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Frank Big Bear

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Photography by Edward C. Robison III.
Frank Big Bear
Photography by Edward C. Robison III.

Frank Big Bear

Anishinabe, born 1953
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BiographyFrank Big Bear grew up on and around the White Earth Reservation. He has lived in Minneapolis since 1968. For decades, Big Bear drove cab while raising his family and creating his art. He received the 2008 Bush Foundation Enduring Vision Award as well as the Bush Artist Fellowship Award in 1998 and 1986. He has shown at the Tweed Museum, Dultuh; Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; The Plains Art Museum, Fargo; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis.

His detailed and vibrant colored pencil drawings depict fantastic figures in wild and disjointed scenes. Big Bear is enormously prolific and paints as well, creating stylized portraits often composed of the same colored shapes in mosaic that mark his style in both mediums. The humans, animals, and supernatural figures in Big Bear’s art portray a world teeming with activity and intent. Honed over decades, his personal vision and artistic commitment are revealed in every work.

[Bockley Gallery, retrieved on 2/25/20 from http://www.bockleygallery.com/artist_big_bear/index.html]
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