A Lifestyle of Art and Community
By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015
Ben Pease (Crow Tribe of Montana, Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation) is a multidisciplinary artist and founding member of the Creative Indigenous Collective and Native Youth Art in Action. Together with Robert Martinez (Northern Arapaho, 2012 First Peoples Fund (FPF) Artist in Business Leadership Fellow, 2015 FPF Cultural Capital Fellow) and John Pepion (Piikani, 2017 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow), they host an annual youth mentorship workshop sponsored by the Indian People’s Action and the Montana Folk Festival.
Ben is a 2019 FPF Artist in Business Leadership Fellow and lives in Billings, Montana, with his family.
As a young boy, Ben watched in wonder as Kevin Red Star participated in the Quick Draw and Auction event at the Charlie Russell Art Week in Great Falls, Montana. Through Kevin Red Star, Ben’s eyes were opened to a world within a world for Indigenous creatives. It was the first time he witnessed a Native artist excelling in the mainstream.
“I then told myself that I wanted to be an artist with a message,” Ben says. “By high school, I had sold my first painting for $400, a fortune in my eyes. But it’s more than just making money, it’s more than the business; it’s a lifestyle.”
To create his one of a kind pieces, Ben travels to antique stores, digs through attics, and searches online. He discovers paper money, mining deeds, water bonds, fashion magazines — American culture with historical context to relate to contemporary times. He explores what things meant, what they mean today, and what they might mean in the future. He prints his digital paintings — sourced from historic and contemporary photography of his own and others — collages that onto the canvas with the pieces of antique ephemera and papers, then goes back into the painting with acrylic, oil, spray paint, pastel, scriffitto, fire, and graphite.
Ben is represented in seven galleries that he strives to keep stocked. He follows his art across the United States, Canada, and around the world in places like the Dubai & Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. It recently took him on a journey to Germany, where he painted a part of the Berlin Wall for the anniversary of the wall’s falling.
The income Ben makes from his art goes to support others including his immediate family and relatives. He and his family host cultural events and do social work in their community.
“Each day, I see Indigenous creatives from around the world doing amazing things and speaking volumes to hoards of people,” he says. “I’m inspired to grow as a human.”
