Artist Bio”sArtist Bio’sAlexander Phimister Proctor(September 27, 1860 – September 4, 1950)Proctor was a prolific artist best known for his bronze depictions of western and wildlife subjects and his public monuments. Though born in Canada, Proctor spent his youth in Denver, Colorado, where boyhood escapades and family camping trips in the Rockies and their foothills kindled in him a lifelong wanderlust. Proctor was, from an early age, “at home in the open,” as he wrote, and his interest in outdoor adventure fed his artistic practice throughout his career. In the West’s wild reaches, the artist sought solace, pursued his passions for hunting and fishing, and sketched the landscape and the creatures that roamed its great expanses. And although he became restless after too long a stint in town, the dusty streets of Denver with their cattle drives and the antics of roughneck cowboys, miners, and hunters also provided ample inspiration for the budding artist. Proctor established a pattern in his teens and early twenties of summering in the high country and spending winters in a downtown studio where he fulfilled commissions for illustrations and worked up sketches into finished paintings. He would continue this itinerant lifestyle long after he moved away from the Colorado frontier; the mountains of the West beckoned him, and whenever he could, he answered their call. Proctor worked under the tutelage of several established artists in Denver, but was predominantly self-taught during his early years. His artistic growth was also encouraged by his cohorts, fellow artists with whom he shared studio space and exhibited work in venues across the growing local cultural scene. An 1883 trip to Yosemite catalyzed his resolve to become a professional artist, but several years would pass before Proctor could afford to move to New York City, a longtime goal of both the artist and his father, who supported his son’s aspirations wholeheartedly. In the winter of 1885, Proctor traded the open spaces of the West-his early classroom-for the museums, galleries, and studios of New York. Although he continued to sketch and paint, he increasingly turned to sculpting as his preferred form of artistic expression. He undertook formal training at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League and, on his own time, sketched and modeled animals at the Central Park and Bronx Zoos. Working alongside (and sometimes inside) the animal paddocks, he honed his skill as a sculptor not only of western wildlife but of more exotic species as well. His intimate understanding of animal anatomy and locomotion, based on close study of live and dissected specimens (which he harvested himself in the field or examined in the lab of the American Museum of Natural History), lent his compositions an air of authenticity that few other animalier artists of his era achieved. Throughout his life, Proctor was an eager student with an almost insatiable hunger for knowledge. He sought beauty and ideal forms in nature, looked to classical Greek statuary for inspiration, and solicited advice from instructors and artist peers. Proctor’s pursuit of perfection was inexhaustible, and his career was marked by an intense passion for his subjects and commitment to his craft. For his first major commission, Proctor was invited to create life-size sculptures to decorate the grounds of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His subjects were western animals and equestrian models of a cowboy and an Indian, the latter inspired by William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West performers. His work earned him accolades, and, encouraged by this success, he decided to travel to Paris, the veritable center of art and culture, to broaden his horizons. There, he studied at the Acadmie Julian and the Acadmie Colarossi, frequented the city’s historic museums, and continued to study animals at local menageries. He would later return to Paris, and spent time in Rome as the Resident Sculptor of the American Academy. Proctor traveled extensively not only to further his studies but also to fulfill commissions, satisfy his adventurous whims, and seek new, compelling subjects. As he wrote in his autobiography, “Smoke from my tent has curled into the sky in many places.” Often with his wife, Margaret “Mody”-a talented artist herself and Proctor’s most dedicated supporter and critic-and their family in tow, the sculptor ventured from the bustling cities of continental Europe and America’s East Coast to quieter locales west of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The American West proved an endless source of inspiration and rejuvenation for Proctor, and some of his best-known works featuring American Indian and cowboy subjects and wildlife were based on his experiences visiting Cheyenne, Nez Perce, and Blackfoot Indians on the northern plains; observing buckaroos at roundups and rodeos from California to Oregon; studying and sketching bison at a game preserve; and roaming wild places from Colorado to Alaska. Proctor became one of the most acclaimed artists of his time, garnering public and private patronage that placed his sculptures, from small bronzes to heroic-size monuments, in prominent private collections, city centers, and renowned museums. He collaborated with the leading artists of his day, including Augustus Saint-Gaudens. He was a member of more than twenty-five professional organizations and won significant national and international awards and honors for his sculptures and paintings. He befriended American presidents, European dignitaries, influential figures in America’s emerging conservation movement, distinguished artists and collectors, and many among the upper echelons of academia and business. Some of these illustrious friends he immortalized in bronze and stone portraits. Although Proctor trained in traditional art academies and espoused classical European models, his career was equally shaped by his lifetime of experiences in the western American wilds. The sculptor felt as much at home in the backcountry as he did in urban art capitals, and his ability to nimbly navigate these disparate worlds contributed greatly to his success. Illustrative of what Hassrick has called Drawing on his own personal history and the larger social and natural histories of the American West, Proctor’s paintings and sculptures celebrated-with all the elegance and grace of the Beaux-Arts aesthetic-some of the characteristics often associated with the West and North America, traits he himself also embodied: independence, optimism, industriousness, and bravery. Karen B. McWhorterAce Powell (1912-1978) Ace Powell was a prolific painter, etcher, and sculptor of Indian, cowboy, and horse imagery in the tradition of Charles Russell.Powell was born in Tularosa, New Mexico but grew up in Apgar, Montana where his father worked as a wrangler, packer, and guide at Glacier National Park. He attended high school on the Blackfeet reservation in Browning before enrolling at Montana State University. In his early twenties, Powell worked as a wrangler on the Bar X6 ranch out of Babb, Montana, managing horses for the Glacier Park concessionaire.As a youngster, Powell became acquainted with Charles M. Russell whose summer home, Bull Head Lodge, was located in Apgar. Encouraged by Russell and his protg, Joe de Young, he took a few private art lessons, but most of his early training came through trial and error and observing the work of other artists. He worked hard at developing his painting and sculpting skills, but he apparently did not make much of a living from his art until the late 1930s, when he built a studio in Choteau, Montana.After Powell’s first wife died in 1941, he joined the Army, worked in a defense plant, and sold plastic figurines. In 1952 he enrolled briefly at the University of Montana on the GI Bill but disliked the academy’s move toward abstraction, so he dropped out and took the Famous Artists School correspondence course. That same year, he married a fellow artist, Nancy McLaughlin, and the couple settled in Hungry Horse, Montana (just south of his boyhood home) where he operated a studio/gallery. After the studio burned in 1964, Powell divorced again. He married Thelma Conner the next year and the couple moved to Kalispell, Montana.During the 1970s, Powell tried to promote Kalispell as an artists’ colony. His studio always was open to both aspiring and established artists, and he gave an early boost to well-known Montana painters such as Fred Fellows, Bud Helbig, and Joe Abbrescia. Powell’s son, Dave, is a painter working in the style of his father and is a member of the Cowboy Artists of America.Powell is thought to have created 12,000 to 15,000 artworks over the course of his life. He felt he was most successful working in oil, but he also produced watercolors and etchings in addition to sculptures in bronze, terra cotta, and wood. In 1965 Powell wrote and illustrated a book of recollections and anecdotes entitled The Ace of Diamonds, an image of which served as his logo throughout his artistic career.Perhaps the most important honor given to Don Crook was the prestigious “Heritage Award” presented by the Favell Museum. The “Heritage Award” becomes even more important when you look at the list of prominent artists who have been given the honor.Some of the recipients are Frank McCarthy, John Clymer, Bev Doolittle, Mort Kunstler, Russ Vickers, Ray Swanson, Harvey Johnson, Jim Daley and Dave Manual.Don has just finished a three year project that included a ten foot by twenty foot mural each year. The three paintings were painted for the Kittitas County Fair at Ellensburg, Washington. On the 4th of July, 1998, Don Crook was awarded the President’s Choice for “Best of Show” at the St. Paul’s Rodeo Art Show, St. Paul, Oregon.Don Crook is known as the “Norman Rockwell of Western Art” and has earned this reputation by painting everyday experiences that people can relate to. His paintings are sold throughout the United States and Canada. Many prominent citizens across the country own Don Crook paintings, among them Denver Pyle, famous movie and television personality, and Charlie Pride, Country and Western Superstar. One of Don Crook’s works hangs in the Governor’s mansion in the State of Nevada.Robert “Bob” Macfie Scriver (1914-1999) was a Montana sculptor who was born on the Blackfeet reservation of Anglophone Quebec parents. Scriver was a scholar of Blackfoot Indian culture and history Bob was born April 24, 1927, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He spent his early years on ranches near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where his friends were the cowboys he worked with and the Sioux Indians living around him. During the Second World War, Bob served in the Pacific, Mediterranean, Atlantic and Caribbean, in the Merchant Marine. Bob has always had an interest in art, and his formal training began with a year of fine arts studies at Phoenix, Arizona. He later studied for three years at the Los Angeles Art Center School, majoring in advertising, illustration and design. During the years from 1953-1956, Bob served with the United States Army, and was stationed in Germany, where he took advantage of the opportunities to visit the galleries housing the classics of art. Following his army stint, Bob became a freelance writer of western fiction for the Whitman Publishing Company of Beverly Hills, California. Later, after ten years of design studios, advertising agencies, display firms, freelance studios, and aircraft graphic design work, Bob went to work in the editorial department of the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The newspaper position finally freed him from the pressures of advertising, and allowed him to pursue his fine art. In the fall of 1973, Bob moved his family to Kalispell, Montana to take advantage of the Flathead Valley’s interest in fine art. Perhaps best known as a sculptor, Bob is equally adept with watercolor. His subjects range from wildlife to cowboys to coastal and plains Indians of the American Northwest. His work always reflects a great deal of study and knowledge of his subjects, and he has been successful in capturing feelings through stylized or detailed work, as the mood demands.who knew and associated with Blackfoot historian James Willard Schultz in the earlier part of his life.[1][2]He specialized in western subjects, but it is more accurate to associate him with the American Beaux Arts-educated sculptors who became prominent at the turn of the 19th century. His first efforts were small inexpensive souvenir wildlife figurines cast in plaster and air-brushed in natural colors. A parallel career in taxidermy and a fondness for hunting supported the increasingly accurate portrayals of these animals.Entry into a statewide contest for a heroic-sized portrait of Charles M. Russell-a contest he failed to win-provided the impetus to become a “real” sculptor and attracted the support and guidance of Charlie Beil, a noted Canadian sculptor. Both men built foundries and cast their own bronzes, guaranteeing high quality. In the late 1950s the Blackfeet tribe and Scriver conferred about a series of bronzes to be cast in heroic size. These included “No More Buffalo,” “Transition,” and “The Return of the Blackfeet Raiders,” which are some of his finest work. These pieces and others about the Blackfeet are shown in the book called “No More Buffalo.” They were never enlarged.About the same time a commission for five historical portraits of Western men with horses culminated in “Lone Cowboy,” which was his trademark work for a long time. In the early Sixties he began to send bronzes to juried New York shows where they were accepted, earning him membership in the National Sculpture Society, the Salmagundi Club, the Society of Animal Artists and other prestigious groups. When the Cowboy Artists of America formed in Oklahoma, Scriver was invited to join them and then the National Academy of Western Art. With both groups he won top prizes.In the mid-Sixties the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association commissioned him to create a heroic-sized portrait of Bill Linderman, a famous champion. This was the beginning of a long association with the PRCA for whom he created many busts of outstanding people. Also, he embarked on a huge project: a large sculpture of each rodeo event plus portraits of representatives of participants, both animals and people. “An Honest Try,” a bullrider, became his new trademark and the name of a book about these sculptures. A one-and-a-half lifesized version of the sculpture stands in Kansas City.At about this time his daughter died of cancer. A commission for a crucifix was followed by a Pieta expressing Scriver’s grief. Portraits of his daughter and of the siblings of his second wife were included in this small group of exceptional sculptures.Somewhat later, coinciding with the opening of many small commercial ceramic-shell foundries that allowed inexpensive casting, Scriver began taking commissions for small sculptures, often on subjects suggested by entrepreneurs, which he sold with the right to reproduce. This was in part because his own health did not allow him to operate his foundry. Later, he found that David Cree Medicine could operate the foundry and that Gordon Monroe could create large fiberglass monumental sculpture. He rebuilt the small original foundry into a huge cinderblock facility.In 1976 the town of Fort Benton commissioned a heroic-sized bronze group of Lewis and Clark with Sacajawea and her baby. This was echoed by Great Falls, whose group dropped out Sacajawea in favor of York and Seaman, Lewis’ dog. By now a protocol had developed to produce small maquettes of the statue and sell them to finance the monuments. Scriver used this protocol to help save a Russell painting of an elk from being sold out-of-state.The Scriver family’s collection of Blackfeet artifacts, which included a gun collection and historic RCMP uniforms, was sold to the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton, Alberta. The insurance valuation of the collections, a million dollars, was leaked to Blackfeet activists and caused a national uproar because ceremonial Bundles were included. Later, Premier Klein of Alberta returned those sacred objects to Canadian Blackfeet.In Browning, Montana, Scriver operated the “Museum of Montana Wildlife” and “Hall of Bronze”. After the artist’s death, these two collections were given to the Montana Historical Society in Helena, Montana. They have never been unpacked or displayed except as loans to other museums. The full-mount animals were put in the custody of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation where they joined many others and are occasionally displayed. Scriver’s ranch became a nature refuge under the guardianship of the Blackfeet Land Trust and Nature Conservancy. The shell of the Scriver museum in Browning is now the home of The Blackfeet Heritage Center.In 2008, the University of Calgary Press published “Bronze Inside and Out: a Biographical Memoir of Bob Scriver” written by Mary Scriver, his third wife of four. W.S. (Steve) Seltzer was born in Great Falls, Montana in 1945. He was influenced by his grandfather, Montana painter Olaf C. Seltzer. Steve originally studied architecture at Montana State University and pursued art part-time. In 1973 he moved to California, studied with Donald Putman and painted full-time. Because of his preference for historical Western Subjects, particularly Plains Indians, he returned to Montana. David Manuel is an American sculptor best known for his bronze figurines and public works projects. His work tackles issues related to American expansionism and the ‘American Empire’ through renderings Native Americans and pioneers traveling the American frontier. In creating his work, the artist pays special attention to historical accuracy, as seen in his depictions of the 19th-century expedition of Lewis and Clark. Born in 1940 in Walla Walla, WA, Manuel developed an interest in the arts from a young age. A self-taught artist, he began his artist career by entering amateur competitions and presenting his work in the local Safeway store. Over the course of his career, the artists has been commissioned by the government to create a number of public works, including a series of statues of John Wayne. To honor his commitment to historical sculpture, he has been named both the official sculptor of the Oregon Trail and the official sculptor of the United States Marshals bicentennial. Manuel lives and works in Joseph, OR. Today, many of his works are held in the collection of the Manuel Museum in Hot Lake Springs, Oregon.Gary Schildt’s talent as an artist cleared a path for him to escape the poverty and isolation of his youth obtain an education, gave him the chance to travel, and have brought him both respect and admiration from a broad community of western artists and collectors.And while there is no doubt his career as an artist has, at times, brought him considerable financial success, Schildt has always been uneasy about the intersection of his creative instincts and the big business aspect of art sales.”It’s unfortunate that money wasn’t the only object for me,” Schildt said during a 1988 interview for Southwest Art magazine. “All I really want is to be is an artist.””He’s never worked like other artists did – just to make money,” said Schildt’s life partner, Sandy Watts. “In fact, he’s almost railed against having to paint for money, and it’s been a boon and a bane for him both.”Now 77, Schildt lives with Watts and the couple’s four dogs in an unassuming house at the edge of Glacier National Park. A series of eye problems has slowed his creative output, but Schildt remains active. Paintings and sculptures, both completed and in mid-composition, fill his East Glacier home.The inspiration for many of these works comes from Schildt’s memories of his childhood and from the lives of ordinary Blackfeet people more than 50 years ago.Gary Carter graduated from the Art Center College of Design in 1971 and was blessed to have great instructors who encouraged him to paint the West. He became friends with artists Joe Henninger, Don Putman and Reynold Brown.He illustrated briefly then was offered a one-man show in Tucson, Arizona, which sold out and started his fine art career. While in Tucson he was invited to be the resident artist at Sun Ranch in the Madison Valley of southwest Montana. The ranch refurbished the bunkhouse to accommodate his studio. Gary, along with his Australian Shepherd Patches and Amos Moses, his “trick” cow horse, took up residence. It was a great learning experience, and he gained a cowboy’s perspective and fine-tuned his cowboy humor.His interests are as diverse as hotrods, fly-fishing, trains, Bear Tooth pack trips, collecting historic artifacts, books and firearms, ranch work and painting for the CA Show. He’s been accused of having way too much fun!Gary was adopted into the Crow Nation on June 25, 1991, as a member of the Real Bird Family and a member of the Big Lodge Clan. He was active in the Custer Battle re-enactment for years held at the Real Bird Ranch on the Little Big Horn River near Garryowen, Montana.In 1982 he was accepted into the Cowboy Artists of America and in 1986 served as President of the organization. Gary lives with his wife, Marlys, in splendid isolation between Yellowstone National Park and Madison River ranches where he works hard to come up with new ideas and keep his “predicament” artist status alive.Arlene Hooker Fay was born in Great Falls on Nov. 21, 1933, to William and Esther Hooker. She lived her first five years on a farm outside Highwood, before moving to Great Falls. Arlene contracted polio in August 1948 just before her sophomore year and was confined to a wheelchair ever since. She graduated from Great Falls High School in 1951, taking classes on the first floor, as there was no elevator. She was an impressionistic painter of the Plains Indian specializing in portraiture. She began drawing as a child, painting a commissioned portrait at fifteen and had a painting reproduced at eighteen. Arlene used her talent in art as therapy while working at an office jobs.After moving to Browning with her husband, she began doing Indian portraits and soon she was sought as a professional artist. She became noted for her warm portrayal of Indians and was inducted into the Blackfeet Tribe. Unable to volunteer in the community she donated much art to be sold for various charities including Bash (Building a Scholastic Heritage) for the College of Great Falls, the Gift of Life, Big Brothers and Sisters, St. Thomas Children’s Home, the C.M. Russell Museum, the Ad Club for their scholarship program and food bank drive, and raffled two paintings for $7,500 which helped get the Crimestoppers program started in Montana. She was an award winning member and one of the founding members of the Northwest Rendezvous Group, a three time People’s Choice Winner and a Best of Show Winner at the C. M. Russell Art Auction in Great Falls, Montana. In recent years she had experienced pain and rapidly increasing weakness from post-polio syndrome. Arlene Hooker Fay decided her own fate in 2001.Robert M. CavanaughBob was born April 24, 1927, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He spent his early years on ranches near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where his friends were the cowboys he worked with and the Sioux Indians living around him. During the Second World War, Bob served in the Pacific, Mediterranean, Atlantic and Caribbean, in the Merchant Marine. Bob has always had an interest in art, and his formal training began with a year of fine arts studies at Phoenix, Arizona. He later studied for three years at the Los Angeles Art Center School, majoring in advertising, illustration and design. During the years from 1953-1956, Bob served with the United States Army, and was stationed in Germany, where he took advantage of the opportunities to visit the galleries housing the classics of art. Following his army stint, Bob became a freelance writer of western fiction for the Whitman Publishing Company of Beverly Hills, California. Later, after ten years of design studios, advertising agencies, display firms, freelance studios, and aircraft graphic design work, Bob went to work in the editorial department of the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The newspaper position finally freed him from the pressures of advertising, and allowed him to pursue his fine art. In the fall of 1973, Bob moved his family to Kalispell, Montana to take advantage of the Flathead Valley’s interest in fine art. Perhaps best known as a sculptor, Bob is equally adept with watercolor. His subjects range from wildlife to cowboys to coastal and plains Indians of the American Northwest. His work always reflects a great deal of study and knowledge of his subjects, and he has been successful in capturing feelings through stylized or detailed work, as the mood demandsRamon Kelley. Of Irish and Mexican decent, Ramon was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming and worked as newspaper seller and ranch hand until joining the Navy. While Don CrookWestern Historical Painter. Although Don specializes on works of the old west, he also does some exceptional wildlife paintings.The Northwest’s leading award winner, the name of Crook has been called 41 times for “Best of Show” achievements. These honors are all the more impressive when you consider the fine artists that he competes against and the quality of western art shows attended.He has been commissioned to do many important paintings, among them “The Spokane Indian Wars” and “The Modac Ware Series” for the Favell Museum in Klamath Falls, Oregon. The “Trail of Tears”, an accurate rendition of the historical move of the Cherokee, was commissioned by the Bowles agency, Nashville, Tennessee. Don was recently commissioned to paint the mural for the state of Oregon and the city of The Dalles depicting the end of the Oregon Trail.An award winning painter from Washington State, Don has been successful at various shows across the United States. He has won “Best of Show” awards in the M.O.N.A.C Show in Spokane, Washington, the National Western Art Show in Ellensburg, Washington; and the Western Artists of America Show in Reno, Nevada (with the Gold Medal in Acrylic, three years in a row). His winnings also include the Favell Museum Ward for “Best of Show” and “best of Show-Public Vote” at the C.M Russell Art Show and Auction in Great Falls, Montana (two consecutive years); and “Best of Show” at the American Canadian Classic Show held in Billings, Montana. Additionally, Don was the last winner of the Kalispell Western Art Show. In 1992 Don won the “Best Painting” award at the Russell Show in Great Falls, Montana (the 3rd time in ten years).Perhaps the most important honor given to Don Crook was the prestigious “Heritage Award” presented by the Favell Museum. The “Heritage Award” becomes even more important when you look at the list of prominent artists who have been given the honor.Some of the recipients are Frank McCarthy, John Clymer, Bev Doolittle, Mort Kunstler, Russ Vickers, Ray Swanson, Harvey Johnson, Jim Daley and Dave Manual.Don has just finished a three year project that included a ten foot by twenty foot mural each year. The three paintings were painted for the Kittitas County Fair at Ellensburg, Washington. On the 4th of July, 1998, Don Crook was awarded the President’s Choice for “Best of Show” at the St. Paul’s Rodeo Art Show, St. Paul, Oregon.Don Crook is known as the “Norman Rockwell of Western Art” and has earned this reputation by painting everyday experiences that people can relate to. His paintings are sold throughout the United States and Canada. Many prominent citizens across the country own Don Crook paintings, among them Denver Pyle, famous movie and television personality, and Charlie Pride, Country and Western Superstar. One of Don Crook’s works hangs in the Governor’s mansion in the State of Nevada.

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