Tomah I (Myrna Loy Center Show): About the Exhibit

The "Tomah I" exhibit is part of a Myrna Loy
Center Grants to Artists award. Foster will present a
series of mixed media paintings, drawings,
assemblages, and working studies for site-specific
installation focusing on the Helena Valley as a sacred
landscape. Tomah I is the first phase in this exploration.

The Native American culture hero Trickster (called
Ishjinki, in Foster’s Ioway tribe) is our guide
through various, sometimes antithetical, cultural
lenses: Native American ethnogeography, Chinese feng
shui, preindustrial European location/leylines,
American folk tradition, and Catholic pilgrimages. For
example, what is the connection between the continuing
controversy over the urban deer population in Helena,
and the ancient tradition that Helena Valley was
considered by the Salish and the Piegan to be a “game
cache,” a favored place where animals congregated and
could be found in times of scarcity? What does it mean
to be a sacred landscape,?

About the Artist: Lance M. Foster

A graduate of Helena High's class of 1978, Foster is
an alumni of the Institute of American Indian Arts in
Santa Fe, and of Carroll College. He received his B.A.
in Anthropology and Native American Studies from the
University of Montana. He has master's degrees in
Anthropology/Archaeology (M.A.) and Landscape
Architecture (M.L.A.) from Iowa State University.

Contact Information:

Lance M. Foster
320 E. Broadway #4
Helena, MT 59601
Phone: 422-5911
Email: lancemfoster@yahoo.com