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Connecting Cultures Through Art

Blackfeet at HeART provides opportunities and donates supplies to artists, and aspiring artists, of all ages on the reservation

By Andy Viano
Fawn Gray creates using chalk at a drawing workshop hosted by Blackfeet at HeART. Courtesy photo

Not long ago, Susan Fletcher was walking across the parking lot toward Glacier Peaks Casino in Browning when a woman stepped out of her car and began a practiced sales pitch, showing off the handcrafted jewelry she was selling out of a vehicle that doubled as her storefront.

This week, Fletcher will return to Browning, find LaVonna Falls Down and hand the Blackfeet artist a check, proceeds from her first-ever gallery showing at the Stumptown Art Studio. It will be precisely the kind of moment Fletcher and Sue Cox, co-founders of the nonprofit Blackfeet at HeART, had in mind when they first came together to connect the people of the Flathead Valley and Blackfeet reservation through art.

“Can you even imagine how that will make her feel?” Fletcher said last week, anticipating her reunion with Falls Down. “She had no concept that her work would be revered and shown in a gallery and sold in a gallery … For her work to be recognized in such a way will be very powerful for her.”

The two women took the first steps toward forming the organization in 2016, when Cox approached Fletcher — a board member at the nonprofit Stumptown Art Studio in Whitefish — about hosting a show featuring exclusively Native American artists. Fletcher agreed, and it wasn’t long after that first show that the pair realized there was an opportunity to help promote and encourage Blackfeet art.

“Not only did I see and appreciate, as (Cox) had already come to appreciate, the quality of these motivated artists, but I also saw that a lot of the work was done with really inferior materials,” Fletcher said of that first show. “We had beautiful work that was done on the back of corrugated cardboard and it was just like, ‘Wow, what if we could put into the hands of this underserved community good, quality art materials and art opportunities?’”

Initially, Fletcher and Cox started providing art supplies via the studio’s broader Art from the Heart campaign that supports art within special needs and other underserved communities. But in January 2017, Blackfeet at HeART was born and its co-founders — a pair of “white women of Whitefish” — went to work making inroads with Blackfeet artists, elders and even teenagers.

“We got in touch with a librarian at (Browning High School), and I’m always into teenagers because they have no holds barred,” Cox said. “And that’s what I wanted to hear, straight from their mouths, what do you like, what do you not like? … We just said, if we had this huge pile of money in the middle of the table and we said this is going to be spent on art, what would you guys come up with?”

The answers they received ran the gamut, but between the need demonstrated at the first art show and an underwhelming art program at the high school desperately seeking adequate supplies, Cox and Fletcher first focused their attention on providing the tools necessary to create works of art. They became involved with the art programs at local high schools, elementary schools and an alternative school, began a program at the Crystal Creek Lodge treatment center, and took out an ad in a local newspaper offering free supplies, to which more than 60 people responded.

Bill Gilham displays a portrait painting. Photo courtesy of Blackfeet at HeART

As the organization has matured, Blackfeet at HeART has expanded beyond providing supplies. The group holds workshops for Blackfeet artists of all abilities at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning and has helped professional artists like Valentina LaPier make inroads with galleries in the Flathead Valley.

“They’ve really gotten to know the artists in our community, and they’ve allowed the artists to specifically address their medium,” LaPier said. “They’re not just throwing stuff at you, what they’re doing is really personal.”

LaPier’s art was on display at Stumptown Art Studio in the month of September — along with Falls Down and the work of more than a dozen other Blackfeet artists — as part the annual Whitefish Gallery Nights. LaPier has also assisted Blackfeet at HeART as an instructor at some of their workshops.

While Blackfeet at HeART is still young as an organization, Cox and Fletcher say they are committed to the Blackfeet long-term. They hope to one day bring even more Blackfeet artists to the Flathead Valley, either to sell their work or interact with the larger art community, and a pair of prominent local artists — Nicholas Oberling and Nancy Cawdrey — have offered scholarships to Blackfeet artists looking to take one of their classes in conjunction with Blackfeet at HeART.

“When we talked with these different groups at the beginning, they all stated ‘groups of white people come, they build us a house, and then they leave. They’ve done their good deed … and it’s done,’” Cox said. “This thing, 10 years from now, we’re still going to be doing it and we’re still going to be involved and have the same commitment that we have now.”

Blackfeet at HeART accepts donations of art supplies in addition to financial contributions, and is seeking additional local artists to partner with. For more information, visit www.blackfeetatheart.com.

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