Smoke Signal's Artists Feature
CAMERON BLAGG "It's not how much (Indian) you have in your blood, but how much
you have in your heart'
Cameron Blagg grew up in Oklahoma at the
edge of a bunch of Indian Reservations Chero
kee and Choctow among them. Indians were
friends and family. So, his art came out of his
love of western history and Native cultures. "I
began to realize that the more I learned, the more
that was out there that I still didn't know," he
said. When he was 12, his folks bought him a
set of oil paints, and he was off.
Today, he paints with both oils and acrylics on
canvas, but he said that he has worked on buf
falo scrolls "and anything that would hold still."
Most of his work is manageably sized 2 feet
by 3 feet, 16 inches by 20 inches but he has
also been commissioned to do some murals that
"go on and on."
Of particular note are murals on two sides of a
building on the Yakama Reservation in
Toppenish, Washington. The Indian side holds
coyote stories and the white side deals with early
commerce, he said. He put together a crew of
artists to help him with that job, including
Yakama and Flathead, and among them was
Gene Andy, a professional Yakama Indian
painter who has been confined to a wheelchair
for years. ...
Blagg also has left his mark in the world of
sculpture with a limited number of bronzes cast
out of clay originals. Among them is a bust of
Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce leader, whom he
calls his hero. "Night Howl," of a wolf, and
"Ghostdancer" are others.
"My best selling work is ethereal work," Blagg
said, referring to the images that come from leg
ends and visions and spirits of the Native world.
"I have had educated people tell me what I'm
doing that these pictures lead people to
think."
But Blagg is confident in being self-taught,
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CAMERON BLAGG AT WORK.
and is often "lost in the work" for countless hours
when he'll emerge from his studio in full dark
with everyone else long asleep not even know
ing where the time has gone. "You do your best
work when you are not thinking about time or
dollars," he said.
"If I'm not at a show," he said, "I'm painting."
But between himself and his son, Cameron Blagg
III, who works full-time promoting the work and
taking it on the road, they cover 35-40 events a
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CAMERON BLAGG III
year. Most of the events are in Montana, Wash
ington and Oregon Blagg, the artist, lives in
Montana now but they also sell the work
from originals to lithographs to posters at
events in Colorado, Kansas City, and Tucson.
Most recently, they opened up a new gallery at
the Two Rivers Market in downtown Albany,
Oregon.
Blagg, the son, based in Portland, hits the
Tribe's Pow-wow here in Grand Ronde every
year.
"I'm dealing with the third generation in some
families," Blagg, the artist, said. The key to his
success with Indians, he thinks, is, "as some
body said, 'It's not how much (Indian) you have
in your blood but how much you have in your
heart.'"
WILLIAM "HUNTER." BREEDLOVE - Evoking the feeling.
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WILLIAM "HUNTER" BREEDLOVE
The hand of serendipity guided William
"Hunter" Breedlove into a corner of the art world
where today, in part thanks to the digital revo
lution, he has developed a unique and evocative
style.
Sidetracked to the Gathering of Nations Pow
wow in Albuquerque in 1996, on his way to Taos,
he said, "I was moved by what I saw. I took
pictures at the pow-wow, but they didn't give
me the feeling that I had. I wanted to evoke the
feeling, the movement and intensity. It was like
a religious feeling. It took me until a couple of
years ago to depict a style. I've got thousands of
images of costumes. The last thing I want is just
another costume picture. But when I went to
the pow-wow at Grand Ronde, I got back the
first rolls and I thought, I can do something with
this. And then it just exploded."
Though trained as an artist, he makes a living
in the Portland advertising industry as a pho-
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tographer and retouching specialist, but this
Indian work really has new meaning for him,
and may send him back to his artistic roots. Be
cause galleries have been cool to digitized prints
that can be easily duplicated, Breedlove's next
step is to use his prints as drawings from which
he will paint these exciting images, making each
one an original.
Simultaneous with this growth as "just a white
guy" artist doing this spectacular Indian art is
his and wife, Helen's, growing interest in her
Indian background. "We know that her great
grandmother married a railroad man in Okla
homa," he said. But when he was out of town,
she lived in a teepee and wouldn't live in a
house."
Breedlove donated a number of large prints to
the Tribe. They have since been framed and
auctioned to raise money for the Tribe's Veteran's
Memorial project.
STEVE BOBB The most important work of his life.
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His professional work
turns up all over
Oregon's west side: the
signs for Burger King,
Roth's grocery stores,
Wittenberg Inn, the
Factory Outlet stores in
Lincoln City and Coyote
Joe's among others. A
lot of his work - more
than 20 years worth -could
be driving by on
cars and trucks. He has
painted names, faces
and native scenes on
hundreds, maybe thousands, of them.
But coming up soon will be his biggest and most
meaningful work of art: the Veterans' Memorial
to be dedicated on the Tribe's grounds on Memorial
Day, 2003. Bobb designed and created the piece,
STEVE BOBB
which will include two 8-foot bronze statues and four
12-foot monoliths
made of black gran
ite from India. The
statues are represen
tatives of Indians
who have served in
the military and
those who still will
serve, and the black
granite will bear
their names. The
memorial, however,
will include all Veter
ans from the Grand
Ronde, Willamina,
and Sheridan area.
Earlier this year
Bobb recreated the
1856 Trail of Tears
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VETERANS' MEMORIAL
march with a 265-mile trek from Table Rock to
Grand Ronde to raise money for the $300,000 me
morial (the cost has since increased to $360,000, so
a few more fund raisers are still ahead).
Bobb crafted the statues in clay from photographs
of Tribal members Mark LaBonte and Courtney
Galligher, posing at his direction. His original stat
ues, done in clay, were smaller, because transporta
tion to the foundry where they are enlarged into
bronzes, would otherwise have been impossible, and
the originals remain in his living room.
Bobb, a marine Veteran of the Vietnam war, de
veloped an artistic side of his own, but the memorial
idea came as a calling in fact, he said, it was a
fellow Vietnam Veteran, Reyn Leno, Tribal Council
Vice President, who gave him the call. "He said,
we've been talking about a memorial for a few years.
You be interested in designing it?" And the rest,
come Memorial Day 2003, will be history.