Parrish Art & Flagg Foundation: Fresh Paint Series — Raven Halfmoon / June 12th thru October 6th

The Parrish Art Museum and The FLAG Art Foundation are pleased to announce the latest installment of FRESH PAINT, a collaborative exhibition series showcasing recently created or previously unexhibited artworks. The current installation showcases Sun Twins (2023), a commanding stoneware sculpture by Raven Halfmoon (Caddo Nation, b. 1991).

“I love the Parrish Art Museum and FLAG is proud to continue our partnership with

them on the FRESH PAINT exhibition series,” said Glenn Fuhrman, founder of The

FLAG Art Foundation. “Raven Halfmoon’s sculpture Sun Twins is a formally

impressive and complex work, one that connects contemporary audiences with vital

histories of this country. For this reason and many others, it embodies the curatorial

spirit and scope of FRESH PAINT.”

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“Raven Halfmoon’s Sun Twins is a powerful sculpture, and we are thrilled to exhibit fresh work once again in partnership with The FLAG Art Foundation,” said Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Executive Director of the Parrish Art Museum. “For this exhibition, Halfmoon invites us to engage with Indigenous histories and futures through impressive form and scale. We are proud to offer a platform that responds in real time to the evolving practices of artists who are reshaping our collective visual landscape.” 

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Standing over six feet tall, Sun Twins presents two towering figures positioned side by side, embodying Halfmoon’s ongoing commitment to creating powerful representations of Indigenous women. Sculpted from clay, an elemental material rooted in her Caddo heritage, the dual forms 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 embody 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.”

FRESH PAINT is a rotating series of single-artwork exhibitions at the Parrish that spotlight 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 by an invited writer, critic, poet, or scholar; the other is a collaboration with the Parrish Teen Council ARTscope, a youth-focused initiative offering an in-depth exploration of the visual arts and 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.

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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.”

Halfmoon’s work 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.”

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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, and 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.

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The Parrish Art Museum is a place to discover and connect with artists and art with a focus on the rich creative legacy of the East End and its global impact on the art world. Inspired by the natural setting and historical artistic community of Long Island’s East End, the Parrish Art Museum celebrates its legacy through a distinctive contemporary lens and socially conscious global context. The Parrish illuminates the creative process and how art, architecture, and design transform our experiences and our communities, and how we relate to the world. Access to relevant cultural engagement, artistic inspiration, a natural environment, and architectural ingenuity characterizes the Museum experience as a unique destination for the region, the nation, and the world.

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Exhibition Support

FRESH PAINT: Raven Halfmoon is made possible with generous support from The FLAG Art Foundation. The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by property taxpayers from the Southampton and Tuckahoe School Districts.