Sioux Indian Museum Rapid City Sd

Bryan Bortnem: Inspired by the prairie

He paints horses, sculpts buffalos, makes shaman necklaces and crafts eagle feathers in silver but all with a distinctly modern feel. "Most of my images are contemporary interpretations of traditional western tribal designs," explains Bryan Bortnem, 56, a professional artist who divides his time between his home and studio near Rutland and his "other work" as a jeweler in Brookings. While Bortnem's name may not be as readily recognized as a Jon Crane or a Joshua Spies, his artwork is on a par with those better-known South Dakota artists. He's been honing his craft for a long time, too he has customers who have been buying his artwork for more than three decades. As an artist, Bortnem is hard to pin down: he's a painter, a sculptor and a carver, and he works in mediums ranging from acrylics to bone and stone While Bortnem's artworks stir the imagination and please the senses, what stands out most is the impeccable craftsmanship with which they're finished . That in itself is unusual, because "Bryan is entirely self-taught ," says Cathy Hoss, Bortnem's wife and partner. "He doesn't order (how- to) books. That is the old Norwegian in him. It seems labor-intensive and can be exasperating, but the result is the incredible beauty of each hand-crafted piece." Bortnem never had an art class in high school, but he did enroll in an industrial arts program that changed his life. The instructor introduced young Bortnem to leathercraft, and the seed was planted. He fell in love with leatherwork and then taught himself leather tooling , getting good enough at it that he began to sell the things he made. Scrimshaw start Scrimshaw, like leather tooling, involves carving or scratching a pattern on an item, but scrimshaw is typically done on ivory, bone or horn. (American sailors used to make scrimshaw carvings using whale teeth and walrus tusks.) Bortnem began by doing wildlife scenes on deer antler. Bortnem's roots are deep in the prairie soil.

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