I was born in Bemidji, Minnesota and I am an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and the Pillager Band at Leech Lake Indian reservation. Both my mother and my grandmother grew up on the Indian reservation near Cass Lake, Minnesota. My mother was half Chippewa Indian and half French. My father was a white man from Kansas. I did not grow up on an Indian reservation; instead I grew up in a big city. My family moved from Minnesota to Kansas City when I was two years old. I lived in Kansas City until 1991 when I returned to northern Minnesota, the land of my ancestors, to the land of my Ojibwe great-grandfather Adam Mountain, my Ojibwe grandmother Tah-ge-gah, my French grandfather Samuel Ridgley, and their daughter, my mother, whose Indian name was Morningstar, “Waab Anangikwe.”
My formal schooling consisted of earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, a Master’s and a Ph.D. degree in Visual Arts and Education from the University of Kansas. I later completed a Master’s degree in Library Science in 1990. I have had several careers, beginning as an artist for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. Through the years, I have done free-lance art work, taught art at several colleges and universities, and been a librarian. I was the Fine Arts and Humanities Librarian at the University of Minnesota Duluth for twelve years where I also taught courses in the Art department and in the American Indian Studies department. I taught watercolor painting at UMD for ten years and also taught watercolor workshops in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. In 2003, I was the Director of Library Programs for the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 2003-2007. I am currently the Library Director at Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas. Since 1975, I have had numerous one-person art exhibitions and have been in many regional juried art shows.
I have always painted. I think a lot about painting, of what I want to say in my work. I continue to paint in the Southwest and to paint images of what has been important to the Native Americans. Their motifs and symbols fascinate me. For many summers, I traveled to New Mexico to paint. I climbed the canyon walls where Native Americans once passed, leaving their marks upon the rocks and cliffs. I have no appropriate language to describe what it is that moves me as I sit among the rocks mesmerized by the river below me, the sky above me, and the mountains beside me. I feel the presence of all the people who have lived and died there. Somehow, I sense that their spirits remain there among the rocks, in the land, and on the mountains. It is a sacred place. And so, their spirits and the beauty of the country move me to record my feelings through my paintings.
For many years, I have painted in watercolor. As an artist, many of the images I use in my art are reflective of the symbols and spiritual meanings found in the Native American culture. It is true to state that my spirituality has a profound effect upon the images I use in my artwork. Some of my work is about the search for inner-self, about healing, and about the empowering of the spirit to communicate. I am telling a story in my art; I am looking for images to express my story. For me, painting also involves my emotions and feelings. I respond to certain places and events. I would call myself a colorist and my recent work is in collage and mixed media. I am an artist who loves the Southwest and the Native American people. The landscape and the people speak to me with great power. Thus, I try to capture the beauty, the magic, the spirit, and the mystery of the Southwest.