Rhonda Holy Bear (born December 15, 1959) is a Native American ( Cheyenne River Lakota) beadworker and dollmaker. She is best known for her dolls depicting Native American people in traditional beaded regalia.

Early life

Rhonda Holy Bear was born on the

Cheyenne River Indian Reservation The Cheyenne River Indian Reservation was created by the United States in 1889 by breaking up the Great Sioux Reservation, following the attrition of the Lakota people, Lakota in a series of wars in the 1870s. The reservation covers almost ...

in South Dakota. She is a

Hunkpapa Lakota The Hunkpapa (Lakota: ) are a Native American group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota tribe. The name ' is a Lakota word, meaning "Head of the Circle" (at one time, the tribe's name was represented in European-American records as ...

and

Dakota Dakota may refer to: * Dakota people, a sub-tribe of the Sioux ** Dakota language, their language Dakota may also refer to: Places United States * Dakota, Georgia, an unincorporated community * Dakota, Illinois, a town * Dakota, Minnesota ...

citizen of the

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North & South Dakota controls the Standing Rock Reservation (), which straddles the border between North and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic "Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakot ...

. She began making dolls at age four, encouraged by her grandmother, Angeline Holy Bear (Lakota/Dakota). She was also inspired by her aunt Agatha Holy Bear Traversie, a beadworker who also tanned hides, and by Ella Bears Heart, a community member who taught her beading when she was nine. Rhonda grew up in La Plante, in a home with no running water or indoor plumbing. She attended Beadle Elementary School in Mobridge. She moved to Chicago when she was 14, and graduated from Little Big Horn High School. Holy Bear remained in Chicago for the early part of her career, teaching high school students about traditional Native American arts.

Art career

Holy Bear began working on her beaded dolls while in Chicago. In 1982, she began working at ''American West'', an art gallery. The wife of the gallery owner took an interest in Holy Bear's dolls, buying two of them, and the gallery offered to sell some of her other dolls. The gallery later placed an advertisement for Holy Bear's work in '' American Indian Art Magazine'', which launched her wider art career. Holy Bear applied to the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

, but was ultimately unable to attend due to tuition costs. Instead, she took weekly trips to the

Field Museum The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educationa ...

, where she sketched and studied the Native American clothing and beadwork in the museum's collection. Later, with the help of scholar Father Peter J. Powell, whom she had met in high school, Holy Bear was given access to the museum's archives. In 1985, Holy Bear participated in the

Santa Fe Indian Market The Santa Fe Indian Market is an annual art market held in Santa Fe, New Mexico on the weekend following the third Thursday in August. The event draws an estimated 150,000 people to the city from around the world. The Southwestern Association for ...

for the first time. At the event, she received a Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) Fellowship, the first doll artist to do so. She also won the First and Second Place awards in the Plains Style doll category. Following this success, several of her pieces were purchased by the

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is a museum devoted to Native American arts. It is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who came from Boston, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo singer and medi ...

for their permanent collection.

Works

Two of Holy Bear's dolls, a male and female

Ghost Dance The Ghost Dance (, also called the Ghost Dance of 1890) is a ceremony incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. According to the millenarian teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka (renamed Jack Wilson), pro ...

r, are in the permanent collections of the

Sioux Indian Museum The Journey Museum and Learning Center is a museum in Rapid City, South Dakota, United States with of gardens. It is set up as a journey through the history of the Black Hills, starting with the Native American creation stories, moving into the ...

. Unlike some of her other works, which use wood bases, these dolls have a painted

muslin Muslin () is a cotton fabric of plain weave. It is made in a wide range of weights from delicate sheers to coarse sheeting. It is commonly believed that it gets its name from the city of Mosul, Iraq. Muslin was produced in different regions o ...

base. A photograph of the dolls was the cover image for the 1989 Doll Issue of ''American Indian Art Magazine''. The dolls were also included in the 1992 exhibition ''Contemporary Plains Indian Dolls'' at the Southern Plains Indian Museum in

Anadarko, Oklahoma Anadarko is a city in and the county seat of Caddo County, Oklahoma, United States. The city is 50 miles (80.5 km) southwest of Oklahoma City. The population was 5,745 at the 2020 census. History Anadarko got its name when its post offic ...

. Her piece ''Lakota Honor-Sees the Horses Woman (SuWakan Ayutan Win)'', "portrays a Lakota widow honoring her fallen husband by wearing his regalia, including his eagle-feather war bonnet". Holy Bear began the doll in 2011, finishing it in 2023. It was inspired by Holy Bear's paternal grandmother, Josephine Sees The Horses Woman (b. 1872), who witnessed the

Battle of the Little Bighorn The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota people, Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Si ...

at age four and whose father was killed in the battle. The piece won Best in Show at the 2021

Style

Holy Bear has described her works as "hyperrealistic," due to the amount of details she includes in her dolls. She starts her pieces by carving a base of

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

balsa ''Ochroma pyramidale'', commonly known as balsa, is a large, fast-growing tree native to the Americas. It is the sole member of the genus ''Ochroma'', and is classified in the subfamily Bombacoideae of the mallow family Malvaceae. The tree is fa ...

wood, which is painted with red oxide. She then moves on to creating clothing, which she decorates with beads and other materials. She utilizes the traditional Lakota ''paha'' stitch. In addition to beads, Holy Bear works with a variety of materials to create her dolls, including bone, buckskin, cloth, feathers, fur, horsehair, quills, shells, and wool. She has also learned metalwork and silversmithing, which she has also incorporated into her dolls. Although Holy Bear primarily draws from Lakota tradition, she has also cited being influenced by Ancient Egyptian art.

Personal life

Holy Bear is married to musician Jim Buck. The two met in

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , literal translation, lit. "Holy Faith") is the capital city, capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Santa Fe County. With over 89,000 residents, Santa Fe is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, fourt ...

. She has lived variously in

Chamisal, New Mexico Chamisal is a census-designated place (CDP) in Taos County, New Mexico. It is located along the scenic High Road to Taos. The population was 301 at the time of the 2000 census. Chamisal was founded by settlers on the Las Trampas Land Grant wh ...

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

, Nevada, and in

Henderson, Nevada Henderson is a city in Clark County, Nevada, United States, about southeast of downtown Las Vegas. It is the List of cities in Nevada, 2nd most populous city in Nevada, after Las Vegas, with 317,610 residents. The city is part of the Las Vegas V ...

. Holy Bear's sister, Charlene Holy Bear, is also an accomplished beadworker. Her Lakota name, Wakah Wayuphika Win, means Making with Exceptional Skills Woman.

Exhibitions

Holy Bear's work has been held and displayed by many institutions, including the

, the

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, and the

. Her first exhibition, ''Eloquent Visions: Dolls of the Great Plains'', was held in 1983 at the

Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian–New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is part of the Sm ...

George Gustav Heye Center The National Museum of the American Indian–New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is part of the Sm ...

in New York City.

Selected exhibitions

, New York City (1983) * C.N. Gorman Museum,

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

, California (1984) *

(SIM),

Rapid City, South Dakota Rapid City is the county seat of Pennington County, South Dakota, United States. It is located on the eastern slope of the Black Hills in western South Dakota and was named after Rapid Creek (South Dakota), Rapid Creek, where the settlement deve ...

(1985), with Berniece Alderman * Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois (2018–2019) * Barry Art Museum,

Old Dominion University Old Dominion University (ODU) is a Public university, public research university in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. Established in 1930 as the two-year Norfolk Division of the College of William & Mary, it began by educating people with fewer ...

(2022)

Awards and recognition

* 1985:

** Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) Fellowship ** First and Second Place awards in the Plains Style doll category * 1985: Best of division award, Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market * 2011: First Prize, Cherokee Art Market,

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa ( ) is the List of municipalities in Oklahoma, second-most-populous city in the U.S. state, state of Oklahoma, after Oklahoma City, and the List of United States cities by population, 48th-most-populous city in the United States. The po ...

* 2019: Best of Classification Award, Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market * 2019: Best of Show Award, Autry Indian Arts Marketplace * 2019: Best of Show Award, Native People of the Plains Art Market * 2021: Best in Show, Santa Fe Indian Market

References

External links

www.example.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holy Bear, Rhonda 1959 births Living people 20th-century American artists 20th-century American women artists 20th-century Native American artists 20th-century Native American women 21st-century American artists 21st-century American women artists 21st-century Native American artists 21st-century Native American women American beadworkers American dollmakers American woodcarvers Artists from Nevada Artists from South Dakota Cheyenne River Sioux people Lakota women artists Native American beadworkers Native American woodcarvers Women beadworkers Women woodcarvers