On September 3, Woven Together: Celebrating Spider Woman in Contemporary Native American Art opened at the Surgut Regional Studies Museum. Suzanne Newman Fricke, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor at the Art History Department at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, who curated the exhibit, explained, “grandmother Spider Woman, in many Southwestern cultures, wove the world into being, creating the Earth and the stars and the planets and bringing order the universe through hozho, the way of beauty according to Diné.” Sarah Sense, a Chitimacha artist whose work is included in the exhibit, also participated in the visit to Surgut. Deputy Mayor Alexander Pelevin, Director of the Department of Culture, Youth Policy, and Sports Galina Grischenkova, Director of the Surgut Local History Museum Marina Selyanina, Public Affairs Officer Sarah Saperstein, exhibit curator Suzanne Newman Fricke, and the artist Sarah Sense greeted the guests of the exhibit opening. In addition, Dr. Fricke and Ms. Sense gave public lectures about their work and offered a workshop onweaving techniques for creative Surgut citizens. The exhibit will be open until September 27th, and we invite those who live in and visit Surgut to see the contemporary Native American artists’ graphics, paintings, quilts, jewelry, boxes woven from the photos and the photos woven like the traditional boxes.
