A new exhibition at a Kalispell art museum represents a homecoming of sorts for a Blackfeet artist.

Terrance Guardipee’s “Honoring the War Horses of the Blackfeet” opens today at the Hockaday Museum of Art. Guardipee, who now lives outside Seattle, is a member of the Blackfeet Nation originally from Browning who has made a name for himself in recent years for his ledger art. Guardipee creates pictograph-type drawings on ledger paper and other historical documents from Montana. 

While Guardipee’s work is familiar to many in the Flathead Valley and elsewhere in Montana, most of his pieces are in private collections and have been sold at shows and auctions. This is his first opportunity to really showcase his art to a broader audience in Montana, he said.

“I’m excited to do the show,” he said. “I’m excited to show the art and to show the old documents I’ve been collecting from Montana. ... It should be a really, really good show.”

The show is based on the war horse of the Blackfeet and based on ledger art that originated among the Plains tribes, Guardipee said.

The original art was painted on buffalo hides and recorded the history of battles the tribes fought. When the buffalo were all but wiped out, the tribes began using whatever was available to record their histories.

“Ledger paper was what was accessible at forts and small settlements and even abandoned structures out on the prairies,” he said.

Guardipee said the history of the art form and of the lifestyle of the war-faring tribes, including his own Blackfeet Nation, appealed to him. In ledger art, Guardipee saw an opportunity to keep the tribes’ histories and stories fresh for new generations.

“I was really attracted to that history, to keeping that alive,” he said.

While many books have been written on the war history of the Blackfeet and other tribes, Guardipee said he thought his art — and his perspective as a tribal member — could bring new dimension to the stories.

One such story is that of Running Eagle, a female Blackfeet warrior for whom a waterfall is named on Glacier National Park’s east side. When her parents died in battles, Running Eagle raised her younger siblings and lived the lifestyle of a warrior. She became a leader of the Crazy Dog society, one of the only women to achieve that status in a male-dominated warrior culture.

“For a long time, she was kind of ignored, I thought,” Guardipee said. “I took it upon myself to bring her back to life and resurrect her story. That’s one of my goals with ledger art.”

Guardipee doesn’t restrict himself to just ledger paper. He also uses checks, receipts, stock certificates and other papers from various communities in central and northern Montana as the basis for his art. Most papers date from between 1850 and 1910, he said.

“I wanted to give my contribution to ledger art, bringing it into the future a little bit,” Guardipee said of why he decided not to restrict himself to ledger paper.

He also uses historical maps of Montana.

“They could represent where my tribe is from, or where battles happened, even battles people don’t know happened,” he said.

The papers come from collectors all over the world. Dealers know what Guardipee is looking for and constantly send him emails that put him in contact with people who own rare documents.

Guardipee says he considers all of those papers a part of his history and the history of the state.

“I mean no disrespect to the communities. I feel like I’m immortalizing them along with my artwork,” he said.

“Those communities were growing, and our communities have been there for a long time. I’m fusing them all together.”

Online:

terranceguardipee.com

Kristi Albertson, editor of This Week in the Flathead, may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.