(woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Council on the Arts; and by the members of Prairie Public.

Welcome to "Prairie Mosaic," a patchwork of stories about the art, culture, and history in our region.

Hi, I'm Barb Gravel.

And I'm Matt Olien.

On this edition of "Prairie Mosaic," we'll meet a photographer with a unique perspective on the world, listen to poems read by a champion, and enjoy the velvety voice of singer/songwriter Sarah Morris.

♪ And I feel a little comfort ♪ ♪ Knowing you probably feel these same things too ♪ ♪ So even if we're far apart I can still ♪ Maria Cree from Minot and Melanie Schwab from Mandan are North Dakota indigenous artists who were awarded fellowship grants from the Sacred Pipe Resource Center and the North Dakota Council on the Arts to expand their artistic operations.

These artists represent a diverse cross section of Native talent from across the state who are making an impact in their field.

[wooden flute plays melodically] (woman) Being labeled an artist was definitely a shock.

I think there's a wide variety of us, and learning more about each of them individually has also helped open my eyes to the entire realm of artists.

(2nd woman) There's thousands of us within North Dakota and Minnesota.

I think that focus of having all of our own stories and how we strive to kind of continue to do the things that we're doing is very important.

We entered into a partnership with the North Dakota Council on the Arts To provide 5 indigenous artist fellowships.

William Brien, Bill Brien, Dakota digital artist, Stuart Lohnes who is professionally known as Stuart James, a hip-hop artist, Frankie Morin, a comic book artist, Maria Cree, a musician, works with the Red Willow Collective Melanie Schwab, who is doing traditional art.

As the artists have talked about, we have our culture and traditions.

We want to remain who we are, but we live in a modern world, and a contemporary world where culture is constantly changing and evolving.

So their representation of how that culture changes and evolves is so important.

I'm Melanie Sue Schwab, I am Hunkpapa Sioux from Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

I'm a traditional Native American artist I focus on beadwork, scrollwork, and traditional tanned hides.

So I am fleshing off, scraping off the flesh from this hide.

I am scraping down.

This would be the internal side of the animal.

This is a deer that I shot this fall.

So I'm just scraping down all of this membrane to start softening it.

Then I'll flip it over to the other side, scrape off the hair.

Then after I've scraped it once or twice, then I will put on a brain mixture.

So I take pork brain, blood it up, put it on there.

That'll again soften that membrane.

Then I'll scrape it off again, and I'll do that process a few times.

It started back in 2015 when I was getting married, I wanted to incorporate something traditional into my wedding aspect.

My husband is a cowboy, so we always felt joked I'm the Indian, he's the cowboy.

I wanted some moccasins for my wedding that I had created myself, so that was the first thing that I learned how to do was bead moccasins.

From there I began hunting more with my husband and family and thought that there was so much more of the animal that could be utilized, so I started learning how to traditionally tan the hides.

After the hunt I go through and I break down the animal, get all the flesh off, scraping, stretching, tanning.

From there I use that hide to create moccasins.

I'm currently working on a Sioux traditional women's dress which is going to be very interesting and a long process.

Well, I have a lot of dreams, but the funds are going to be used to develop the business that I've started.

I call myself the modern Sioux, I'm going to buy some equipment to document the process of everything that I'm doing.

So when I'm tanning traditional hides, I'll be able to record everything from start to finish, put it on line so that people that don't live in the area can learn on line as well.

Then I'm going to build a website that tells a little bit more about me and the things that I am doing and events that I might be holding to show my work.

Then eventually I would like to purchase some kind of area to do everything at that's not inside my home.

I think people are always stunned to hear that everything that I'm using, the material that I'm using, the hides specifically come from deer that I've hunted myself, I think that's always very much a shock that it's not something that's bought overseas and imported.

my name is Maria Cree, my native given name is Yellow Bird Woman.

I'm an enrolled member of Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.

I am a community organizer within Minot, North Dakota for the last decade.

Essentially what I do is I book DIY all ages events for the last 12 years.

What I usually do is, I collaborate with local artists-- printmakers, artmakers.

We're are trying to utilize a lot of this grant to get more video art within shows, trying to collaborate as much as we can with that.

So essentially for the music collective the hope with the grant is to acquire more equipment just to utilize more at our events because we don't have a solid space currently.

We utilize a lot of local venues.

[performing hip hop] My grandparents are Francis and Rose Cree.

They are really well-known Ojibwe people within North Dakota.

They're mostly well-known for their basket weaving which essentially was red, brown, and scraped brown willow.

It's something that's been handed down for multiple generations.

I was very fortunate enough to learn how to do that.

Currently right now our button making is just a way for us to promote.

Everybody wants buttons, trinkets, any little juncky thing.

I am obviously a sucker [laughs] for those good things.

Button making is something I feel is very integral within punk community and the way that we merchandise.

The goal with Red Willow Collective is creating more spaces for bipoc use, and by bipoc use I essentially mean black, indigenous, and people of color, and a lot of queerious, I am queer myself.

We hope within the state by utilizing our true-spiritedness to kind of normalize what is normal within our community.

I also think being a modern rez kid on top of it, I feel like punk has taught me a lot about that and how to be vulnerable and how to be open about that.

So me doing things like this or even applying for a grant defeats the humbleness part, but it's also something that I think is very important because I want multiple generations under me to eventually have space, to feel like they're allowed to talk about these things, to feel that they have access to be able to show their art.

At the end of the fellowship they will be participating in the Capstone presentation.

I'm really excited to hear what they come up with and what their journeys are like because each one is so different and sort of needing different things.

It'll be really interesting at the end of the fellowship to hear how they've grown and what they've done to grow.

Sacred Pipe Resources has been such a great aspect to our community to add for Native American youths to find outlets for things to learn and do.

They've actually brought in a lot of educators to help teach some of these classes, and I do teach myself.

So I'm so thankful that they put together this fellowship with the North Dakota Council of the Arts just to give everybody an opportunity because these grants aren't easy to come by.

I think the biggest thing about understanding Native art is that for us as a people, as indigenous people, art is not something separate from ourselves.

I really like the artists that were selected because they do represent that diversity of art forms and how the work that they're doing is changing lives.

Andy Hall has been a full-time photographer for more than 20 years.

Working out of his studio in Crookston, Minnesota, photography has become Andy's way of expressing his love for the world around him.

[drums, bass, & keyboard play rhythmic dance music] Photography for me has been not only my profession for the last 20-plus years, but it is my way of communicating with the world.

It's my way of sharing about things that I get to see, but it's also a way of creating images that are hopefully evocative for the viewer, but more importantly it reflects what I'm trying to say.

I opened Sweetlight Gallery in downtown Crookston about, coming up on 7 years ago now.

This was my first foray into a gallery space.

I lived in the Twin Cities for 20-some years, and I had a shop there for 17 years, but it was strictly a working space.

I had been doing art fairs that whole time.

So when I moved up here about 10 years ago this opportunity presented itself I thought wow, you have a storefront spot on downtown Crookston.

Sure, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring and see what happens.

So it's been fantastic so far.

I still end up doing far more art fairs than anything else.

It's not quite a big enough community to live entirely on just what happens here at the gallery.

Right now in Sweetlight Gallery I have kind of 4 major categories of work up right now.

I have landscape, kind of what would be termed traditional landscape location images.

I have a whole series of images kind of called found object images or exploratory architecture images, typically old buildings, cool old rusty grubby things.

I have a whole body of work that's abstract images, long exposures of water, ice formations that are teeny tiny, but when you make a big print out of it it almost becomes unrecognizable as what it is.

Then my most recent body of work is the botanical images.

I kind of stumbled on this by mistake up here in The Red River Valley.

I'm not originally from up here, so it took some time to kind of see and appreciate the beauty that is the prairie.

So when I would be out hiking in the wintertime either snowshoeing or cross-country skiing, I was just noticing all of the plants and the unbelievable amount of detail and structure and the way it was just whimsical the way they moved, the leaves.

I collected a few of them and brought them back to my gallery and I put them in front of my camera, and I was just noticing how unbelievably captivating all of the movement was in these tiny tiny little things that are, you know, the size of a dime or smaller in a lot of cases.

That has just kind of lit a fire inside of me.

It has me, it's grabbed me, and it has me.

So the techniques that I have adopted for the prairie plants, and this will be a little bit techy, but I'm using focus stacking.

I start at the closest thing to me, I take a shot, and now I have I have this little 8 inch focusing rail that allows me to turn the dial, and it moves the camera 1 mm per revolution.

So if I'm shooting a plant that's this much depth to it I start here and I eventually take enough pictures where I have the entire thing in focus, then I use software to stitch those together, or layer them together, and that's called focus stacking.

The ultimate cool thing about that is I have 100% control about the depth of field.

See these 2 areas of sharpness here?

I like that.

And I like that part of the scene goes away.

It's really, really a gratifying process too.

It is kind of software driven and hardware driven with the focusing rail, but that focus stacking has allowed me to get image quality that I've just never been able to get before.

I love finding just the amazing in the everyday scene.

That's really what I concentrate on.

So when I go out to shoot landscape photos I do not want to shoot what everybody else is shooting.

There needs to be something to say with the image.

I don't necessarily just want pretty pictures, I want emotion, something that evokes a reaction in people.

I kind of naturally just push away from shooting the iconic.

I am kind of the anti-iconic shooter.

I want to see the super cool in what's right at my feet.

I want to see the super cool things that are in Northwestern Minnesota.

Circe Atkinson from Mandan High School was the 2024 North Dakota State Poetry Out Loud State Champion.

Circe was excited to share her love of poetry with the audience as she presented poems during competition that she connected with on a personal level.

"I Like the sweet apple which "Reddens upon the topmost bough, "Atop on the topmost twig, "Which the pluckers forgot, somehow, "Forget it not, nay; but got it not, For none could get it till now."

Poetry Out Loud is a competition.

Competitors from all across the United States come together to compete in a poetry competition where you memorize 3 poems and say them in front of the crowd and try to emulate the emotions that are in the poem.

"One Girl" by Sappho is about the marrying and raping of young girls in ancient Greece.

This is a very common practice for a lot of history, and it's basically Sappho lamenting about the fact that this is the way that society is and how it is damaging these young girls to no end.

They are seen as nothing more than objects, or flowers being troddened in the ground.

They are essentially nothing in society.

I knew that I wanted some form of like queer representation in my poetry because that is integral to who I am as a person.

I've also always loved Greek mythology and the history behind it, and Sappho is from ancient Greece, and I think it's really cool to pull from that ancient sphere and just perform it as if it's modern.

"Like the sweet apple which "Reddens upon the topmost bough, "Atop on the topmost twig, "Which the pluckers forgot, somehow, "Forget it not, nay; but got it not, For none could get it till now."

"Like the wild hyacinth flower "Which on the hills is found, "Which the passing feet of the shepherds "For ever tear and wound, "Until the purple blossom Is trodden in the ground."

"How to Break a Curse" by Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné is about trying to break a curse, how to do it.

And a lot of the things with when you are cursed-- usually if your are cursed, there's a reason why.

[laughs] So it's a lot of self-reflection trying to figure out who and why it happened, then trying to heal yourself of that wound, then also trying to heal the other person of that wound.

Maybe that's self-reflection, apologizing gestures, but at the end of the poem there's also this sense of revenge where it's saying this is a sharpened blade, keep it for safe keeping.

Use it only when you have to.

And I think there's something really beautiful about that because there are certain times where you are cursed.

But it was not done because it was warranted.

Sometimes revenge is necessary, sometimes you have to be the karma to set it in motion.

"Lemon balm is for forgiveness.

"Pull up from the root, "Steep in boiling water.

"Add locust wings, salt, "The dried bones of hummingbirds.

"Drink when you feel ready.

"Drink even if you do not.

"Pepper seeds are for courage.

"Sprinkle them on your tongue.

"Sprinkle in the doorway and along the windowsill.

"Mix pepper and water to a thick paste.

"Spackle the cracks in the concrete, "Anoint the part in your hair.

"You need as much courage as you can get.

"Water is for healing.

"Leave a jar open beneath the full moon.

"Let it rest.

"Water your plants.

"Wash your face.

Drink.

"The sharpened blade is for memory.

"Metal lives long, "Never grows weary of our comings and goings.

"Wrap this blade in newspaper.

"Keep beneath your bed.

"Be patient, daughter.

Be patient."

Sarah Morris of Shoreview, Minnesota writes and performs a style of music that allows the listener to let go of stress and focus on healing and personal wellness.

Her velvety voice was a welcome addition to our music series, "Prairie Musicians."

[playing a slow country blues beat] ♪ ♪ Spring came early this year ♪ ♪ Or came late I can't tell ♪ ♪ Oh I hardly know what day it is ♪ ♪ Anyway ♪ ♪ You could hold a calendar in front of my face ♪ ♪ I'd press my finger to some square ♪ ♪ Declare with confidence it's this one ♪ ♪ Maybe?

♪ ♪ There's a weirdness and a wildness ♪ ♪ And a heaviness to every moment lately ♪ ♪ And I feel a little comfort ♪ ♪ Knowing you probably feel these same things too ♪ ♪ So even if we're far apart ♪ ♪ I can still be with you ♪ ♪ ♪ The weeks are flying by the hours are just limping along ♪ ♪ My heart can't settle on a song to fit the mood I'm in ♪ ♪ Which is a restlessness like I've never known ♪ ♪ I've paced each inch of my kitchen floor though my doors aren't locked ♪ ♪ And there's an open road if I had the inclination ♪ ♪ There's a bitterness but a sweetness too and a darkness ♪ ♪ And a light that finds me daily ♪ ♪ And I feel a little comfort ♪ ♪ Knowing you probably feel these same things too ♪ ♪ So even if we're far apart ♪ ♪ I can still be with you-oo-oo ♪ ♪ And I'm not sleeping well ♪ ♪ So I'm rarely awake but I end each night ♪ ♪ With a prayer for strength ♪ ♪ And the wisdom to take this time this space ♪ ♪ To root down ♪ ♪ And trust one day we will bloom out ♪ ♪ Again ♪ ♪ And I feel a little comfort ♪ ♪ Knowing you probably feel these same things too ♪ ♪ So even if we're far apart I can still ♪ I can still oh I can still ♪ ♪ Feel a little comfort knowing ♪ ♪ You probably feel these same things too ♪ ♪ So even if we're far apart ♪ ♪ I can still oh I can still ♪ ♪ Be with you-oo-oo ♪ ♪ ♪ Be with you-oo-oo oo-oo ♪ ♪ ♪ You-oo-oo oo-oo ♪ ♪ Oo-oo ♪ [playing in folk-rock rhythm] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Come back ♪ ♪ I see you out there wandering come back ♪ ♪ Oh I missed you so come back ♪ ♪ Whenever you are ready ♪ ♪ Come back rest a while before of course again ♪ ♪ You go oh ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Come back ♪ ♪ Tell me all your stories ♪ ♪ Come back show me the world through your gaze ♪ ♪ Come back I'll gladly lose track of the hours ♪ ♪ Come back I swear I will not ♪ ♪ Count the days ♪ ♪ ♪ Come back If you'd like I could hold you ♪ ♪ Come back my arms soft as they are strong ♪ ♪ Come back I have prepared my shoulder ♪ ♪ Come back for the weight of you to press in and then ♪ ♪ Pass over ♪ ♪ ♪ The whisper of a dream that you'd belong to me ♪ ♪ Any longer than a moment ♪ ♪ The notion you'd be satisfied with stillness ♪ ♪ For any stretch of time ♪ ♪ Those illusions are not mine ♪ ♪ Oo-oo oo-oo ♪ ♪ Oo-oo ♪ ♪ ♪ Come back less a plea more a promise ♪ ♪ Come back no strings ♪ ♪ The terms made clear ♪ ♪ Come back should you grow weary of constant motion ♪ ♪ Come back my darling I will be ♪ ♪ Here ♪ ♪ Here ♪ ♪ Here ♪ If you know of an artist, topic, or organization in our region that you think might make for an interesting segment, please contact us at... (Barb) You can watch this and other episodes of "Prairie Mosaic" on Prairie Public's YouTube channel, and please, follow Prairie Public on social media as well.

I'm Barb Gravel.

And I'm Matt Olien Thank you for joining us for another edition of "Prairie Mosaic."

[guitar, bass, and drums play in bright country rhythm] (Barb) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of Prairie Public.