Grant Profile: Merlin Little Thunder

Guest Author: Lauren Kubier, Intern 

Merlin Little Thunder, The New Sacred Bundle, Acrylic, 14x40" 

Merlin Little Thunder will create artwork for publication, teach and demonstrate for the third annual Lek Treks and More in Woodward in part with help from an Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Community Artist Partnership Grant.

Little Thunder’s goal is to preserve and record the history of the land, its animals and people of the past and present in a narrative painterly style.  For this project, Merlin’s artwork will combine images of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken with Native American images, showing the connection between nature and Native American traditions. Lek Treks and More raises awareness of the Lesser Prairie Chicken, a bird species endemic to a small area of the US that includes western Oklahoma, and one that is currently under threat from development and other factors.

Merlin Little Thunder, Cradled in the minnie
ha ha Gulch, Acrylic, 14x40" 

A Tulsa-based artist, Little Thunder is an enrolled member of the Southern Cheyenne tribe who has been painting professionally since 1980. His paintings are held in collections at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the Fred Jones Museum in Norman, Oklahoma and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.  They have been displayed at the Governor’s Gallery at the State Capitol in Oklahoma City and at Wickenburg Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a co-founder of Thunder Road Theatre in Tulsa and he works regularly with the Alternative Education Students in Canton, Oklahoma. Articles on his work have appeared in Southwest Art, Oklahoma Today, and on book covers for the University of Nebraska Press.

The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition provides project grants to artists to help themat watershed stages in starting and growing their careers. The next deadline is April 15 and guidelines can be found here. The program is supported by the Oklahoma Arts Council and Allied Arts as well as discerning individuals and businesses.