On Friday, January 24, the first art show at the new Ho-Chunk Art
Museum and Culture Center took place in Tomah, Wisconsin.
The showcased art was created by Clarence Boyce Monegar.
Many of Clarence’s watercolor paintings represented the Ho-Chunk
landscape of central Wisconsin. They focused on the forests and fields with a
perception that is not only accurate but tempered with knowledge and respect
inherited from generations of devotion.
Monegar first became inspired by art from watching his mother
weave, design, and decorate baskets. He had an art teacher at Tomah Indian
School, Miss Crane, who recognized his talents for drawing and painting and
encouraged him to pursue art as a career.
For several years he had spent periods among the Ho-Chunk Nation and
immersed himself in the life and work of his people. He found himself back in
the city, painting and selling his pictures and seeking the companionship of
friends and family who understood his art.
His great grandfather, Chief Joe Monegar, had been a famous leader
and medicine man among the Winnebago tribes during the Civil War. His father,
Thomas Monegar, provided a living for his family of seven by working in nearby
cranberry marshes.
Conscious of poverty, his father was inclined to discourage
Clarence’s early attempts at drawing and painting. His mother, however,
supported his work.
Once his father passed, Clarence dropped out of high school to
help support his mother and family.
At the age of 22, he married Emma Stacy, and his attempts at art
were revived and encouraged by his wife. For many years the family thrived, but
after the birth of their four children, tragedy struck when the mother
contracted tuberculosis.
Her illness had a depressing effect on his work and personal life.
Her death, shortly after that, set him on a continual path of fallen trees and
broken bottles.
When the shock of his wife’s death left him unable to support his
children, he was sent to the Neillsville jail on the nonsupport warrant of a
kinsman. While in jail, his desire to express himself creatively returned.
He asked for paper brushes and crayons, and literally painted his
way out of jail. The first viewers of his work were prisoners, jailors, the
sheriff, and the district attorney.
The district attorney was so amazed by Clarence’s work that he
drove him to UW-Madison to see the noted artist, John Steuart Curry, artist in
residence, in the hope that Curry would recognize Monegar’s art. Curry was so
impressed that he wrote to his dealer, Reeves Lowenthal of Associated American
Artists in New York.
Curry then introduced Monegar to lithography, and it was his
painting named Feeding Grouse that the dealer accepted and sold in an edition
of sixty.
Curry started
mentoring Monegar and introduced him to the annual Rural Arts Show at the
University. Whatever art Clarence submitted was sold.
Clarence started
to sign his drawings with his name and also drew a tiny arrowhead after his
name to signify his Native American culture in a predominantly Euro-American
audience. This all came to an end in 1945 when he was drafted into the army to
serve as an ambulance driver
It is estimated
that, throughout of his life, he painted over 8,000 pictures and sold the
majority of them himself by going door to door.
What has become of these paintings is unknown. Some hang on the
walls of hunting shacks and lake cottages, while others are in the galleries of
collectors.