Metal artists explore native roots
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The drummers are spaced around the drum, sticks raised, one in a cowboy hat with an eagle feather, a couple wearing ball caps.
The dancers circle — a jingle dancer, a shawl dancer, a fancy dancer, a grass dancer and a chicken dancer.
Although the drum and the voices — “way ah way ahhhhh” — can almost be heard, the drummers and dancers are all made of steel. Each rosette of the fancy dancer’s bustle and length of fringe on the grass dancer’s arm was cut with a torch, and the facial features are made with welding rod.
Glenn Aragon and Jennifer Green created the dancers, drum and staffs on display at the Tribal Health building in Polson. They also made life-size dancers displayed on the wall in the Big Knife building on Salish Kootenai College Campus.
Aragon teaches metal art part time at SKC. A welder by trade, he got tired of the cold and the grief.
One morning watching his colts play, he thought, “I can make that out of metal.”
So he did and has been a metal artist for 25 years.
Aragon is Eastern Shoshone and Pend d’Oreille and grew up in Wyoming. Although he always says he went to “Arlee Tech,” Aragon took art classes at SKC and earned his A.A. and a degree in computer design.
Green came from Michigan about 10 years ago and studied at the University of Montana for a couple of years as she pursued her massage therapy career. She loves Montana, so she stayed. Green met Aragon when she signed up for his metal art class.
“Glenn almost didn’t let me into his class,” Green said, pointing a thumb at Aragon. “He told me I’d be better at sandblasting.”
She persevered, and she’s just “a born natural,” Aragon explained. Only a few students are as talented as Green, who also is a potter and a painter.
Aragon had a contract for the life-sized dancers, but Bill Finley, who worked with him, had to retire. He said he looked around his classrooms to see which student could do the work, and he spotted Green.
“I’m really fortunate to find a person who likes to do metal artwork,” Aragon said.
Each life-size dancer required four sheets — 4 feet by 10 feet — 20 or 22 medium grade sheet steel and took about 200 to 320 hours to complete. The fancy dancer at SKC took 320 hours. They worked together, one dancer at a time. Aragon did the hard bending and shaping, and Green sculpted the faces, moccasins and hands. Aragon made all the rosettes on the fancy dancer at Tribal Health at home while watching TV. They wrapped the bustles with colored wire and used old plasma tips for the breastplate.
Immediately a person can tell the two artists have a similar “sick” sense of humor. Like a spark arcing, Green and Aragon take an idea, toss it back and forth, make suggestions, make fun of each other, build on each other’s notions and get to work.
“We have a war about every 10 minutes,” he added, laughing. “We click pretty good; we’re good working friends.”
Not many metal artists work like these two, with overlays, shaping the metal themselves, creating tools to make their lives easier and keeping the proportions true. Aragon and Green don’t use automatic or air tools; all the metal is hammered out, sometimes on an anvil.
“Jennifer does a lot of the work — all the fine welding and the coloring,” Aragon said. “Coloring metal (with a torch) is really hard to do. If you color too much, you lose the image.”
With a long winter, they’ve taken on all kinds of welding jobs, from trailer hitches to clothesline poles.
“I don’t think there’s a welding job she can’t do,” Aragon said. “I had Jennifer crawling around welding on a horse trailer.”
They found time to create some art, too. Their shop is an orderly maze of welders, tools, snaking hoses, sheets of steel and scraps. Finished work is displayed at the back and sides, a gallery of metal art: buffalo, wolves, feathers, eagles, horses and elk.
The pair calls their shop and gallery Native Metal, and they also do custom orders. Located off Highway 93 between Pablo and Ronan, their building sports brightly colored horses. The business is open from about 9:30 a.m. to about 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
