After original work was destroyed, Caddo artist debuts new piece at Dallas Museum of Art

In 2022, the art world was in shock when news broke that somebody allegedly broke into the Dallas Museum of Art and started smashing priceless pieces of work.

In total, around $5 million of art was destroyed and police at the time said that the assailant went on this rampage because he was “mad at his girl.”

When the assailant broke into the museum, he shattered three artifacts from Ancient Greece and a four foot ceramic alligator gar fish that took Caddo artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles six months to complete.

“It’s a very ancient fish,” Earles said. “One of the biggest fish in the rivers in the Caddo homeland areas.”

The Caddo are an American Indian community of about 7,000 whose ancestors lived in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and East Texas.

Earles is one of the few contemporary Caddo artists who makes a living representing their culture. When he found out that one of most ambitious pieces had been destroyed, he was devastated.

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“It was really shocking,” Earles explained. “But it was also devastating because getting a work of art into the Dallas Museum of Art is huge.”

Caddo artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles creates ceramics through open ground wood fire. Courtesy of Chase Kahwinhut Earles

Soon after disaster struck, the Dallas Museum of Art commissioned Earles to make three new pieces titled Batah Kuhuh Bit: Alligator Gar 2, The Resilience of the River People.

To get the job done, the museum gave Earles fragments of his original alligator gar to mix into the clay for the new pieces.

“That is actually a very specific Caddo tradition,” Earles said. “It was kind of cool to be able to take the former piece and add it to the new work. So all three pieces have crushed up clay from the original.”

Earles’ new work debuted this past weekend and is currently on display.

“This piece makes a poetic statement about rebirth, resilience, and perseverance,” wrote the Dallas Museum of Art in a statement to Texas Standard. “Chase transformed that difficult experience into something new and beautiful, and we are so grateful to him for his collaboration and ingenuity.”

Earles is also currently working on a book inspired by an ancient Caddo fish dance and the alligator gar fish.

“Caddos haven’t written any story in hundreds of years,” said Earles. “But these pieces that are going in the Dallas Museum of Art, they’re all illustrative of this story, so when I finally do release the book, they’ll carry it.”

Texas Standard’s attempts to interview a representative from the Dallas Museum of Art were unsuccessful.

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