Raven HalfmoonFRESH PAINT

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.