The work of Kansas artist Blackbear Bosin straddled rivers — and worlds
The painting "Prairie Fire" launched Kansas artist Blackbear Bosin to national prominence. (Mid-America All-Indian Museum)
It is one of the most recognizable pieces of art in Kansas.
“The Keeper of the Plains” is Blackbear Bosin’s 44-foot steel sculpture of a Native American, hands lifted to the heavens. It is installed on a rocky plinth above the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers near downtown Wichita and, since its creation in 1974, has become synonymous with the city — its aspirations and hopes and the First Peoples who came before.
It is also a Mercator of worlds.
Land and river, city and plain, earth and sky, past and present.
Red and white.
If only Bosin were still around, he might be able to tell us what it’s like to straddle two worlds. Alas, Bosin — who was born in a tipi in Oklahoma and was of Kiowa-Comanche heritage — died 45 years ago.
But the subjunctive capacity survives in his work, the ability of one soul to reveal a glimpse of itself to another in an eternal game of what if? If I had been born in another culture, or another time, or a different place, this is what my eyes might have captured, this is what my heart may have held. This is the secret of all great or at least good art: the ability to transmit experience.
I’ve been thinking about Bosin because this three-day weekend marks Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The holiday is celebrated in some localities on the second Monday in October, as an alternative to the Columbus Day federal holiday. In Kansas, despite attempts by advocates to set aside a day to respect and honor First Peoples, Indigenous People’s Day is not a paid holiday for state employees. Many cities and schools in the state do mark the day, however. It is recognized in Wichita by proclamation and was celebrated Saturday, with remembrance and a Trail of Tears walk at the Mid-America All-Indian Museum.
The museum, on the triangle of land between the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers, is almost in the shadow — just a short walk away — of the “Keeper of the Plains.” Established in 1969, the site was originally called a center instead of a museum, but it’s really both; not only is it a meeting place that hosts cultural events such as powwows and book talks, but it also has a collection of 3,000 American Indian artifacts.
In June, I spoke at the museum about my 2018 University Press of Kansas book, “Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River.” I arrived a little early for my talk and, as I walked among the exhibits, I became absorbed in the work of Bosin.
Studying his other work made me see “Keeper of the Plains” differently.
“Keeper” is his only sculpture, and I’ve seen it so often and for so long — in person, in newsprint, on postcards and regional television — that I took it for granted as a part of the Wichita landscape. Dedicated in 1974, in advance of the nation’s bicentennial, over the years it became hidden by surrounding trees. It was later placed on a raised plaza and became the centerpiece of an eight-year, $20 million river beautification and renovation project completed in 2007.
The location of the “Keeper,” where the big and little rivers meet, is of special significance to several First Nations. It’s been inhabited for centuries. The headwaters of the Arkansas River — the big river, the one most folks in Kansans call the AR-kan-sus — has its headwaters on the Continental Divide above Leadville, Colorado, more than 600 miles and about 9,000 feet of elevation away. The headwaters of the little river are 80 miles away in Rice County and not far from the ancient Native American “Serpent Effigy.”
The “Keeper of the Plains” sculpture has become a symbol of the city of Wichita. (Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress)
In “Elevations,” I described rivers as liminal spaces, as those places between. While I was on the spit of land between two rivers where the Mid-American All-Indian Museum is located, I kept thinking back to the idea of the liminal as I looked at Bosin’s art. On one hand you have the quick early sketches and commercial work and on the other hand there are the cultural pieces that vibrate with color and power.
My favorite is “Prairie Fire.”
The original 1953 painting is held by the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. The dreamlike sky seethes with wind and flame, antelope jump, Native Americans race away on horseback, and wolves (or perhaps coyotes?) slink in the foreground. National Geographic used the work in its magazine and as the dust jacket cover of “Indians of the Americas.” It is the work that brought Bosin national attention and secured his place among contemporary Native American artists of the mid-20th century.
Let me pause and revise that last sentence.
It should read “contemporary American artists” instead.
Bosin was an American artist who also happened to draw inspiration from his Kiowa-Comanche culture. To qualify his work as that of a “Native American” artist is true, but also patronizing, in the same way that makes Kathryn Bigelow, the Oscar-winning director of “The Hurt Locker,” bristle at being called a woman filmmaker. Such attitudes toward Native American artists were crystallized in an April 14, 1957, review in the Tulsa World.
Bosin’s paintings “in exhibition now at Philbrook are particularly interesting as an illustration of this artist’s attempt to solve the problem which faces all Indian painters,” opined the newspaper’s arts editor, Maurice De Vinna. “That is, how to avoid repetition of stereotypical motifs without either taking his work out of the category of American Indian painting, or pushing a personal style to the point of mannerism.”
I’m not attempting to be cruel to De Vinna — somebody 70 years from now might take an example of something I’ve written as an example of our thick-headed age — but to underline the patronizing constraint under which Bosin worked. Mannerism was a part of Thomas Hart Benton’s style of exaggerated figures and vibrant color, and while Benton had plenty of critics who sneered as his populism, his heritage was not a part of the argument.
Bosin was born in 1921 in a tipi near Anadarko, Oklahoma, according to a chronology on his legacy project website. His Kiowa name was Tsate-Knogia. At a mission school he became acquainted with the work of the Kiowa Five artists and his mother, Ada, a bead worker, encouraged his interest, although he would have no formal training in art. During the Depression, the teenage Bosin peddled his own paints door-to-door for $1 or so each at Anadarko, according to a United Press International feature.
At 20, he moved to Wichita and worked at Beech Aircraft. He was a Marine during World War II, and his interest in art was rekindled while recovering from an illness in Hawaii. His first one-man show was in Honolulu in 1945.
Back in Wichita after the war, he was an industrial designer and illustrator for Boeing. In 1958, he was asked to create a mosaic for the Crystal Ballroom at the Hotel Broadview downtown. The result was “Advance of Civilization in Kansas,” and part of it depicts Coronado’s 1541 exploration of the region.
By 1959, Bosin opened the Great Plains Studio.
“Bosin attained widespread acclaim as a traditional painter,” according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. “While using some manner of the Kiowa flat style, he also employed European techniques of illusion and surrealism. This combination contributed to his work’s uniqueness. Besides relying on his own research and reading, Bosin drew inspiration from his grandmother’s tales of earlier and better times.”
In 1965, he was invited to the White House Festival of Arts and in 1970 was part of the All-Indian Show at the Kennedy Theatre in New York. It was about this time, or slightly earlier, that plans were laid for “Keeper.” The idea for the sculpture came from Elmer Hall, CEO of Kansas Gas & Electric Co. (now Evergy), according to the utility’s website. But it would be years before work began on the sculpture.
Blackbear Bosin, a Kansas artist of Kiowa-Comanche heritage, created the “Keeper of the Plains” and other memorable artwork. (Mid-America All-Indian Museum)
Meanwhile, Bosin pursued authenticity in his two-dimensional work.
“Bosin travels from his Wichita home to the reservations of the original Plains people to interview the few remaining medicine men and hear stories of supernatural deeds handed down over countless generations,” wrote UPI reporter Patrick Malone in 1973. “He pores over weighty anthropological finds — all in his quest to accurately chronicle what Indians looked like centuries ago, and perhaps more importantly what they dreamed.”
The five-ton “Keeper” sculpture was dedicated in 1974 as part of the nation’s bicentennial celebration. Construction was funded by $20,000 in state and municipal grants and another $8,000 in community contributions. KG&E engineers and crews created the sculpture from designs provided by Bosin. The skin for the sculpture was made from Core-Ten, a type of steel that doesn’t need painting and turns a burnished red as it weathers.
The 2007 renovations incorporated the themes of water, air, earth and fire. For 15 minutes each night, a ring of fire pots is lit near the base of sculpture. Exhibits along the limestone walls of the plaza celebrate Plains culture, including depictions of bison, ceremonial pipes and dream animals.
“This is not the place I was born,” Bosin told a Wichita Eagle reporter in 1974, “but this is the birthplace of my fathers and forefathers. (The sculpture) has conveyed everything I wanted to say. And I have a very good feeling about it. That is the reason I have asked no stipend, and why I have given the design to the city.”
As he grew older, he increasingly portrayed Plains nations as he dreamed they were in prehistory.
“Late in his life the artist remarked that his paintings never recognized the defeat of the Indian,” according to his Oklahoma Historical Society entry. “Instead, he described America as if Europeans had not arrived in 1492. His art reflected spiritual history, tribal history, and Indian myth. He depicted his people in the same way the tribal storytellers told their histories.”
Bosin died on Aug. 9, 1980, after years of heart problems. He was 59.
“Blackbear never was aware of it,” eulogized George Neavoll, an editor at the Wichita Eagle, “but I loved him with a passion that was born of the land and all that walks upon it, and none trod its surface as lovingly and as gently as the great Indian artist.”
Bosin was one of the most organic of creators. From selling his paintings door-to-door during the Depression to his most iconic work, it was inspired by time and place — and, in some cases, the dull compulsion of the economic. But art flows on, even when the most influential of artists dies, and other generations step forward. The Smithsonian has a striking digital exhibit of contemporary Native and Indigenous artists.
Nobody knows what Bosin experienced when he crossed from earth to sky, or from darkness to light, or from being to nothingness. He crossed the last great border, the threshold to Shakespeare’s “Undiscovered County.” Perhaps he joined his ancestors in a world before history. But wherever he went, he left pieces of himself scattered across our world, in paintings and murals and one singular sculpture.
Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.