Colleen Friday

April 2026 – March 2027

Opening Reception: April 21st, 4:30-6 pm, remarks from the artist and guest Al Hubbard at 5pm.

Duhesa Gallery, Lory Student Center

Undiminished centers the symbiotic relationship between the Arapaho people and the buffalo. It traces parallel histories of massacre, displacement, land loss, and attempted erasure, revealing how these forces disrupted an enduring, interdependent bond. At the same time, the work looks forward, highlighting ongoing Tribal buffalo restoration efforts as acts of cultural renewal, ecological balance, and reconnection. Through this lens, the exhibition holds both the deep undertow of history and the undiminished possibility of resurgence.

Artist Statement:

“I grew up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, where my earliest artistic influences came from my mother and older sisters’ beadwork. The intense discipline of sorting and stitching tiny beads during evening hours, grouped around a table with the golden light of a lamp mixing with conversation and the laughter of Native women. Their expertise carries the traditions of beadwork and rawhide paintings seen in art museum collections across the world, many of which were created by unnamed Native women artists.

My practice reflects my interwoven identities as a Northern Arapaho artist, scientist, and conservation organizer. With a background in rangeland ecology and watershed management, I draw on both cultural knowledge and scientific ways of seeing. I am especially interested in geometric abstraction, symmetry, and patterns informed by the natural world.

Working across different media, I create beadwork, paintings, stencils, digital designs, photo collages, and murals. My work moves between what is often labeled craft, folk art, and fine art, combining traditional forms with contemporary processes. I create images based on historical photographs and abstract compositions rooted in pattern, land, and mapping. The Duhesa gallery space was a catalyst for me to experiment with sculptural work. I’ve had the ideas for Immeasurable and Invocation for a while but 2D mediums seemed flat — not offering the depth or impact the concepts deserve. The space and light and even the display case format itself invites viewers to investigate beyond what a static representation of an image on the wall might provide.”