Dwight Billedeaux

Hometown: Ronan, Montana
Major medium: Sculpture
Art background: University of Montana

 

 

An enrolled member of Montana's Blackfeet Tribe, Dwight Billedeaux grew up in Dillon and Sunburst, Montana. He was accedpted to the San Francisco Art Academy, and was drafted to military service in Vietnam before he could attend. After the war, Dwight returned to Montana, attending Western Montana College in Dillon and the University of Montana in Missoula, where he majored in painting.

In years since, Dwight has been a central figure in the Montana Native American art scene. In the 1980s, he organized Coup Marks, a cooperative of artists on the Flathead Reservation. Through his work with Coup Marks, Dwight participated in exhibitions at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning and the state capitol in Sacramento, California. His solo exhibitions have taken him as far as the New York American Indian Community House Gallery, the Santa Fe Indian Market, the Denver Art Market, and the Sandpiper Gallery in Polson, Montana.

For the last 25 years, Dwight has been working as an art professor at Salish Kootenai College in Pablo, Montana. the skills he teaches include traditional arts such as beadwork, roach making and quillwork, as well as contemporary American art media.His own sculptural work draws a lot on the found object/recycled method. Creating avant-garde pieces out of second-hand junk, he explains, "I can see beauty in junk. I see art in everything. Shapes of objects always remind me of some form of art."

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Sacajawea Gallery - 301 Main st. Stevensville, MT 59870 - (406) 777-3806