- Art is a universal peacekeeper among all nations.

You know, all other ethnic people, their art was a start of them, even though they've disappeared, what did they leave behind?

Art.

And then of course, there's those who destroy art.

Things that are even unexplainable, things that are a mystery to, to man itself.

A lot of it consists of artwork and you can't replace it.

It is a thing that comes from people's feelings, comes from down deep.

Something that they have to express, something they have to show, something they have to let out into the world and be it that it looks good or it don't look good.

That don't matter.

What matters is, is that they are doing that.

Oh my God, I work with anything.

I tried to express myself with the ledger artists, even though my, my material, my paper material is not really that much ledger.

Mine's a lot of documents, marriage license, bonds, certificates, different kind of categories of such.

The only thing I can really say is I try to make things to where it can go behind glass and hang on a wall.

It's not sticking out all over the place.

But as far as the procedure of doing a piece of artwork, It's, it's hard to say because I add to a picture.

I take away from a picture.

I move things around in a picture.

I, I throw the whole thing away, or I start all over.

I don't, I never really throw anything away or I start all over and try to get it right or do it better.

But the factor of just doing a piece of artwork, it's sometimes it's just what I see.

Sometimes it, I could be looking at the stars, sometimes.

I could be looking at a mountain.

You know, sometimes I see animals run by, you know, it, it, it's just what hits you at the moment, you know?

And I guess finding the position for certain things of adornment in a picture just has to depend on whether you put it here, put it there, take it, put it over here, put like a jigsaw puzzle.

I grab something, I explore different angles with it, or different, you know, positions with it.

I never, I try to work on maybe five or six pieces at once.

And if it don't go here, maybe it goes there.

If it don't go down the line, you know, and then hopefully I find the right spot for it.

Otherwise, it goes in the pile next month.

It helps me to know that there are other artists out there that are not doing what I do, but they're doing something to say, well, he's part of that category.

You know, I figure I'm part of the category of ledger artists.

'cause I try my best to do what I can with that involved in my heart.

Native Americanism, tribal art history, we gotta remember that a lot of this artwork that I've done has a story, a legend.

Its folklore, its history.

It's our past, maybe our future.

And, and, you know, it has its own meaning in history.

In 1862, they hung 38 warriors in Mankato, Minnesota.

And when I go to make a picture about that, there's the number 38 plus two.

And I go around to coin stores and find pennies with the date 1862.

And all these things that have Native American meaning, because it is a Native American piece, are installed in this picture to make it the story, to make it be told of that situation.

Those 1862 pennies are all the year that it happened.

The 38 pennies is how many were hung.

The bead work that was done back then.

Maybe a map showing how they were chased out of Minnesota into the Dakotas.

And, you know, all these things go installed in, in that piece.

The names, the names of the 38 that were hung are written on something, on a piece of leather strip and, and left dangling in there to show that they're hanging.

You know, all this represents that piece.

And we're just talking about the hanging of the 38 wounded knee.

That could be another one of, you know, the, the mass grave and stuff.

All these things that happen I try to install into the picture.

Something from that time period or something that has to do with that time period or information from that time period are just right.

You know, the story alone itself, you know, they, they sang their death chants and, and they have that in writing.

You could put that up in the corner and, and such the, the death chant that they sang and, and, and just anything that you can find and put together in that picture that represents that time.

And that's just one of many things.

Like the missing murdered indigenous women.

You know, you look at that and then when you, you maybe you have a hard time wondering, okay, what is this about?

And once you say murdered or missing indigenous women, it just pretty much comes to you.

What they're talking about.

What I tried to install, what I tried to put across there, these women back here that murdered and missing indigenous women that is real hair in there.

I try not to falsify my art as such of bead work.

I don't use plastic beads.

I use actual glass beads, our brass beads, our actual bone.

And I'm not trying to be morbid with my heart.

I'm, I'm trying to express a full feeling of what I'm trying to pass on to who is in front of it and has it, or knows about it, the truth.

I try to get out the truth.

Being able to come up with materials too.

That's another big factor of finding things and being able to accommodate things to go into my pieces.

I tried many different medias and none of 'em worked for me.

I mean, I could do, I could do some things in it, paintings, drawings, pencil work.

I can do those things.

But, but there's so many artists that are just wonderful at it.

Just awesome.

And I try to be a, a person up there with them, you know, and there's just no room for me.

There's a lot of different ideas of different media.

And that's what my big thing is.

I do something like ledger art.

I watch those, those artists do their ledger art and Oscar, how and stuff, and their beautiful paintings and everything else.

I said, all right, I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna make it my own.

I'm gonna cut out the horses, I'm gonna cut out the Warriors.

I'm gonna cut out the, the, this and that that belong the buffalos, the buffalos or whatever, the teepees.

I'm gonna cut 'em out of leather.

I'm gonna put toothpicks through the front end for the doorway.

I'm going to do additives.

I'm gonna do takeaways.

I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna make it stand up a little bit more off the paper.

The document is there, but everything on the document stands off of it.

It's something different.

And then when I finally accomplished doing that, I started just making my own background and making things stand off of it, such as this one back here.

Things just stand forward from it.

And it is something different.

Now, the way the story goes is I did mixed media.

I called it mixed media, but a lot of people said, well, watercolor and acrylic together is mixed media.

So I said, all right, I'll call it multimedia.

So they put the same two things together and they put one flower in the corner, and they call that multim mixed media.

So being my last name, fog, I said, I'll start my own and I'll do fma, which is all kinds of pieces put together to tell a story, a legend, a tale, a fable, a piece of history, or a piece of now, or a piece of the future.

The first time I saw art, it would probably have to be a Donald Monolo piece.

I believe it was his ghost dancer piece or his winter dancer piece.

It, it just seemed that It was an image that was put in the center surrounded by art in itself.

The whole piece was a piece of art, of course.

But just that piece, the way it was, helps me to ize everything I do.

I have a middle and I go out from that with some adornment of some such, you know.

But once I did see that, I began to see a lot of other artists just immediately after that.

'cause I believe my ideal of curiosity just exploded right then and there.

I said, wow, I can do something like this.

I really believe I can.

Well, my childhood, I was raised on a homestead that was given to my great-grandfather and grandmother.

And I lived there with my grandparents.

And the, the city of Fort Thompson on the Crow Creek reservation didn't really have much to offer me.

And, and like I said, the only exciting thing for me was the annual powwow that happened.

The Indian dancer, the, the dance, you know, the singers, the, the colorfulness, the, the enjoyment, the, the excitement of it all.

You know, you, you get out there on a grand entry and you just, it's just awe awesome.

It's, you look at everything that is out there and you know, you'll never be able to see everything, but your imagination takes over there and, and helps you to visualize what you are missing.

In my artistic way of doing things, of course, People never really realize the urgency or the feeling inside that you want to express yourself.

And when you do feel it, sometimes you have that problem of deciding how to do it.

Well, I found out that basically the things that surrounded me, where I was, my environment helped me along the way to decide that I wanted to be an artist back when I was, what you would call, almost a little more than a toddler, you know, it started with time after school.

I didn't have much to do living on farmstead with my grandparents and such.

I looked for things to do, hobbies to be, to, to occupy my time other than looking at the stars.

My brother, he reminds me all the time of how we used to do art together.

And we created things together and it was a, something that was just left of us to do in a place where there wasn't very much to do at all.

You, you waited for the annual powwow to come, you went fishing.

Swimming of course, which was very liked, rode horseback and, and you know, but those can only last so long.

But something that means something to you deep inside, being able to create and have something to show for what you are doing at that time period is what we did.

All the images I used as a child drawing, being horses in Buffalos, it, it was the kind of into the religious aspect of my relatives that were being put upon me at the time.

Being that told the stories we could not survive without the buffalo being that the horse was a sacred animal that was brought to us.

You know, even if it wasn't, it was told in stories as such and believed as such by some people.

So I took that upon myself to also have the, the courage to believe in those things.

So the images of horses buffaloes was my strong point.

But as time goes on, I learned the stories and such of woves and coyotes and, you know, even right down to the little old ground squirrel, as I grew older, you know, and, and, and developed the value of certain materials.

I looked at ashes on the end of a stick from a fire.

I looked at berries being squashed.

I looked at, you know, just putting things on top of paper and, you know, letting it stick to it and stuff.

Additive things and adornment of such as they call it today.

But, you know, it was just using anything anywhere that I could possibly find back then, I just worked with things that were nature, not things that were manmade or manufactured.

It was just all nature things.

That's where I got the ideal, you know, I'm gonna try to stick to nature as close as I can and not use anything artificial because it had so much more of a meaning than just assembling something.

I wasn't just boom, making stuff to sell or boom, making stuff to go to a gallery or anything else.

It was just things like I said, to occupy myself my own time and enjoy.

I went and daydreamed in my art class in school, you know, the teacher would come over and he'd say, aren't you gonna do anything here?

I said, I am.

I'm putting pieces together in my head.

And as I grew older, my and my artistic abilities kind of arose.

I had relatives, aunties and uncles and stuff that would give me things like western stuff, you know, belts, old leather belts and, and aunties and grandmas would give me star quilts and, and things that they've made that were small that I could use in my heart ribbons and, and things that they had half sewing and never finished.

And, and, and just kind of give me ideas to braid things and do what whatnot with it and add it to things and make things.

And as I grew older and older, that stuck with me, you know, to where I, I didn't really want to go down and find some kind of bag of materials that I can make something out of.

I'd rather try to go and find individual things to use.

And, you know, it came about to where old coins was a factor in that, and, and old money, even though I almost cried when I had to cut it up to put it in the picture and such.

But yeah, you know, I, I, I just was given things by relatives and people who supported me for and seen the potential that I may have.

What I do today is a way different than what I did when I was a child in, in my essence of trying to find myself with my niche that most artists do find.

It started out to be a, a a side thing because I was, I was a worker.

I held on jobs and stuff.

I was a singer in a band and, and such and such, and this and that, and la la la But then art was always there.

It was always there.

I could always pick up something and start something and I could stop anytime I wanted to.

You can't stop your job just 'cause you feel like it for a while.

You lose it, but you never lose heart.

You never lose that feeling that you can do another piece.

Or you'd be walking down the street and all of a sudden, bing, here comes an ideal for a piece.

I'm gonna run home.

I gotta get this on paper.

I decided to become an artist, like, like, like they said, when I moved into a bigger city that had places available.

But first I had to know about these places and, and be informed.

There were things that were going on, like the South Dakota Hall of Fame had a call to several artists to display several pieces of art to add to the essence of what holiday it was that they were celebrating.

I can't believe, I can't remember if it was 4th of July or what, but I put a couple pieces in there and they got a real good response.

And then there was places like arts in the park where, you know, you just bring your art and set it up, you know, you didn't have to be invited or anything else.

And I, I just got a little bit more things together to do that.

And again, it got a successful, a action out of it.

And then from then on, I, I said, well, I'm gonna take my chances at places like museums and galleries.

And by then, I had created a lot more pieces to put up in these galleries.

And I, I even was told by the gallery person that, I really like your stuff.

I like it so much.

I referred you to the gallery across town.

And then from then on, the word got out that you ought to get this guy's artwork in your gallery.

It's different, you know, and that's where I'm saying it goes back to the part to where I'm not saying I'm better than these artists.

I'm different.

My artwork is different.

And by that time, my artwork had started to excel in that direction of adornment into something behind glass that was sellable.

Well, that was the, mostly the people I just created things I didn't know.

I, I really didn't know.

I created things.

I put 'em out there in smaller places and little bit bigger places.

And the people decided that the people were the ones who said, you can do the, you, you're gonna do good at this.

You got talent, you know, you got what it, what it takes or whatever, or I like this, or, you know, and it gives you that encouragement, that feeling down inside that, alright, maybe I can do this and I'm going to, I like to share my artwork with anybody who will take the time to understand it.

You know, the electronic world has opened up a wide, wide gap for artists and anybody else, followers, people who keep track of your art and stuff.

And that, that is a good thing.

You know, it's, there's nothing wrong with that.

I mean, I, there might be somewhere hidden in the deep part of things that could be wrong, but I don't really see it.

I see, you know, people enjoying artwork by an artist, being able to follow that artist and without having to look 'em up and track 'em down.

You can, but of course, that artist has to put things on the electronics too.

And I have a hard time doing that.

I'm not really familiarized with the best I can.

I usually have somebody do it for me.

But yeah, I, I like to share my artwork with anybody who will take a little time to understand, not just say, oh, that's pretty.

And walk onto the next one.

You know, to, to understand the piece of artwork is to actually enjoy the piece of art.

The, the museum to begin with is great.

This museum here you're talking about.

Yes, yes.

The museum is great.

They've been so nice to me, you know, and they've allowed me to express myself.

And in doing that, it is just a joy.

I'll always advertise this place, I'll always talk about this place now that, that has happened before, it was just, I wish I could get in there, you know, now that I have been here, it is a joy, you know, it, it, it lifts me to a category to where I am good enough for that place.

I'll tell you right now, this piece right here that has history to it, that has time to, it, it, it, it, it really makes me feel comfortable sitting here talking to you.

And I don't know how you would wanna take that, but it does, it just soothes me to, to know, like my ancestors are here.

I would say it's probably from the late 18 hundreds, possibly a woman's dancing regalia with the fringe.

You know, that's probably about all I could tell you.

And it does have actual bone pipe bead harness to it, but it is very patriotic.

You can see by the, by the flags.

So that would make it, you know, later into the 18 hundreds if that old, I'm sure an ancestor of mine wore it.

And that's part of me of what I am who I am.

You know, the thing I like to say to children about being artists is if you're gonna be an artist, be an artist.

Don't go in there just to waste time or daydream.

If you're gonna think about things, think about art because you're in an art class.

You go in there because you wanna be part of creating something.

You want to be something special that can bring something from nothing.

It's, you know, I've seen too many real good artists just, they're just in there because they say they gotta have another class under their belt, you know?

And they don't really care, you know?

And if you don't really care that you want to be an artist, nine times outta 10, you're not gonna be, Keep going, keep going.

Because already I just said art, didn't I?

You, what you do is art.

It don't matter how it looks.

It don't matter what it is.

Its coming out of you on a piece of paper or a nail in, in, in wood or or whatnot.

It's a piece of art that you did.

And hence forth.

It's art.

So just keep going, keep moving.

Don't let anybody judge your art.

Go in there with the positive attitude.

If you want to be an artist, stick with it.

Push it.

It's there.

It'll happen.

Because like I said before, it's art.

And it doesn't matter how it looks or what people think of it, it's art.

And art is art.