ARTIST JESSE LITTLEBIRD’S 1973 Dodge Dart is not a lowrider, although people often mistake it for one. It might be a boat compared to most modern compacts, but the Dart is typically smaller than the classic lowrider cars that have left indelible marks on the New Mexico landscape. Decked out in bold graphics inspired by Pueblo pottery motifs, it’s its own thing, poised somewhere on the periphery of the lowrider phenomenon, belonging to the tradition and yet standing out.
“It would be really fun if I could get it to be a daily driver,” says Littlebird of the car he calls Petrolglyph. He painted it in burnt umber, meticulously taping the body to add geometrized Pueblo patterns of rain clouds, birds, and jackrabbits in cream with traces of black. “But I’m still working on the mechanics side of it.”
Downtown Albuquerque’s Kukani Gallery, which the Laguna and Kewa artist co-founded earlier this year with non-Indigenous artist Max Baptiste, has Petrolglyph parked right outside the art space. Littlebird considers the ornately painted Dart to be a symbol of endurance and perseverance.
"Untitled" by Beedallo.
Courtesy of Kukani Media.
“It’s turned into something that I’m more of a steward of,” he says. “It opens up conversations.” The work was also inspired by the idea that, unlike in Los Angeles or other places with popular lowrider scenes, New Mexico’s car scene bears the influence of Native culture.
Santa Clara Pueblo artist Rose B. Simpson’s own classic black El Camino, Maria, named for famed San Ildefonso potter Maria Martinez (1887–1980), might have been the first Native high-art car, with its San Ildefonso pottery motifs. Littlebird acknowledges Simpson’s influence on his own ride, while also nodding to Hopi painter and sculptor Dan Namingha as well as tattoo and graffiti artist Mike Giant.
“It’s very freeing not being the first,” Littlebird says. “I don’t like being the first in anything. It was a personal achievement when Mike Giant reached out to tell me it’s a cool car.”
Three 2025 enamel works on glass by Max Baptiste: "Sunsets Over Sunsets," "Red Skies," and "Sacred Rain."
Petrolglyph is just a part of his oeuvre. Since opening Kukani Gallery, the artist co-owners have embraced the curatorial side of the market. The space features work by artists including Huitzil Sol, Gabriel Jaureguiberry, and Joel Davis, as well as limited-edition archival prints by Littlebird’s father, well-known artist and storyteller Larry Littlebird, including his Picasso Bull Study from 1960.
“It’s not trying to fit into a narrative or mold of what the trending topic of the day is right now,” says Littlebird of the gallery’s mission. “If people think I’m just going to curate shows of Indigenous artists, it’s disrupting a lot of that.”
Kukani rotates exhibitions monthly with new and emerging artists from all kinds of backgrounds engaging in different mediums. June’s Art Speak exhibition, for example, featured Triple Take—Janet Bothne, Joseph Riggs, and Bill Sabatini—who share an interest in abstraction and intuitive painting.
Jesse Littlebird in his studio.
Kukani also looks for works that may carry provocative or uncomfortable imagery or themes. In May, the artist Beedallo’s solo exhibition, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, included works that reflect a sense of identity obscured by societal pressures, along with hints at the dark side of modern technologies. Giving new meaning to the term love bomb, an untitled, two-foot-square painting by the artist depicts a blue Christ figure nailed to the shadowy form of a stealth bomber being deployed.
Also at Kukani, Baptiste’s own minimalist, abstracted landscapes distill mesas and canyon lands into uncomplicated compositions of color and form. “Minimalism for me is really a way to boil down the chaos of the world and be OK with it,” says Baptiste, who is represented in Santa Fe by Acosta Strong Fine Art. On view elsewhere in the gallery is a model made by famed Albuquerque lowrider artists Rob Vanderslice and Joseph “Blast” Leyba for an under-construction installation at the Albuquerque International Sunport: a lowrider airplane co-created with Baptiste. (Baptiste hopes they’ll use a Piper Cub, which has a 36-foot wingspan, for the airport project.) “I made video games for a long time,” Baptiste says of his earlier career. He also served as the Sunport’s art curator for a couple of years; the 2019 lowrider show there made an international list of best airport exhibitions.
Jesse Littlebird’s "Sainted Wolf Beaten Up on the Path North, No. 3."
Courtesy of Kukani Gallery.
Kukani Gallery is entirely funded by the owners’ art careers. “We didn’t get any big investments or nonprofit grants,” Littlebird says. “Starting this at 32 years old, when I’m still in my emerging artist career, was a big swing.”
“The thing I love about Jesse is that we both operate the same,” Baptiste says. “There’s not a lot of verbal communication. We just really work well together.”
Littlebird grew up on Albuquerque’s west side, tagging and making art with spray cans in abandoned buildings. “Some of the most underrepresented artists in the state are graffiti artists,” he says. “They’re deemed vagrants all the time.”
His father, Larry, had a full career as a painter before moving into filmmaking and Indigenous storytelling. Jesse sees his dad’s career as a sort of counter-parallel to his own, which evolved into making large-scale landscapes replete with skies full of Indigenous symbols. He also made his own inroads in the film industry with The Land: Stories of the People (2017), which documented activism across the country in the early days of the first Donald Trump administration, before transitioning back to painting. In visual art, he says, “There’s a lot more freedom.”
Max Baptiste, Kukani artist Ruben Cantu, and Jesse Littlebird wearing the Two Cats Hoodie by Ruben Cantu.
Littlebird sells his paintings, which verge into the territory of the imaginary with motifs that tie to the land, exclusively through Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, which frees him up to show more of his subversive work at Kukani.
These days, he’s busy with curatorial projects. In addition to shows at Kukani, he’s slated to curate a wall of Indigenous painting at the La Fonda on the Plaza during Santa Fe Indian Market. Littlebird’s work is also included, alongside works by Dan Friday, Ryan Singer, Jody Naranjo, Chris Pappan, and others, in Blue Rain Gallery’s annual Indian Market Group Exhibition. Also in August, Kukani features a show of custom-painted bicycles from Vanderslice’s Duke City Bike Club.
“A lot of artists go to school for this and get into museum studies and get a degree,” says Littlebird of his newfound curatorial career. Neither he nor Baptiste fits this model. But with Petrolglyph parked at Kukani’s curb, looking like a Kewa pot’s dream of itself as a car, one is lured inside by the promise of more works that break the mold.
Michael Abatemarco has written about lowrider and Indigenous art for nearly 20 years.
