Received 06/25/2006 23:40

DenverPost.com - A cool, American Indian everyman

That Coyote is quite a guy.

He skateboards. He struts his stuff in a zippered black-leather jacket and high-tops. He feasts on watermelon. He even kicks up his feet in the ballet, "Swan Lake."

The always-smiling, supremely self-confident canine has played a central role off and on in the work of Santa Fe artist Harry Fonseca for 30 years and has become a popular icon in the process.

To celebrate that anniversary, the Emmanuel Gallery is presenting "Fonseca's Coyote: Living With the Trickster," an exhibition of 29 well-chosen drawings and paintings offering an engaging overview of Coyote's evolution and related themes.

It is a good start for Shannon Corrigan, the new director of the little- known gallery, which sits in a former synagogue on the Auraria campus. Beginning with shows devoted to two nationally known, veteran artists, she is trying to breathe new life into the space, with its up-and-down history.

"Fonseca's Coyote" is the third in an unusual confluence of Colorado exhibitions in recent months. The shows have focused on major contemporary American Indian artists, who all happen to be from New Mexico.

Earlier this year, the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art presented works by Jaune Quick-To-See Smith that focused on the horse. And the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is spotlighting Emmi Whitehorse through July 29.

The idea for this 30th-anniversary exhibition emerged in a dinner conversation between Fonseca and Polly.

Nordstrand, assistant curator of American Indian arts at the Denver Art Museum, during a symposium at the institution last winter.

Since the art museum is virtually closed in anticipation of the Oct. 7 opening of its .5 million addition, Nordstrand looked around for another venue and initiated a collaboration with Corrigan, formerly a curatorial assistant at the museum.

Coyote can be found in the folklore of many Indian tribes, but he has an especially strong place in the creation beliefs of the Maidu culture of California. He is seen as a kind of trickster,with connections to truth and deception and joy and sadness.

In the 1970s, the symbolic figure made his first appearances in the art of Fonseca, 60, a Sacramento native of Maidu, Hawaiian and Portuguese heritage. At the start, the artist depicted him more or less conventionally, as in "Coyote No. 46" (1974).

But by 1976, in works such as the pivotal painting, "Coyote Leaves the Res No. 1," he had evolved into the now-familiar character for which Fonseca is best known - a standing, human-like figure who epitomizes cool and loves to have fun.

Emerging around the same time was Coyote's girlfriend, Rose. In the the boldly rendered "Coyote Woman No. 1" (1976), with its bright green background, Fonseca flamboyantly depicts her as plump and uninhibited, with red lipstick and a big yellow boa.

Coyote can be seen as a kind of American Indian everyman as well as Fonseca's alter-ego - a connection made evident in "Self Portrait" (1993), a pen-and-ink drawing in which he depicts himself as Coyote painting a Coyote canvas.

Hidden not so subtly beneath the lightheartedness of these works are examinations of native identity and the challenges many Indians face in trying to fit into mainstream urban life.

A telling example is "Coyote Chief with Cigars" (ca. 1993). Like virtually all Fonseca's works, it evokes a carefree feeling on the surface. But it confronts American Indian stereotypes, as embodied by the once-widespread, cigar-store Indian statues of decades past.

Although the depictions of Coyote have a loose, often cartoonish, pop look, these works should in no way be underestimated. Fonseca is a sophisticated painter with a knack for handling paint, as illustrated by the deft, Pollock-like splotches and swirls he uses to evoke the background surf in "Coyote on Skateboard No. III" (ca. 1995).

He is also an experimenter, applying acrylic to cardboard, for example, giving it a bold, opaque quality. He also draws on past Indian art, such as ledger drawings, as he does in "Coyote Meat 005" (1980). This easily misinterpreted drawing on tablet paper, which comes from a little-displayed series, was inspired by the work of an artist known as Buffalo Meat.

"Fonseca's Coyote" is a worthy tribute to an artistic series that, after three decades, remains vital as ever.

"Fonseca's Coyote: Living With the Trickster"

Through July 15|Paintings and drawings by Harry Fonseca|Emmanuel Gallery, Auraria campus|Free|11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays (303-556-8337 and emmanuelgallery.org)

Kyle MacMillan

DenverPost.com