Untitled (Indian Dancer)

Archie Blackowl’s flat style version of a dancer jumps off the page. Archie Blackowl lived in Oklahoma. This piece is from the Jeanne Snodgrass Collection. Ms. Snodgrass worked at both the Philbrook Museum and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She wrote extensively on Native American Art and is the author of The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters, which is the definitive work on Native American Painters. When Archie Blackowl was seven years old, the U.S, government placed him into an Indian boarding school. “When I was seven years old they took me to this damn Indian school and we had to stand in line and they cut my hair off. They just cut my braids off and threw them into a box with all the other children’s braids. It was hard being an Indian in them days.” Archie Blackowl’s works are included in the permanent collections of a number of public institutions, including the Gilcrease and Philbrook museums inTulsa, Oklahoma, and the Sequoayah Research Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.