Rose B. Simpson, Heights I, 2022, de Young

Beyond the Paint

Transcript Katy: Situated in the sculpture garden at the de Young museum, this is Heights I by Rose B. Simpson: an androgynous human figure who stands tall and alludes to the idea of profound spiritual growth. Through its antenna, the figure appears taller, yes in height but also in knowledge — as if it’s showing us an extension of wisdom that grows from the brain. I ask Rose B. Simpson how she hopes people will feel in front of this work. Rose: When you stand in front of my piece, Heights I, I hope that you feel, inside of yourself, a deep knowing. That you see reflected in the piece a part of yourself that is connected to information that is always available to us if we put up the right kind of antenna. So, how does that feel inside your body? What questions do you have that can be answered when you extend that type of antenna? Katy: Simpson is a mixed-media artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, a Tewa tribal community next to Española, New Mexico. She comes from a long lineage of ceramicists, including her mother, and her work is grounded in Pueblo traditions and ideologies. Rose: All I saw around me were women working in clay. I feel that they helped build a neural pathway inside of myself that allowed me to believe that it’s possible to (a) work in clay and have a deep relationship to ceramics and (b) to make it a lifestyle. This is the first sculpture by a Native American artist installed in the de Young’s sculpture garden. Located at one of the museum’s entrances, it also makes us think about what kind of experience we want to have. Rose: To have Heights I in the foreground of the museum, outside in a natural world, in the Bay Area, it feels important to me because that space is a threshold where we’re going through our daily lives, navigating the mundane, and entering into a museum, into a space of art, representation, and honoring of the creative processes of our human world. That we kind of shift gears, and we start paying attention in a different way. To have Heights I out there in front of the museum to me is really special because we need to tap into a different sense of witness when we’re approaching the creative processes in our world. And those creative processes are connecting to a deeper awareness, and I think oftentimes that deeper awareness also happens when we’re in the natural world. So, if you can, take a minute before you enter the museum and take a deep breath and look around and notice the weather, notice the sounds, notice the sculpture of trees, notice the sculpture of humans, in space, in the way we navigate our world and each other, but also the sky and the buildings, and how we have co-created this incredible world, and that we are all artists of our own existence. Image: Rose B. Simpson, Heights I, 2022. Patinated bronze, 85 x 16 x 9 1/2 in. (215.9 x 40.64 x 24.13 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Major Accessions (AOA), 2023.11