Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract, by Philip Joseph Deloria; and Knowing Native Arts, by Nancy Marie Mithlo

Indigenous women were the creators of most of the historic Native art on view in museums, yet hardly any of the artists� names are documented. Philip Deloria�s Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract introduces readers to one of these overlooked, early twentieth-century Indigenous female artists. Susan “Susie” Mabel Deloria (Yankton Dakota), who signed her works as Mary Sully, was born on Standing Rock Indian Reservation in 1896. She was the greatgranddaughter of nineteenth-century American portrait artist Thomas Sully, from whom she acquired her name and with whom she shared a fascination for celebrities. Her works, color pencil triptychs on paper, were stored in a suitcase and nearly forgotten, until her great-nephew, historian Philip J. Deloria, reclaimed the works from obscurity. His book chronicles and analyzes Mary Sully�s journey as a Yankton Dakota woman who was passionate about being an artist in the era of American modernism. The biography�s subtitle, Toward an American Indian Abstract, hints at Sully�s creative blending of both influences. The artworks themselves are mysterious and fascinating. Mary Sully was largely a self-trained artist but came from an artistic family: besides her famous great-grandfather, Thomas Sully, her grandfather Alfred Sully was also a painter and her grandmother Pehánlútawiƞ (Susan Pehandutawin) was a skilled quillworker. Interestingly, Mary Sully was not influenced by Native art groups, such as the Kiowa Six, the Bacone School in Oklahoma, or the Studio at Santa Fe Indian School, who were active at the time and created romanticized images of past Native life that appealed to non-Native audiences. Instead, Mary Sully�s works were mainly inspired by her immediate surroundings: several of her drawings include patterns from textile prints, including calico flour sacks or wallpaper designs. To further her skills, she largely resorted to selfhelp books and correspondence courses and enrolled in a few art courses at the University of Kansas and the Art Institute of Chicago. Magazines, radio, and newspapers provided access to the world of art and entertainment. Her main works are what she called “personality prints.” These are 134 sets of three-panel portraits rendered in color pencil, representing famous actors, celebrities, and musicians (Fred Astaire, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth) she read about in Time magazine and Ladies� Home Journal; others were classes of people (Children of Divorce, Titled Husbands in the USA) or events (Easter, Highway Rudeness). The triptychs consist of three stacked pieces of paper of different sizes that are taped or hooked together. The top panel usually depicts abstractions of elements Mary Sully associated with a person—for example, an object or characteristic forms, composed as an individual design or as a pattern. The large center piece is usually a very complex geometric grid-like pattern, which is related to the first panel through color and forms. The small bottom image repeats aspects of these forms and colors and rearranges them into Native American-like designs, which relate to Mary Sully�s Yankton Dakota cultural identity. Sometimes these are arranged in kaleidoscopic patterns. The book is an effort to analyze and comprehend Mary Sully�s work and this specific “moment of American/Indian history itself ” (4). Deloria examines her work through the lens of genealogical research, Dakota culture and history studies, formal art analysis, art history, art criticism, psychological theories, and American Indian politics of the 1930s. By placing Mary Sully�s work in an art historical context, he convincingly portrays her as a Yankton Dakota artist engaged with modernity, including visual arts, such as Art Deco and geometric abstraction, as well as film, music, and lifestyle from an Indigenous perspective, effortlessly blending both influences. Throughout the publication, Deloria investigates possible influences for Mary Sully�s art. One of the most important sources of inspiration is her knowledge of Dakota and Great Plains Indian art and culture. Sully accompanied her sister, anthropologist Ella Cara Deloria, during Reviews