Mesa Verde National Park will have Rick Braveheart, landscape photographer, as its second Artist-in-Residence for 2012. Braveheart has studios in Ohio and Florida and has been a National Park Service Artist-in-Residence recipient nine times. His award-winning photography is found in private and public collections, seen regularly in gallery and art museum shows and is currently in a long-term exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum. In 2013, he will serve as the resident photographer for an International Arctic Expedition.
Braveheart says that As a Native American, I feel a deep connection to Mesa Verde because of the lands history and cultural significance to the Ancestral Puebloans and the many tribes and pueblos of today that have park affiliations. I strive always in my landscape work to honor the ancestors who have come before us, by visually sharing the beauty of the land on which they lived, cared for, and made possible for future generations. I am carrying out my work at Mesa Verde in a way that honors those ancestors whose vision, culture and ingenuity are seen everywhere throughout this magnificent and sacred place.
Braveheart will have a multi-media presentation at 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 2, in the library located at the Far View Lodge. He will speak about his decades long passion of photographing Americas national lands and his work with the National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, wildlife and conservation groups and nature preserves across the country. A drawing for a photography related door prize will be held at the presentation.
Begun during Mesa Verde National Parks 2006 Centennial, the artist-in-residence program provides accomplished writers, composers, and visual and performing artists the opportunity to pursue their particular art form while being surrounded by the inspiring ancient architecture of the Ancestral Pueblo People and the sweeping natural landscape of the park. The park provides a historic, rustic residence to selected participants for four two-week periods each year.