Leah Yellowbird - Minnesota Artist Spotlight

May 05, 2019

Leah Yellowbird - Minnesota Artist Spotlight

The first place I came across a piece by Leah Yellowbird, it was a part of the Intersections gallery at the Tweed Museum of Art, on the University of Minnesota Duluth campus.

I was completely mesmerized by it, drawn to it. It caught my eye more than any other piece in the gallery did.

Dances with Sweetgrass - Leah Yellowbird

One of the things that interested me about the piece is the way she applies her paint on the canvas. It can be hard to see unless you are seeing it in person, but the whole painting is created out of many individual dots.

When I saw this, it reminded me of one of my own art forms. I like doing embroidery, and one of my most used stitches is the 'french knot,' which tends to look like small circles just like the dots on the canvas.

Another thing that I liked about the piece is all of the imagery. There are many different things on this canvas. Braids, wild strawberries, honeysuckles, and much more. Overall, it is a very beautiful piece.

This of course isn't the only piece this artist has created. She has done many more that are just as beautiful and mysterious.

Some examples:

Leah Yellowbird - Howling Wolf

Leah Yellowbird - Small Fish

Leah Yellowbird - The Teacher

So who is this artist then? Yes, she creates beautiful work, but it's just as important to know the artist behind the art to know where their ideas come from.

Leah Yellowbird identifies strongly with her Native American heritage; both First Nations Algonquin-Metis and Anishinaabe. While she has worked with many mediums over time, she has been beading her entire life. At a young age, she learned from her extended family how to make sense of traditional beading patterns.

While she was involved in art her whole life, she wasn't using a lot of canvas at first. After going through some rough spots in life, Leah decided to pick the paint brush back up and was inspired by the styles of her beadwork, along with a style her aunt had used before her.

Leah says she receives her ideas for her art pieces through dreams, ideas from her ancestors she believes.

She had a solo exhibition of her work in 2013 at the American Indian Community Housing Organization, and has had pieces on display at the Macrostie Art Center in Grand Rapids, MN.

She was the Grand Rapids Arts artist in residence from 2015 until 2016. The piece I mentioned above, Dances with Sweetgrass, was actually made in Grand Rapids, which is close to where I grew up.

Overall, Leah is a very talented artist. She takes the things that have happened to her in life, along with the dreams she receives from her ancestors, and creates stunning and thought provoking pieces of art. She is able to create something unique, and then make something important out if it, such as when she created this piece of art, highlighting the topic of wolf hunting: