Bio
Don Bailey is known for his complex, richly colorful compositions. An enrolled member of the Hupa tribe, Bailey was raised on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in California. He teaches fine arts and art history at the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon - a school founded in 1880 as the first federal Indian boarding school west of the Mississippi and oldest still inexistence. The Hoopa Valley landscape, traditional design, and the socio-political legacy of the reservation system all inform Bailey's art. His work honors those who came before him with reference to traditional dancers and basket designs, raises questions about the conventional telling of Indian history, and winks at the worn clichés about Indian artists living in both the past and modern worlds.
Don Bailey's work is in the permanent collection of the Hallie Ford Museum in Salem Oregon. He works out of his studio in Portland, Oregon.
Click here to contact Don Bailey and learn where else you can see his work in person.