I resonate with what you said. I think there could be a distinction between a teaching role and a mentorship role. And I think mentorship, to me, doesn't look particularly legible. It's almost like learning from experience or practice or something. Two of my most supportive mentors of mine at MCAD were Natasha Pestidge and Peoter Sholholski, who actually both come from this immigrant narrative. They both have a lot of inheritance, culturally, from elsewhere. And I think I resonated with that subconsciously. I didn't really articulate that to myself until recently, like, "Whoa, we have some stuff in common that, we've never perhaps super talked about it, but it's felt in the way that they approached the world and their art practice."

And with both of them, I spent a lot of time with them outside of campus. I mean, outside of the teaching classroom. With Peoter, I remember helping him with his labor camp projects, and back in the day when [inaudible] factory was around, and installing his solo show there and seeing how he works. Or talking to Natasha in regards to student activism and needing some sort of guidance. And Tasha also being really involved with organizing and just seeing how someone works in their field and the stuff you can't really describe.

It reminds me of the summer job I had remodeling houses and how you're doing something in some weird way that you're not supposed to be doing. And then you watch someone who has done it for 20 years, like spray the joint compound mixture with water and putting plastic over it so you don't have to wash your tools every time you're done using it. I don't know, more efficient ways of working. And you're just watching someone in the craft that they've developed over years, that as a younger person or as someone who is learning from them, doesn't have, doesn't have that experience. So you're just in the midst of watching someone and learning from them in their work.

Sanjit: I wonder if maybe it's too big an umbrella in the sense, I wonder if, because Jonathan, what you're talking about, that following, that kind of almost like a pseudo apprenticeship, but not quite. For instance, that kind of, watching that physical activity of how you do something. It's the junior baker that comes in, the baker in training that comes in and understands, "Okay, this is how you knead, this is the kind of proportions, this is what you're looking for." And I feel like that that's a whole situational kind of learning. Learning by doing, learning by following, maybe even different than what we see more formally known as pedagogy in the classroom.

And then I wonder if there's this more notion of giving support. Being the individual that provides council and feedback, ideally. I also say that I'm thinking the fact that we're all three people of color. Yes, we're talking and I'm thinking too, how much of this idea of mentorship as a Western construct, and I'm reflecting on this in part, because, Mike, when you were talking about Crow Fair and saying that how there's a totally different valuation of purpose, in terms of why you're there and why you gather and why you sit together, instead of feeling like you're always doing, you're always trying to achieve a goal. And I wonder if the soul of mentorship is really about just being able to hold space and not feeling like it's purpose driven.

Mike: Yeah. That's a really interesting concept. And I think at least that also, I feel that too with how things are taught, at least back home. I do feel it's much more in that apprenticeship realm, like “here's the skill”. Not a whole lot of that feedback, which I think is really critical. Here is something you could be doing better. There's that really the concept of analysis, which I really haven't come to until I've come to these more traditional spaces, which I think we do need that. We do need a place to be able to validate and say, "Here's what you're doing, but here's what you could be doing better." And not in a negative way, but feedback as a way to focus in on your blindspots.

Jonathan: Right. In that distinction between mentorship and teaching, I'm remembering reading ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ and there being an outline of teacher-student, student-teacher relationships, and it being rooted in reciprocity that it's not like this ... I think Paulo Freire uses the term banking system of teaching where you are inserting knowledge. If it's a coin, into a piggy bank, an empty piggy bank. But there's this outline of a reciprocal relationship where the teacher is both teacher-student and the student is both student-teacher. And I think fundamentally, that whole book is attempting to envision or to put language to a decolonized method of pedagogy, of complicating and texturing the instilled, the higher article, like ladder, like form harbored within education and institution. Maybe it speaks also back to that reward system of someone does the rewarding and the one receives, versus there being rewards and gifts from both ends.

Sanjit: I'd love to talk to both of you, as we're moving, thinking about this and thinking about it in relationship to both of your practices. I guess I'd love to know if there's a personal story that both of you could share with me regarding a connection you had with someone that created a light bulb moment for you, where you felt like, "Wow, things fell into place," in a way that you found to be astounding.

Jonathan: I think something that provided me a lot of clarity and I think speaks to this theme of colonial lenses, is having this Zoom call with my mom. I talk with my mom a lot recently and in the middle of pandemic, and I was asking her all these questions like, "Oh, what does it feel like as an undoc?" I kind of get very much in my American voyeurism sometimes with my family and I like ask these questions of like, "Oh, what's the undocumented experience of the pandemic?"

We're all experiencing this immense isolation due to the COVID pandemic. Like social distancing, you can't be close to people, you have to be weary and distrustful of people in public settings, and you have to be at home all the time. And that's the experience of my family for the past 20 years. They purposefully, or at least for my parents, you purposely don't have many friends and you don't spend a lot of time outside, because more time spent outside is more risk, to be caught or to be exposed.

The mental deterioration that we feel, are feeling, this panic of like, "Oh, this being inside all the time is driving me crazy," or something like that. I think we have a lot to learn from the undocumented or immigrant communities, because these people have been isolated and in their houses for decades, forever. And it's like, we're all wondering what a year of isolation is going to do to us. All we have to do is go to our immigrant neighbors and ask them like, "How has it felt to be so isolated or fearful for this long?"

And it complicates our relationship to everything. Like this colonial lens that, "Oh, the apocalypse is happening right now." But for many, many, many people, the apocalypse has already happened. They've gone through multiple, they're in the midst. I think it builds bridges to our neighbors to be able to learn. And maybe it goes back to this teaching topic that you're talking about. What can we learn from people who have gone, or are going through, or are going through some of the most unique and unimaginable experiences that we find ourselves in?

Mike: Yeah. I think building on that and on the other side of that isolation topic, a lot of what I've done and my goals have been very focused in on predominantly these white spaces, being 3D, very tech, not a whole lot of people of color in those fields. And so going through that, there was this isolation, which I didn't know I felt until I had reached Target. And then I had no more people of color, who were working in this space, who were also leaders, who were also doing similar or parallel fields. And I think that was the biggest revelation to me is just acknowledging that I was in isolation, right? I was just lacking that. And I think that has really been the biggest thing for me and my transition and just getting to connect with so many great people who code, who are also people of color. That's just amazing to be part of that in a way that I wasn't before. And so I think that was a huge revelation to me for switching.

Sanjit: Yeah. And it occurs to me that you're both involved in such fields that they have such a very specific and distinct vocabulary. When I think of printmaking, for instance, I mean there are processes and vocabularies that are so specific to that, and the same thing with animation. And I guess I'm wondering about what are the ways that you start to feel like you're pushing the definitions that may exist or the preconceived notions that exist within these two medium. Are there things that you're doing that you think that are really going ahead and pulling at the edges of this, and if so, how? Or in things that you think that within this area, that you think are on the cusp of changing.

Mike: Yeah. The biggest thing for me is just to be in this space and to do this work. I think that I would love to be an example for other Native Americans to be, "Hey, I could also do 3D animation and 3D rendering. I could also work at Target." And just to be an example for everyone on, we can do this technical work. Very technical, in this space that is very unexpected. And so, that's what I'm hoping to unlock here ultimately, and to share back.

Jonathan: I still am and label myself as a printmaker. But if you go on my website or look at my work, it's really hard to see it, because it involves sculpture, it involves drawing and painting and performance, and it's all these different things. But holding and harboring this idea of print is really important to me, and diversifying the visual language or the visual parameters we use to see printmaking. But for collectors who want to have an artifact or to have a piece of the artist, but can't afford at a certain level, they buy prints, and they buy prints at a 10th of the cost because they're duplicates. They're additions of 20 or 25 or whatever.

And there's this inherent hierarchical system of how we value art and paintings and sculpture. And is this inherent quality and print making that inherently has the potential to be a duplicate. Therefore, it's a threat. Therefore, it's a threat to capital. Therefore, it's a threat to this colonial notion of having the only one. "I have the only one." But I still have the matrix. I could make another one if I wanted to. And there's this negotiation that needs to happen.

It's like how to participate in this market, acknowledging it. I feel like power is really masked in the art world and it's hard to talk about the money of things, or the politics of things, or the things that happen with the networks of power. And printmaking, I don't know. I feel like my place in print making to kind of complicate that in the ways that I can. I  need to find ways of resistance because I'm also simultaneously participating in the machine, and printmaking ancestrally roots me to my ancestors in that it has a really rich, radical and grassroots history in Latin America.

Mike: Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, Jonathan, I think, for my ambition, at where I'm at, I've been building essentially towards a name. I feel like for those gatekeeping situations, those places where it would be hard to have opportunity. What I'm really working towards is just being able to have these partners, these people that I've worked with, to be able to sustain myself and say, "Hey, Mike Medicine Horse is going to set up his own studio and sell his art directly."

And to be able to bring people along so that it could be sustainable and so that I'm not feeding into this broader machine, because I do have this desire to make more personal directed art and explore really what Native art means. And maybe even deconstruct that. And I don't foresee myself trying to shop that to a gallery or trying to make it fit, or to say, "My art, since I’m Native American, has to go to Santa Fe," or some predetermined channel. I want to make that channel. And I think making my own network and making my own connections and making my own name is really where I see that happening. And that's my long goal.

Sanjit: In some ways I think that that's a great segue for me into asking these two questions that I think start to really coalesce, maybe a lot of this conversation. And so I'll ask the first one of both of you, which is that, what do you know now that you didn't know five years ago?

Mike: I think for me, and this is mainly situational, I would say I've been in this industry for over 20 years now. So if five years ago you asked me the same question, I probably wouldn't have the same answer due to where I was at. But thankfully I had the opportunity to switch to Target. And that changed a lot for me. And I think the biggest thing is perspective in not only the type of investment someone else can have in me. That was a new one. But also just acknowledging personal development and how can I not only build my artistic skills, but just build my personal skills and things that I maybe have not been able to focus on.

So I think that is the biggest thing.  Like I said, five years ago, I was very much in the very technical, “how do I do this in 3D?” Or “how do I make this thing 3D?” And now it's more like, "How can I maybe make this work for myself as a studio? Or how can I make this work through other people?" How can I work on defining a lot of what I was doing, which is mentorship, which is leadership, which is advocacy, just larger concepts that I've been able to define by switching to Target. So I think it's been amazing to be able to be separated from the work and just to learn more about where I fit in the broader sense by working. So I'm pretty happy with where I was at now versus five years ago.

Sanjit: Jonathan, what do you know now that you didn't know five years ago?

Jonathan: I think five years ago, I was very much a workaholic. I had this notion of hard work is the cure or something. I think looking at it in a more abstract sense, I was working. I was working really hard. Like someone who would be working 40, I don't know, like a job. And there was no room for levity. And it wasn't until the pandemic that I really got to see this other side of resistance, which is, how do you resist a machine that feeds itself on work? It's to rest, or it's to not say yes to every opportunity. It's to purposefully slow down or to celebrate or have joy and levity in life.

I want to, I think, complicate this notion of working hard towards progress and prioritizing these, I don't know, more abstract notions of work or of success or of, maybe the word would be sustainability. What does sustainability really mean? Or how can we accomplish that collectively? I think I was replicating the models that are used against us. I was just inheriting them and rebranding them and wishing I had the hindsight to complicate my worldview a little bit.

Sanjit: Yeah. I think even in the past 18, 19 months, the notion of how we approach work has really dramatically changed. And I know Jonathan, you were talking about that. And so it's great to hear you both reflect on that.

Well, the second question I want to ask you, in some ways this helps wrap up our time together, is one that I think is connected to the earlier one, which is what do you know and believe to be true that you think no one else in your field believes in?

Jonathan: That's hard because I think everything I think about it's like, I know some folks that probably think this is true. But I talk a lot about my practice as sacred space. It took me a while to put language to it. But I think as someone who's generationally been displaced and removed from a certain regional or indigenous knowledge. I remember this collective, this art collective, this indigenous art collective post commodity using this term Lost Tribe. But I feel lost a lot of the time. And in between two colonial languages, in between two colonial cultures, with no specific allegiance to any flag.

And the studio space is this place where things fall into place and I get to talk to people who are gone or who I've never met, or I haven't met yet. And it's like time or space and time kind of collapse. And I'm also talking to my past self and future self because stuff I did five years ago, or two years ago is currently informing me as I make. Therefore, I have to believe that I'm informing myself down the road and it's a place where time goes back and forth in that way. So it's like this weird wiggly space that a bunch of stuff happens that feels really powerful. And I kind of really tap into it as like a sacred, learning space, the studio.

Mike: I think one of the things, I think to have this racial theme to the question. I do believe that there is an inherent structural racism to this industry, that if I was to tell another colleague, would they believe me? They'd basically say no. And what I mean by that is just by the nature of how I got here, it was a very focused effort that I knew that could I stay in Montana and do 3D animation? I knew there's no way I could be on my rez and do this. I needed to be in a bigger city, I needed to have access to the software, to the hardware to even be able to do that.

And so I think that decoupling from my family, which, in and of itself, is something that is frowned upon, but I had their support in this vision to do it. And so I think that thing, although I want to be that advocate to be in this space, I do know that there is going to be challenges to pursue it. It's like, you're going to need faster internet, you're going to need access to hardware, access to software. The starting price to even be in this industry is thousands and thousands of dollars. You know what I mean? And that's going to be difficult in a place where maybe fixing a car is a challenge. Being able to get into this is going to be difficult. And so I think that is something I just want to acknowledge and is  that's a barrier and that's a challenge. And it's going to fall by the wayside when just basic things need to come up first.

Sanjit: I think that's a really powerful addition to what you said earlier, too. And in many ways, I do think this goes back to this idea of the type of leadership. And I think that that leadership is really exemplified in both of you, because it's not just a regular form of leadership. It's that creative, cultural leadership that I think, for me, defines the two views we've gotten together today in hearing diverse practices, diverse methodologies and histories. But at the same time, I think just also understanding what's the stuff that it takes to really go ahead and not just give back, but go ahead and provide pathways for others, too.

So thank you both. I've been fortunate to be joined today by Jonathan Herrera Soto and Mike Medicine Horse. Two fantastic artists and designers. And again, thanks again for joining us today and having the time for this conversation.

Jonathan: Thank you.

Mike: Thanks.

Jonathan: Thank you for having us.

Sanjit: Thanks for listening to this episode of On Topic. To find out more about all of my guests this season and from season one, head to mcad.edu/ontopic where you can find profiles and links to all of our guests. Make sure to tune in to next month for my interview with Sarah Bellamy of Penumbra Theater. If you haven't already, don't forget to like, rate, subscribe, and follow wherever you're listening and you can always find out more content at mcad.edu/ontopic.