Arts & Life

Pine Ridge Couple's Art Wins Best Of Show At Santa Fe Indian Market

SDPB Radio | By Victoria Wicks

Published September 24, 2018 at 12:56 PM CDT

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Kevin Pourier and Valerie Morgan

Victoria Wicks

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The prize-winning belt

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The bombing-range target as seen from a satellite image. Notice the cottonwood tree in the crosshairs.

Courtesy of Kevin Pourier

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The cottonwood can be seen in the distance from the corral near the Bombing Range Art Studio.

Victoria Wicks

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Kevin Pourier designed this horn spoon, covered with figures representing victims of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre.

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The belt buckle and Susie Silook, with tipi tiles between them.

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Tipiziwin Tolman and Mary Kathryn Nagle

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Wanda Batchelor and Jodi Archambault-Gillette

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Roxanne Swentzell and Suzan Shown Harjo

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Bobbi Jean Three Legs

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Kevin Pourier holds one of the bullets he has found on the old bombing range.

Victoria Wicks

On the Pine Ridge Reservation, two artists work in a small studio in the Medicine Root District at the edge of the Badlands. The landscape is maybe best described as rough and rolling prairie with vast skylines.

Kevin Pourier and Valerie Morgan live quietly here in South Dakota, but they have another life elsewhere. They won a Bush Fellowship a few years back, and their art has been exhibited internationally. And in the Southwest, they're a really big deal. They've entered the Santa Fe Indian Market for 21 years, winning many categories, and this year took the grand prize.

The winning piece is a belt that depicts eight contemporary activist Native women. It has now been purchased by the Smithsonian and will soon be featured on a billboard in Times Square.

Victoria Wicks recently visited the couple where they work, at the Bombing Range Art Studio.

To hear Kevin Pourier describe the women featured on the belt, listen here:

kevin_and_val_edited_naming_of_women_for_online.mp3

Kevin Pourier talks about the eight women depicted on the belt: Susie Silook, Tipiziwin Tolman, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Wanda Batchelor, Jodi Archambault-Gillette, Roxanne Swentzell, Suzan Shown Harjo, and Bobbi Jean Three Legs.

Click here to learn more about Kevin Pourier and Valerie Morgan's art.

https://www.kevinpourier.com/

For more information on Kevin Pourier's talk at The Garage in Rapid City, click here:

http://www.garagerapidcity.com/conversations/