Frank Big Bear

Dreams speak the language of the heart. In the English language we "take" a nap, we "have" a dream. But is it not as accurate to say we "give" ourselves to sleep or we "receive" a dream? Frank Big Bear tells of his family, sitting around the breakfast table in the morning, sharing their dreams of the previous night. Dreams are seen as events of experience, like a toothache or a rainstorm, information to be aware of.

In the monumental Caterpillar Man, which was inspired by a dream, we see in the bottom panel the artist himself dwarfed by his vision, apprehensively listening.

In the drawing White Earth, the place of Big Bear’s birth, the past, present, and future all dissolve together into a single moment, as if the earth itself is dreaming all it had seen and experienced.

White Earth, 1988, 110" x 120", prisma color pencil on paper, copyright Frank Big Bear

Frank Big Bear was born in 1953 on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. He grew up on the reservation and moved to Minneapolis in his early teens. Though largely self-taught, Big Bear also studied with George Morrison at the University of Minnesota. He lives and works in Minneapolis.   Big Bear has been a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Bush Foundation, and Minnesota State Arts Board. He has shown throughout the nation including, in 1994, a one-person show at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and, in 1997, a one-person show at the Jacobson Foundation, Norman, Oklahoma. In 1998 he completed a library mural for the New York City Percent for Art Program.

Listening with the Heart / George Morrison / Norval Morrisseau

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