“There’s something about being around mountains that makes you feel quiet for a minute,” Raven Halfmoon observes. “I wanted to instill that same feeling in my work—a moment where we can just sit with something large scale and powerful, and feel serene.” At over seven feet high, On the Lookout for Choctaw Ponies speaks to the artist’s interest in monumentality as an assertion of Indigenous presence. With its stacked breast forms, hinting at matrilineal strength, the colossal statue embodies concepts of multiplicity and duality that Halfmoon has explored in subsequent works. She achieved the work’s technically demanding scale through a residency at California State University, Long Beach, which is famous for its large kilns. The ambitious size of her work points to global inspirations as well, referencing both ancient cultures like the Mesoamerican Olmec people and contemporary masters like Simone Leigh.
Halfmoon connects her drive for ever-increasing scale to the vast lands of the American West. A registered member of the Caddo Nation, the Oklahoma artist first experienced clay with community elder Jeri Redcorn, who led a revival of ancient Caddo techniques. Halfmoon further explored the rich ceramic traditions of her people at the University of Arkansas, where she studied art and anthropology. She has incorporated Caddo iconography into her work and embraced techniques like coil-building. The textured surface of On the Lookout for Choctaw Ponies suggests the “punctuation” (layering of rounded depressions) found in ancestral pots. Pop-culture-inflected imagery, such as the cowboy hat, and Halfmoon’s large, graffiti-like signature on the reverse read as proclamations of Indigenous survival and resilience.
Staci Steinberger
2024