Interview 2

My time as Visiting Artist in Montana is really going fast. The people I have met have been fabulous, as has the scenery. I have been staying in cabins in East Glacier, Montana about 12 miles south of Browning. Let’s see, the first night I stayed in East Glacier Motel and Cabins, right across the road from a terrific restaurant called Luna’s Cafe and just about a quarter mile from Serrano’s Mexican Restaurant. I’ve been to both places before so it is no coincidence I stayed close by. Then I moved to Jacobson’s Cottages. The president of the local Chamber of Commerce said “they’re clean and cozy, you’ll like them.” And I did.
Browning is the headquarters for the Blackfeet Nation and the location of the Museum of the Plains Indian where I have been working. The Friends of the Museum of the Plains Indian have a good sized office on the second floor of the Museum that I have converted into a photo studio. I have been taking 30-50 reference shots of each of the invited artists so that I can go back to Michigan and create the sketches and then the final large format art quilt portraits. I went in with a number of poses in mind and just chucked them all out the window and let each individual get comfortable and talking before I started looking for the pose that was uniquely “them”.
The first person I worked with was Leonda Fast Buffalo Horse. I was talking with a tour guide from the Red Bus Tours when I was in Montana in July. He described the ancient Blackfeet women as ‘fierce”. Then he added with a cautious smile, “Contemporary Blackfeet women can be pretty fierce too.” These word echoed in my mind the first time I met Leonda despite the fact that she looks all of 5′ 5″ and 98 pounds. She struck me as the kind of person who would be a jewel of a friend. She has the ability to see to the heart of the situation and is willing to share her insights in an honest and direct manner. My husband is gifted in this way also. No wonder I liked her.
This information came from her gallery:
“Leonda was born in Browning, Montana and has been a full time artist since she moved back to the reservation from Seattle, WA in 1993. Her foundation is in painting, drawing and design, which fosters her flexibility to create organic forms as well as traditional geometrics. Adapting imagery of the Northern Plains, she enjoys the simplicity of the designs and primary colors, re-imaging cultural art forms in the medium of glass. She incorporates objects and traditional porcupine quillwork into stained glass designs to fuse old Plains Indian tradition with the media of glass into a new form of cultural artistic expression. Leonda was an instructor for porcupine quillwork at the Institute of Native American Art in Santa Fe, NM and has been a contracted teacher for glass mosaic work in the Browning School District, Since 1996, Leonda has attended art shows such as Northern Plains Tribal Arts in Sioux Falls, SD, Heard Museum Indian Art Show in Phoenix, AZ and the Native American Art Show in Great Falls, MT. In most of the shows she was honored for her quillwork. In 2005 she received the Artist in Business Leadership Award by the First Peoples Fund.”