Corn Ears of the Future, 2003 $9,000
Rawhide, natural pigment, poplar frame, digital images
84” by 63” by 6”

Winter Count paintings were made by the Plains Indians such as the Cheyenne. These history paintings on buffalo robes used pictographs representing significant events in lieu of a written language. As these events were recorded in the dead of winter hence they were called Winter Count paintings.

The Box and Border design featured here was once painted on the backs of Cheyenne buffalo robes worn in winter. The designs are painted in all natural pigment like the originals. Ringsby has taken this tradition and reworked it combining images from Palestine as he wishes to forge a parallel between the histories of these oppressed native peoples.

The images used in Ringsby’s Winter Count paintings were either sent to him by friends in the peace movement in the Occupied Territories or from the UN. The text was found by the artist in the course of his exhaustive research preparations for “The Indian Wars-Palestine.”

Once banned, the text found here was written by the Syrian poet Qabbani in response to the 1967 war. Syria, Jordan and Egypt all lost land to Israel. Qabbani blamed the corrupt Arab leadership. Ringsby uses the poem to celebrate the Palestinian children who seem to sprout right out of the rubble of the camps and be joyful in spite of the seemingly endless violence and suffering.