Major Award for Walter Piehl: Bush Foundation Fellowship

After months of intense anticipation, North Dakota artist Walter Piehl, Jr. was handed the newly minted Bush Foundation Enduring Visions Award on Monday during a reception and celebration in Minneapolis. Three $100,000 awards were given to visual artists of distinction, who have at least 25 years of art practice and significant exhibition records.

The Bush Foundation was established in 1953 by 3M executive Archibald Bush and his wife, Edyth. The foundation awards grants to individuals and organizations to improve the quality of life in the region that includes Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The foundation has already presented more than $1 million to visual, craft, and media artists in 2008.

Piehl, who hails from Marion, North Dakota, received the award in the company of family, friends, Bush administrators and staff, the art-appreciating public, and fellow recipients. “This is really the gold seal of approval,” Piehl said. “I am humbled and honored.”

The Enduring Vision Awards are not considered lifetime achievement awards, according to Julie Dalgleish, director of the Bush Artist Fellows Program. “They were designed for artists who are continuing with their work and whose art profoundly affects other artists and the community.”

Bush Foundation president Peter Hutchinson characterized the substantial monetary award--the only award of its size and intent in the country--as a “gift of time.” “What is more courageous,” he asked the reception audience, “than artists who put their work out there and wait for the public to respond?” Hutchinson praised all of the 2008 Bush Fellows “for helping us to better understand ourselves and for making our region a vibrant place to want to live.”

(Editor’s note: Piehl was nominated for the award in November of 2007 by Laurel Reuter, director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, and by Pamela Sund, artist, educator, and HPR staff writer.)

From a pool of 93 nominees, ten finalists were named in February, at which time Piehl was asked to submit a personal artistic statement along with supporting materials. “The waiting was the hardest part,” Piehl said after being informed by letter that he was among the fortunate finalists.

An interdisciplinary panel of artists from outside the region chose the final three Enduring Visions 2008 Fellows. Piehl was notified of his win about three weeks before the award reception, though mum was the word--a secret that all the Enduring Visions winners, admittedly, found hard to keep.

Piehl admirer and reception attendee Odin Stutrud of Wahpeton said, in speaking to HPR, “Piehl knows his subject firsthand, horses and the rodeo. Remington had to fake it quite a lot, but Walt is the real deal.”

Stutrud’s son Mark, president and founder of Summit Brewing Co., was also in attendance and is a collector of Walter Piehl’s work. His father remarked with humor that his son “made just enough money brewing beer to be able to afford a Piehl or two.” Mark Stutrud added to the levity. “It’s amazing how the vitality and energy of Walter’s art can liven up a Victorian shack.”

Rusty Freeman, curator of the 2003 Plains Art Museum exhibition The Walter Piehl, Jr. Retrospective, told HPR, “It couldn’t have happened to a more important artist or a nicer guy. His experience is so broad, and he’s also a huge resource for the Plains. The museum is abuzz with this wonderful news.”

In the Piehl retrospective catalogue Freeman speaks to Piehl’s dogged pursuit of his art in the hinterlands of Dakota. “It’s just the way of the West. If you’re going to be an artist here in the rough rider state, you’re going to do it on your own.”

Doing it on his own paid big dividends for Piehl this week. When asked how he plans to put the fellowship to use, he said he wanted to get back to printmaking, to use it for the purchase of materials, and to update his website to make it more representative of his current endeavors.

Piehl--who has taught at Minot State University for over 35 years and is considered one of North Dakota’s most revered visual artists--is a painter of Western Americana. A rodeo rider himself, Piehl comes by his subject naturally. He portrays the cowboy as an American hero, complete with cowgirls, his “sweethearts” of the rodeo.

His paintings delineate narrative aspects of the American West, a historically significant part of the American ethos. He utilizes abstract expressionism’s form, an energetic line quality and a bold palette, to create the illusion of cinematic time passing in his medium to large scale acrylic works.

Piehl forged a painting style that has moved the art of the American West into the 20th and 21st centuries, updating Western subject matter in a manner similar to what his aesthetic contemporaries and friends, Fritz Scholder and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith did for Native American imagery.

Quick-to-See Smith, who wrote in support of Piehl said, “When first confronted with the knowledge that this kind, gentle man was a weekend bronc rider, I must admit that I was startled.” His paintings, she continued, “offer not only a visual experience as he expresses ‘the ride’ through his uniquely individual combination of futurism and expressionism, but also a feeling of joyousness and a sense of freedom...”

By this writer and others, Piehl has been characterized as the hunkpapa--a Sioux term that means gatekeeper or head of the circle--of North Dakota visual art. This word takes on additional meaning for all North Dakota artists this week.

What’s next? He said, “I’m going to get back on the train, pass out in the sleeper berth, and roll back into Minot.” In awe of the generosity of the Bush Foundation, and with his wife Becky, his high school sweetheart, at his side, he made his way back to home turf. As I’ve heard, there was ample adulation awaiting him out West.

As my daughter Jessica and I left the festive Minneapolis event, walking toward our vehicle whose parking meter had run out, we heard Piehl’s voice as he stood with family and friends on the sidewalk. “Happy Trails,” he said.

Back at you, Walt.