“If you have an ounce of creativity in you,” he says, “if you come to this country and go to the sandhills, where good horses and cattle are raised and the families have been for generations, there’s poetry all around.”

Cook is a 2025 Midwest Culture Bearer awardee. His work is “the poetry of the working cowboy,” flowing from years of hard work on horseback, chasing cattle and building a life. 

Photo Credit: Rebecca DeWitt / Arts Midwest

Cowboy poetry—a name that Cook says some appreciate and others find limiting—stretches back to the 19th century. Cowboys put their stories of trailing cattle and braving fearsome weather into rhyme so they could remember, he says. “Stories turned into songs and poems. And it continues to this day.”

Cook was a full-time rancher for decades, but he started as an actor. He studied Theatre Arts at Southern Utah State College, performed at the renowned Utah Shakespeare Festival, and was considering grad school. But his father’s passing brought Cook to a crossroads. 

Photo Credit: Rebecca DeWitt / Arts Midwest

He decided to move to the upper Great Plains, where he’d spent summers ranching with his mother’s family in Nebraska and South Dakota.

“I loved it as much as I loved acting,” says Cook. “I came back and rebuilt a life here, and it’s been a wonderful life. But boy, you can’t get rid of that other itch.”

As a rancher, Cook found himself jotting down his experiences on the job. (“Having a major in Theatre Arts and a minor in English Lit, you’re bound to pick up a pencil whether you’re a cowboy or not,” he says.) In 1987, when he received Waddie Mitchell’s Christmas Poems with a note saying, “Read this aloud,” and heard the legendary Baxter Black recite cowboy poetry to a packed gymnasium in Martin, Cook realized how to scratch that itch.

“From there on,” he says, “I was writing poetry.”

 

Photo Credit: Rebecca DeWitt / Arts Midwest

Photo Credit: Rebecca DeWitt / Arts Midwest

Photo Credit: Rebecca DeWitt / Arts Midwest

Photo Credit: Rebecca DeWitt / Arts Midwest

Now, Cook is a veteran of the genre. He was the 2010 Academy of Western Artists Poet of the Year and a founding member of CowboyPoetry.com. While a core feature of his work is live performance, his poems have been featured in The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering Anthology and on several poetry CDs. He partners with singer-songwriter Paul Larson for Cowboy Culture South Dakota Style, bringing cowhands and city-folks to tears—of both laughter and poignancy—with stories of this ever-vibrant way of life.

“There are gatherings clear across the West, thousands of people, to come and listen to cowboy music and poetry about the working cowboy,” says Cook. “Who wants to listen? A lot of people.”

The enthusiasm is especially meaningful in an artform that stems from deeply personal stories of triumph, heartbreak, humor, and love.

“All four of my kids were ranch-raised,” Cook says. “Hayfields, building fence, moving cattle, we all did it together. The most wonderful times of my life was spent with family doing this. The role family played [in my poetry] . . . it’s not everything, but it’s everything.”

Receiving the Midwest Culture Bearer Award has “spurred me on,” he says. “Keep telling your stories. People are listening.”

Bloodlines

An excerpt from Ken Cook’s ‘Bloodlines’


Now over the years our horses improved because me and my crew did the same.

Gosh I enjoy horseback in the sand with cowboys who share my last name.

No matter the job or which neighbor we help, very seldom we’ll be poorly mounted.

As their Dad I’m amazed by the kids that we’ve raised, our blessings are gratefully counted.

Still our horses aren’t the kind whose bloodlines run real deep,

but the cowboys who are riding them, their bloodline is mine to keep.

Photo Credit: Rebecca DeWitt / Arts Midwest

The post Meet Ken Cook, Sharing Cowboy Culture Through Poetry appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Growing up in Morelos, Mexico, Marván saw spectacular paper figures constructed by master artisans called cartoneros, especially at festivities like Día de Muertos. Cartonería was more than an artform; it was a bedrock of culture and collective memory. But it was also at risk.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gabriela Jiménez Marván

“Cartonería was disappearing because not all of the generations wanted to continue,” says the 2025 Midwest Culture Bearer awardee based in Viroqua, Wisconsin.

In 2016, she began apprenticing with a third-generation cartonera. She learned not just the trade, but the stories and names behind it. She studied at the folk art museum in Morelos (Museo Morelense de Arte Popular), and later with Leonardo Linares, whose family are perhaps the most well-known and influential cartoneros in the world.

To pass on this knowledge, Marván founded a collective of women cartoneras in her hometown in south-central Mexico. They taught workshops for children and seniors, sometimes in partnership with environmental biologists. “Cartonería is about reusing paper, so we wanted to connect that with environmental education,” she says.

Collective Art Making

With recycled paper and homemade glue—cut, layered, pasted, dried, and painted—cartoneros create figures of people, animals, or fantastical creatures called alebrijes (invented by Pedro Linares in the 1930s).

Large-scale cartonería pieces require a skeleton of wood or metal. Most times, it is not a solo activity.

“Community building is the heart of cartonería, the heart of my life,” Marván says. “In Mexico, cartonería has always been a collective practice. Big figures are created by teams of artists and families. They are meant to be on the streets in the hands of the community. Working this way teaches you to collaborate and honor many voices.”

So, after moving to rural Wisconsin, Marván set to work.

There were “very few spaces of cultural diversity” when she first relocated. “Instead of seeing this as an absence, I saw it as an invitation,” she says.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gabriela Jiménez Marván

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gabriela Jiménez Marván

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gabriela Jiménez Marván

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gabriela Jiménez Marván

Photo Credit: Peter Cozad / Courtesy of Gabriela Jiménez Marván

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gabriela Jiménez Marván

Marván founded the Mexican Folk Art Collective and launched the region’s first Día de Muertos celebration. Now an annual event, she organizes with local non-profit Driftless Curiosity and area farmers, who provide a venue, Mexican corn, and thousands of marigolds for people of all backgrounds to gather and build ofrendas or altars. Marván creates breathtaking cartonería displays.

“Community building means creating spaces where people feel invited to connect to something larger than ourselves,” she says. “Cartonería is the simple language I use to make that connection.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gabriela Jiménez Marván

With the Mexican Folk Art Collective, Marván collaborates with other artists to host workshops at schools and libraries. She’s created large-scale alebrijes for venues like Sauk County’s Farm/Art DTour and Centro Hispano in Madison.

She has also curated exhibitions at galleries and museums, and presented workshops at the Mexican consulate in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Latino Arts, and the Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington, D.C.

“Being a culture bearer is a responsibility of the heart,” she says. “To show up with humility, keep learning from traditional masters, and create spaces [to] pass traditions on. To allow them to grow and to adapt and belong to the people who experience them.”

 

The post Meet Gabriela Jiménez Marván, Building Bridges Through Mexican Paper Art appeared first on Arts Midwest.

“It started as a little bit of a joke, because if there’s a conversation in which I don’t drop the word ‘noise’ or ‘cosmology,’ you know something’s wrong,” laughs Hiranmayena, who is a 2025 Midwest Culture Bearer awardee. “But it encapsulates the kind of things I’m interested in: how people believe and what people believe, and how the presence of noise exists in belief.”

While “noise” can be a broad term, Hiranmayena uses an Indonesian word to pinpoint his definition: ramé.

Photo Credit: Chhayachhay Chhom / Courtesy of Putu Hiranmayena

“[For many Indonesians] It’s a kind of noise that is desired…a centrality of human life,” he says. Think of a tailgate, a birthday party, or even a protest: “Loud and noisy, but full of love, life, and people in collective motion.”

Hiranmayena’s multi-layered career blends tradition and experimentation. He grew up performing Balinese music with his family, who emigrated to the U.S. when he was an infant. At the center of this tradition was gamelan, an ensemble of drums, gongs, flutes, and xylophones that is played by, for, and in community.

In Indonesia, gamelan are passed down from generation to generation. They are specific to each village, using locally sourced materials, designs, and tunings that are not usually standardized (attempts at standardizing is a huge critique of Hiranmayena). They feature in many ceremonies, often with multiple musical events happening simultaneously.

“Traditional Balinese music should not be conceptualized as mere entertainment (a contentious topic even amongst Indonesians); it’s an activity you do with people in your community,” says Hiranmayena. “When you have all these different musical practices in the same place, it becomes ramé.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Putu Hiranmayena

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Putu Hiranmayena

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Putu Hiranmayena

Today, Hiranmayena composes and collaborates regularly with gamelan ensembles across the country. He also performs in the noise/metal improvisational trio Turtles All the Way Down, the Balinese experimental duo ghOstMiSt with dancer/poet/anthropologist Dewa Ayu Eka Putri, and most recently under his solo moniker, aQarawaQ. His compositions use noise as a conduit to critique systems and point to cultural problems, from challenging patriarchy to addressing Bali’s waste crisis.

As a professor at Grinnell College in Iowa, he draws on his traditional music background to teach classes like instrument-making, in which students use local materials to create new instruments with an emphasis on sustainability and community building. He also draws on this background for another class: heavy metal.

“Heavy metal tends to be really about the layperson, about getting with your buddies and negotiating creativity on your own without an authority,” he says. “It took me a really long time to realize this, but gamelan traditionally works that way too.” 

Community. Connection. Freedom from standardization. The tenets of both metal and traditional music, he says, revolve around these. And thus noisemaking advances justice.

Hiranmayena’s next project is the ParasWani Kvlektif, bringing together a collective of multi-modal Indonesian artists to create exactly what—and how—they want. The goal? To get noisy, he says, “making sure that the voices that exist today have no holds barred on what they want to get out.”

This is the heart of what a culture bearer is, he says. “It’s not forgetting where our communities come from, but also not being afraid to change and push for social justice, even within our own culture.” 

The post Meet Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena, Infusing Experimentation into Balinese Music and Beyond appeared first on Arts Midwest.

For over four decades, the 2025 Midwest Culture Bearer awardee has done his part to keep the art and craft of metalwork thriving. From public installations to corporate commissions, restoration work to education, Medwedeff’s hammer has made an impact across the U.S. 

His blend of metalsmithing and sculpture has led to remarkable commissions including intricate custom railings, two-story sculptures, even championship trophies for professional golf tournaments.

Photo Credit: Megan Robin-Abott / Courtesy of John Medwedeff

From a Spark to a Career

Though he grew up in Tennessee, it was a trip at age 10 to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, that originally sparked his interest in metalsmithing. Watching blacksmiths at work in the living history side of the museum, he says, “just fired my imagination.”

As a teenager, Medwedeff got a $20 anvil from a flea market and taught himself some basics. “I would hammer on flattened-out pieces of copper pipe, make weird-looking belt buckles,” he remembers.

At 19, he began a three-year apprenticeship with James “Wally” Wallace, the founding director of the Metal Museum in Memphis. That experience became the foundation of Medwedeff’s career.

“I followed his example and owe my career to him. Few people leave a legacy so large as Jim Wallace. I am one of many whose lives are shaped by working with him,” he says of his lifelong mentor and friend.

Since then, he’s received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in metalsmithing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, opened his studio in Murphysboro, Illinois, and mentored dozens of young smiths. He’s lectured at colleges, conferences, and craft schools and spent 17 years on the board of the Metal Museum. But it is in public art—about 60-70 percent of his work—that Medwedeff sees his creations make the biggest difference.

Art That Draws You In

“[Public art] lifts people up. It does something for the community,” he says. “My job is to communicate to people what can be beautiful, interesting, educational, spiritual even, and reach people through that.”

He recalls how his sculptural fountain for downtown Murphysboro became a regular backdrop for newscasts and wedding photos. Another sculpture, “Whirl” installed on the Bluff in Memphis, was voted “best place for a free date”. And while installing “Centripetal” at the Sarasota County Courthouse in Florida, he noticed everyone—from the judges to the defendants—pause to marvel on their way to court. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of John Medwedeff

Photo Credit: Courtesy of John Medwedeff

Photo Credit: Courtesy of John Medwedeff

Photo Credit: Courtesy of John Medwedeff

Photo Credit: Courtesy of John Medwedeff

“Public art becomes part of the fabric of people’s lives,” he says, stressing its importance.

Medwedeff’s medium of choice is part of what draws people in.

“Humans love metal,” he says. “On a biological level, our blood has iron in it. It is of the earth, just as stone is. Metal is a fundamental thing.”

The art and craft of metalsmithing take this profound connection even further. “Taking metal, shaping it, hammering it, extends the work of generations of smiths before you, which is thousands of years of work,” says Medwedeff. “You’re a part of that tradition and that mindset of making.”

This rich tradition makes his recent recognition as a culture bearer personally meaningful, he says. “It’s an affirmation that I’ve been doing worthwhile things.”

The post Meet John Medwedeff, Bringing the Art of Metal to Everyday Life appeared first on Arts Midwest.

In percussive dance, the body is the instrument. From tap dance and body percussion to sand dance and stepping, it is a multi-sensory medium of encounter: between body and body, movement and sound, past and present.

“The lineage of percussive dance is American history, and the Black experience,” says Ryan K. Johnson, MFA, one of the nation’s foremost percussive dancers and a 2025 Midwest Culture Bearer awardee. 

Photo Credit: BeccaVision

Growing up in Baltimore with his mother, a dancer herself, Johnson took his first tap class because he needed “something to do with all my energy.”

His teacher, Mary Slater, saw his potential and began exposing him to the work of other Black male dancers.

“If I didn’t see these men who look like me doing these [dance] forms, I’m not sure I would have jumped into it as quickly as I did,” Johnson says.

Decades later, his multidisciplinary work involves much more than tap. It uplifts the lives, legacies, and creativity of Black people, tracing histories from the realities of enslavement—when drums were outlawed, and thus the body became the drum—through the advent of jazz, the civil rights movements, and beyond. 

Johnson’s credits include iconic companies like STOMP, Step Afrika!, Cirque du Soleil, the Kennedy Center, and the Washington Ballet. He made history as the first African American percussive dancer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography in 2024. 

Johnson feels a deep responsibility to the stewards of dance—past, present, future—constantly asking “what do I have to do today to ensure that these forms aren’t just looked at as a novelty act? [How do I] get these forms into academia, into concert and commercial dance, into K-12 curricula as a tool for learning and teaching?”

Photo Credit: BeccaVision

Photo Credit: BeccaVision

Photo Credit: BeccaVision

Photo Credit: BeccaVision

Photo Credit: BeccaVision

Photo Credit: BeccaVision

His pursuit of percussive dance scholarship brought him to the Midwest. Completing his post-MFA fellowship at Ohio State University, Johnson has cultivated a rich artistic community in Columbus. Regular collaborators include the Lincoln Theatre, a landmark African American arts institution, and the Wexner Center for the Arts, where he premiered his latest show, ZAZ. 

“[These organizations] have become pillars for me,” says Johnson. “Columbus has a lot to offer.”

Featuring dance, song, rap, and immersive technology, ZAZ is a 4-D storytelling experience sharing the oral histories of Hurricane Katrina survivors. It was created and performed through SOLE Defined, the company Johnson co-founded with choreographer Quynn Johnson. 

As the company brings percussive dance works nationwide, it fulfills Johnson’s mission to reach the next generation.

“Dance education needs reform to support the dance continuum beyond Eurocentric forms,” he says. “There’s so much we can learn from percussive dance. It’s time for [it] to have tenure tracks, longevity, and more funding.”

Johnson knows the impact of percussive dance on audiences and participants of all ages. Its physical rigor is great for the body. Its emphasis on rhythm and counting beats supports mathematics for youth, memory and attention for the elderly. 

But Johnson also sees the impact this powerful form has always had: “an immediate liberation of spirit.” 

“Sometimes in other forms, [students] are not allowed to be as expressive or as open,” he says. “Sometimes we forget that even in learning there should be joy.”

The post Meet Ryan K. Johnson, Sharing Untold Stories Through the Power of Percussive Dance appeared first on Arts Midwest.

This annual award celebrates Midwestern folk artists and cultural practitioners who keep traditions alive through craft, poetry, dance, visual arts, and more. This year, more than 365 culture bearers shared their work and stories with us.

Today, we recognize nine extraordinary practitioners who are preserving traditions and passing them on to the next generation.

• John Medwedeff (Murphysboro, Illinois)
• Calvin Small (Gary, Indiana)
• Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena (Grinnell, Iowa)
• Jozefa Rogocki (Lansing, Michigan)
• Judith Kjenstad (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
• Roxanne C. Henry Laducer (Rolette, North Dakota)
• Ryan K. Johnson (Columbus, Ohio)
• Ken Cook (Martin, South Dakota)
• Gabriela Jiménez Marván (Viroqua, Wisconsin)

John Medwedeff (Illinois)

“I have been a full-time studio artist creating monumental sculptures and site-specific architectural ironwork, furniture, and small objects since 1988. My work is represented in numerous public, private, and corporate collections, including the Illinois State Museum, SAS Inc., The Metal Museum, John Deere, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

At the age of 9, I learned metal casting techniques in my father’s dental office and started taking art classes with Nashville artist Chris Tibbott, who encouraged me to create sculptures out of wire, wood, and ceramics. At 14, I acquired my first anvil. At 19, I took a blacksmithing course from James Wallace, the founding director of the Metal Museum in Memphis, and started a three-year blacksmithing apprenticeship with him the next year. I earned BFA and MFA degrees in metalsmithing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. 

Since establishing my studio, in conjunction with my commission work, I have also published articles in trade journals, taught visiting artist workshops, and presented at conferences, craft schools, art schools, and universities while nurturing and training studio assistants in my shop. 

As a member of the Metal Museum Board of Trustees and a full-time studio artist and educator, I am engaged in the development of deeper relationships between the public, art, and artists.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of John Medwedeff

Calvin Small (Indiana)

“I am a lifelong artistic, freestyle, and JB skater. This style of skating mirrors the fancy onstage footwork of James Brown (JB), whose famous song ‘Say it Loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud’ still means so much to Black communities.

Although I began roller skating in Gary, Indiana in 1967, Black skaters were excluded from roller rinks until 1969. With the opening of Black-owned Twin City Roller Rink in East Chicago, Indiana, my community was able to congregate and build new traditions.

As a competitive roller-skating athlete, I placed first in the Coca-Cola Skate Contest from 1976 to 1979 and won the 1979 Nationwide Skate Contest with the Gary Steel City Steppers.

I was also one of the co-originators of JB roller skating in 1971. JB skating has evolved to include new steps, skaters of diverse backgrounds, and a growing global community.

Although we have earned multiple honors, including a Midwest Emmy Awards nomination, my skate crew Glide8orz most strongly values connecting with youth. We perform for Boy and Girl Scout troops, community organizations, and K-12 school groups all over Chicagoland. As one of JB’s few living culture bearers, I maintain communal connections by teaching, specifically as the Dean of Skate University at The Rink in Chicago’s predominantly Black Chatham neighborhood. I have taught over 10,000 students of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.”

Photo Credit: Monika Wnuk/AARP Illinois

Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena (Iowa)

“I am an Indonesian artist-scholar serving as Assistant Professor of Music (Performance and Creativity) at Grinnell College, where I where I direct the Balinese Sound Ensemble and teach courses on Heavy Metal Music, Sonic Installations, Performance Art, and Noise and Activism. I am also a founding member of the Balinese Experimental duo ghOstMiSt, with dancer-anthropologist Dewa Ayu Eka Putri.

My academic, performance, and compositional research focuses on the intersections of Cosmology, Indigeneity, Environmental Activism, and Performativity in Balinese Gamelan, Heavy Metal, and Noise. I take post-colonial, performance studies, and creative ethnographic approaches to looking at the state of cultural sound and glocal community.

As a creative ethnographer, I have written articles, coupled with artistic compositions, that interrogate the state of performance in South-East Asian performing arts. Most notably, my articles “If a Dragon Dies in the Forest, Do Humans Hear a Sound?” (2022); “Fix Your Face”: Performing Attitudes Between Mathcore and Beleganjur” (2022); and “ghOstMiSt’s Trails of Indigeneity” (2021) discuss myriad perspectives on traditional, popular, and experimental Balinese performance idioms. I continue to perform and compose internationally, most recently as a member of the CHAN percussion ensemble with Susie Ibarra.”

Photo Credit: Ivan Indrautama

Jozefa Rogocki (Michigan)

“I was born in the UK to a Polish father and an English mother. As a child I loved the beautiful decorated eggs on the Easter cards we received from Poland. When I came to the US in 1999, I found a strong Polish community in Hamtramck, Detroit and began to participate in a traditional Polish art that represented community and belonging for me: Pysanky, or decorated eggs, a Slavic folk tradition that is thousands of years old.

I have practiced this art for 25 years and am honored to be recognized as an expert by my local Polish community. I learned the more advanced techniques from the Master Pysankarka, Helen Badulak, and have acquired extensive knowledge about the designs specific to various regions in Poland and Ukraine.

I participate in the Polish Dozynki Festival in Grand Rapids with the Polish Heritage Society, provide education workshops for the Polish Federated Home in Lansing, and offer workshops at libraries in the Greater Lansing Area as well as demonstrations anywhere from art galleries to gardening clubs to local schools. I have also been invited to present my work at the International Festival of Holland, Michigan. I am passionate about the art of Pysanky and excited to continue reflecting contemporary relevance within this Eastern European folk art.”

Photo Credit: Jozefa Rogocki

Judith Kjenstad (Minnesota)

“I started painting by learning rosemaling, one of the trademarks of Norwegian folk art, earning a gold medal in rosemaling in 1981 from Vesterheim, the Norwegian American Museum.

Since then I have expanded my repertoire to include Swedish, German and Dutch decorative paintings as well as faux finishing.

I have produced large public and private commissions around the Midwest including the Hotel Pattee in Perry, Iowa. In Minneapolis I painted in the Black Forest Inn, Ingebretsen’s and many stints at the old Dayton’s Auditorium shows in Minneapolis as well as the Norway Pavilion at Epcot Cetner in Orlando, Florida.

I earned my bachelor of science degree in design from the University of Minnesota in 1990.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Judith Kjenstad

Roxanne C. Henry Laducer (North Dakota)

“I made my first Dreamcatcher in 2000. A cousin from Minnesota taught me and my children, and we made them as a family that summer. About ten years ago, I picked up the craft again.

I learned that the Dreamcatcher originated with my people, the Ojibwe, as a symbol of protection; I am part of the Bear Clan of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.

The Dreamcatcher was originally made with Willow, a tree associated with the moon, the water, and the feminine; with dreams, deep emotions, and intuition. To me, the Dreamcatcher is a spiritual symbol of great love.

Making the Dreamcatcher has guided me into learning more of my culture and heritage. Through crafting dreamcatchers I have learned the healing properties of the Willow tree, and I have gone on to learn more Ojibwe traditions including smudging with sage and singing traditional songs.

Now I attend arts and craft shows and share what I have learned. I have taught at Dunseith Public School, the Turtle Mountain Heritage Center, and the Arts for Vets art gallery in Grand Forks, North Dakota. I feel honored that I am able to share the knowledge I have gained and keep such a tradition going. I honor my children and my people by doing so.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Roxanne C Henry Laducer

Ryan K. Johnson (Ohio)

“I am an award-winning performer, choreographer, and cultural leader described by Dance Magazine as ‘one of the foremost percussive dance artists in the U.S.’ I am dedicated to preserving and evolving African Diasporic traditions through performance, education, and community engagement.

I made history in 2024 as the first African American body percussionist to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography, celebrating my boundary-pushing work at the intersection of sound, storytelling, and embodiment.

As Executive Artistic Director of SOLE Defined Percussive Dance Company, I blend technical excellence with visionary leadership. I have successfully led national tours, curated large-scale productions, and secured over $500,000 in arts funding. My performance and choreographic credits include Jacob’s Pillow, The Joyce Theater, Cirque du Soleil, Amazon Studios, and STOMP, among many others.

Holding an MFA in Dance and Social Justice from the University of Texas at Austin, my work is rooted in cultural equity and artistic innovation. I bring deep expertise in body percussion, tap, immersive technologies, and arts education—bridging tradition and innovation to inspire audiences and empower communities across the country.”

Ken Cook (South Dakota)

“My work is primarily meter-and-rhyme cowboy poetry, memorized and presented to the listener. Four decades as a ranch hand, plus several seasons as an actor with the Utah Shakespeare Festival, are the cornerstones of my artistic history. Though my father’s death brought me back to South Dakota and put ranch work center stage, by the ‘90s I was writing poetry about ranch life and starting to perform again. By 2010, I was named the Academy of Western Artists Poet of the Year.

Cowboy poetry is a relevant art form that has tremendous value and appeal. I have worked with high school teachers seeking alternative lesson plans and provided cowboy entertainment at functions across the West.

I have recorded three spoken-word CDs of original poetry and co-authored Passing It On: Poetry by Great Plains Cowboys, which also includes a CD. I was a founding member at CowboyPoetry.com, a project of the Center for Western and Cowboy Poetry. My poetry and recitations of classic poetry are included in compilation CDs available worldwide and my website. My work has also been included in the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering’s 30th anniversary anthology.

The poetry and music of the working cowboy has a past, a present, and a future. It frustrates editors, angers English teachers, and delights hundreds of thousands across America. It is real, heartfelt, and humorous. My work pays tribute to past as well as future generations.”

Photo Credit: Richard Carlson

Gabriela Jiménez Marván (Wisconsin)

“My artistic path is rooted in cartonería (the Mexican folk tradition of paper-and-paste sculpture), first introduced to me in the vibrant festivities of my childhood in Cuernavaca, Mexico. In 2016, I began training with traditional masters such as Monica Franco and Raziel Pacheco, whose families have practiced cartonería for generations. Later, I had the honor of learning from the renowned Leonardo Linares. I also studied at the Center of Arts and the Folk Art Museum in Morelos before moving to the United States.

In 2020, I founded the Mexican Folk Art Collective, a space for artists to preserve and share traditions in Wisconsin. Since then, we have co-organized Día de Muertos celebrations in the Driftless Region, developed school programs, and curated exhibitions with museums and galleries. My workshops and presentations have been welcomed by nonprofits, ecological organizations, and institutions including the Consulate of Mexico in Milwaukee, the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., Latino Arts, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

In 2021, I was selected for Mexico’s National Cultural Conferences for migrant artists, which produced the international touring exhibition “Corazón Migrante.” More recently, I received a Wisconsin Arts Board apprenticeship grant in 2024 and presented large-scale alebrijes (fantastical folk creatures) at Sauk County’s Art DTour.

I believe traditional art sparks creativity and fosters belonging, building bridges between heritage and community. Through teaching and sharing these traditions, I hope to cultivate cultural pride, freedom of expression, and understanding across communities.”

Photo Credit: Natalie Hinahara

The post Meet the Winners of the 2025 Midwest Culture Bearers Award appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Culture bearers and folk arts practitioners are deeply rooted in the practice and preservation of cultural traditions through craft, storytelling, dance, performance, visual arts, language preservation, foodways, and more. Cultural identities may include geographic communities, occupational groups, or family traditions.  

Folk arts and culture bearer practices are often connected to cultural communities and prioritize sharing knowledge with the next generation. Some of the titles they may use are culture bearer, folk artist, taproot artist, traditional artist, elder artist, and ancestral knowledge bearer. 

• WHAT: The 2025 Midwest Culture Bearers Award is a $5,000 unrestricted, non-matching award. It honors and amplifies the work of nine Midwestern culture bearers each year. 
• WHO: If you have a folk arts or traditional cultural practice that you have engaged in for at least 10 years and prioritizes the next generation of practitioners, you may apply.
• WHEN: Applications close at 11:59 pm CST on July 21, 2025. Awards will be made in September–October 2025.
• WHERE: You must live in the Arts Midwest region. This includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and the Native Nations that share this geography. 

You may get help from someone else to complete your application. Or, you can nominate someone with their permission. 

About the Midwest Culture Bearers Award

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award will honor and amplify the work of nine Midwestern folk arts and culture practitioners each year. This award seeks to financially support folk arts and culture practitioners, as well as create opportunities for further recognition and relationship-building across the region. 

Selected individuals will each receive a $5,000 unrestricted, non-matching award. Additionally, we will offer professional development and networking opportunities, and stories featuring awardees and their work.  

Read the Application Guidelines

Learn more about the 2025 Midwest Culture Bearers Award, eligibility requirements, and how to upload and submit your application.

Learn More and Apply

Photo Credit: Mia Beach / African American Arts Institute

The post Now Accepting Applications: 2025 Midwest Culture Bearers Award appeared first on Arts Midwest.

When he turned 30 years old, though, Red Eagle decided he was going to change his life. “I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. For me, the way to change my life was through my culture.” That’s the guiding force behind Red Eagle’s bow-making work today.

In 2014, he and his wife left Montana for South Dakota’s Lake Traverse Reservation so Red Eagle could reconnect with his Dakota roots by learning the language. “The more we reclaim who we are—our language, our way of life, our history, everything that happened to us both good and bad—it grounds us and gives us a sense of identity,” he says.

At his wife’s suggestion, he looked into a Dakota language teaching certificate program at Sisseton Wahpeton College. “I enrolled, and the rest is history,” Red Eagle says. The college offered traditional arts workshops, and Red Eagle took all of them. Having always been interested in archery, once he got to bow-making, the craft spoke to him.

He spent years supplementing his formal training by speaking to elders and learning about the long traditions of bow-making from around the world. “I’m really big on not staying stuck in the past, but using it as a foundation to move us forward. That’s why I do everything in my power to learn how we did things a long time ago, but also acknowledging that we live in a different time and not being afraid to adapt and adjust,” Red Eagle says.

Not only are the bow and arrow tied to Dakota creation stories, “to me, the bow and arrow symbolize being able to provide and also protecting your people. There’s a spiritual significance to them.”

Building on a background running a youth program in Montana, today Red Eagle works with Native American communities of all kinds to revive culture through bow-making and other crafts, but delights in working with Indigenous young men specifically. “I help our young men reconnect with their roles and responsibilities in our community because that was stripped of them through boarding schools.”

Photo Credit: Jeremy Red Eagle

Photo Credit: Jeremy Red Eagle

Photo Credit: Dustina Gill

Red Eagle’s holistic approach to bow-making is customized to the needs of the community he’s working with. This means his classes can include everything from responsibly sourcing the necessary wood to the intricate beadwork and quillwork that embellishes the final product. Others swap traditional, natural materials like bone and animal sinew with modern materials like metal for accessibility.

For Red Eagle, receiving the 2024 Midwest Culture Bearers Award gives him the ability to focus on bow-making amid his broader art practice. “Starting this spring, my goal is to bring back horseback archery.” Plus, “my grandson is two. I want him to grow up with a bow in his hand.”

Jeremy Red Eagle is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Jeremy Red Eagle, The Bow-Maker Teaching Dakota Traditions appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

“Why am I studying Chinese art if I don’t know anything about Korean art?” she realized. “How can I study Korean art if I had rejected my Koreanness?”

Until then, the 19-year-old Lee had insisted on speaking English to her parents. But she decided to speak Korean again, and traveled to Korea to refresh her skills. On subsequent travels, she encountered the artisans behind Korean paper, or hanji, hand-made from the bark of the paper mulberry plant.

Lee’s “lightbulb moment” led her to continue studying visual art, and she fell in love with bookmaking and papermaking. When she discovered there was very little research about hanji in English, she applied for her first Fulbright—that Fulbright year in Korea “made it very clear that this would be my life path,” she says.

It was difficult to get training in a discipline typically performed by men in rural communities. But Lee says once she found a teacher–after six months of searching!–“all these doors that felt slammed in my face started to open.” She studied with a basketmaker, a natural dyer, a calligrapher–artists who worked with the hanji she was learning to make.

Lee developed lectures and workshops to share what she’d learned. She worked with the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland to build the first North American hanji studio. Rather than big cities like New York that “already had so much,” she felt she could make a greater impact in the Midwest. She published Hanji Unfurled, the first English-language book about hanji. She now has dozens of residencies, exhibitions, publications, and awards to her name. But she was still surprised to hear a student say, “You’ve influenced every Asian American papermaker.”

“When I grew up, it was totally uncool to do work based on your lineage,” says Lee. “It’s so heartening to see that it’s now a point of pride.”

Photo Credit: Stefan Hagen

Photo Credit: Stefan Hagen

Photo Credit: Stefan Hagen

Photo Credit: Gus Chan

Lee creates artist books, woven baskets, animals, even garments with hanji. Some she buys from Korean papermakers, whom she is proud to support. Some she makes herself–a laborious process of cultivating the plants, stripping away layers of bark, boiling, beating by hand, pressing, and drying… before letting the paper rest for a year or more. She uses plants native to her Ohio home, such as milkweed, which creates a “super-hybrid hanji very reflective of [her Korean-American] identity.”

Lee says the Midwest Culture Bearers Award has made her feel “seen for the heart of my work… in a way that the contemporary art world isn’t always equipped to understand.” The connection between artist, art, and the community around both is crucial for Lee. “Connecting my heritage from my family line with my place of birth with my skills and interests is how I embody a living tradition that will always feed my studio and community practice,” she says. “I think that connection is why art is so powerful.”

Aimee Lee is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Aimee Lee, an Artist-Educator Expanding the Legacy of Korean Papermaking appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Founded in 1868, the town’s Bethel AME church long served as a central pillar of its Black community until 2020 when it was unable to survive the pandemic.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

When Jetter was growing up, her parents had the means to ensure that their eight children were exposed to diverse artistic and cultural activities elsewhere, despite the slow decline of Black culture in Clinton.

“The town’s population has actually gone down over the years, so it was tough for me to find things to do. But my family created those opportunities for us,” she says. “It was about education. It was talking about Black historical moments, the Black museums that were around.”

Although Jetter now lives in the Chicago metro area, she continues her family’s legacy by serving as a community connector in her hometown two and a half hours away.

Today she’s the program director of the Vince Jetter Community Center in Clinton, named after her uncle, that has stepped up to fill the void left by the closure of Bethel AME.

“People always knew they could go to Bethel for any type of resources, so that’s how we want the community center to be, for it to continue to create opportunities for these kids to have experiences they wouldn’t normally have,” Jetter says.

Through the community center and beyond, she works broadly across cultural genres, from dance and music to language and crafts, to provide programming anchored in both Clinton’s rich Black history and the broader vibrancy of Black history as a whole. Her work is open to all community members, but is often focused on youth in particular.

One example of her vast programming is the summer event the community center holds each year to promote nonviolence among Clinton’s youth. “This August will be our 32nd year,” Jetter says. “It’s a back to school event for the kids. They’re fed, there’s games, and they’re given school supplies.”

Ultimately, Jetter sees her work as a natural extension of her family history.

“My grandfather owned a business. He would help his employees obtain housing and vehicles. Our holiday family gatherings would always have employees there, they were like family,” she recalls.

Photo Credit: Tara Dohrn Photography

Photo Credit: Tara Dohrn Photography

Photo Credit: Tara Dohrn Photography

Photo Credit: Tara Dohrn Photography

It’s her family’s legacy that she’s able to further extend thanks to the Midwest Culture Bearers Award. “We’ll be purchasing djembe drums and incorporating them into our programming. We’re also looking to build up our African dance [offerings],” she notes. She’s also buying easels, looking to bring in guest artists, and planning to host poetry events.

“Some of Clinton’s Black families have completely moved out just because of a lack of access to activities that represent their culture and interests,” she says. “So we want to create those activities and opportunities for the youth—and not just for Black youth, but for all the youth.”

Tamra Jetter is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Tamra Jetter, a Community Connector for Iowa Youth appeared first on Arts Midwest.