Ceramic Buffaloes, Milk Jugs, and Old Medicine Cabinets

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

Marty Two Bulls Jr. (Oglala Sioux Tribe) is an artist, musician, and educator. He grew up under the artistic tutelage of his father, an accomplished artist, designer, and cartoonist. Marty attended college at the Institute of American Indian Arts where he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts focused in Printmaking and Ceramics.

In 2017, he returned to live in Rapid City, South Dakota, and teaches at the Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He built the Associates in Graphic Arts program, and continues to mentor other Lakota artists.

Crying, laughing, a blank stare, winking. Four of Marty’s glazed ceramic pieces were exhibited at the 2019 Native POP: People of the Plains show this summer. Veering from his typical aesthetics, he is experimenting with abstracts concepts to explore within his life and culture. He created a group of glazed ceramic sculptures — buffalos in cartoon form that won an award at the show.  

“I was looking at ideas around identity and culture and specifically my identity as a Lakota artist, how I exist today.”

— Marty Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota), 2019 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow

The small-sized sculptures might lead to larger pieces in similar form, but not having his own kiln hampers Marty’s abilities. Too often, a batch of work he has taken to fire at a foundry comes out broken.

“The creativity gets stifled by issues of transportation and firing,” he says. “There have been instances when someone else’s piece exploded, and my work was next to it. It’s a real gamble sometimes. I can be working for three months towards a show, and if I lose that work in the kiln, I don’t always have another three months before the exhibition.”

Marty’s 2019 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership grant is allowing him to purchase a 400-pound electric kiln.

“I’m looking forward to being able to increase the delicacy of my work,” he says. Marty explores art in a variety of forms beyond ceramics. When a vague idea or theme comes to mind, he grabs his sketchbook. Inspirations may come from found objects. He displayed two medicine cabinets and ceramic milk jugs at the LUX Art Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, an exhibit he curated in 2019.  

“I like to go to the re-store and find an old chewed up medicine cabinet, something that has a history of use,” he says. “It’s this personal place, and it’s also a brutally honest place. The only time we may see ourselves is in the reflection of its mirror.

“For this exhibition, there were two medicine cabinet pieces. I was looking at ideas around identity and culture and specifically my identity as a Lakota artist, how I exist today. I’m a Lakota artist, but I don’t necessarily make my work towards anyone else’s ideas around what that means. I get challenged sometimes about this work. I like that, it tells me that the person is looking at the work and engaging with it.”