Monty Little

 

Monty J. Little is a Diné artist from Tuba City, Arizona. He is Ashiihi (Salt) clan, born for Tl’iziłani (Manygoats) clan. Monty is a poet, printmaker and painter. He is studying at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, Audra. Monty was Honorably Discharged from the United States Marine Corps in November 2008, after serving four years with Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines in Camp Pendleton, California. While in the Marine Corps, Monty deployed to Okinawa in 2005, and to Ar Ramadi, Iraq, in 2007. 

 

Following his service, Little continued with school where he began to utilize his creative endeavors. It was here he began to feel the urge to translate his thoughts on his experience of war and post-war. Little wrote extensively on his encounters of conflict and commenced an unfolding of his deployments. Much of his writing initiated surreal images; thus, wanting to visually relay those images, Little began to paint and print what he wrote.

 

Mr. Little is a recipient of the 2011 and 2012 Truman Capote Scholarship at IAIA for creative writing and a winner of the Native Writer Award Scholarship to the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference in 2012. His paintings and prints derive from punk rock culture, juxtaposition of harsh realities in indigenous contemporary issues, the beauty of openness, and the content of delicateness. Mr. Little is currently exploring abstraction, and cropping of images to explain the complexity of unconscious thought through strict awareness of placement in images, shapes, and color.

 

Artist Statement

“There is a certain architecture we lung for, and during those deep breaths, I encompass an inaudible feel. I visualize my written work of anomalistic images of war, past/current memories, and employ a disarray of images that interstice uncertainty. Placement is indirect, yet strict, but not predictable—I find clarity to be marginal. Series of curvilinear lines are blanketed upon themselves to hide or unfold emotion and frailness. I use multiple mediums to intertwine shifts in dialects, but still try to capture an openness that reflects past and current landscape.”