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Artist Spotlight - Creativity Out of Rootedness

Updated: 5 days ago

An Interview with Apsáalooke-Crow artist Ben Pease


Our president, Paul G. Chandler, had the privilege of interviewing the celebrated Native American artist Ben Pease of the Apsáalooke-Crow Nation, who was one of the 15 contemporary artists from Indigenous American tribes traditionally based in and around the Great Plains region of the USA who participated in our "GROUNDED” exhibition.


“I accept and embrace change. But at the same time there are things that should be remembered.”

Ben Pease


Ben Pease was born in 1989 in Missoula, Montana and grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation. Ben attended Minot State University on a football scholarship and was awarded the Twyman Art Scholarship. At MSU he studied under Walter Piehl, a protégé of world-renowned artist Fritz Scholder. He eventually moved his family to Bozeman, Montana, and continued his pursuit of art and creativity at Montana State University where he studied under Rollin Beamish and Sara Mast.


Ben’s work has gained national and international attention, and has been featured in numerous US and internationally esteemed magazines, books, online publications, and social media networks. Ben was commissioned to participate in a large group exhibition at the Chicago Field Museum, University of Chicago’s Neubauer Collegium, titled “Apsáalooke Women & Warriors,” which opened March of 2020. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of the Rockies and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He was named Artist-of-the-Year by the Yellowstone Art Museum’s Board of Trustees in 2019. Ben currently lives in Billings, Montana.


For more information: benpeasevisions.art



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The arts have worked profoundly in my own life. And as you know, I am passionate about indigenous cultures, having grown up around indigenous cultures most of my life.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

 

Pease: Yeah, I guess my family, we’ve always been a practicing family. By practicing I mean in our culture, going to celebrations and ceremonies, etc. And there’s always some type of regalia, some type of our culture present there. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always known our family to be making things - beading or painting or sewing or anything in connection to our culture. Before I knew any words, I was dancing in our ceremonies. In addition to that, my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather were makers of things because of our heritage.


And at the time, in their generation, they were trying to understand how to exist in this changing world. Being forced onto reservations, you had to make a living; you had to make a life-way or not. If you weren’t farming, you had to be a rancher, you had to run cattle. That was about it, as job opportunities on the reservation. So, my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather - they made things: coats, gauntlet gloves, leggings, all sorts of beadwork. And my great-grandfather was maker of what they called at the time, “art fakes.” Collectors at the time called him an art-faker. He was Ben Pease, Sr.  And so now as I’m going around the region, to the museums – they have my great-grandfather’s pieces and some of my great-grandmother’s works.


So, they are in more museums than I am. In addition to that, my grandfather was always making things. And my mother was working so much, traveling her education work. She spent her whole entire career in arts and education as an administrator. So, we traveled to different institutions and museums all over the country where she would have a job. So, at the time I was able to run around the bowels of the collections and really see who I used to be. And that’s an interesting notion to me because I’m not parading around in beads and feathers, obviously. I came here in a brand-new Ford pickup truck; I have an iPhone on my watch, and I left my horse at home.

 

Because I was seeing these things, it was just natural for me to create. And so, I was always creating, because of this, because of my environment. In high school, all I wanted to do was talk to girls and do art, and draw. And so, I did that; and that took me to college where I played football and I met my wife. We found out we were going to have our baby, and I said a football jock life isn’t the life of a family guy. So, I withdrew from football my senior year and we moved to Bozeman [Montana, USA]. And it snowballed from there.


Thinking about your own artistic life, what other influences have really been strong for you?

 

Pease: It’s always my community. The people that surround me, the people that I know that care about me, those people that I know that love me. The binding force there is our culture, our heritage, our language, our history and that potential future. Today, we see our languages dying. Even today we see our kids forgetting how to speak, forgetting how to do things in ceremonies, forgetting protocol – speaking over their elders – being disrespectful, not tying their shoes, etc. We see these things happening. Those are signs of cultural degradation, culture loss. And even though those things are happening, there’s so many things to combat that, like language preservation. Those things are some of my most intense influences. Trying to keep who I am alive, and keep alive our culture.


For example, this is my great-great-great grandfather. Things like that, little things I can do to remember who I am and where I come from, because if I get too far away from it, I start to get lost. This is my identity and without it, I feel like I’m a ghost in the world. The Crow people say, if you cut your hair, you’re a ghost person. And I’ve been cutting my hair ever since I was a kid. I’m trying to find a way back to grow it, to have my braids. But until then I wear my braids on the inside.


So, at the same time I have other contemporary influences, contemporary art painters, and mixed media and installation artists, but my largest influence is my family and my culture. There’s nothing beyond that, because who am I if I don’t have those things? And I’m lucky. I’m entirely fortunate and I know that. I know I’m so very fortunate to have context about my life. Understanding a place to go back to, people in the community. For example, the first documented Crow Indian person who did not only speak the Crow language was in 1880. In direct contrast to that, the first non-speaking Lumbee on the East Coast, was in 1580. And I just think of the geographical difference from the westward expansion (in the US), colonization, conquest, to now; we’re so much further behind their assimilation [those on the East Coast] that we’re just not experiencing the same things that they experienced hundreds of years ago. Those are the things that really keep me moving.


Do you find in the next generation, that is coming up, that there’s a renewed interest in returning to their indigenous culture that was lost? Is that happening on the Crow Reservation?

 

Pease: I would say that the return and the interest in the culture is there, but there are so many distractions with just the base level of integration that we have throughout our society today - everybody, we’re all connected. We all have super computers in our pockets, almost all of us. We have them in our cars now. We have them in our homes; our assistants, our Siris, our Alexas. They’re so far engrained into who we are as people today that it’s hard to get away from them.

 

And if a kid was to listen to this interview, and spend the [time] it takes, and digest the information, then that’s [time] away from learning his or her language. So, you have to make these choices. How do we get them to understand the importance of our language, the importance of our history? You have to know your history to know where you’re going. You just have to. You have to know where you come from to know where you’re going. And so how do you speak toward that importance? How do you make them value water more, in 50 years? Water is the most natural resource on our planet, as humans, the most important thing to us. How do you make that important to a 16-year-old who’s only concerned with TikTok?



How are you intentionally doing that with your kids?

 

Pease: The way that we’re combating it has largely been emboldened by COVID [pandemic]. Because everyone was trying to confront and deal with the Coronavirus. And at the same time, the way that we combated it was just spending more time out on the land. Like literally on the land, with no phones, just walking and talking about this plant and or that plant. Hey that’s a form of licorice. This is kind of related to the carrot; here’s what you use it for. These are the sounds the deer make. At the same time, here let’s take a picture by this big canyon and put it on Facebook.

 

But I speak to them when I can. I write a Crow word on our fridge with a dry erase marker every morning, next to a math problem. We sing songs to them. We play the piano. We’re actually working on a Crow hymn that was written in 1940 from the First Crow Indian Baptist Church. It’s in Crow. It’s with our musical timing. It’s with drums and a tambourine. So, it’s really sort of an interesting curriculum that I’m presenting to my kids. And everybody does it their own way.



That’s beautiful. I wanted to ask you about a statement from Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux in the 19th century. He said;       

 

“Upon suffering beyond suffering: [We] shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness, and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you, and I am at that place within me, we shall be one.”              

 

He says there’s going to be a time when we are coming to you as Indigenous peoples, saying we need your assistance. How do you see that being able to be more proactively done? I believe we really do need you to help guide us today in numerous ways.

 

Pease: That’s a big question, paired with immense responsibility, that I don’t think I’m ready to answer. At the same time, we put so many hurdles in front of ourselves today, and we forget to slow down. And most of us are forced to slow down. I know the importance of slowing down because I’m a young guy with a young family and it just seems like there’s no more time left to do anything. It’s getting harder and harder to be a traditional Indian. It’s getting more expensive to be an Indian. Buying feathers, buying beads; the prices are going up with inflation. On top of buying brand-new basketball shoes, it’s a lot.

 

But I think the thing that we always have to remember is that we’re all human. And learn to see each other as human and nothing else. Beautiful humans – it’s the most important thing to look at; just even starting that yearning and learning to reconnect. Valuing each other’s words and feelings and trying to understand that somebody might have a different language than you, but there’s a way that you can see each other and meet on the same plain. I think it’s just that simple. The world is speeding up exponentially. On every front we look, there’s so much happening and it can be disheartening, and at times, if you think about it too much, you’re going to run yourself into a stupor. You’re going to solidify yourself and become statuesque. I think you just need to find a way to get closer to community and those people that you love.


Let’s talk about your art a little. Tell us a little bit about the distinct composition in your work.

 

Pease: Well, my work is basically a commentary of my experience. Some pieces are made just because I can’t keep them in my head. I have so many ideas I can’t get them out, and the ones that come out are just the lucky ones. My work is my thoughts. It’s literally who I am. Sometimes it’s what I thought we were. It’s who I think we could be. It’s asking questions of beauty. It’s asking questions of so many different things.

 

But compositional things, like with the flowers in this work (see image below), I’m wondering if a tribal person is more beautiful in their regalia versus a Columbia [US clothing brand] jacket and ASICS running shoes. I think that question in my head roves about because as a cultural person going to pow wows, seeing people in their regalia, you say “you’re so beautiful, you’re so beautiful.”

“Ishbilaxpáake” Barney Old Coyote Sr. and Mae Old Coyote and their eldest son, Hank/Henry Old Coyote (Private Collection)


What I’ve experienced is just what I said, that native women are more beautiful in their regalia than not. And I ask questions, why is that? Because I use the flowers for the right thought that flowers are beauty, they’re pure beauty, pure facets of beauty. In some cultures around the world, flowers are a direct representation of God, of a deity. And pure forms are just that; they’re beautiful because they’re beautiful, not because of what they have on. It’s the humanness that makes us beautiful. I’m wondering about that and it takes me to thinking about artists and making decisions and everything in our world; even our places of worship are created by art. Our books, our religious texts, are created by artists, mostly. Everything in our world was designed by the human hand and the human eye. We just forget about it. So, I think at the same time we forget to realize beauty where it is more important.



And the halos that are often in your work?

 

Pease: The halos. The halos are a multifaceted reference. In classical Russian art, Romanesque art, Byzantine art, religious art, there are always these halos, the golden halos signifying a specific person, or their deeds, their history. But what I’m doing is I’m appropriating those halos for my own use because I’ve seen my culture appropriated too many times, and a lot of times misappropriated. From my perspective, it’s a disrespect, a dishonoring, a disservice to us as indigenous people. For a lot of reasons, I think there’s disrespect in some of those misappropriations so that is one of the reasons I use the halo. The other reason that I use the halo is not to really sanctify these individuals, or even deify these individuals, rather it is to say that we as indigenous people, we as Apsáalooke people, we as Crow people, say women are holy beings because of their ability to keep a family together, to keep culture, to perpetuate knowledge and to give life. For those reasons, women are sacred. Men have another role. Men are sacred also, but have a different role. That’s why I’m using these halos to say that women are sacred.

 

Can you tell us about this work featuring your great-great-great grandfather (see the first painting above)?

 

Pease: My great-great-great grandfather. In the background of the work (above), if you look closely, there are all sorts of paper ephemera in the background, it’s a collage work. It’s all on top of antique 1896 ledger paper with contemporary magazines from the 30s, 40s, and up to the 70s and 80s. It’s all thinking about what the measure of a man is today and what it was cross culturally at the time he was alive. In his lifetime he had 15 wives. And Crows, we have a culture that is no longer practiced, that was a culture of wife giving and stealing. There are a lot of reasons for that. There are control factors for those things. And they had a place. And at the same time, I’m thinking about what it means to be an indigenous man in 2022 with a family operating in this society and knowing that we’re only 150 years away from assimilation. So, I’m thinking about me speaking English, the conqueror’s language, and what does that mean? Am I a conquered person or am I not? These are the things I’m thinking about with this piece.

 

When I was talking to some of artists in the GROUNDED exhibition, one of the struggles they have is that they get labeled as “native” artists, as opposed to artists who are native. Do you have any thoughts on this?


Pease: Yes, quite a bit actually. Right before COVID hit, I had an interview for the Charlie Russell Art Week in Great Falls, Montana for the Charlie Russell Museum. They were featuring my work because of the context that I bring in talking about things like this. And so, the title of the article was “Why can’t I just be an artist?” Because there are so many shows around the country for Native Americans that are specifically for Native American art. Nobody else can get into that show, not an African American or Black, not an Asian American and not a Caucasian. To get into the show you have to show your degree of Indian blood.

 

A degree of Indian blood was a device that was thought up by the government, the U.S. government, to eventually eviscerate the Indian. If you cut something in half so many times, eventually it’s indistinguishable. If it had an identity once, eventually it won’t. So, to get into these art shows I have to show my pedigree card, to show that here, this is my pedigree, I qualify. And those other people don’t. But because of that, most of these shows don’t have a large platform. They don’t have legs that have grown to take them more places. So, they’re kind of so-so. You can only get so much out of those exhibitions, those shows, those markets.

 

I was thinking, why should I label myself as a Native American artist when I could just be an artist and go all over the world and do everything any other artist is able to do? And so, I said, why can’t I just be an artist? If I’m at the Charlie Russell Art Week and I walk around the show and I say “Oh you’re a white artist,” that would be really weird.

 

Because I said that, I had a lot of flak, but at the same time I’m still called a Native American artist, an Indian artist, in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle [a newspaper], in articles, in interviews, etc., on name tags. So, I have a lot of perspective on pigeonholing, boxing ourselves in as Native artists, while everybody else is also boxing us in; we become this little Russian doll, if that makes sense.


The reason I bring that up is because it’s really easy to forget about where we came from, and the importance of learning how to work together and meeting each other and speaking the language that we both understand. I wonder about these things because I’m trying to make a way for my life. I’m trying to build a future for my children and their children and their children and their children etc. What is it going to look like? What is an artist today? Even in the conquest of the West, artists were used for what were largely marketing campaigns. C. M. Russell, Remington, Bierstadt - all these other artists, they were used for a purpose, at one time or another in their careers. And what does that look like today for an artist? There’s not an art market here. The only market that exists is the Western art market. Now there’s other money coming into the region from the cities. There’s money coming from L. A., there’s money coming from Texas, there’s money coming from New York. A lot of that money doesn’t have the same principles as local people have. It’s just a difference in culture, just the same as anything else.

 

I’m wondering, will our culture as the heart of the West, is that going to be preserved as new forms come in? Things change, I know. And I accept and embrace change. But at the same time there are things that should be remembered.

 

Coming from a community of Apsáalooke people, I see so many people in our community who are creative, who have talent. The way that we see it is that our creativity is that conduit, that bridge to that Greater. If I’m able to bring these thoughts out on whatever substrate it may be, a canvas or silver, then why shouldn’t I be able to make that a life-way? If there’s no market for my people, and if there are other people who are not directly from our community making money off of our community, it doesn’t really weigh out for me. The scales aren’t even. There are a lot of questions about equity. There are a lot of questions about equality. There are a lot of questions about attention economy.

 

Oil painting has been a calling card of the West, at least in this region for 150 years. That’s normal. It’s a normative practice so I’m not mad at that because it’s normal. I’m hoping that we can find a way to get those artists in our community some support so that in fact we can live, we can have jobs for people in our community, we can have artists making an income off of their works. That’s not normal. Really, I mean how normal is it to see an Indian, painting an Indian? Now that’s weird; honestly it is.


You are a founding member of Native Youth Art in Action. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

 

Pease: Native Youth Art in Action is a young group that I helped found, along with Robert Martinez, who is the curator of the GROUNDED exhibition, John Pepion, another participating artist in GROUNDED, in conjunction with Indian People’s Action and the Montana Folk Festival in Butte, Montana (US). It is to give youth a place to come and learn about art. What is art? Because growing up on a reservation I didn’t really know what a painting was. I didn’t know that you could sell it and make a lot of money. I mean it’s not that easy; there are costs for framing and shipping and photography. So, we bring kids in and we teach them about these things – how to speak to galleries, how to make better work, how to write an email, how to make a website, how to run social media, all these valuable tools that you’re not taught or exposed to.

 

So, Monday morning, Ben Pease wakes up. Give me a little sense of your life as an artist day by day.

 

Pease: I start with getting my kids up. I get them to school and then I go through emails, then I go into town for errands. There’s no structure whatsoever so I’m sorry to demystify that. I do what I want, when I want to do it because I’m self-employed. I have a large studio downtown Billings [Montana, USA] on Montana Avenue. It’s a large three floor building that’s old and decrepit and dank and cold, and it’s perfect for an artist. So, I work in there from the time the sun comes up until the sun goes down. Then I go home and have dinner with my family, and then I do it all over the next day.

 

Most of your work is two-dimensional, but you have some three-dimensional work as well.

 

Pease: I have some three-dimensional work, yes. It’s changing because almost any art show I go to around the region is give or take a two-day art show, paintings, mostly, cowboys and Indians, mostly; sculptures of a cowboy, or a cowboy chasing an Indian. My work is shifting into new formats because I think there are different ways to say things. I can’t say everything I want to say by just using the same format. So naturally I’ve expanded to include commentary on a different level. That commentary on a different level is maybe some of what you’re looking at right now – the red sculpture.


This specific red sculpture I found in Bozeman, Montana at Goodwill [a charity shop] l for $100 when I had just moved to Bozeman. I couldn’t afford it by any means, but I bought it anyway. He was painted realistically; his moccasins were painted as beadwork. The rock he’s standing on was grey. All I did was paint him red, because I realized that for 50 years, and he was cast in Chicago, he was perpetuating a stereotype. His shield was painted realistically. His gun was grey but his skin was really unrealistically dark red. My skin is not that dark red. So, all I did was paint him red, and I gave people a marker [to write on him]; and any show I went to across the country I took this thing with me.


I gave people a marker and said, “What’s a Native American to you? And if you’re Native, what is it to you? What have you been called or what have you heard or what have you called somebody?” And people started writing things on it, all sorts of things: alcoholic, illiterate red skin, right on the forehead, prairie Niger on the back shoulder, etc. Just all these bad denigrative terms surrounding what people thought and think an Indian is. It was a powerful thing. I had people yelling at me over this sculpture. I had people cry and hug me over this sculpture, and laugh over this sculpture. As time went on, people started seeing all the painful and hurtful things that Native people have to deal with. Because being Native, give or take, it’s kind of about the struggle that you go through. It’s a literal thing. It’s physical. It’s there, it’s tactile.

 

The struggle is real. And once people saw the struggle visually, they started writing more positive things, like “grandmother” in their language. I had one of my friends who’s South Asian, from India, she drew a chakra on the forehead right next to illiterate Indian, red skin. It’s this project that has grown more than I could have anticipated. So, my commentary is expanding.

 



Another one I did was on blankets.


I chose four blankets, and it was right during Corona virus, so I was thinking about disease. And our communities know disease almost better than anyone on the planet in recent times, because of everything we’ve combated – cholera, yellow fever, malaria. You name it, we’ve had it, because of so many different things.

 

There are four blankets. One was a Pendleton blanket, which is a historic blanket that’s always been used in this region by Natives. I also chose a Hudson Bay blanket, U.S. Army blanket and an Eighth-Generation wool blanket. Eighth Generation is a Native owned company contracting with Native artists to create their designs. Versus Pendleton who has almost always used Native designs for profit. Throughout the whole inception of their company, they’ve used Native designs and not really given back too much to the Native community. I drew the portraits on the front of these blankets, four portraits on each blanket; all contour drawings. On the U.S. Army blanket there’s President Lincoln, there’s General Custer, there’s Chief Plenty Coups and there’s Sitting Bull. All contour drawings and you can stare at the blankets and the figures pop out at you and you can see.

 

So, I’m asking questions about our protectors, about the things intended to keep us warm, the things intended to bring us comfort. And usually those things are our leaders, making decisions for better or for worse. Knowing that blankets had been used at one time as some of the first documented forms of biological warfare, intentionally infected blankets, I’m wondering about intentionally infected leaders. So, these are my thoughts around the things that keep us warm, especially in the face of adversity. I’m wondering about disease and how we can confront it and how we can provide for our families and our people.


Can you share about the use of humor in your work?

 

Pease: The use of humor in my work is an extension of our culture. As a cultural being, I’ve been taught that humor is something not just to laugh to; it’s a tool. Comedy is a tool. Laughing is a tool. Getting someone to laugh before they cry is a powerful thing to do. Getting someone to laugh before they laugh.


This “Peter Pan piece” shows my great great grandfather His name for most of his life was “White Man Runs Him,” which doesn’t mean what it sounds like. There’s a story for that; there’s a story for everything.

 

There’s a video that in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. of this sacred pipe ceremony that these two men are doing. One is my great great grandfather and the other is the more well-known Chief Medicine Crow. They are doing a sacred pipe ceremony, and when Chief Medicine Crow goes to hand my great great grandfather the pipe, he does it respectfully so. And my great great grandfather takes the pipe, he cleans it out, and he starts to smoke it again. As he’s raising it to his mouth, Medicine Crow, the chief, mind you, he reaches over and hits my grandfather’s elbow and so the pipe hits him in the mouth and Medicine Crow is laughing. And once he’s finished laughing, he tries to light the pipe again and Medicine Crow hits his elbow and again and they start laughing, both of them. And then they continue the ceremony.

 

That was a beautiful thing to me because I realized that those men were humans. They laughed and they loved and they got mad and they hated. That led me to understand that I should not deify my grandfathers or grandmothers, because they were human. If I deify them, if I make them seem like these mythical figures with feathers and war bonnets on a horse, warriors going into battle, I’m actually doing them a disservice; an entire disservice because I’m forgetting about the times of loss and of the times of happiness that they had. Using humor as a tool is really important.


Do you see indigenous artists playing a role in reshaping the narrative?

 

Pease: I would. . . as artists who happen to be indigenous, I think it’s imperative that we tell our story. Just for the very fact that our story has always been told for us. And we’re focusing on telling our own story. And there’s power in telling our own story. We’re claiming our narratives, because who can tell their story better than themselves? There aren’t a lot of people who can tell someone else’s story better than the person themselves.



Note: This interview is an abridged version of a longer interview held with Ben Pease in person.





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