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Creative Process and Identity Blend at This Summer Program for Teens

by Amy "Frankie" Felegy

People sit around a table and screenprint.
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
Students work on a screenprint at the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute.

The two-week art intensive for Native American high school students embraces 'creative futures,' inspired by leading artists of the Northern Plains.

When school is out for the summer, a cohort of 10th, 11th, and 12th graders enter university doors for two weeks. 

Inside the University of South Dakota, they find out what campus meals and dormitories are really like. But they also unearth belonging and ownership—over themselves and their art.  

This June, 20 high school students attended the annual, longstanding Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute (OHSAI). In between dining hall lunches and loft bed rests, these select teen artists learn from each other and renowned Native artists—they put pen or brush to paper, attend lessons, and utilize open studio time for the 13 days. 

“We keep going and having things until 10:00 p.m., sometimes 11 if we convinced the counselors to stay late,” former student Tylar Larsen says. “The second it ended, I was like, ‘Oh, man, let’s run it back. I want to go again.’” 

So, he did. The Bdewakantunwan Dakota artist from Cansa’yapi kept coming back; five years as a student, then two years (and counting) as a counselor. And it changed his life, he says. 

“I had never stepped foot on a college campus before this. I didn’t know what a college dorm would look like. I didn’t know what professional art studios would look like. I didn’t even know that there’s so many amazing professional Native artists (whose) ‘every day’ is making art.” 

Three people look at a piece of art on a table.
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
Tylar Larsen, center, has been a counselor at the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute for two years after being a student for five.
Two students stand next to an art piece
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
“You get really close to these people and really look up to them and admire them,” Tylar Larsen says of students, peer counselors, and instructors. “They make such an impact in those two weeks that it’s hard to put into words.”
An overhead view of a campus.
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
The Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute takes place each year at the University of South Dakota and has existed in different iterations for decades.
A person wearing an apron creates art.
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
The summer art institute is selective and can accept up to 20 students, who submit portfolios and letters of recommendation.
Students work in a studio.
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
“I’ll be honest, I liked making art, and I thought I was pretty decent at it as a kid, but I didn’t love making art until I came to the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute,” now-counselor Tylar Larsen says.
Two students smile looking at gallery art.
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
Students at the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute get to view and learn from art at the University of South Dakota just as much as they make it.
Two pieces of art in manila folders.
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
Students lean into new or preferred art mediums at the institute, sometimes creating culturally relevant pieces and sometimes not.

Larsen, who now makes jewelry and sews, credits OHSAI (in its 35th year) for going on to undergrad and master’s programs (which he’s nearly finished with). Through the summers, he’s learned to fall in love with the artmaking process—one that doesn’t need to look a certain way. 

“Something I realized was that Indian art is art made by an Indian,” he says, not bound to “imagery that we associate with Native people like horses, buffaloes, eagles, dancing, drums, ceremonies.” As a student, he loved drawing video game and anime characters.

Trailblazing artist and professor Oscar Howe (1915-1983) paved the way for Native artists to challenge stereotypes, teaching at the university for over two decades. More recently, his legacy was celebrated through Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe, an exhibition by the Smithsonian and Portland Art Museum to introduce “new generations to one of the 20th century’s most innovative Native American painters.” 

“When I first had the chance to see Oscar’s work in person, it was a memorable experience,” says OHSAI visiting instructor Keith BraveHeart. “It felt like the work was alive, like it was physically breathing; it was pulsating. And I know that it could have been an optical illusion because of the way that he designs his work, but I also later would truly believe that it was imbued with a Dakota spirit.” 

Peeople gather around a table.
Photo Credit: University of South Dakota Department of Art
Keith BraveHeart teaches screenrprinting to this summer’s cohort: “I would return back and mature from a student to an assistant, like a helper to the staff members, but then eventually a full fledged instructor on my own, and then even later a coordinator, assistant director,” the current OHSAI teaching artist says.

BraveHeart studied in one of the institute’s many iterations as a student, and he has returned in various roles, including assistant director, for 17 summers. He is a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. 

He teaches students about Howe’s legacy and art practice. It’s sacred, diligent, and distinctive. BraveHeart stays involved with OHSAI to give back, but also to be inspired—by students, by creativity, by the Dakota way—in return. 

“I really loved the opportunity to make art, to be around these great artists,” he says of the summer intensives. “It was just a synergy. It becomes contagious. You all fall into this creative bliss.” 

BraveHeart says though it’s taken generations, Oscar Howe (and his institute) has impacted him greatly. Now, he passes that on.

“I want to make sure that I can provide that time and space for (students) that they can start to discover their path for themselves,” BraveHeart says. “Because I know that’s exactly what Oscar envisioned.”