FRESH PAINT
Raven Halfmoon

The Parrish Art Museum and The FLAG Art Foundation continue their FRESH PAINT collaboration with a work by the artist Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation, b. 1991). Standing over six feet tall, Sun Twins (2023) is a stoneware sculpture of two towering figures positioned side by side. The work emerges from Halfmoon’s ongoing project to create commanding depictions of Indigenous women. Built from clay, a material with deep ties to her Caddo heritage, Halfmoon’s icons stand as monuments to Indigenous feminisms, generational knowledge, and relationship to homelands.

Sun Twins reflects Halfmoon’s interest in duality, a motif that often appears in her work as a representation of “the binary elements of life—darkness and light, ancient and modern, traditional and contemporary.” Each of the figures is bisected by Halfmoon’s application of white and buttery yellow glazes—colors the artist works with to symbolize celestial light, as well as the white designs applied to traditional Caddo pottery. The sculpture’s doubled forms personify both ancestral lineage and the multifaceted nature of identity; as Halfmoon explains, “I use multiplicity…to physically manifest these ideas of who I’m carrying with me.”

Sun Twins also demonstrates Halfmoon’s painterly approach to glaze and her appreciation for highly textured surfaces that reveal her working process, the impression of her fingers retained in the malleable clay. “They’re supposed to have imperfections,” Halfmoon has said of her ceramic sculptures. “They’re supposed to show my personal experience, have that human emotion in them.” In Sun Twins, a work that brings centuries-old tradition into conversation with the present moment, the trace of Halfmoon’s hand is a further testament to enduring Indigenous presence.

FRESH PAINT is a rotating series of single-artwork exhibitions at the Parrish that spotlights new or never-before-exhibited works by both emerging and established artists. By circumventing traditional exhibition planning timelines—which can extend years into the future—FRESH PAINT provides a platform for artists to promptly showcase freshly created artworks and ideas, allowing for a more direct response to current issues and cultural movements. This approach fosters a timelier dialogue between the Museum, visitors, and our surrounding community. Presented in the Parrish’s Creativity Lounge located in the Lobby, FRESH PAINT is open to the public at no charge during regular Museum hours.

Each FRESH PAINT installation is accompanied by two sets of interpretative texts: one is a commissioned piece of writing by an invited author, critic, poet, or scholar; the other is a collaboration between members of the Parrish Teen Council ARTscope, a youth-focused educational initiative that offers participants a comprehensive exploration of the visual arts, career pathways, and practical experience in museum operations.

FRESH PAINT: Raven Halfmoon is organized by Scout Hutchinson, Associate Curator of Exhibitions at the Parrish, in collaboration with Jon Rider, Director, and Caroline Cassidy, Director of Exhibitions, at FLAG.

Exhibition Support
FRESH PAINT: Raven Halfmoon is made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of The FLAG Art Foundation.

The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.

About Raven Halfmoon
A citizen of the Caddo Nation, Halfmoon is also of Choctaw, Delaware, and Otoe Missouria descent. She was first introduced to working with clay as a young person growing up in her hometown of Norman, OK. There, Caddo elder and celebrated potter Jereldine “Jeri” Redcorn (b. 1939) introduced the teenaged Halfmoon to the tradition of building ceramic vessels from coils of clay, a technique she continues to use today.

Halfmoon’s devotion to the material grew during her undergraduate studies at the University of Arkansas, where she earned a double bachelor’s degree in ceramics/painting and cultural anthropology. At university, she began to blend techniques from traditional Caddo pottery—distinct for the geometric designs etched into the clay’s surface—with her own stylistic approach and references to popular culture, including graffiti, music, and fashion. Halfmoon applies her glazes gesturally, often thinning them so that they drip freely down the raw surfaces of her sculptures. She works primarily with black, white, and red glazes, colors that she explains are significant to “the imagery of ancient Caddo iconography, symbols of Oklahoma, and the Red River that runs through our homeland.”

Artist residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, Helena, MT, and California State University’s Long Beach Center for Contemporary Ceramics provided Halfmoon with access to large-scale kilns. Her figures gradually grew from life-size to monumental, allowing her to develop the commanding scale and presence she is recognized for today. “I feel like my pieces are monumental reflections of identity,” Halfmoon has expressed. “Not only is it my understanding and interpretation of culture, it’s a fight to maintain a place for it in today’s world.”

Halfmoon’s work is currently featured in the major solo exhibition Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers (2023–), which debuted at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, and traveled to the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; the show is currently on view at the Contemporary Austin, TX. Her sculptures have been exhibited in institutions across the country, including Art Omi Sculpture Park, Ghent, NY; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Missoula Art Museum, Missoula, MT; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Halfmoon’s work is in the permanent collections of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Forge Project Collection, Taghkanic, NY; and the Museum of Fine Art Houston, TX, among others. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards such as the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship (2023) and the international Loewe Foundation Craft Prize (2024). She continues to live and work in Norman, OK.

About The FLAG Art Foundation
The FLAG Art Foundation is a non-collecting, nonprofit exhibition space that mounts solo, two-person, and thematic group exhibitions centering on emerging and established artists from around the globe. Organized by a diverse community of curators and thinkers within and beyond the art world, FLAG opened to the public in 2008 and has staged over 100 exhibitions celebrating the work of nearly 1,000 artists. Committed to providing education and resources for its surrounding community, and across New York City, all exhibitions and programs—including artist talks, artist-led workshops, and guided tours for school and museum groups—are free and open to the public.

The FLAG Art Foundation was founded by Glenn Fuhrman, an art patron and philanthropist, alongside his wife Amanda, a Co-Founder of The Fuhrman Family Foundation. Fuhrman is a Trustee of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, and The Tate Americas Foundation, New York, NY, and is a Board Member of The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, PA. He is also a Board Member of the 92nd Street Y, New York, and The Central Park Conservancy, New York, NY.