Maggie's Farm

Smith is a member of Montana's Flathead Nation. Like so many artists, as long as she steers clear of politics she makes nifty pictures to look at. Here are some of her works.

(I think I first became aware of her work in Jamake Highwater's The Sweet Grass Lives On; 50 Contemporary North American Indian Artists. Highwater himself has an interesting story. Born Jake Marks, he was a choreographer, critic and writer who worked in San Francisco and NYC and who, like Ward Churchill, wore a ponytail and passed himself off as an Indian. A fraud. In some areas of society, of course, being a member of an "oppressed group" lends mucho cachet and sex appeal. His Indian art book was pretty good, though. Lots of pictures.)

Twenty years ago she was making American Indian/Chagall-type mythic dream stuff. Ghosts and monks and coyotes and firebirds and petroglyphs. Here are two of her pastels: