Jalen Whitethorne

Yáá’tééh abíní my name is Jalen Whitethorne, I am a 3rd Generation Native American Artist born and raised in Flagstaff Arizona: I started painting when I was small with drawings on sketch paper my grandpa who I commonly call my dad and self taught myself methods and ways to further elevate my style.

What I use now is Authentic 1960s to Early 1970s Newspaper mainly from the Space Race Era from cities throughout the American Southwest and Northeast mostly from the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post and paint Native American stories my dad has shown me and/or told me growing up and driving him to his Art Shows.

The way the Yeis connect with the paper is my dad was a Boilermaker in the State of Arizona, He welded the reactor shielding for Palo Verde, The Smokestacks for Cholla and Navajo Generating Station, every morning when I used to get up to wait for the bus at 6am during elementary he’d be awake, and I used to sit with him and watch History Channel, How It’s Made, Modern Marvels, and various documentaries about the Space Race or Aviation, It’s what got me fascinated with Aerospace and Engineering sitting there watching and hearing him explain and breakdown how they work with how he used to work, the stories he’d tell me…

“That’s how I used to weld”
“when we built this, that’s what we used”
“This man I used to work with his dad built the fuel tanks for Saturn V”

The Many Stories I loved and listened to is what makes the connection with the painting to the newspaper