Iron Thunderhorse - Artist

Artist

Thunderhorse has published a special series teaching the basics of many Native American traditional crafts. His book, Return of the Thunderbeings (by Iron Thunderhorse and Donn LeVie, Jr., Santa Fe, Bear & Co., 1990, ISBN 0-939680-68-8), has chapters on Shamanic art and is full of symbols and designs used as iconography in tribal arts and crafts. All of Thunderhorse's books, booklets, and scholarly studies contain his line drawings, maps, and charts. Four of his illustrations appear in Voices of Native America and he designed the cover for his only authorized biography, Following the Footprints of a Stone Giant: The Life and Times of Iron Thunderhorse.

Iron's artistic work has been collected by tribes, museums, and private collectors in the US, Canada, and abroad. His historical pictographic portraiture of Tecumseh is on display at the Museums at Prophetstown in Lafayette, Indiana. His masks are in the private collections of Barbara Hand Clow, David Wagner, and Yehwehnode. At the Indian Trading Post and Powwow Museum, just south of Indianapolis, Indiana, many Thunderhorse originals were on display for several years. Other works have been on display in Louisville, Kentucky; New York City; Orange, Texas; and elsewhere. A permanent exhibit of Iron's maps and portraits reside at the Quinnipiac Dawnland Museum in Guilford, Connecticut, while a large collection of his work remains at the ACQTC National Office in Milltown, Indiana. At gatherings, his creations have been used as educational tools in CT, IN, NY, and Quebec, Canada. To help raise funds and awareness, he has donated paintings to worthy groups such as the Eastern Puma Research Association in Baltimore, Maryland.