RedCan Graffiti Jam

CRYP 9th Annual RedCan Invitational Graffiti Jam 2023

Join us for this FREE event!

July 5-6, 2023

Mural painting and youth art activities at sites throughout the Eagle Butte community

July 7-8, 2023

Painting, performances, community meals and youth art activities

CRYP’s Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park
101 East Lincoln Street
Eagle Butte, SD 57625

Boy from community painting with spray can with other youth and adults also painting in the background

Held in the heart of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation, RedCan is the first and only graffiti jam in Indian Country.

For four life-changing days every summer, this award-winning event offers an unprecedented opportunity for the Cheyenne River community to experience humankind’s largest art movement while also strengthening connections with traditional Lakota culture. Along the way, RedCan provides meaningful, lasting inspiration for our young people, who are discovering the profound power of art in finding their own voices, exploring their identities, and expressing themselves.

Graffiti jams are dedicated to introducing graffiti as an art form, bringing together people who exemplify the contemporary graffiti art movement and how it has evolved since its inception more than a half century ago.

Since its 2015 inception, RedCan has been breaking new ground. Not only are our featured artists showcasing a global movement, its relevance, and how to be part of it, they’re connecting the graffiti world with the indigenous one.

Boy from community painting with spray can with other youth and adults also painting in the background
Boy from community painting with spray can with other youth and adults also painting in the background
Graffiti jams are dedicated to introducing graffiti as an art form, bringing together people who exemplify the contemporary graffiti art movement and how it has evolved since its inception more than a half century ago.

Since its 2015 inception, RedCan has been breaking new ground. Not only are our featured artists showcasing a global movement, its relevance, and how to be part of it, they’re connecting the graffiti world with the indigenous one.

Together, we are sharing and revitalizing our stories, our language, our values, and our identities. And through reclaiming our spaces in this way, we are lifting up our community.

Support RedCan

Hosting such a major event with acclaimed artists from across the country is no small task, and RedCan wouldn’t be possible without you. You can make a contribution to support this year’s graffiti jam through Square or PayPal. All proceeds will be used to purchase art supplies, food, and beverages and to help cover the artists’ travel expenses.

For more information: redcan.cryp@gmail.com
For news updates: Subscribe to our email list

Learn more about our new Waniyetu Wowapi (Winter Count) Institute and Art Park Project and how you can help!

Redcan 2023 Artists

179

179 is a muralist and teaching artist in Seattle, and works with the community on public art projects and workshops. Her goal is to create safe and beautiful spaces for community members by engaging them in mindful installations. She loves working with youth and challenging their brilliant minds to think about their roles within the rapid growth of our city. Her work strives to engage the viewer to be a part of their environment through observation, critique, and participation. She believes community engagement is vital to successful art planning, and art should be accessible to all. Her focus is education and leading by example.

LUCIOUS

Lucious/Lucid is an enrolled tribal member of Marten Falls Anishinaabe First Nation and has paternal ties to Constance Lake Oji-Cree First Nation. She is an active graffiti artist and muralist. She is a project coordinator for an all BIPOC artist collective called City Mischief Murals. She utilizes art to elevate community voice, healing, and advance change. She has been part of several community arts-based events and mural projects throughout the United States, Canada, Africa, and Mexico. She uses acrylic paint, aerosol paint, traditional Native American artforms and dance as a personal and political tool to address, explore and portray contemporary indigenous struggle.

REZMO

Natasha Martinez is Diné and Mexicá, and she grew up on the Navajo Nation Reservation in New Mexico. She has been doing graffiti for 18 years across the Southwest, and she enjoys teaching graffiti workshops in Native communities. As a graffiti writer, she is best known as Rezmo, which is short for Rezfunkmomma. “My work represents who I am and the women that inspire me, near and far,” she says. “I grew up with dual heritage, and often people judged me by the color of my skin and the way that I look, thinking I didn’t know anything about my cultures and traditions. In fact, I grew up in a very traditional Diné household. I found my voice and the acceptance of myself through my art, and through graffiti. My work has connected me to others who have felt the same way about themselves at one time or another. Art, to me, is a powerful way to communicate, and sometimes it’s the best way to show how I’m feeling.” Rezmo currently lives in the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community in Arizona.

TAMIJOY

Tammy Joy Granados is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, from the Itazipco and Hunkpapa bands of the Lakota/Dakota people, and she was born and raised in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. She currently resides in the community of LaPlant on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. She uses the name Tammy Joy Art for her professional work, and TamiJoy for her graffiti and street art.

Tammy’s expressionistic style is honed through years of experimenting with different mediums and styles — primarily acrylic paint, graffiti and street art, graphic art, and paper. She draws inspiration from cultural components and storytelling, as well as from subjects and objects that have great meaning to her.

Tammy has four young children who inspire her daily, and they often can be found in the pieces she creates. She credits her artistic knowledge to her late uncle, Leonard Granados; her pride in her uncle’s creations evolved into a motivation to learn and find an avenue for her own self-expression. She also attributes a great deal of her artistic growth to her years employed with the Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte; she learned a variety of artistic techniques and mediums alongside the young people she served.

Tammy sees her artistic development as a lifelong journey, one in which she is constantly fine-tuning her artistic vision and enhancing her skills and techniques. While she works primarily with acrylic on canvas, she also creates large-scale murals as a graffiti and street artist. On a smaller scale, she produces craft items and wood decor. She enjoys video creation as well as graphic arts; she creates logos, publicity pieces, holiday cards, T-shirt designs, and illustrations for children’s books and other publications. For several years, Tammy has participated as an accepted artist in the “Native POP: People of the Plains” art market, and she has consistently placed in CRST’s Labor Day Domestic and Lakota Arts Exhibit. In addition, her work has been displayed at the Journey Museum in Rapid City as well as at the Rapid City Public Library.

YUKUE

An enrolled member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe from Guadalupe, Arizona, Anitra Molina was raised on the New Pascua Reservation in Tucson. Her artist name, Yukue, refers to the rain that falls during the Arizona summer monsoons. She is a graffiti writer and a self-taught painter and aerosol mural artist. In her artwork,

Anitra incorporates applied graffiti paint techniques, bright color palette, and surreal pop — with elements of neo-folk art with an emphasis on expressing indigenous joy, attitude, and empowerment t through sun-kissed cactus characters named “Nopalitas,” “Saugo,” and “Taawe ToothTaker.” Her work also reflects a deep admiration for and spiritual connection to the lands and sky of the Sonoran Desert as well as Yaqui Tribal cultural essences and symbolism. Mixed into her paints, viewers will discover a dreamy and joyous kawaii twist with attitudes of punk rock and heavy metal.

EAST

A native of Illiana (Illinois-Indiana) now residing in Denver, East graduated from the Chicago Academy of Fine & Performing Arts in 1988. This classically trained scholarship recipient and teacher’s apprentice excelled in the arts of Intaglio printmaking and color theory. His love of technical lines and color spilled over into his passion for urban art, and East became a leading influence in the Illinois underground art scene and is a founder of Midwest graffiti styles. With more than 30 years’ experience, East continues to surge forward — through his consistency and perseverance, he has earned the title “Midwest Master.” East is the lead instructor for CRYP’s Waniyetu Wowapi Lakota Youth Arts & Culture Institute, and he continues to pursue his passion for letters and lettering styles.

CYFI

Rock Cyfi Martinez is a native to Tucson, Arizona. He is now lives and creates in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pulling from elements of his surroundings in nature and life, Martinez uses these themes throughout his work. He is influenced by his Mexican American heritage and native descent. A self-taught artist born in 1980 with more than 18 years of experience as a freelance muralist, Martinez has produced more than 300 murals throughout his career.

www.cyfiart.com

HOKA

Hoka Skenandore was born in 1982 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His multicultural roots include the Oneida of Wisconsin, the Oglala Lakota and the La Jolla Band of Luiseño, as well as Chicano heritage. He grew up in a home where he learned to appreciate traditional native art as well as fine art. On his own, he embraced the DIY ethos of punk rock, hip-hop culture and painted graffiti art. He transitioned from painting graffiti to working on murals in the Albuquerque metro area. After a year in AmeriCorps, he attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2006. He is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Oklahoma. He also has written for First American Art Magazine and Contemporary Native Art Magazine, and he recently contributed his perspectives on the intersection of graffiti, street art and indigenous culture to a chapter written by Matthew Ryan Smith, titled “Indigenous Graffiti and Street Art as Resistance.”

BIAFRA

Biafra Inc. (pronounced bahy-ah-fruh or bee-ah-fruh) is an artist residing in the Twin Cities. He took his name in part from Jello Biafra from the band Dead Kennedys, the first band he got into that had content in their lyrics. His work is a visual retelling of stories that are apart of his life; much of it takes a critical look at “white” culture. Biafra is a multifaceted artist who uses a variety of mediums, including spray paint, screen printing, stencils, stickers and posters. As his work spreads across North America, he continues to work tirelessly to get his imagery out to the public.

“My work is a reflection of the culture around me. I retell stories that I have experienced or been told through my illustrations and large-scale murals.”

www.biafrainc.com

WUNDR

Wundr is populating the space we live in with his playful, mischievous and always evolving illustrations. The characters he creates are not meant to represent any specific individual, but are stitched together from pieces of all of us. Wundr is currently producing artwork in multiple mediums, including murals, illustration, toys and fine art. Influenced by traditional graffiti, cartoons and comics, Wundr’s work provides a fresh take on designing characters that are constantly creeping into our known habitat.

www.wundr.org

LAWST

Lawst uses his Potawatomi, Menominee and Puerto Rican heritage to influence and shape his visual artwork. His murals and photography examine social and political issues such as the criminalization of immigrants and indigenous populations, urban life, and self- identity. He has been a part of many collaborative mural events across the country, is a member of City Mischief Murals, and is the Founder of Intertribal Styles BIPOC Graffiti Jam.

Man wearing a hat, bold glasses and striped scarf
DESI MUNDO
Desi Mundo has been a spray-can artist and muralist for 30 years. The Oakland, California-based artist merges studies of space, balance and transparency within his unique stylized letters and masks with a strong foundation in cultural engagement, community reflection, and rooted spirituality.

A spray-paint educator and hip-hop cultural diplomat, Desi is the founder of the Community Rejuvenation Project, a pavement-to-policy mural organization that has produced more than 300 murals throughout the Bay Area as well as nationally and internationally. His work has been shown at DePaul University, the St. George Art Museum, and the Block Museum at Northwestern University. His largest mural, the “Universal Language,” galvanized the Oakland community in the struggle against gentrification, resulting in $20 million in community benefits (as documented in the feature documentary film “Alice Street”).

Desi’s legacy as an educator and youth worker in K-12 schools spans two decades. He has been awarded the Individual Artist grant from the City of Oakland eight times. He served as a hip-hop cultural ambassador to Egypt through the Next Level program of the U.S. State Department in 2017, and again in Chile in 2023. In 2020, Desi completed his tallest mural, “AscenDance,” a 90-foot-tall piece on the Greenlining Institute, followed by a 25-foot-tall, block-long mural for Kaiser Permanente titled “East Bay Rising Together” in 2021.

RedCan Daily Opening and Closing Prayers By

WAKINYAN MAZA

Wakinyan Maza is a local drumming group.

Redcan 2023 Special Guests

Check back soon for updates!

black and white close-up of man's face with Bazille tag written across his eyes
BAZILLE
Talon Bazille is a rap artist, producer and sound designer from the Cheyenne River Lakota and Crow Creek Dakota tribes in South Dakota. With albums like “Taku Sni (Nobody)”, “Ghost Plant” and “Traveling the Multiverse with Iktomi”, his work centers in a reality that refuses to separate “traditional” and “modern” themes of Indigenous/human existence.

Today, Bazille lives in South Dakota where he continues to create music, produce other artists, and compose soundscapes. His work has been performed in places like the Kennedy Center all the way to small tribal halls back on the reservation, and now currently, a soundscape he has composed for Dyani WhiteHawk’s piece (also in collaboration with Leya Hale), “RELATIVE” – as part of the Rising Sun Philly exhibition at PAFA. “I’ve come to find that music is my only way of making good-sense of the world, and I want to honor that feeling it gives me by doing this in an honest way.”

Band playing at outdoor concert. Woman signing with microphone at keyboard, man on base and man on guitar.
THE WAKE SINGERS

The Wake Singers are an Oglala Lakota rock band based out of Mni Luzihan. Three cousins make up the core group; Douglas, Michael, and Reed Two Bulls. Douglas and Michael have been making music together since childhood, with Reed officially joining the group in 2018. With the incorporation of a multitude of genres, The Wake Singers showcase together beautiful and powerful songs.

THE SAMPSON BROTHERS

As world-renowned dancers, Lumhe and Samsoche Sampson (Mvskoke Creek/Seneca)—a.k.a. the Sampson Brothers— strive to promote cultural pride, unity, and hope by setting a positive example through art, education, and dance. They hope to give back to their tribe and the Indigenous community as a whole by breaking stereotypes and thus creating opportunities for generations to come. The Sampson Brothers aim to be successful artists, but also use that success to educate others while keeping their culture alive. With perseverance in modern times and tradition in tact, they bridge two worlds to provide positive inspiration as 21st century warriors.

Hoop dance has been the brothers’ passion and instrument of choice since they first learned as young boys. While the Powwow styles of Grass and Fancy dance were their origins when they began to walk, they were always encouraged to “never stop learning” and try more… that’s when they were introduced to and picked up their first hoops. At first, it was simply to inform and share with their peers at school assemblies, yet it quickly became a means of living, and ultimately, a way of life. More than 25 years later, they have since performed in more than half a dozen countries and at hundreds of universities, and they have educated thousands of individuals around the world about their culture and Indigenous Hoop Dancing.

Redcan NEWS

RedCan Brings Hundreds to Mural Sites and Art Park, Including Special Guests

The Cheyenne River Youth Project’s 9th annual RedCan invitational graffiti jam on July 5-8 was one for the record books. The award-winning event’s attendance exceeded pre-pandemic levels, attracting hundreds of people —  including the chair of the National Endowment...

RedCan Update: Artists Complete City Murals, Prepare to Paint in the Art Park Tomorrow

In the last two days, our RedCan artists have been completing their large-scale murals in the city of Eagle Butte, supported by volunteer assistants and local youth artists. While they painted, volunteers from Ursuline College and the University of Missouri-St. Louis...

The 9th Annual RedCan Invitational Graffiti Jam Begins Tomorrow, July 5!

The 9th annual RedCan invitational graffiti jam begins tomorrow, July 5, in the heart of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation. The four-day, Eagle Butte-based event will run through Saturday evening, July 8. On July 5-6, 12 featured artists from around the country — East,...

CRYP Prepares to Welcome Artists, Performers and Guests to RedCan 2023

The 9th annual RedCan invitational graffiti jam is just one week away, and CRYP staff and volunteers are preparing to welcome artists, performers and guests to the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation for four days of art, culture and connection. The first and only event...

CRYP Releases Short Film, Announces 2023 RedCan Lineup

In less than two months, the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation will be ground zero for the 9th annual RedCan invitational graffiti jam, the first and only event of its kind in Indian Country. RedCan is scheduled for July 5-8 and is open to the public. Today, the...