My artwork.

Painting. Sculpture. Printmaking. Ceramic. Beadwork.

I work in a variety of media to brings my visions to life.

  • She Is with the Moon

    2017

    Acrylic on linen

    16” x 12”

  • She Is with the Moon explores the issue of women going missing from our community and the hope we have for their return. The monarch butterfly rising through Her represents the human soul, and how the soul transcends the physical self. Women, givers of life, are a part of everything. From our hearts they never fade; their existence merely transforms.

  • 2018-2019  Bring Her Home: Stolen Daughters of Turtle Island, All My Relations Gallery, Minneapolis, MN;  Watermark Art Center, Bemidji, MN; Gizhiigan Arts Incubator, Mahnomen, MN; Fargo Public Library with The Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND; AICHO Galleries, Duluth, MN 

    2018  Cover Art: CALYX Press journal 30:3, Corvallis, OR

    Private Collection

  • Pequot

    2018

    Horsehair and leather

    36" x 4" x 1"

  • Pequot is a braided noose symbolizing my relative, Katherine Garrett, who was executed by hanging in 1738 by the colonists for staying true to herself as a Pequot woman. This piece honors cultural autonomy, human rights, and the freedom of choice.

  • 2018 Tamara Aupaumut & Jeremy Pomani, Two Rivers Gallery, Minneapolis, MN

  • Star Guides

    2019

    Oil on canvas

    48" x 36"

  • Painted from an abstract dream that I vividly recall. I was deep in space when I saw five dancing stars that transformed into these ‘portals’. Something told me to choose the middle one. Dreams offer us messages, sometimes without explanation.

  • 2019  Changing Horizons, Two Rivers Gallery, Minneapolis, MN

  • NDN Time

    2022

    Glazed ceramic

    7.5” x 11” x 11”

  • Visualizing time through the four directions and the sun.

  • 2024 Lay of the Land, Open Loop, Form + Content Gallery, Minneapolis, MN

    2025  Mino-Bimaadiziwin, Artistry, Bloomington, MN

  • Reconstructed Home

    2023

    Papier-mâché and wasp nest

    15" x 20" x 4"

  • I have deconstructed a wasp nest found near Bdóte, a spiritually significant place of the Dakhóta people whose lands I reside on, and reconstructed it into the shape of my bust to symbolize my transformation and healing from breast cancer. This piece is an exploration of the medicinal connection between our bodies and nature, and how the connection to home encompasses a place for healing.

    This Land Is My Body series

  • 2024  Okizi, All My Relations Arts, Minneapolis, MN

  • Our Traditions Are Our Records

    2024

    Papier-mâché, deer blood, ink, eggshells, cornsilk, sage, sweetgrass, cedar, and tobacco

    3.5" x 11.5" x 5" each

  • “Our traditions are our records” is a profound and bold excerpt from a letter that my great-grandfather, Hendrick Aupaumut, wrote to the New York State Legislature in the late 1700s regarding the theft of our homelands. In this piece, I traced his handwritten words onto paper, then used it to create traditional footwear. While we were displaced from our homelands, our traditions went with us. These moccasins record our connection to home and continue our traditions into the future.

    This Land Is My Body series

  • 2024  Okizi, American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, MN

    2024  People of the Waters That Are Never Still: A Celebration of Mohican Art and Culture, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY

  • Flows Through Me

    2024

    Kitakata chine-collé and drypoint on Somerset

    6” x 8”

  • This Land Is My Body series

  • 2025  Paper + Prints + Parts, Second Shift, Saint Paul, MN

  • Halving My Pye And Eating It Too

    2024

    Oil on canvas

    48” x 36”

  • A self-portrait set amidst a celestial oceanscape. This is my birth chart. It speaks to the inherent connection that I have to my community, to our stories, to the water, and to the stars we descend from. The title is a play on the idiom “have your cake and eat it too." Pye is being used here to honor my ancestor, Joe Pye, visualized as the plant that was named in homage to him. Pye is also seen in the form of a pie, symbolizing the colonial construct and divisive nature of blood quantum, which seeks to define us out of existence.

    This Land Is My Body series

  • 2023  Arts North International 28th, Hopkins Center for The Arts, Hopkins, MN

    2024  People of the Waters That Are Never Still: A Celebration of Mohican Art and Culture, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY

    2025  Mino-Bimaadiziwin, Artistry, Bloomington, MN

  • People of the Waters That Are Never Still

    2024

    Glass beads on elk hide

    88” x 47”

  • People of the Waters That Are Never Still is derived from the Muhheconnetuk (Hudson River) and symbolizes who we, the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican people, are and the place we come from.

    This community beadwork project was created in part by contributions from twenty-four community members, with collaborative assistance from the Stockbridge-Munsee Cultural Affairs Department and the Arvid E Miller Library and Museum.

    Support provided by the Native American Community Development Institute and Hennepin Arts in Minneapolis, MN, and the Albany Institute of History and Art in Albany, NY.

  • 2024  People of the Waters That Are Never Still: A Celebration of Mohican Art and Culture, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY

  • Remembering the Future

    2025

    Gouache on soft Unryu

    24" x 35.5"

  • This piece was created from a dream I had in the fall of 2019. My son was standing in fresh snow with a profound look on his face, among him were his murdered relatives—wolves. Early in 2020 there was a public wolf kill in Wisconsin where 218 wolves were killed in a matter of days, and this reminded me of this very vivid dream I had been carrying in my psyche. The dream seemingly felt more like a premonition. I juxtaposed my son’s face over a wolf’s to emulate that we are all the same—that all life is equal.

  • 2025  Paper + Prints + Parts, Second Shift, Saint Paul, MN

  • The Land as Witness

    2025

    Papier-mâché, deer blood, cedar, sage, sweetgrass, tobacco, land

    10” x 13” x 13”

  • The land emerges as ancestors to confront the Hudson River School paintings that literally painted them out of the landscape. The Rombout Patent* stole the land we are on, signed by the original inhabitants who spoke not a word of English, and authorized by the Crown. This piece gives agency to the Land, empowering its freedom to exist without ownership.

    *The Rombout Patent was the first land grant in Dutchess County, a Colonial-era land patent issued by King James II of England in 1685.

    Commissioned by The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.

    This Land Is My Body series

  • 2025  Great Green Hope for the Urban Blues, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar  College, Poughkeepsie, NY (curated by John Murphy, The Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings & Ian Shelley, The Loeb Collections Curatorial Fellow)

  • Land Is Thicker Than Blood

    2025

    Papier-mâché, deer blood, wasp nest, dried echinacea, seeds, corn silk, sweetgrass, ink, land

    54" x 42" x 24"

  • The land reclaims my body because I belong to it, not because it belongs to me. I have blood running through my veins, blood that connects me to ancestors, blood that is quantified; I am connected to the Earth, our Mother; I am the Earth.

    In this mound of Earth, I demonstrate that everything has a life cycle by burying a recreated map of the Rombout Patent* and returning it to the Land it claims to own. 

    *The Rombout Patent was the first land grant in Dutchess County, a Colonial era land patent issued by King James II of England in 1685, signed by the original inhabitants who spoke not a word of English; the map was created in 1693.

    Commissioned by The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.

    This Land Is My Body series

  • 2025  Great Green Hope for the Urban Blues, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar  College, Poughkeepsie, NY (curated by John Murphy, The Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings & Ian Shelley, The Loeb Collections Curatorial Fellow)

  • Current Time

    2025

    Embossed gelatin monotype, gouache on Stonehenge

    22” x 30”

  • Clocking time as it moves like water currents.

    Created in part during my residency at Second Shift Studio Space in Saint Paul, MN

  • 2025  Paper + Prints + Parts, Second Shift, Saint Paul, MN

  • Mother

    2025

    Papier-mâché, Earth, corn silk, and glass sherds

    2" x  3.75" x 2.25"

  • I found a rock looking at me when I went outside in the alley of my studio at Second Shift, and felt compelled to bring it inside. It had some interesting divots, so I decided to make a mold of it and added land from my homelands to it. I found the glass sherds it is displayed upon in the street. My friend and fellow artist, Gordon Coons, calls this “In the Hood.”

    Created during my residency at Second Shift Studio Space in Saint Paul, MN

    This Land Is My Body series

  • 2025  Paper + Prints + Parts, Second Shift, Saint Paul, MN

  • Sometimes I’m Dreaming

    2025

    Papier-mâché and foil

    79" x 17" x 7"

  • This is from a dream I had when I was young about a tree that turned into a woman and seduced my boyfriend. I shaped it from a large piece of oak bark, along with a mold of my face and bust. I created this sculpture after revisiting a conversation I had had with artist Jim Denomie.

    Created during my residency at Second Shift Studio Space in Saint Paul, MN

    This Land Is My Body series

  • 2025 Paper + Prints + Parts, Second Shift, Saint Paul, MN

    2025  Mino-Bimaadiziwin, Artistry, Bloomington, MN