Hockaday to exhibit work of Blackfeet artist Terran Last Gun — Live art demos, talk and reception planned

Blackfeet visual artist Terran Last Gun/Sah’kwiinaamah’kaa will create new works of art through live demonstrations scheduled in April at the Hockaday Museum of Art.

His solo exhibit, Piikani Visual Sovereignty, will be on display April 5 through June 22. The exhibit, Piikani Visual Sovereignty, features more than 25 serigraphs and ledger art. His work centers on the process of color exploration and visual documentation of nature, cosmos, cultural narratives, and recollections of home. Employing contemporary geometric shapes from traditional Blackfeet lodges and visual iconography, Last Gun sees his work and artistic processes as a contribution to an ancient Indigenous North American narrative through various media including printmaking, ledger drawing, painting, and photography.

“My work bridges the ancient to the contemporary. It reaches beyond, all while creating visual color stimulation in my varied approaches to making art: printmaking, painting, photography, and ledger drawing. I am revealing fragments of time, history, and Indigenous Abstraction — an art form that has continued for tens of thousands of years. I am creating a new Piikani art form that is bold, vivid, even humorous at times and has minimalist and geometric qualities that are potent in meaning, content, and place,” says his artist statement at terranlastgun.com.

Born in Browning, Last Gun is a Piikani (Blackfeet) citizen of Montana, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. He currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Last Gun holds an associate of science degree from Blackfeet Community College in Browning and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Museum Studies and an Associate of Fine Arts in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe. 

He’s been awarded multiple fellowships including the First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship in 2020, the Santa Fe Art Institute Story Maps Fellowship in 2018 and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Goodman Aspiring Artist Fellowship in 2016.

The live demonstrations will be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 1-3. The public is encouraged to observe Last Gun and ask questions about his materials and process as he paints. The demonstrations are funded in part by a Humanities Montana grant.

On April 4, the public is invited to attend a gallery talk from 4 to 5 p.m. featuring Last Gun, Missoula Art Museum Senior Curator Brandon Reintjes and Hockaday Executive Director Alyssa Cordova. Following the gallery talk, Hockaday members are invited to an exhibit preview reception from 5 to 7 p.m.

Museum admission is $10 for non-members. Members of the Hockaday are free. The museum is located at 302 Second Ave. E., Kalispell.

For more information visit www.hockadaymuseum.com or call 406-755-5268.

    Sunbeam, 2019, five color serigraph on Stonehenge paper by Terran Last Gun. (Courtesy image)
  

    Sites of Creator, 2023, ink and colored pencil on antique ledger paper, by Terran Last Gun. (Courtesy image)