Distinctly Montana Magazine

The second panel depicts a mother and newborn wrapped in the quilt of the past while the third panel illustrates Montana's beauty and the passing of the Native American life-way. Ladies of the evening also had a role in Helena's evolution. Jazz guitarist M.J. Williams and her fellow musician were part of Helena's strong artistic community. The Native American woman reflects on her past and how one way of life eclipses another. Helena's Commemorative Mural The artistic arrangement consists of three major sections with each section telling multiple stories. An old woman dominates the first section. She represents the true pioneer, reflecting on her life through memories of herself as a little girl, running free in the Prickly Pear Valley, hunting rabbits with a faithful dog at her side. This panel represents time and change in Montana with the clouds reinforcing the importance of memory. The school teacher and the artist with her palette symbolize the many courageous women who came west—leaving homes and family—to bring education, culture, and stability to the remote frontier. Fannie Sperry Steele, World Bucking Bronco Champion, on her favorite pinto Napoleon, is one of the few distinct characters depicted in the mural. She represents all independent women who followed nontraditional paths and blazed new trails for others. Along with Fannie are several suffragists, wearing their banners of suffrage yellow, who worked tirelessly to win the right to vote and participate. Painted ladies, a fixture in nearly every frontier settlement, are humorously juxtaposed next to the suffragists. A modern housewife and her beer-drinking, TV-watching husband provide a transition in the second panel. Next door, guitarist M.J. Williams and a fellow musician testify to the talented arts community well established in Helena by 1979. The sleeping mother with her newborn overarches the mural's center, suggesting new potential wrapped in the quilt of the past. As the mural was being designed, Helena businesswoman Debi Corcran's son Eli was born. This sparked the inclusion of the quilt as the essence of motherhood, childhood memories, women's social gatherings, family history, heirlooms, and the importance of handing these things down. In 1979, a dramatic eclipse of the sun had a profound effect on the community. The artists changed the third panel, dedicated to Native American women, to incorporate the event. This third panel illustrates the pristine, unspoiled wilderness, and beauty of all Montana. It celebrates a way of life that existed in the valley for thousands of years before the arrival of miners and settlers. One way of life eclipsed another, and the Indian woman reflects on her childhood and her ancestors, looking back on a life-way that is no more. The reflections of the pioneer in the first panel D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A Gal 27 FA L L | 2 013

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