Arts Council awards Fellowships to four South Dakota artists
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Each year the South Dakota Arts Council selects a group of South Dakota ar"sts to receive the Ar"st Fellowship grant rewarding individual ar"s"c excellence. The $5,000 fellowships, awarded following an extensive review by a judging panel, reflect the variety and quality of art being produced in South Dakota. For FY2021, four ar"sts were selected as Fellows.
Ben Miller
Ben Miller is the author of River Bend Chronicle: The Junkifica!on of a Boyhood Idyll Amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa. He has received a crea"ve wri"ng fellowship from the Radcliffe Ins"tute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a research grant from the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. His wri"ng has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Experimental Wri!ng, The New England Review, The Southern Review, The An!och Review, One Story, Fic!on Interna!onal, The Kenyon Review and other venues. The first South Dakota project he developed involved collec"ng new transla"ons of the William Carlos Williams poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” in the 140 languages currently spoken in Sioux Falls. For more than three decades, he has been married to writer Anne Pierson Wiese, the recipient of an SDAC Ar"st Fellowship in 2018. Kevin Pourier, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has been carving buffalo horn in the Pine Ridge Indian Reserva"on in South Dakota for nearly 30 years. Pourier is one of the only ar"sts in the country working in the medium of incised buffalo horn. The works he produces carry forward Lakota ar"s"c prac"ces for crea"ng spoons and vessels of sublime beauty from the horns of the revered animal. His carvings reveal the beauty he sees in the world around us, u"lizing imagery intent on inspiring thought, growth and crea"ng the opportunity for educa"on.
Marty Two Bulls, Jr. is an ar"st and educator based in Rapid City. Two Bulls is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe Kevin Pourier and was raised in the high plains of South Dakota. Two Bulls comes from a family of diverse ar"sts. His father, Marty Two Bulls, Sr., is an accomplished ar"st and was his first art instructor. Two Bulls grew up in his father’s studio where he learned the fundamentals of sculpture, illustra"on, graphic design and how to make a living as a crea"ve person. He is a graduate of The Ins"tute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and spent several years in Santa Fe developing his art prac"ce and working in contemporary art galleries before returning to South Dakota in 2017 to be a full"me art faculty member at Oglala Lakota College. Two Bulls has exhibited his artwork in galleries and museums both na"onally and interna"onally with works in several museum permanent collec"ons. Stephen Yarbrough began his musical career as a flu"st/arranger with the Air Force Academy Band outside of Colorado Springs, CO. In 1982 he took a teaching posi"on in Music Theory/Composi"on at the University of South Dakota, and in 1983 was awarded his D.M.A. in Music Composi"on from the University of Oklahoma. His work has been commissioned and performed by the Na"onal Symphony Orchestra, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, interna"onally renowned tenor Sco% Piper, Maestro Henry Charles Smith and many others. He has three "mes received the Ar"st Fellowship Grant from the South Dakota Arts Council, and was commissioned to write composi"ons for South Dakota’s BiCentennial year, the Sesquicentennial Celebra"on for the City of Sioux Falls and the 125th year of SD statehood. Yarbrough is a writer member and publisher member of ASCAP—the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers—and Emeritus Professor in Music and former Composer in Residence a#er 29 years of teaching at the University of South Dakota. Page 12
www.ArtsCouncil.sd.gov
Marty Two Bulls, Jr.
Stephen Yarbrough
