Art: Drawing my Personal Heroes

A friend of mine is winning a distinguished award this week. I wanted to make her a card. That's when I realized that a recent photo she posted on Facebook would be fun to draw because it really captures who she is, and it would be a good chance to get me back into the swing of making art.

I like to make art about people

I do a lot of art and poetry "to" people who inspire me in some way. Usually my favorite artists, leaders, musicians, poets.. usually they are people who I know. I feel so lucky to know the people that I do! And I am not shy to tell people when I admire and appreciate them! The world is so harsh. And we are all usually pretty hard on ourselves. Most of us do not hear sincere appreciation enough. I don't mean in an ego way.. but in a connected and authentic way.

(I decided not to share her name here for a bunch of reasons, one being that I am trying to stay kinda anonymous too. If you know me more personally on Discord or something and you want to learn more about my friend and her work, I can share some more info with you.)

I also wanted to share this with you, especially those of you who do not live in the United States, because it might bring you a new awareness of issues and people in my area.

Brilliance of mind + working for social good inspire me!

She has a BA in physics, and she also has a PhD in environmental history. She is an award winning author, as well! She studies the ways traditional ecological knowledge intersect with the academic study of environmental and religious history.

As an activist, she works to revitalize indigenous knowledge and language. She is trying to help strengthen indigenous food systems on the reservations in our region. The knowledge of the plants is often encoded right in the indigenous languages, in the names of the plants themselves. So the language and the plant knowledge go hand in hand.

In Montana, the Reservations are sometimes far away from major grocery stores, and people end up just eating a lot of fast food and stuff from convenience stores. This leads to all kinds of issues as you can imagine, including a disproportionate occurrence of Diabetes in their communities. They have to drive a long way to make a weekly shopping run to get healthy food. It's what is known as a food desert, and many of us believe it is very intentional, a way keep those communities oppressed. That is why regaining control over food systems is a crucial aspect to indigenous sovereignty.

The land and history in a jar

I recently attended one of her lectures and she passed around jars of dried roots and plants from our area. All food preserved in the traditional way, with a modern twist. It smelled so good. There is a certain smell in the woods of Montana, the Ponderosas mixed with a very multidimensional earthiness... and thats what the food in the jars smelled like. Montana holds my favorite scent. It always makes me feed grounded and alive in a special way.

In this picture she is holding up a card showing about a plant. In the cabinets behind her are stacks of similar cards. This drawing took me about a few hours to do, with breaks in between for chatting in Discord, cooking delicious food, and petting my dog. I am a little out of practice so the hardest parts for me were her hands , hands are the worst! And also I realized my friend sure has a Mona Lisa kind of smile! It was so hard to make her look as kind and clever as she really is.. I hope she likes this drawing. I might work on it more, but I am done for today!!!

Here are a couple screen shots of it as I was working on it. I am sorry I did not do more of them! I drew this in procreate with a pencil setting, and then at the end I added watercolor.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day/night, wherever you are!

xo,