When it came time to put her artistic ability down on paper, there was no question Dale Cordier-Homan would sketch the St. Ignatius Mission, the ornate Catholic church that was the backdrop of her childhood on the Flathead Indian Reservation.

“I attended that church all my life,” she said.

The pencil drawing of the church, framed by the majestic Mission Mountains, still hangs in her Kalispell home.

Cordier-Homan, 53, of Salish heritage, has dabbled in pencil and charcoal drawings all her life, giving them away for charity auctions or to family members. It was a hobby more than anything.

Two years ago a car accident changed the focus of her art.

“I got ran over,” she said. “The doctor told me my right foot had been de-gloved.”

The debilitating injury sliced through her heel and ankle, buckling the back portion of her foot. It took three surgeries and Cordier-Homan still feels the effect.

“I was laid up a long time,” she said.

She did janitorial work for the Kalispell school system for four years and otherwise has been a stay-at-home mother to her three children and now is a stay-at-home grandmother who enjoys her two grandsons.

A long, curved piece of bark she found in her yard gave her the inspiration to try her hand at wood burning. The shape of the bark resembled a salmon, she said, so she burned the image of the fish onto the inner side of the bark and now has it hanging on her wall.

She knew she had found her niche as she began using her wood-burning tool on any piece of scrap wood she could get her hands on.

“My mom always says I can make something out of nothing,” she said with a smile. “Why throw it away?”

Cordier-Homan uses simple wooden slats to create rustic boxes that can be used to store jewelry or any memorabilia. The wood burning on the box covers and sides features American Indian motifs, such as buffalo, eagles or other animals and symbols.

She happened upon another use for the boxes when her aunt’s dog died and she made a box for the pet’s ashes, then wood-burned a picture of the dog on the cover. These special cremation boxes have become a popular sideline for her wood-burned art pieces.

Cordier-Homan was one of the first American Indian artists in Montana to put the “Native American Made in Montana” stickers on her artwork.

She never has been one to market her work heavily, tough.

“I’m shy,” she confides.

Other family members have become ambassadors for her work. Her cousin has sold her pieces at area powwows. Her daughter, who works at Glacier Raft Co., has taken the memory boxes to the Glacier Park area, and Cordier-Homan’s brother works in the North Dakota oil fields and has been selling her pieces there.

Cordier-Homan incorporates sinew, a traditional native art medium, into her pieces, using it for trim or string to hang her larger pieces. When she made wooden toy knives for her grandsons, ages 9 and 10, she used sinew to recreate a traditional American Indian look.

Beyond wood burning, Cordier-Homan loves to work with wood in any way, shape or form. She hand-built a series of multilevel decks in her backyard, and when she got a payout last year as part of a lawsuit settlement between the U.S. government and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, she used the money to install logs on the inside walls of her home to create a cozy, log-cabin feel.

“I did all the log work,” she said, adding that power tools are among her prized possessions.

Her woodworking is all self-taught, but the artistic ability may be genetic, she said. Her mother has a flair for art.

“She can draw cougars really well,” she said.

Cordier-Homan’s husband, Frank, an employee at Brendan House for 32 years, shares her love of art.

“He has artistic bones, too,” she said. “We both worked on the St. Ignatius Mission piece, but he won’t do wood burning.”

A while back Cordier-Homan was asked to draw a family tree for the Cordiers as part of a family reunion that drew more than 200 relatives.

“I didn’t want to do a traditional family tree, so I drew a peace pipe,” she said.

The unusual charcoal drawing uses various animal symbols to depict family members, with an eagle overhead to symbolize the patriarch of the Cordier family. Feathers hanging from the peace pipe reflect the various families and each feather is different, “because we’re all different,” she explained.

“Everyone wanted a copy of it. We had prints made,” she said. The original hangs in her family room.

For more information about Cordier-Homan’s wood-burned art pieces, call 212-9137 or 212-1147.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.