The Open Arms Exhibition is a retrospective show featuring White Cloud Wolf Hawk Eagles Xochipillicueponi Quetzalkanbalam, known as "Doc." This exhibition honors over sixty years of his creative performances, including plays, scripts, songs, artwork, activism, and more. Thirty-five of these years have been shared with his companion and fellow artist, M3, who is also showcasing artwork influenced by their shared life experiences. M3's art has been deliberately off-grid, with no internet exposure, and has remained private since Amsterdam 90. Come see the premiere of the Metal Geist series.
“I have not seen anything like in my 20 year career specializing in hanging fine art through out Socal. It is uniquely original”
SHOW CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE – DUE TO THE LA FIRES
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White Cloud “Doc” grew up in Fresno, CA 1943. His parents Jose and Delores Rodriguez were Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants. He often worked in the fields instead of going to school until his sisters convinced his parents of his exceptional talent.
In High School he excelled from a freshman through senior years, winning many awards, including the 1962 National Forensic Championship for original oratory with his script “The Plea” written at age 14. This set him up with scholarships that led to more opportunities, including the Pasadena Playhouse where he produced his play “Invocation at Golden Gate Bridge.”
He won a Shubert Playwrite scholarship to attend Occidental College. In 1968, Doc’s play was one of the first minority plays featured in American Theater. He wrote and starred in “El Manco” (1968) at the Inner City Cultural Center, Los Angeles. Betty Saar did the costume design for his main character. Doc was ahead of his times and had to persevere through typecasting roles available to minorities and theater companies afraid to produce some of his works, as they considered them too shocking.
Doc worked with Luiz Valdez and Peter Brook and directed Valdez’s theater troupe in Doc’s indigenous version of El Virgin De Tepeyac in the early 70s at the San Juan Batista Church. He worked with and directed Jay Silverheels’ Indian Actors Workshop in Los Angeles. At the Pasadena Playhouse, he shared the stage with Sally Struthers, Imogene Coca, Marni Nixon, and Bea Lillie. He performed in Steve Allen’s experimental science fiction dramas in the early 1960s and co-starred with Jay Silverheels in “Eagle Boy.”
His colleagues in Los Angeles included cinematographer-turned-director John Alonzo, Tom Smothers, Brian De Palma, Katherine Ross, and Orson Welles. He starred in “Hotspur” for Olympic Films International and worked with Patty Duke and Richard Boone in “Deadly Harvest.”
He co-founded the Napa Valley Theater Company in Yountville, CA, and produced “El Vato Loco” (misquoted by the newspaper as “Bato Loco”). He produced “Alice in Wonderland” and “Antigone,” with Betty Saar working on the productions.
In the Bay Area of San Francisco, White Cloud produced many performances and one-man shows, including “Toltec in Deco Land” performed at the Hatley Martin Gallery in San Francisco. He was ahead of his times and had to persevere through typecasting roles and theater companies afraid to produce some of his works, as they considered them too shocking.
In the early 1990s, in the Bay Area, White Cloud started working on the “Get Lost Columbus Opera” and produced it in October of 1992 as part of the local protest to Columbus Day. The New York Times hailed it as the first Native American opera, coinciding with Berkeley declaring National Indigenous Peoples Day on October 12, 1992.
Doc’s works go beyond writing, producing, singing, and scripts for film, theater, and TV. He connected with the Indigenous community of Ixtahuacan, Guatemala, through his study of the K’iche language from 2000–2008. He was instrumental in getting Engineers Without Borders to bring water down from the mountaintop to the newly relocated village below.
Doc traveled to meet and connect with other Indigenous communities, including those in Tibet, India, Tahiti, Mexico, and Guatemala. Doc is an accomplished artist in drawing and painting. He also enjoyed photography. Doc found fluidity and expressive freedom in any medium that he applied himself to.
The last of his artworks were pen and ink drawings and the “Singing Glyphs” story murals on stainless steel, depicting alternative realities. At the same time, he recorded six songs with local musicians in and around Pasadena, CA, from 2018–2019.
