Virgil Ortiz is what the fashion-conscious might call terminally hip.
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To translate, Ortiz is the most prominent artist to have sprung, fully developed you could be forgiven for thinking, from our local scene. Ortiz is also virtually impossible to get ahold of. His manager Tish, a charming and absolutely tenacious woman, called on a Monday morning to say Ortiz would be in town for a few hours between an opening in Phoenix and a regularly scheduled jaunt to LA. In person, Ortiz is as elusive and difficult to pin down. He has been seduced, completely and overwhelmingly, by the world of fashion. He wears milky, reflective sunglasses (even inside) and a stenciled T-shirt promoting his new show,
Rezurrect
. He takes a seat at the center of a large table, among several members of his entourage, and tucks into his salad.
We're off.
He's perhaps not the mastermind, but Ortiz successfully embodies the move of contemporary Native artists toward innovating on traditional themes.
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Though the first goal articulated in his artist statement is "not to get pigeon-holed in my craft and to refrain from staying only within the American Indian art galleries and only doing American Indian art shows," Ortiz comes from a long line of potters, and his mother Serefina taught him the trade at 6. Fashion was a natural elaboration; he designed clothes and taught himself to sew in high school, but his induction into the world of haute couture came much later, when Donna Karan spotted his designs in 2003 and initiated a beautiful, and beneficial, partnership. Ortiz has been a magazine coverboy ever since.
Despite his flamboyant dress and manner, Ortiz's cadence is understated and, when asked about his impending Phoenix opening, he dreamily offers a mumbling account of traditional pueblo figures in leather and chains, saints offering their eyes on platters, priests in S&M garb. It's racy talk for such a pastoral patio brunch. "I like to use traditional materials and methods and offer commentary that's a little more timely," he explains. The current legend goes that he discovered he'd revived a long-dead tradition of 19th century Cochiti storyteller figurines after he'd already begun sculpting them, as though his ancestors had reached from beyond and encouraged an explosion of risqué ceramic sexuality in the young artist. Obedient to the original forms, Ortiz instills his clay work with caustic social commentary, but his ultimate personal judgment-Is S&M hot or campy? Is St. Anne virtuous or cartoonish? Just what does it all mean?-is ambiguous.
Perhaps more important than Ortiz's artistic innovation is his ability to network. Like a man of letters, he uses the notoriety generated by his own art to foster artistic culture around him.
Rezurrect
, the Phoenix exhibition, features not only Ortiz's own art but a corresponding dance troupe. The Indian Market fashion show called Red Hot For Pop features several of his close friends' (including the Gaussoins) designs in jewelry, fashion, makeup and hair design.
When home from the world of high fashion, Ortiz is formulating a plan to open a studio where pueblo kids can learn the tradition of Cochiti pottery and learn their native language, Keres. Ortiz's parents still live at the pueblo. They have some sense that he's a potter, but no idea of his visibility in fashion circles. "My parents don't know much about fashion," he demurs. One wonders what they might think.
