Amon Carter print details
A two-part print of an abstract American Indian bust surrounded by text on the left, and lots of chunks of text in different sizes and colors on the right, with the word "WARRIOR" prominently in red.

I Couldn't Tell if He was Crying

Daniel Heyman (b. 1963), Lucy Ganje (b. 1949)

Object Details

  • Date

    2015-2016

  • Object Type

    Prints

  • Medium

    Color reduction woodcut and letterpress on handmade mulberry and North Dakota native milkweed paper

  • Contributors

    Printed by Kim Fink

  • Object Format

    Diptych

  • Dimensions

    19 3/8 x 52 1/4 in.

  • Credit Line

    Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

  • Accession Number

    2017.2.3

  • Copyright

    © 2015-2016 Daniel Heyman and Lucy Ganje

This artwork is part of In Our Own Words: Native Impressions

Object Description

In 2015, Heyman traveled to North Dakota to chronicle the stories of those living within the state’s tribal nations. Ganje, a letterpress artist who grew up on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, invited Heyman to meet with members of four nations: the Spirit Lake Tribe; the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians; the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation; and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Heyman and Ganje are not Native American, but they worked in close collaboration with each nation’s tribal college, conducting extensive portrait sittings and interviews with 12 individuals selected by the colleges, which Heyman used as the basis of a series of woodcut portraits. In turn, Ganje created letterpress prints comprised of quotes from each interview recounting aspects of the sitter’s personal histories, values, and cultures. Collectively titled In Our Own Words, the collaborative project, printed by Kim Fink, provides first-person testimony that Indigenous cultures remain unique, rich, and very much alive.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)

Additional details

Location: Off view
W28-artist-CMYK-CarterBlack
See more by Daniel Heyman and Lucy Ganje

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Educator Resources

  • Why might artists choose to collaborate on a work of art?

    How might the choice to create a diptych affect the way in which a work of art is viewed and interpreted? How might unity be created in a diptych?

    Why might an artist choose to include text in a work of art?

    How has the purpose, media, and style of portraits changed and/or stayed the same throughout time?

    How might the background, clothes, facial expression, and body language depicted in a portrait reveal something about the sitter?

    How might the style, subject, and depiction of the sitter reveal something about the artist who created the portrait?

    What kinds of relationships can exist between artist and subject, and how might those relationships impact the work of art?

  • Grades 1–3

    Read the book The Star People: A Lakota Story by S.D. Nelson.

    Grades 6–12

    Have students take time to read the words that are in the artwork. Students will then take time to consider how they would want to be represented in a portrait and what story they would want to tell about their lives. Students will take a paper and fold it in half like a book. On one half of the paper, students will draw their own portrait and write words around the portrait that are important to them. These words could be things they say, their ideas or beliefs, or words that describe them. On the other half of the paper students can write a story they would want to share with others.

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